Startup Mentoring Network

Anyone aware of a startup mentoring network in India. Not a traditional incubation type of setup, but a place where startups can identify mentors who might be able to guide on various issues. Maybe Venturewoods can take the lead here?

Ashwin (vaatsalya.com)

9 Responses to “Startup Mentoring Network”


  1. 1 Manish Agrawal Jul 2nd, 2006 at 2:03 am

    Hi Ashwin,

    TiE has mentoring network. Many of the TiE charter members are involved with start-up companies as mentors/advisors. Infact we (www.picsquare.com) have Sanjay Swamy as mentor, who is a TiE charter member and we met him in one of the TiE Bangalore event.

    TiE-EAP http://www.tiebangalore.org/eap_home.html, initiative of TiE Bangalore chapter is aimed to build a ecosystem to provide access to mentors, VCs, key service providers.

    I am not aware of many such organized organization, however there are few groups in Bangalore which works on principle of members helping members.. there are no mentors here but you still get help.. and sometime much more useful for small-small tasks.. i am aware of 2 such groups:
    1. Bootstrap Bangalore
    2. E-club Bangalore..

    Hope this is helpful.

    Manish..
    www.picsquare.com

  2. 2 Alok Mittal Jul 2nd, 2006 at 10:06 am

    Ashwin

    In Delhi, I am involved with TiE which does a fair bit of this. AT band of angels also, we frequently get a lot of mentoring and advisory requests, and people who have the passion to get engaged do so.

    Not that these are sufficient — just wanted to let people know a few sources that do exist.

    Manish, would love to see how the two clubs you have mentioned work — can you put me in touch. We had a similar club called tuesday club in delhi, but it kinda fizzled out because people were unwilling to share the overheads…

    Alok

  3. 3 Prashant Jul 2nd, 2006 at 2:19 pm

    Hi Ashwin,

    Nice to hear from you. I visited Vaatsalya.com, definitely a thought whose time has come (actually far overdue)… Our target audiance is almost the same (assuming I end up doing whats in my mind)…thankfully we are not competing, I will engage this guy once he is out of your Clinic and well….

    You can reach me on 9820291559 any time you want, would be my pleasure spending some time with you learning things….I love associating with start ups and helping them find passionate partners, business associates, employees. This rather unstructured yet important activity I do under a banner called plugHR. Now don’t go to plughr.com right now….it doesn’t make sense at the moment…….I also love Bapu….have been getting bashed (thankfully verbally) for that more than Bapu would have.

    Will look forward to hearing from you…don’t bother about right day….all days are Sundays to me…

    Cheers!!!

  4. 4 Balaji Sowmyanarayanan Jul 3rd, 2006 at 10:18 am

    Interesting time to setup/consolidate mentoring network.
    An unconference circuit like the BarCamp will be a good starting point.
    Just thinking aloud.

    -Balaji S.

  5. 5 Prasoon Kumar Jul 3rd, 2006 at 6:07 pm

    I just came back from a FOSS startup camp at Anna University - K B Chandrasekhar, MIT, Chennai. They had a bunch of veteran mentors, incl. TT Srinath of TTK industries, who we can choose to be mentor for our business plan. I wish I had such a facility here in Delhi.

  6. 6 rajAT Jul 4th, 2006 at 10:12 am

    We have started couple of initiatives here in Hyderabad for mentoring startups and entrepreneurs.

    1. Bootstrappers Hyderabad
    2. Coffee Club (TiE Hyderabad)

    Barcamps have definitely as a common platform for entrepreneurs here.

    Bootstrappers Hyderabad meets once a month and fellow members help each other in networking and other issues. We have a very diverse crowd also - Ex Snr. Wiproite (runs a HR firm), a strategist ( got solid links ), a sports lover - wind surfer ( wants to do someting in adventure tourism ) , runs an Indian operations of a MNC office , VP of a hardcore technology company, IPR guy.

    July meeting will coincide with Barcamp Hyderabad 2. We are organizing a discussion here - What is the missing link - For Cyberabad to become a Startup Valley.

    We are getting VC , Academia and Budding Enterpreneurs to discuss it out.

    All are welcome

  7. 7 pawan Nov 8th, 2006 at 7:45 pm

    how to start ur own adventure tourism company????

    i am thinking a lot about starting my own adv. comp. but as i do not have background in it i am not sure where to get the info on it. waht are necessary things i need to do before i venture in this feild.where can i get info on this and what agency can help me in this matter.plz put some light on this.

  8. 8 Mary Douglas Nov 14th, 2006 at 1:11 am

    Hi Everyone,

    Great to know that the concept of Mentoring has entered India. Well , Im writing a paper on mentoring in Indian and International context. What are the different types of mentoring occuring in the field of business in India? Could someone help me out? As you all are aware, no literature is available on Mentoring and I am really finding it difficult when it comes to Indian context.

    Cheers guys.

  9. 9 Kiran Jul 31st, 2008 at 3:26 pm

    Hi Mary,

    Mentoring is a very much unheard word till now. And very slowly the doors of the mentoring are opening up in india, that too mostly in Metro Cities. In the indian contest of mentoring, mentoring has been there from long time back. It dates bact to thousands of years. In generall life mentoring starts at home for indians. But the colonization of India by British has ruined the social transforation of the Skills, knowledge by pushing the people towards the english education system, which was never part of indian context. Please let me this is enough else, I am more than happy to contribute to your research/search.

    Bye,
    Kiran
    www.rollakiran.com

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