My best learning experience from the trip was definitely sharing the experiences with other geeks. Geeks On A Plane is unique setting and I don’t think there is any other way to consume as much information as I did in such a short period of time. I’m going to miss all of the geeks and I know that I will certainly remain close to them and they’ll become life long friends.

Another learning experience I had while visiting India was definitely understanding their infrastructure and the challenges it presented for opportunities for the local startup community as an entrepreneur. I left India with a lot of take-aways and some of the immediate opportunities I noticed were in the mobile industry. I think that there are few ways to capitalize on this category, one quick use case would be to develop SMS based learning applications to help with health or nutritional education. For instance, if a woman was pregnant, she could send a text message saying she was 1 month pregnant and receive a text message every day with advice about how to care for her baby at that particular time. The SMS aspect of the application in this case would play a big part because of the lack of mobile data infrastructure. This same concept could be applied to things such as dietary restrictions, for example, a diabetic could send a text message about certain food types to learn about their nutritional value.

Another area where I saw opportunity in this sector was with long distance calling. While I was there, I noticed that I had occasional challenges in placing long distance calls and thought it would be interesting to have a way to send a text message with the number that you’re trying to dial and it would text you back informing you that it would connect your call within a certain amount of time, for instance 20 minutes, and then 1 minute prior to your call you would get another text message informing you that it was about to connect your call. You might be able to reply URGENT for an additional fee and it would prioritize your call. This would not only lower long distance rates and open communications between India and other countries, it would also load balance the mobile carrier networks.

Both these ideas could be applied to other emerging markets such as Latin America.

During the trip, I met Milind Doshi, who went to Babson College. He shared a lot of interesting stories about opportunities in India. Milind is a local entrepreneur who is trying to connect like-minded individuals. Milind who was part of the GOAP trip is one of the local entrepreneurs who I know I will remain in ongoing contact with and I hope to visit him and other entrepreneurs I met again.

Sean Percival wrote a good post, “Startup Lessons from the Busy Streets of India“.

BOALT ‘Geeks On A Plane’ India 2013 Blog Series:

• Geeks On A Plane: Overview
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 KickOff
• Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore
• Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend
• Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp

The post Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp appeared first on BOALT.

Fellow geeks, George, Paul and I ventured off to a private event called the Balagan Party being held at the Dome a rooftop venue at a nearby hotel. We got there as the event just started and it was spectacular. We got to meet a lot of people from India.

As the night progressed, the Balagan party went on until past sunset and we could see the sunset over the Arabian Sea with a perfect view of the Mumbai coastline. Just a little after sunset, we all decided to call it a night and went back to the hotel where we met up with Dave McClure and the rest of the geeks for dinner.

The next day, we headed to the Bombay Stock Exchange was one of the Geeks On A Plane trip highlights. We were given a tour of the location and Dave McClure gave some opening remarks before he rang the bell.

Geeks On A Plane at the Bombay Stock Exchange

All the geeks we’re then given an opportunity to ring the bell with Dave McClure.  This was one of the most exciting parts of the trip and it was my first time visiting any stock exchange.

BOALT ‘Geeks On A Plane’ India 2013 Blog Series:

• Geeks On A Plane: Overview
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 KickOff
• Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore
• Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend
• Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp

The post Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai appeared first on BOALT.

From left to right: Christen O’Brien and Bruna Maia of 500 Startups

Coincidentally, I was assigned to a startup called Fan Engage. With my prior experience with a startup I founded, GOSO, short for Going Social, I happened to have a lot of knowledge in building Facebook engagement for brands so I was excited that I got to help this Indian startup. The team had already made some significant progress with the Facebook application but I felt like I was able to add some valuable input to their business plan. The gaming dynamics they were using ranked customers and I told them that wasn’t the ideal way to drive engagement because you’ll only have one winner and the rest of your customers will fall short of first. I explained to them that it’s important to build a customer loyalty reward program that finds a way to rewards every customer. They agreed and quickly shifted their pitches to get ready for their presentations.

Adam Boalt (center) with Indian startup company, Fan Engage

We left StartupWeekend and walked down the streets of India and stumbled into a local brewery. We all had a mix of pizza, wings, Indian food and beer. We sat around for a couple hours talking tech and I had some really good conversations with Kyle Wild, CEO, Keen IO. He founded a API that helps developers build analytics and data science features directly into their apps without having to build a big data infrastructure. Keen IO is a TechStars company and is funded by 500 Startups and Data Collective. Kyle was part of the development team that created Google Analytics at Google in Mountain View. His CTO also developed the API for Force.com at SalesForce.

