E-Chai Debut in Mumbai

The Mumbai Metro is the best thing Mumbai has got from the government since Independence! The Metro was one of the important reasons I (a Kandivali resident) jumped onto the opportunity to visit the E-CHAI (which I’m guessing is inspired by Modi’s ‘Chai pe Charcha’).

To those who are not familiar with it, E-Chai I think is a wonderful community driven initiative led by the charismatic Jatin Choudhary (I love his designation – Salesman at EChai Ventures) where startups come together and give pitches to audiences to not only polish their presenting skills and increase their visibility but also get some great critical feedback. While there are local startup groups which try to do the same, but they usually end up attracting the same audience. 

But imagine if you could interact with startups from all over the country instead of only from your city. This provides an unbelievable insight and opportunity to network and find valuable new connections as well as strengthens the bond among startups.

So as I reached the venue of Mumbai Edition of the E-Chai hosted last week which was held at the extremely scenic VESIMSR in Chembur, I was greeted by our highly energetic Gujju bhai, Jatin, who was doing a brilliant job of hosting as well as the managing the really enthusiastic crowd.

While just a few minutes back I was unsure of what to what to expect, as soon as I entered the room, I was enveloped with vibrant energy from an audience of more than 200. There is always a sense of friendly competition when you are presenting among a group of people. When you have startups from all over the country, the bar is usually set much higher.

The proof that the startup community was alive and kicking, we had on stage 10 really amazing startups which presented at E-Chai. It made me realise how entrepreneurship was growing and the possibilities we had in front of us as Entrepreneurs.

First up we had AllEvents.in from Ahmedabad, which collates and provides information about events happening in and around you. It was an amazing concept given that we are usually unaware of the exciting things which may be happening around us. They gave a brief about how All Events was event category agnostic and supported every kind of event while staying away from traditional ticketing. They claim to be one of the world’s fastest growing event discovery portal having more than 13 million events from more than 20,000 cities of the world and having more than 2 million monthly users which is brilliant!

Next in was Sosio.in which helps community managers to create, manage and grow their user base. Which means if you have users distributed over multiple social networks or email, they help you compile and grow this using their service offering. This is a pure B2B product with a lot of application for every business which is social media and customer interaction dependent.

Then we had Interestship.com from Bangalore, presenting a platform for students and promising startups to connect and work together on common domains of interest. This one was particularly interesting to me personally, since I had worked with 6 interns before and my experience hadn’t been really good. Usually what I encountered was that the learning curve was usually very steep and a few interns used to be irresponsible towards their work. They claim to use tests to ensure this does not happen and thay make the right intern company fit. This one also got the crowd which predominantly consisted of students really excited.

Autonomous Chess Board which came up next had created an amazing chess playing experience for the visually impaired. Tailor-made for the sightless, with Braille inscription on chess pieces, voice feedback of every move played, and textural differences between black and white boxes it was one of the social entrepreneur initiatives which were deserving of the awards they have got. They also generously gave the audience a chance to see and feel the chess board and that really got the crowd going!

Then it was time for us to present My Cute Office, which helps you reduce office rental costs by allowing sharing of unused commercial spaces like workstations, meeting rooms and conference rooms on hourly, daily and monthly basis. Everyone who seemed to have a spare space got excited at the idea of being able to monetise their space.

After a hectic and exciting first half we had a break for some sumptuous lunch, which saw the DNA journalists interviewing us for putting up a piece about the amazing event in their newspaper. We were also introduced to the trustees who had been generous enough to provide the venue for the event and mingled with the audience for feedback.

Following the break we were back at the venue and the pitches resumed.

The first guys to present post lunch were TheFundoo.com which provides users decisive insights, immaculate data intelligence and friendly tools to help make informed financial choices, confidently. Knowing that the financial sector is now picking up, this one can build a good future if it can capitalise on the sentiments.

Next up was Madiralekh an interesting and somewhat controversial website considering Alcohol is something people in India do not prefer discussing in the public. The website deals with the finer nuances for alcohol connoisseurs and the business model focussed on revenue from tourism to wineyards and other alcohol festivals since alcohol sale online is banned. With a celebrity bartender in tow they made up a great team.

SmartWheels was by far the highlight of the event. It is a cost-effective and maintenance free smart wheelchair that can be operated by differently abled people. It can be operated by Speech Recognition, Neck Movement and Joystick and also by care taker using wireless remote controller. SmartWheels was selected among the 24 best innovations from all over India by TV Program “Power of Shunya: Challenge for Zero” organized by Times Group and Dupont. In all probability they seem to have an amazing future.

Then it was Pykih which took to the stage, a data analytics and visualisation firm which helps businesses discover actionable business insights, which in turn helps build a data-driven decision making culture. One of the Big Data startups this is something all entrepreneurs like me get interested in. What really impressed us was the impressive client list which they had.

Last but certainly not the least, it was Ediffy, a text message communication service used by teachers to engage their students better and help streamline various processes in education institutes. With educational reform being the battlecry of the government startups like Ediffy can become the promising businesses of the future.

The hectic 6 hour long pitch session had been anything but tiring for all those who participated in it. It finally came to a strong end at around 4 p.m. with some amazing closing words from the superstar of the event Jatin.

In a way the event summarised what startups are about. Endlessly energy and creativity and the ability to create something incredible with the limited resources at hand.

All in all, if you happen to be in a city where the E-Chai is going to be conducted, and are by any chance interested in startups or have your own startup, E-Chai is a must visit.

Cheers to E-Chai

Visit them at https://www.facebook.com/eChaiVentures