Start Up Festival, Bangalore

On Thursday, March 7, Bangalore woke up to the Start Up Festival. It celebrated the city's rise as the definitive destination for new companies in the country. Organised by The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE) and Unstoppable, an event management and branding company, the festival was unlike the mundane conferences techies have gotten used to. Held in multiple venues across Indiranagar in Bangalore, the event fused serious deliberations with fun.

The Start Up Festival began early, at 6.45 AM, with a yoga session at 'a 1000 Yoga', a health studio in Indiranagar.

Venkatesh Peddi, Assistant Vice-President at IDG Ventures India Advisors, gave a pep talk to entrepreneurs over breakfast at The Ants Cafe, a coffee shop.

Start-up executives check out the day's agenda overbreakfast.

Ashwin Raguraman, Vice President of India Innovation Fund, tips start-ups on how to approach venture capitalists.

About 1,500 attended Day One of the four day event.

One feature of the festival was 'company crawls'. Prospective entrepreneurs visited the offices of Red Bus, an online bus ticketing company. CEO Phanindra Sama spoke about how he started the company.

A street festival, all along Indiranagar's 100 Feet Road, showcased the work of niche entrepreneurs. Sanjana's company Pink Feather makes artifacts from bread.

Visitors crowd around a low-maintenance green shop at the street festival.

A bunch of students have floated a company called 'Bechain Nagri', which sells notebooks and drawing books with illustrated covers that are both creative and naughty.

The festival saw the launch of some new companies. One of them was Blunkit, a social app. From left to right: Joe Fernandes, Shubha and Alan Levine of the Blunkit team share a lighter moment.

Shashikiran, Co-founder of the Start Up Festival and Associate Director of TiE, was one of the most visible faces of the event.

John Paul, CEO of Plackal, launched the 'JusWrite' app, a stylus-based organiser, at the event.

Pratheeksha A.K., CEO of Amidray, a Kochi-based start up, speaks at the festival.
 

Vlad Dubovskiy, co-founder of the festival, talks about why Bangalore should be among the world's top 10 start-up cities.

An artist captures one of the panel discussions.

The day ended with the attendees chilling out in pubs. From left to right: Dominic K., Director of Technitics Consulting, chills out with Rajesh Joshi and Vikram Nair of Doctorscabin in Doff Pub, Indiranagar.