On 20th Apr. TiE Pune organized a My Story session with “Rolocule” – Story of a startup in gaming industry.

A quick info about founder’s background, how it started and achievements …

Circa April 2009, Rohit Gupta returned to India from New York, after completing his MS in Computer Graphics from Columbia University and chucking his job at Electronic Arts, got Rs 1 Lac from his father and Rolocule was born. He teamed up with Anuj Tandon who left Infosys to do something exciting.

Starting with 2 people, Rolocule bootstrapped, and became 8 people strong team.

Along the way, they became ‘knowledge partners’ with a gaming training institute in Pune and taught at the institute.

In 2010 Rolocule won Power of Ideas and was incubated by CIIE (IIM Ahmadabad) receiving seed funding as part of incubation.

With more than 1.5 million downloads, Rolocule has built a strong portfolio comprising of 3 unique game IPs spanning across 8 games available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Rohit & Anuj shared their college days at PICT (Pune Institute of Computer Technology) where they were room mates as well and used to play a lot with PSP. They were hard core gamers from the very begining and that’s where it all started.

After completion of engineering both of them get placed with Infosys.

Within 6 months Rohit realized that this is not what he wanted to do. The job was not enough challenging. He then thought of developing a game on his own but that didn’t worked out. It was not so easy to develop & design a game. Then he tried looking at some local (Pune) training institute where he can learn game design, development. But couldn’t find any.

He was so passionate about gaming that he finally decided to take this seriously and got selected for MS in Computer Graphics from Columbia University.

Completed his MS and got offer from Electronic Arts (EA) which was like a dream come true for him. He was so excited to get into his field.

But again after few months he started feeling that this is not what he wanted to do in his life.

Left everything, came back India to start Rolocule.

The story was really interesting.

Few important things which Rohit & Anuj shared :

+ Use your network. There are many people around you who are ready to help. Its just a matter of reaching out to them and asking for help.

+ The passion & vision should flow within the team and not just founders. The core team is really important. Rohit & Anuj shared how they openly told their team members that they are running out of money and have nothing to pay to them but they still worked with them because they were enjoying.

+ Founder, CoFounder, Core Team …. these are not just terms… these carry a very basic & important thing called “trust”. Anuj shared how he got full support from Rohit when he and one of his team member were going through tough times.

On 12th Apr. 2012 TiE Pune organized an Interactive Breakfast Meeting on ‘Project Success – Using Technique of Critical Chain for Project Optimization’

The discussion was led by Mr. Dilip Thosar.

Dilip an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad, with around 25 years of experience in the Indian IT industry. He has led various functions (Marketing, Software Delivery, Business Unit Head) at corporate leaders like TEC, UTC, Wipro and Hexaware. He has run his own company, started in collaboration with Persistent Systems. He now works with various Business schools to upgrade employability and leadership qualities of management post- graduates, and coaches executives in various corporates on quantitative business techniques and leadership skills.

As always, we requested participants to share their experience/ takeaways/ feedback.

Mr. Manish Kulkarni says:

Key highlights/ takeaways:

+ Goldratt’s “The Goal” is a must read and highly recommended for re-reading.
+ Theoryof Constraints (ToC) is applicable to anything in life.
+ Throughput is the objective of the organisation
+ Organisationis a system of highly inter-related links.
+ Bottle-necksare key constraints – weakest links

+ Plan of action:

1. Identify theconstraint
2. Exploit theconstraint. Make it work to the hilt.
3. Subordinateeverything else.
4. Elevate
5. Repeat…Don’t let inertia become a constraint

+ Identify the real constraint. Couple of interesting anecdotes: Can A Car Be Allergic To Vanilla Ice Cream? & the spooky trend of dying patient in a certain ICU bed due to the cleaner unplugging the lifesupport machine and plugging in the vacuum cleaner.

+ Neverminimize costs, optimize costs.

+ Identifying bottlenecks—look for short supply, CC path, working just ahead of the hugeinventory waiting.

+ Beware of “Student Syndrome” (11th hour preparation) and “Artist Syndrome” (applying finishes touches just because time is available).

+ JIT (Just in Time) – late completion is bad obviously. Early completion is also badmost of the times.
+ Delaysadd up, early finishes don’t. (Acceleration gets lost, delays add up)
+ It’sbetter to be approximately right than be precisely wrong.
+ As a Project Manager, focus on Project Buffer not Activity Buffer.

Mr. Manish also shared few pictures…

Mr. Vishwas Mahajan summarized the meet with an appeal to participants to send feedback defining:

a) Your Business
b) Your Throughput
c) Your Bottlenecks

This will enable a follow up session onthe same topic during next breakfast meeting.

View all photographs taken during the meet by visiting this link.

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TiE Pune organized My Story session with Mr. Anand Khandekar on 6th Apr. 2012.