From left to right: Adam Boalt, Connor Hood, George Karidis, Crystal Rose, Timothy Falls, Paul Ford, Milind Doshi and Kyle Wild

Andrea Zurek, who previously worked at Google for over 7 years, later that afternoon spoke at Startup Weekend. She said that she fortunate to be with the company prior to their IPO and was able to exercise her stock options which allowed her to transition her career into becoming a tech angel. After providing some background on herself she quickly turned the presentation into an open discussion allowing the startups to ask her questions related to seeking outside capital from investors.

Andrea Zurek, founder partner of XG Ventures and previously with Google

Let’s not forget it was Saturday night. Geeks don’t spend all their time in front of a computer. We do like to have fun too. A few of us went out on the town, raced some auto rickshaws and ended up having a late night breakfast back at the hotel. I had some very interesting talks with Milind Doshi who is a serial entrepreneur from Mumbai. He’s a Babson graduate a long with another friend of mine who I’m hoping to see in Mumbai, Rishi Khiani. Milind is actively involved in building the entrepreneurship ecosystem in India by hosting various events and I spoke with him about how I was trying to do the same type of thing in Miami.

Nightlife in Bangalore, India

BOALT ‘Geeks On A Plane’ India 2013 Blog Series:

• Geeks On A Plane: Overview
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 KickOff
• Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore
• Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend
• Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp

The post Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend appeared first on BOALT.

Counterclockwise: Nathon Gunn, Christen O’Brien, Bruna Maia, Pankaj Jain, Sean Percival, Andrea Zurek, Dave McClure and Adam Boalt

Just a few days ago, I was listening to Tony Hsieh at ‘Start-up City: Miami‘ talking about how the key to success and innovation is “social collisions.” I couldn’t help to think that GOAP has mastered that on a mobile and global scale. I’m 8,000 thousand miles from home, it still hasn’t set in that I’m across the globe in India and I have the most incredible day ahead of me starting out at GE’s Research Center.

GE – Imagination at Work

On my way to GE, I spoke with Andrea Zurek, Founding Partner of XG Ventures, and previously with Google for 7 years. She has been named one of the top 25 tech angels by Business Week and has invested in 45 companies with 14 exits, including companies such as Aardvark, Crocdoc and Posterous.  Andrea who was doing her 3rd GOAP tour told me about some different angel investment trends and how much she had learned from other Geeks on the trips. The amazing part about GOAP is that the rides to and from the different start-ups we visit are just as interesting because you get time to connect with others on the trip.

When we arrived at the GE John F Welch Technology Center (GE JFWTC), it was like we had arrived at the gates of innovation heaven. GE JFWTC employs over four thousand of India’s best technologists. They have contributed to over 1,850 patents and are developing solutions in energy, healthcare and transportation. The 50 acre campus is where GE solves the world’s toughest problems.

Although I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures, I had to break the rules just once and capture a picture of Dave GEeking out. We were greeted by Dr. Mano Manoharan, General Manager of Global Research, who gave us the lay of the land. GE has such a responsible business centric approach, being first isn’t as important to them, GE doesn’t mind getting in a bit later in the game as long as they make the best product. GE is the only company from the original 30 Dow companies. “When it comes to manufacturing jet engines it’s not like software, Microsoft has the luxury of restarting, we don’t” said Dr. Manoharan.

FlipKart.com

After GE, we made our way to FlipKart.com.  As we traveled back into the city, just looking at the surroundings, it’s a real eye-opener and it makes you feel grateful for the simple things in life that we take for granted.

From left to right: Nicole Winokur, Andrea Zurek and Christen O’Brien

FlipKart.com was founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007 and is India’s largest online retailer, the equivalent of Amazon.com in the U.S. Flipkart.com employs over 4,500 people and had approximately $218 million in revenue (USD) in 2012.

Sachin Bansal, founder of FlipKart.com, and Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups

Sachin said that his biggest challenge in growing Flipkart.com was that the ecosystem wasn’t available to support the need. There was a tremendous amount of infrastructure that was required to get FlipKart.com off the ground from suppliers, logistical partners to payment systems processors. With only 0.02% of the retail penetration, Sachin said he has no immediate plans to expand outside of India.

