Yesterday, I went to the THINK NEXT event: the demo day of the summer batch of Microsoft Ventures India. It was hosted in a big hotel in the center of Bangalore and packed with several hundreds attendees. Most of them investors, mentors and entrepreneurs.
This batch was different than the other ones as the selected startups were more mature, i.e., most of them had already raised seed funding. The quality was indeed impressive with startups like Daily Rounds or Gaze Metrics, which are clearly disrupting their market.
It was also the launch of an ambitious app initiated by TiE Bangalore and Microsoft Accelerator. The app is called StartHUB and is all about helping the Bangalore startup community. Naganand Doraswamy, President of TiE Bangalore went on stage to pitch the app.
As Bangalore is climbing up the top 10 of startup cities, it makes sense to help new entrepreneurs who arrive in the city to thrive as Naganand told us. With this app, on the one hand, you get a directory of all the resources useful for startups in Bangalore and India, like VCs, accelerators and co-working spaces. They are all certified by TiE. On the other hand, you get a social environment where you can ask any question about startups to a network of entrepreneurs, mentors and investors.
Minsh has been mandated to develop the app. We’re eager to help TiE Bangalore and Microsoft Ventures build a strong startup community. This only the beginning, but we’ll make it a huge success and a reference for all entrepreneurs arriving in Bangalore.