Anand Khandekar is 72 years young and can be best described as a doyen of Pune’s IT industry. He founded Yojana Systems the first 100% Software EOU way back in 1989.. yes 1989 when the fastest link he worked with was 1.2 KBPS,  something inconceivable today in the gigabit era. His next assignment was leading Motorola’s (now gobbled up by Google) India Dev Center which became the first ever SEI CMM Level 5 company. He then came back to Pune to start Cirrus Logic center in Pune doing pioneering the work in multimedia embedded s/w on programmable DSP and parallel processing chips. In July 2000, he was Founding Chairman of Pace Soft Silicon, a VC funded company focused on creating IP and s/w products in the domain of video and multimedia on Mobile wireless. This company pioneered the software camcorder on Mobile phones in 2004. Pace received Nasscom Innovation award in Feb 2005. Pace was acquired in Dec 2005, by Santa Clara based company, Nvidia, a world leader in graphics, multimedia and high performance computing. Continuing as Director Pune Development Center of Nvidia and Chief Mentor from Mar 2006 to April 2010, building it from 35 to 670 high performing people.

Along the way, he became the First Chairman of the IT Committee of Marhatta Chamber of  Commerce and Industries in Pune, in 1996. Prepared and drove the Strategic Plan for making Pune, a major IT destination, along with a  few committed S/W Entrepreneurs and the STPI (Pune). Pune’s  IT exports grew from Rs. 125 Crores (US$ 25 Million) in Mar 1996, to Rs. 30,000 Crores ( approx US$ 6 Billion ) in Mar 2010. He then pioneered the Gaming and Animation movement in Pune.

Anand has actively mentored many software companies in Pune like Compulink Systems, KPIT-Cummins, Persistent Systems, etc. and held board positions in some of these.

All the above accomplishment of Anand have been AFTER having Served, with distinction, in the Indian Navy for 25 years with specialisation in Electronics, communications and Weapons Systems with various postings in India and London. This is where his title of Commodore comes from.

Today, he continues his passion of mentoring by serving as Chief Mentor for a Students’ NGO called FUEL (Friends Union for Energising Lives).

This NGO creates awareness amongst the rural and semi-urban students from 10th and 12th Standards.

Anand has not only been a witness to the growth of IT and ITES in Pune, but has actively orchestrated it over his long career.

The session was houseful as you can realize with the picture.

Clarion Venture Partners sponsored the event.

Quick info about Clarion Venture Partners:

They have invested in 4 startups in 2011 and plan to invest in 15 startups in 2012

1) Space & infrastructure to get you started
2) Funds for staff salaries & expenses for 1 year
3) Help with operations through shared incubation
4) Help with marketing through shared CMO
5) Help with sales through Lead Gen & Sales Outsourcing
6) Help with finding Board of Advisors through network
7) Ongoing mentoring & coaching to help attain success

Ms. Swati Agarwal presented the memento to Mr. Khandekar.

We asked participants to share their experience and and here is what Ms Arti Agarwal, HR – Operations, Husys has to say:

It was my first opportunity to attend the My story session, and I wish to congratulate TiE Pune for taking such great initiatives that help and inspire the entrepreneurs, who choose to take the path less traveled..!!

This time, none other than but the doyen of Pune’s IT Industry, Anand Khandekar, presented his 72 years story in a compact mere 2 hours time and left us all inspired.

The best part of Anand (he prefers to be addressed by his first name and not as “Sir” ) is that even though he has been an achiever and a pioneer in life, he is equally down to earth to share about his good and bad experiences for us to learn from.

To put it in a nutshell, we all would strive our best to reach the quality of a Navy SEAL (as he calls it) (SEAL training is very rigorous, having a reputation as some of the toughest anywhere in the world.) to achieve our aspirations and contribute to the society.

One more participant Mr. Arvind Agarwal from FLAME, Pune says:

This was an excellent event. Mr Khandekar had a clear idea and focus for each of his pioneering activities, though he might not have pursued opportunities proactively. He kept his eyes and ears open and jumped on opportunities that he felt were promoting his personal vision further. Sometime though he mentioned he may not have known the final outcome of these activities. It is this confidence that he transferred to his team, and created an environment that allowed his team members also to research and take chances without the fear of failure.

This is something that I took away from his session. He was very open and spoke from his heart and did not mind sharing his true feelings. Congratulations to you for bringing such a luminary amongst us.

Click here to view photographs taken during the meet.

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Thank you for taking out some time and reading. Hope you enjoyed the post. We keep trying our best to bring best to you in terms of events. Kindly join our network by clicking this link.

PS: If you organizing/ organized/ attended an event and want to share your thoughts/ videos/ photographs do reach us at contact@eventNu.com. We would love to publish your thoughts at eventNu blog.

Disclaimer: The photograph(s) & logo(s) used in this post belong to the respective owners/ groups/ startups/ individuals/ companies. eventNu doesn’t own them and have used with owner’s consent.