Timothy Falls, Chief Evangelist from Sendgrid, and Adam Boalt

Embrace Global

Our next stop was at Embrace Global, which is a non-profit organization run by a group of students who graduated from the Entrepreneurial Design For Extreme Affordability program at Stanford University and developed the concept of low-cost incubators to prevent neonatal deaths in rural areas in developing countries.

Rahul Panicker, Co-Founder of Embrace Global

What I thought was most interesting about our visit to Embrace was the fact that both GE and Embrace shared the same challenges of production in India: cost and electrical grid. The product had to be affordable but also continue to work on an unstable power grid.

Bruna and Christen checking out an Embrace incubator prototype.

Startup Weekend Bangalore

After our trip to embrace, we stopped by the Microsoft Bangalore office to kick off StartupWeekend. StartupWeekend is a non-profit event that started in Seattle and spread across the world. The event is held over the weekend during which developers, startup enthusiasts and graphic artists pitch ideas for new startup companies, form teams around those ideas, and work to develop working prototypes/demos by Sunday.

Dan Harrelson, UX Architect, GE and Drew Olanoff, Community Director at TechCrunch

Dave McClure kicked off the night with a jolt and certainly woke everyone up. It looks like this StartupWeekend is going to be very exciting for the many geeks participating from India. Dave encouraged the group to get emotional and tap that power in order to crush your startup pitch!

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the kickoff event, we all had dinner together and discussed a lot of interesting things about entrepreneurship in India and the United States.

BOALT ‘Geeks On A Plane’ India 2013 Blog Series:

• Geeks On A Plane: Overview
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 KickOff
• Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore
• Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend
• Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp

The post Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore appeared first on BOALT.

Being in India was a surreal experience. The country is the second largest country in the world with a population of 1.2 billion people. Experiencing things in real life is never quite the same as reading a book or watching a documentary. Until I was able to actually see it with my own eyes, I didn’t realize how big a part socio-economics played in India’s potential market opportunity. I knew about the caste system in India, its history and geography but all the marketing benchmarks I lived by didn’t apply. I realized that in order to truly understand the potential opportunities within this country, there was no better way to learn about the cultural differences than with like-minded geeks from GOAP, which was founded by Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups.

When I arrived at the hotel, I sent a group text through Group.me and within minutes Connor and I were joined by Sean Percival, CEO of Wittlebee, and Dave McClure who had also caught early morning flights. Sean’s company sells kids clothing on a monthly subscription model which has traditionally been known for things like Wine or Cheese of the month clubs. The concept was interesting to me because I had recently been introduced to some of the folks at ShoeDazzle! and found the business model extremely interesting considering the huge changes that the retail industry has seen in the United States.  I asked Sean his thoughts on how this model could potentially be applied to other categories in the space since he had grown his customer base to over 5k orders a month recurring in a year’s time. He said that the products you’re selling have to be “must haves, and not a nice to have.” I thought that made a lot of sense.

Traveling from one technology company to the next, GOAP organizes a perfectly planned itinerary.

After breakfast and quick orientation, we started our venture off to FusionCharts. As I got into the Geek Bus, it was still hard to believe that I was India. With so much to learn in so little time, I decided I needed to make a plan. I decided I wanted to focus on learning about emerging start-ups and innovation in India and how I could apply that knowledge to help foster growth in the city I live in, Miami, Florida.

FusionCharts

We had a Q&A with Pallav Nadhani at his Bangalore office. Pallav is the CEO of FusionCharts which is one of India’s fastest growing start-ups with over 20k customers in 118 countries. Pallav had a lot of interesting insight on India’s global market opportunities as well as the current social economic challenges that exist within the country. I briefly spoke with him about how I was trying to grow the Miami start-up community and we compared notes. He said that he felt that one of the most common connections was that cities and countries alike need to realize that entrepreneurs have enough challenges as it is and anything that a municipality or government can do to fast-track certain bureaucracies would be essential to fostering growth. A lot of governments focus on things like tax credits which is great but being able to accomplish things quickly from an entrepreneurs stand-point is key since they are generally working against the clock and have a limited runway.

Pallav Nadhani, CEO of FusionCharts, and Adam Boalt. Fusion Charts is one of the largest technology based companies in India and has 20,000 customers and 450,000 users in 118 countries.

