Techstars Global Startup Weekend '17

TGSW Pune ‘17 started at 7:00 pm on Friday, 10th November It was anchored throughout by our Facilitator from Techstars, Mr. Arun Philips. The event got off to a fantastic beginning with our Speaker, Mr. Kapil Shelke; the CEO of Tork Motorcycles ( Creator of India’s first electric motorbike! ); who narrated his startup story.

47 people attended the event and pitched a whopping total of 31 ideas! A variety of products like news services, travel apps, and smart wardrobes were pitched. Then the voting commenced; The top 9 ideas went on to form teams and build their prototypes.

The work started on Friday night itself, each team went home with a solid idea of what to build upon. From Saturday onwards, we had Mentors interacting with teams. The Mentors were themselves Founders and CEOs of successful startups, from fields such as Digital Media to Agritech.

The participants thoroughly enjoyed these fruitful discussions as their ideas were molded and refined. The whole of Saturday was spent building up their prototypes for the final pitch on Sunday. This was done with the help of various online platforms such as Canva, Ionic Creator, and WordPress.

Saturday night the participants and our Facilitator had a game of football to relax after a gruelling day. It was followed by unpacking our Startup Weekend stickers from StickerGiant. The work resumed then and went on late into the night, some of the participants even chose to stay back at IISER.

Sunday morning the participants arrived fresh and early. After a few hours of feverish activity, it was time for the final presentations.

Our judges were Mr. Akash Sureka, Mr. Amol Chaphekar, and Mr. Satyendra Gupta. After 2 hrs of pitching by the 9 finalists, the top 4 teams were announced. They were:

MeTime, U, News for Me and iDresser. iDresser: the Smart Wardrobe bagged the first prize. They will go on to compete at the next round of Techstars Global Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekend Pune ‘17 was indeed a great experience. At the end of 54 hrs, everyone felt more like family than friends. The energy, the excitement, was intoxicating.

Highlights of the event: The entire Startup Weekend Pune family celebrated the birthday of Neharika Bayas on Saturday night who chose startup weekend over her friends for celebrating her birthday. There were also 2 participants who drove all the way from Bombay to attend the SW Pune.

All in all, this event gave every person involved lots of memories to cherish!