Inviting You To WATBlog Panel On “Lessons From Failure For StartUps” On 23rd Jan @ NIMHANS, Bangalore (Post Proto.in)
Yes WATBlog Panel is back! After doing one in Delhi in December In January we are headed to bangalore.
Weare doing a WATBlog Panel on “Lessons Learnt from the Failures of Startups” at NIMHANS Convention Centre in Bangalore on 23rd January, 2009 at 6:30pm. This is in association with Proto.in which is happening on 23rd & 24th. The registration for this is separate from Proto.in and one can register here. The panel shall be followed by Dinner and Mixer.
Sponsored By
The panelists are as follows:
Rohit Agarwal – CEO of techTribe, India’s career networking portal.
An experienced entrepreneur, Rohit has co-founded successful startups like Webify (acquired by IBM in 2006), CommercialWare (acquired by Micros in 2002), and been in executive management at large software companies like Baan (BAANF), Remedy (RMDY: acquired by BMC), and FileNet (FILE: acquired by IBM). Rohit is an industry speaker at international conferences, and an author. His book titled – How Innovators Connect, was published in March 2007. Rohit actively mentors young entrepreneurs and serves on several boards.
Mr. Suresh Sambandam – Founder & CEO of OrangeScape.
At the age of 19 yrs, he kicked off his career by co-founding a company, at his home town Cuddalore, a tier 3 town near Pondicherry, India. After this initial stint of 3 Yrs, he went on to work at Hewlett-Packard. Later, Suresh joined Selectica and rose to senior position, as Director of e-Insurance product division in a short-span. The e-Insurance Division and its products were later acquired by Accenture. He has exposure in global client engagements at DELL, Vodafone, Unilever, etc.
Mr. Sambandam has 15 years of industry experience. He is a technocrat specializing in product engineering with expertise in software architecture for complex enterprise applications, inference engines, configuration engines, rule-based computing and middleware. He has applied for multiple US / WIPO patents. Has a post-graduate diploma in business administration.
Mr. Sambandam is passionate about entrepreneurship, technology startups and spends a significant amount of personal time in the startup eco-system. He also does mentoring for budding entrepreneurs at IIT Bombay, E-Cell. Suresh is a regular speaker at industry forums & academic institutions.
K.Ganapathy Subramanian – Founder – Myduniya Networks – Co – Founder – Jumpstartup
Mr Subramanian has been part of the innovation industry for over 15 years as a VC and entrepreneur. Till recently Mr Subramanian served as CEO of MyDuniya Networks which he founded in 2006.
MyDuniya Networks provided mobile application platform supporting “Beyond Voice” applications for the end consumers and enterprises. In 2000, Mr Subramanian co founded, JumpStartUp VC, a US $ 45 million fund focussed on investments in early stage, information technology companies in India and US.
Mr Subramanian has been a classical VC since 1993 and began his VC career at ICICI Ventures focussing on investments in young and high growth companies in the business services, consumer services and product companies in the Information Technology sector. Mr Subramanian has held active member of the Board of Directors in several listed and private high technology companies and has played an active role assisting those companies in business strategies, growth directions and strategic initiatives. Mr Subramanian graduated with Honours in Chemical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli and holds an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India.
Santosh Dawara – Founder – Lipikaar
Santosh is currently working on Lipikaar, a product that enables multi-lingual communication in 17 Indian languages. Lipikaar was presented before Proto.in 2008SE and won the 2008 Manthan South Asia Award for E-Localization.
He is the driving force behind several initiatives to nurture and encourage entrepreneurship. He started Pune’s Open Coffee Club that brought together 500+ Entrepreneurs and Startups in various stages of development in just 8 months.
Before this, Santosh has co-founded BookEazy, an entertainment service and has also worked with TeamOn.com, a startup in the mobile e-mail space that was later acquired by BlackBerry manufacturer – Research In Motion.
Santosh strongly believes that the current wave of entrepreneurship and innovation is necessary in order to achieve economic independence for the country.
Rajiv Dingra – Founder & CEO WATMedia Pvt Ltd – Chief Blogger – WATBlog.com
Rajiv started his entrepreneurial journey at 20 years of age right after his graduation with a fresher jobsite Jobs4freshers.com in 2005. In 2006 he started a group technology blog in mid 2006 called WATBlog.com (WAT- Web, Advertising, Technology) which quickly gained credibility and became the mouth piece of the digtal media space. It was the success of WATBlog that lead to the setting up of WATConsult – A Social Media Agency. Now WATMedia Pvt Ltd as the company is know is into Media, Events and Consulting. Rajiv has 3 years of core startup experience and has also reviewed over a 100 web and mobile startups on WATBlog.com.
Rajiv is also associated with Startup Event Proto.in, an active member of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a mentor at IIT Entrepreneurship Summit and an Alumni Advisor to the Jai Hind College Entrepreneurship Cell.
Rajiv has done Bachelor of Management Studies from Jai Hind College and has an MBA in Marketing Management from Welingkars Institute of Management. Rajiv is an avid movie buff, an avid reader and a big fan of Robin Sharma’s books.
Some famous quotes by personalities on Failure to gear you up for the panel
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work – Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
failure can be intrinsically valuable
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
J.K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Speech
The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures. – Humphry Davy
I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate. – George F. Burns
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. – Samuel Smiles
I never see failure as failure, but only as the game I must play and win. – Tom Hopkins
Supporting Organisations:
Previous WATBlog Panel’s
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS Feed OR Email Alerts!
Well.. I was actually looking forward to hear the names of the panelist for this session but looks like match the following did go wrong this time – discussion topic “ Lessons Learnt from the Failures of Startups” and panelist profiles !!! I don’t see a single panelist having rose from ashes …stepped in from failure to success … What I see in their booty is a linear curve…!!
In short,this panel discussion would only talk of failures of startups based on observations but not from experience !! Not really insightful for startup community assembled at proto !!
Hehe.. @Surabhi – Look before you leap!
All the panelists have had atleast one failure. We do our study when we pick panelists. Just that their corporate profiles wont put it that way. 
@surabhi – Infact Sure who is from Orangescape was a speaker at Failcamp and the feedback to his talk was amazing.
Thanks Rajiv for clearing the fact that its only corporate profiles which looks glossy and esteemed panelists have had at least one failure !!
Hope in the discussion ‘failure’ is taken in absolute terms of startups !!
Hope to see you @ Proto!!!
Looking forward to Proto n this both