Pallav said that one of the biggest challenges that start-ups faced in India was what he referred to as a “Series A Crunch” which meant that start-ups were finding it easier to get seed capital but were hitting road blocks when it came to raising a Series A round of financing. I chimed in and told Pallav that I thought that was also a problem that existed in other countries as well as the United States. I asked Dave his thoughts on the matter and he said that the “crunch” can be viewed as a good thing or bad. It’s good because investors and entrepreneurs make smaller mistakes, whereas an angel investor might only commit $50k versus $5 million which was typical investment a few years ago.

Dave McClure, of Startups 500, asking Pallav Nadhani, CEO of FusionCharts, comparing investment strategies between the different markets in the United States and India.

Pallav continued to talk about some of the other challenges and said that people don’t quite understand the overall global problem in India: adoption is slow and sales cycles are very long. He said it’s essential to have a blueprint and know where you’re headed, what problem you’re going to solve and create a solution. Some of the other GOAP geeks asked questions regarding the work culture in India as it related to the tech community and how it compared to the U.S.

From left to right: Dan Harrelson (behind the plant), Bruna Maia, Christina O’Brien, Nathon Gunn, Andrea Zurek and Patrick Eggen having an interaction discussion about the start-up opportunities and culture in India with FusionCharts.

Pallav said that the culture is very different in India. Your typical entry-level developer out of college makes approximately $6k/year. There are plenty of human resources in India but finding true brand evangelists is difficult and there aren’t too many. Some of the GOAP members suggested that you build brand ambassadors from within and referred to U.S. companies that have done just that.

RedBus

On my way over to RedBus, I had an opportunity to speak with Dave McClure and ask him a few questions regarding his background and how he got started with 500 Startups.  Dave spoke about entrepreneurship in an open and humbling way. He said that when he got paid from the PayPal exit, he took about $300k and invested it into startups since he wasn’t too sure about the stock market at the time. He bet right and although the name was derived from his previous company, he’s about to reach 500 startups very soon.

From left to right: Nicole Winokur, GE, Adam Boalt and Dave McClure, 500 Startups, walk down the streets in India on their way to the next startup meetup.

When we arrived at RedBus, India’s largest bus ticket company with the highest bus operator partners and largest distribution, I was amazed to find how systematically designed RedBus was and how they had disrupted the bus ticketing system. It reminded me of Uber meets Stubhub. The founders are currently working on ways of incorporating their technology with the public transit system. This would provide insight into things such as frequency and schedules for public transit in real-time.

Phanindra Sama, Sudhakar Pasupunuri and Charan Padmaraju, Founders of RedBus.in, one of India’s hottest startups.

YourStory.in Technology Conference

YourStory.in is India’s leading and most comprehensive online platform for startups and entreprenuers, dedicated to promote the startup ecosystem.  They held a welcome event to host GOAP in Bangalore.

Fireside chat with Dave McClure and Shradha Sharma, founder of YourStory.in.

At the fireside chat, Shradha asked Dave what he felt was the most important investment criteria. Dave’s answer was simple but brilliant. You need a hacker (developer), designer (product designer) and hustler (business developer/marketer). India has both hackers and can source designers she said but there was still a great need for hustlers. Dave added that venture capital in the traditional stage has changed quite a bit, the whole perceived notion of investors being on Wall Street has changed and it doesn’t matter whether you’re in shorts or not. You have to get out and surround yourself with the right people to find the right deals.

Crystal Rose, Executive Producer at Phenomenon, introduces herself as a geek at the GOAP YourStory.In Tech Conference.

I got a quick minute to speak with Shradha about India’s growing economy and told her that I was from Miami. We discussed several things and how in some ways India was at a global scale what Miami was to the United States. She said that it was important to bring the hackers, designers and hustlers like Dave said together to collaborate in Miami to create the ecosystem that is required for innovation to succeed.

Shradha Sharma, founder of YourStory.in, the equivalent of TechCrunch in the U.S., and Adam Boalt.

BOALT ‘Geeks On A Plane’ India 2013 Blog Series:

• Geeks On A Plane: Overview
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 KickOff
• Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore
• Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend
• Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp

The post Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 KickOff appeared first on BOALT.

I started out my trip with a NADA University presentation from Lindsay Schultz from Google.  She touched on the marketing model called the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).

Traditionally marketing is a three step mental model: a) stimulis, for instance developing a tv ad, b) the point of sale, also known as the first moment of truth, and finally c) an experience, for instance people driving home in their car, referred to as the second moment of truth.

