ow much space do I need to set up a start-up, how do I find talent, how soon can I source funds – these were some of the questions that were bowled at the first start-up walk that happened in Chennai last week.
“We had a little over 200 people participate in the first such exercise. We had 35 women who registered and participated. There were quite a few who were below 30, but we also saw quite a few in the 30-40 age group, which was quite heartening,” said Vijay Anand of The Startup Centre, the brainchild behind this walk.
New ventures in Chennai
The teams visited different new ventures in Chennai including, The Fabric, Tenreads, Freshdesk, Chargebee, Madstreet Den and PickYourTrail. “The teams spent 45 minutes at each of these places. Everyone seemed to have quite a bit of fun otherwise in learning from the founders on how they got started,” said Mr Vijay.
It was a free-flowing interaction ranging from questions on the ecosystem to specific questions about the products they were building.
For Ramya Thanga, who is pursuing her M.S. in entrepreneurship at IIT-Madras, this walk helped her understand in-depth on how human resources work in start-ups and how hiring takes place.
Ramya, who has also incubated a firm and is now building a prototype, says “I always had issues with hiring. I found out that there are a lot of avenues to find talent like networking sites and LinkedIn.”
“I also realised that there are a lot of people ready to work with start-ups, we just have to find them,” she added.
The walk saw people from different disciplines – some were aspiring entrepreneurs, some of them were entrepreneurs, but were looking for more information.
Another group was not happy with their current jobs and looking for a change through this walk. One of the groups had a professor.
Housed in apartments
“Some of the participants were surprised when they visited start-ups which are housed in apartments,” said Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy, a start-up enthusiast. “This walk gave courage to enthusiasts on succession and failures,” he added.
Looking at the responses, Mr. Anand says the next walk will have a bigger crowd and more companies participating.
the next walk will have a bigger crowd and more companies participating
The walk saw people from different disciplines – some were aspiring entrepreneurs, some were entrepreneurs but were looking for more information, another group was not happy with current jobs and looking for change
