Yet another journey for Siddharth Basrur and me. This time we visited the garden city for India’s premier startup event Proto.in.

Though we managed to reach the airport on time and board our flight (we are both infamous for turning up late) our journey from Bangalore airport to the NIMHANS Convention Centre, where the event was being held, turned hectic.

We missed the keynote and inauguration session we managed to make it on time for the startup showcase. Well, Proto.in is not just about online startups and there were many enterprising teams showcasing products and ideas from varied genres. Here are a few online startups that presented on the first day:

Community Gaming has a New Name:
IndiaKhelo.com came up with an interesting proposition that propagates and promotes a variety of sports at the grass root level. To put it in simple words, IndiaKhelo.com is a destination where children and adults can share their scorecards for games played in their respective school or local tournaments. As an online platform IndiaKhelo.com is aiming at initiating and encouraging local sports. They would be targeting schools, colleges and corporates for an affiliation program which indirectly would help them create a bigger base. In fact they are even planning on creating a team, which would be attending schools, and monitoring games conducted during the Physical Traning (PT) sessions.

I did check the website to discover a rudimentary design and a few copy mistakes. In the end it is a good idea but execution is the key. I am eager to know how they go about with the project as it demands lot of networking and ground work.

Health is Wealth … Literally!
LifeMojo.com has a unique proposition and even the audience agreed with a loud response to their presentation. Mentored by Morpheus Venture Partners, LifeMojo.com is surely a breath of fresh air in the startup clutter. For starters LifeMojo.com is a unique online platform aimed at providing complete and continuous wellness to millions of Indians. I would proudly tag LifeMojo.com as the best startup at the 5th edition of Proto.in. Take a look at our interview with the CMO Himanshu Khurana.

The first day had Bharat Goneka (Tally Software), Amit Ranjan (Slideshare), Allwin Agnel (PagalGuy.com), Alok Kejriwal (Games2Win), Suresh Sambandan (Orangescape) and others sharing “gyaan” with the attendees.

But I was really impressed with the session conducted by Abhishek Sinha from Eko. The “Conversation” (as Proto terms it) had Abhishek showcasing his product. Eko is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) that aims at extending banking facilities in untapped / unbanked areas through the use of existing branch network and new technology. Eko enables mobile phone based transactions which offer far more convenience and accessibility than a traditional financial institution.

The microcredit model will help individuals debit and credit their account by using their mobile phone. To make things easier they have routed the service via short codes in turn making it simple for rural Indians to make transactions.

Eko has partnered with SBI and will be rolling out its service in Bihar and Delhi on 2nd February. We are eagerly awaiting the launch.

The first day of Proto.in ended with the WATBlog Panel titled “Lessons Learnt from the Failures of Startups” followed by a mixer and dinner.