In Chennai, India, a DEMO-like event called Proto.in was held this week to showcase 30 new technology
companies. As of now there is no information on the official blog
about the presenting companies, but organizer Vijay Anand sent me a list of the companies along with descriptions. The event wasn’t just for web 2.0 type companies – as with DEMO, there
were also Telecoms, consumer hardware and other product types on show. I’ve summarized
the Web products below.
A blogger named Gokul has an excellent
overview of the proceedings. Gokul noted that he didn’t see any disruptive products,
but he said companies like Unleash Networks, Taazza and Wizdom.in “showed
the potential to create disruptive products.” He also wrote that “quite a few number of
companies had social networking woven around their products.”
Web companies at Proto.in
Here is a short summary of the Internet companies on show at Proto.in:
Stringbeans Portal Platform: “Nabh is creating a
“Portal 2.0” platform, code named “Juggets”, that brings Web 2.0 selfpublishing features
to the enterprise portal market. “Juggets” offers a unique WYSIWYG portal building
capability and a WebOS environment along with a comprehensive feature set addressing
enterprise concerns regarding security, application integration,
standardscompliance.”
SaffronConnect: “SaffronConnect.com is a
social networking portal centered on user generated audio and video content from the
Indian sub-continent. SaffronConnect allows independent artists, music labels, bands and
video content owners to upload, share, distribute and monetize their content to a
community of users rooted in South Asian culture.”
Ixigo: “Ixigo is more than a travel portal, and
more than just air travel as most travel portals these days seem to cover. The next
interesting aspect is that Ixigo is built around a community of people who have their
views to share, recommendations on places to see, hotels to stay and food to try. Ixigo,
plans on being a neutral platform and enable all this to happen.”
SEraja – The Event Web: “SEraja – The
EventWeb is a web-based event-centric publishing system. The service has the capability
to provide users a ‘near real’ experience of even remote, time-displaced events through
multi media content. SEraja’s target audience is anyone, anywhere, with a mobile or
Internet connection.”
SpotEazy: “SpotEazy makes buying decision simpler
through a search engine that will give products in the order of best choice. The
application delivered over web and mobile platform will offer unbiased advice to
consumers to determine the best bet among the deluge of products – fast and easy.
SpotEazy is built on top of technology that aggregates and analyses product details,
expert reviews and user opinions to rate products. The application is focused on consumer
durables for now.”
Picsquare: “Picsquare’s vision is to build a
platform for the Indian community to share memories through photographs. Currently,
Picsquare provides online photo sharing and printing service to NRIs and local Indians.
Users can also create photo gifts like photo-tshirt, calendars and personalized greeting
cards.”
Taazza: “Taazza is a fresh perspective to news
which provide a holistic, context aware & content rich experience that empowers the
news reader. Our mission is to make news easy, enjoyable & complete! Taazza is in the
online news space.”
DEMOs all over the world
Also noteworthy is Vijay’s day 1 blog post, in which he says he hopes Proto.in will encourage Indian startups
to stand on their own feet:
“India is an amazing country, but we see the long-term problems we are going to race.
We are tolerant, and perhaps even grateful for the companies and individuals who have
enriched this soil with offshore projects and skillset requirements and have brought in
foreign exchange. But that won’t sustain us for long. Proto, is an earnest effort is
trying to get India on her feet… so that she can stand on her own, and not depend on
anyone else.”
This kind of event is an excellent way to encourage web innovation in various countries, so
I hope to see more of this. Send me an
email if you know of similar events in other countries.