Through independent studies, Google’s goal was to show where influence takes place from undecided to purchasing a vehicle in your dealership.  They found that the average auto shopper uses over 18 sources of information to make the decision that drives purchase intent.  When looking into depth into these sources, there was a fourth step in this process and that was the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).

The responses showed that consumers read reviews, look for promotions and specials, and comparison shop before they even go into the dealership.   ZMOT is second only to the shopper experience that you provide in the dealership and it’s important to incorporate all these new channels to both engage and influence the consumer.  Dealers that coordinate all these marketing channels aligning their marketing investments with stimulus shopping and ZMOT, provide consumers with a competitive advantage.

After checking out the NADA University, the following day, I spent the majority of the day checking out the convention hall and it was good to see a lot interesting changes in the industry.  I was excited to see Jesse Biter, co-founder of Dealers United, Alex Snyder, Senior Director, Product Design, from Dealer.com, Tim Jackson, President of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, and Bill Ricks, VP of Business Development for Cargigi.  It’s always fun stopping by the Aspen Marketing booth where I stumbled into Playboy’s Miss February.

On Friday night, I checked out the Pandora reception party that was being held by J.D. Power with my good friend and business partner, Shawn Burst, and Jim Crouse, former CEO of Bar None.

The Car Gigi party was a lot of fun and it was good bumping into my Twitter buddies, Mark Boyd (@markboyd) and Gary May (@imacsweb).

The weekend ended off at the Howl at the Moon party being hosted by Dealers United where I was able to hang out with Jesse Biter, Co-Founder of Dealers United, Andy McBride, COO of HomeNet Automotive, and Phil Penton, President of Social Dealer.

There are a lot of opportunities in the upcoming year and I’m very excited about the prospect of working with everyone who I met with at NADA.  We’re excited to finally be rolling out some very turnkey direct response solutions that we’ve been designing and perfecting for sometime which provide a closed-loop sales match guarantee for dealers.

At the present our direct response efforts range from direct mail to both inbound and outbound business development center services.  Our direct mail printing is at about 10 million pieces a month and we plan to increase that to 25 million pieces a month in the next year.  In addition, we’re also in the process of expanding our call center to accomodate about 4 times the amount of volume we currently support.  If you’d like to learn more about Sales360 dealer services, please contact us for more information.

The post NADA 2013 Recap appeared first on BOALT.

In partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and in association with the Creative Class Group, the inaugural program will explore the emerging models of ”urban tech” taking root in cities around the world.

Matt Haggman, Program Director, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, giving opening remarks on building Miami’s startup community and cultivating innovation.  The unique voices today will help our city know where we are and help us pave our future for tomorrow.

Manny Diaz, Former Miami, City of Miami, touches on the fact that cities must function as an incubator for start-ups and cities must invest in the prosper and growth of those pushes innovation and change.  Miami is emerging as a global city… many cities can make these claims… a city must constantly reinvent itself and invest into the future.

Richard Florida, Senior Editor, The Atlantic, shares that Miami has made the investment in arts and culture, becoming a laboratory for creativity and now its time for that next step. Richard touches on Miami’s economic growth.

Tony Hsieh, Chief Executive Officer, Zappos, starts out by asking the audience how many of us have purchased anything from Zappos.

Culture is everything to Tony and he is moving Zappos into the former Las Vegas City Hall.  The number one request by employees was to create a doggy day care.

Tony is talking about the Downtown Project Goals in Las Vegas that he started.  He’s talking about how co-working spaces are a great way to foster growth in cities for start-ups.

Tony starts to speak about the recipes for success in growing a city.  When cities double in size, productivity and innovation per resident increase by 15%.

3 ingredients for a start-up city serendipity:

• Residential density of 100 residents/acre
• Street-level activity for residents to collide
• Culture of openness, collaboration, creativity and optimism

Steps on How to accelerate learning & innovation in a city:

• Maximize serendipitous interactions
• Density in the office
• Density in the city
• Social collisions vs. convenience

The 3 keys to overall success is collisions, community and co-learning.  50% of all humans live in cities and that’s going to increase to 75%.  Growing a city to Tony is like the 4-minute mile, everyone thought it was impossible, until someone wrote a book on it and now others have been able to run a 4 minute mile.

BOALT is located in a co-working space in Miami called Pipeline Brickell.  Philippe Houdard, in attendance at Start-up City Miami, is the co-founder of the Miami co-working space, Pipeline.  He has played an integral part of cultivating start-up growth and innovation in Miami.

Special thanks The Atlantic and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for making this event possible.

