Indo American Community services (IACS), a Chicagoland based not for profit organization, has been organizing multiple events across the nation by creating a community platform to foster networking, engagement, mentoring, leadership, women, innovation, job fairs and entrepreneurial related exchanges amongst the South Asian community in general and specially Indian American community. By organizing multiple events around the year, IACS brings together successful leaders and entrepreneurs and aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs for the mutual benefit of individuals as well as community.
The second IACS Business and Entrepreneurial conference held on 24th of July 2015, at Sheraton Naperville IL, was a roaring success. The event was attended by successful and wannabe entrepreneurs as well as people interested in networking.
This year’s event had a mix of startups pitching to seek funding from potential investor panel and demos by startups with their innovative solutions and a panel discussion providing tips and tricks and guidance to wannabe entrepreneurs. The investor panel consisted of Jai Shekhawat, founder and CEO of Fieldglass, acquired by SAP, Raymond Stanton III, Co-Partner of Savearound, publisher of coupons books for retailers and Lakshmi Shenoy, Director of Business Development for 1871, Chicago based startup incubator. The startups seeking funding were Pranadiabetes, (http://www.pranadiabetes.com), Schoolrush (http://schoolrush.com), TracknProtect (http://www.traknprotect.com) and Symplast (http://www.symplast.com). These four firms were the finalists from a list of multiple startups seeking funding. Runners up from the list were provided with an opportunity to demonstrate their products in a startup expo, where the investor panel and other participants had an opportunity to review the features and functionality of the products by the startups. The firms which participated in expo are netisen (http://www.netisen.com), Occation (http://www.getoccasion.com), Conceptdrop (http://conceptdrop.com) and India Health Link (http://www.indiahealthlink.com).
Dr. Sindhu Rajan, CEO presented Pranadiabetes. Dr. Sindhu has spent last 12 years at Yale and university of Chicago, on ways to develop effective solutions to help patients impacted by Type 2 diabetes. Pranadiabetes developed an innovative mobile solution ‘StopSugar’ to engage, guide and enforce compliance on signed up patients to proactively manage diabetes. The app takes patient through a sixteen week clinically proven program to help prevent or manage diabetes. ‘StopSugar’ enables phone-based monitoring of key health parameters such as blood sugar, blood pressure, diet and exercise.
Mr. Balu Kadiyala, CEO presented SchoolRush. School rush is a smart phone app supported on both iOS and Android operating systems. The app enables communication between teachers and parents so that parents can be on top of all the activities of kids at school. Teacher can 1) push homework assignments, 2) send pictures, documents and text messages, 3) push voice notifications and message alerts and 4) provides student and staff directory.
Ms. Parminder Batra, Co-Founder & CEO presented TraknProtect. TraknProtect solutions enable enterprises improve their efficiency and saving dollars by helping them track their tools and equipment faster. One of the primary targets of TraknProtect is hotels such as Hyatt. TraknProtect is a iPad/mobile enabled hardware equipment tracking solution that helps hotels better serve guests by providing real-time location of items anytime anywhere, without increasing labor costs.
Mr. Sashi Kusuma, Co-founder and MD presented symplast. Symplast was founded by a group of plastic surgeons, seeing a need for a complete eHealth solution built specifically for plastic surgeons and medical spas. Symplast is attempting to change the market paradigm in the health care segment. This firm is bringing a holistic approach to solve the problem by taking an end-to-end approach so that patients, doctors and hospitals can reduce and potentially eliminate the need to use multiple systems, technologies in providing a service to the patient. What is unique about this firm is that the people who feel the pain on a daily basis are coming up with a solution to not only solve their own problems but problems faced by other members of their community.
All the firms were seeking additional round of funding to increase their marked foot print by penetrating other verticals.
The presentations are followed by a talk by Jai Sekhawat on tips and tricks for successful entrepreneurship. Jai is the CEO of Fieldglass, which he co-founded and was acquired by SAP in 2014. Jai is one of the top entrepreneurs from Chicago area. He was Ernst & Young’s 2012 Midwest “Entrepreneur of the Year” as well as the 2012 recipient of the Peter Yessne Staffing Innovator Award, recognized for pioneering the Vendor Management Software (VMS) space. Fieldglass was also recognized as the Illinois Venture Capital Association’s 2014 Private Equity Portfolio Company of the Year. According to Jai, entrepreneurship though hard can be successful if focused few key aspects which he listed out viz. 1) Startup is all about Idea, team and funding, 2)Idea is not the company as it may change based on market, 3) Team should stick to their core competency for better focus, 4) Don’t fear big competitors; it is not big but fast and nimble makes the difference, 5) Preserve cash; being frugal is key, 6) Get the strategy right; this makes all the difference and 7) Get the right amount of funding; not too little or too much; too little keeps the firm struggling to survive and too much makes the firm complacent. All the participants were highly appreciative of the talk.
Participants networked with others after the presentation over dinner and also attended mini presentations by three other startups. The first one is netisen (http://www.netisen.com), a SaaS solution that aggregates web/social media feedback on products and services, analyses the feedback based on patent pending natural language processing algorithm, helping customers improve product features, service based on the feedback. Netisen released the beta version of the product and signed up many pilot customers. The second presentation was by Occation (http://www.getoccasion.com), an online booking solution. This simple to use solution helps customers directly book their orders online rather than speaking to a customer representative, saving cost to the firms and time to customers. The solution is targeted for small and medium merchants and have signed up with some customers. The third presentation was by Conceptdrop (http://conceptdrop.com) , an on-demand graphic design firm which brings designers and firms on a common platform. Firms can post their requirements and freelance designers who can serve the need provide quotes, proposals and ultimately the service in a cost affordable manner. Customers save money on getting best pricing and quality and freelance designers get orders. The final presentation was by India health Link, which plans to deploy health check kiosks, similar to the ones we see at Walmart and other retail chains, in India at an affordable price. As the number of doctors available to serve patients in India is low, this concept can bring basic health care to ordinary citizens in India in an easy manner.
Dinner and networking was following by a panel discussion and Q&A session, where participants got a chance to ask questions and panel addressed them. Panel was facilitated by Balu Kadiyala and consisted of Lakshmi Shenoy, Sashi Kusuma, Arnav (CEO of Fitnesscubed).
Sreenivas Katragadda, President of IACS thanked all the sponsors and participants who attended the event and also discussed about upcoming events planned by IACS for the benefit of the community. All the shortlisted startups received gifts worth of $2,000 of accounting services from Chawla and Associates, CPA firm from Chicagoland and $60,000 worth of software and support from Microsoft.
This article was published in Chicagoland South Asian, newspapers and below are the links.
Indiapost: http://issuu.com/indiapost/docs/indiapost_07-31-2015_e-paper/17
Newsindiatimes.com: http://www.newsindiatimes.com/iacs-holds-2d-business-and-entrepreneurial-conference-in-naperville
Desitalkchicago.com: http://epaper.desitalkchicago.com/2015_07_31/index.html#16/z
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