WATBlog Panel On Lessons Learnt from the Failures of Startups on 23rd January @ NIMHANS, Bangalore

WATBlog Panel on Lessons Learnt from the Failures of Startups is being organised at NIMHANS Convention Centre in Bangalore on 23rd January, 2009. This is in association with Proto.in which is happening on 23rd & 24th.

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.

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. 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.

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 acheive economic independence for the country.

The panel would be followed by a Mixer and Dinner.

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 

• WATBlog Panel Mumbai – 16^th Oct 2008 – Digital Media in the next decade Pics & Video

• WATBlog Panel Delhi – 12^th Dec 2008 - Bridging the Digital Divide Pics & Videos