Every fortnight on Sunday, a group of twenty somethings stream into one of the coffee shops in the IT capital of India to sit and discuss things close to their heart. If you thought it was all about the latest fashions, movies, gadgets or just gossip, you?re wrong. This is a group of entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs or those who are passionate about entrepreneurship. Welcome to Bangalore?s Open Coffee Club.
The idea germinated in the mind of 25-year-old IIT-Kharagpur product Ramjee Ganti and friend Vaibhav Pandey when they found there was no forum to address the simple issues of starting a business. ?We needed simple clarifications and used to approach friends, but we found there was a serious gap and there was no forum to voice our concerns. We did not want to reinvent the wheel, just gather information and get our doubts clarified. So, we decided to start the Open Coffee Club,? says Ramjee. The club began in August and already has 150 members.
Modelled on the lines of the OCC in the US where a group of 10-15 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and fund managers meet over a cup of coffee, the Bangalore OCC was reworked to suit Indian needs. ?The dynamics here are different from the US where people meet informally and discuss things. That is a difficult model to sustain over here. So, we decided to have theme meets with an agenda,? says Ramjee, who himself is not an entrepreneur but is passionate about entrepreneurship.
At these meets, people come up with queries from the sublime to the ridiculous. If getting funds, approaching VCs, patenting products and recruitment are on top of the agenda, there are others who even want to know how to formulate an idea that can translate into a business.
?It is a place for people who are passionate about entrepreneurship to meet and discuss things that are beneficial and relevant to them,? says Ramjee.
So, you can find people from Infosys, Intel, Oracle, Adobe all attending the meet just to give their perspective and also check out whether their ideas are feasible. ?OCC?s main idea is to build an eco system of entrepreneurship and in building that eco system we need inputs from all ends–legal to taxation to venture funds,? says Sharda Balaji, a technology lawyer who was earlier with Intel. ?I help start-ups start,? she says.
As Sidu Ponnapa, who works as a consultant with IT firm Thoughtworks and also runs a mass mobile messaging company Activ, says: ?We are not married, are not committed and have no dependents. If we do not take a risk now, when can we?? And that remains the underlying theme of Bangalore Open Coffee Club?s enthusiastic members.