Content Credit: AltlanticLive.
Disclosure: BOALT is a sponsor.

The post Start-up City: Miami – The Entrepreneurial Economy appeared first on BOALT.

On February 19, 2013, I’ll be joining Geeks On A Plane, which is headed back to India! I’ve shared the tentative itinerary from the #GOAP website and will be blogging everyday while I’m on the trip.

Organized by 500 Startups, Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. The group will be traveling by planes, trains, and automobiles to the most exciting international startup scenes with the sole mission of uniting geeks and exploring cross-border opportunities. The result: a lifelong bond with fellow travelers, a wealth of new friends and business contacts in exploding technology markets, and a stronger appreciation for the cultural and economic ties that bind us globally.

India which has a population of 1.2 billion, unprecedented growth of mobile and broadband, 400 million internet users by 2015, and a startup scene that’s hotter than Delhi in August, the conditions are perfect for a revisit from the Geeks.

During the trip, I’ll be making stops in Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai. The program goals include:

• Meet startups, geeks, and investors in cities around the world.
• Learn about trends in internet, mobile, and other tech platforms.
• Gain insight into local markets, demographics, business models.
• Meet cool people, new ventures, have fun on planes, trains, buses.

Bangalore

Known as the “Silicon Valley of India”, Bangalore is the heart & soul of India’s tech ecosystem. Home to 800+ startups & tech superstars like FlipKart, Wipro, and Infosys, Bangalore has the highest concentration of IT companies in the country. The city also has the most active funding and mentoring network, strongest pool of tech talent, and largest number of crossroads with Silicon Valley. Despite this, Bangalore still has a long way to go. A growing market requires even more talent in a culture that values established and dependable firms over startups, and infrastructure woes (from traffic to power outages to poor connectivity) pose continuous hurdles. Still, the spirit of entrepreneurship is thriving in this pulsating city, and the world is watching it closely with great expectations… so are we.

In Bangalore, the agenda includes:

• “Welcome to India & Bangalore” dinner hosted by Harvard Business School Alumni Angels with a hand-picked group of startup CEOs/Founders, investors, tech influencers & press. A macro overview of the India ecosystem and market will be presented by Ravi Gururaj, Vice President Citrix & Co-Chair HBS Alumni Angels
• StartupWeekend, hosted by Pankaj Jain + Chidambar Kulkarni
• Visit to RedBus (one of India’s most successful tech startups) to tour the office + meet the founders
• Visit to FusionCharts (the industry leader in enterprise-grade web charting) to tour the office + meet the founders
• Tour Embrace’s HQ, an NGO startup that developed an innovative, low cost infant warmer for newborn babies in developing countries
• Visit to FlipKart (India’s largest online bookseller) to tour the office + meet the founders
• Visit to ZipDial (a 500 Startups company) to tour the office + meet the founders
• Tech conference with Banaglore’s entrepreneur community hosted by YourStory.in, a leading tech blog in India
• ‘Off the Record’ conversation with India’s most successful startup CEO’s, covering the challenges and opportunities for tech companies in India, hosted by ZipDial
  
• FailCon Conference, where we’ll meet India’s leading tech companies, investors, founders and incubators
• GEek tour of the GE Research Center, home to 2,000+ researchers focused on sustainable energy + healthcare, & visit to the GE Healthcare Plant

Mumbai

Mumbai is India’s financial & entertainment capital, and home to 20 million people (making it the most populous city in all of India). An island city that sits on the picturesque Arabian Sea, its also boasts the largest concentration of wealth and as such is an important hub for venture capital. In 2012, Mumbai had the 3rd highest number of deals, and though the startup ecosystem there is nascent, the available capital and strategic position for finance & entertainment leave it well poised for rapid growth.

New Delhi

The buzzing city of New Delhi is known for its rich history, fast-growing economy, and flourishing tech scene. Innovative leaders like SnapDeal, FashionAndYou and One97 are paving the way for other early stage startups, and as a result, Delhi is the country’s 2nd largest tech hub with 220+ new startups emerging in the last 3 years. Delhi is all about dhandha (business), and its ever-expanding tech reach into the suburbs of Noida + Gurgaon is turning Delhi into a hub for innovation & capital.

• Geeks On A Plane: Overview
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 Kickoff
• Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore
• Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend
• Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp

Credit: 500 Startups & #GOAP.

[UPDATE]

I modified the final itinerary after the trip and amended some the posts.  

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