Camp Major

The third being a product company that was involved in making media servers for mobile phones, which he and friends later sold to Nokia.

“We slept once in three or four days,” he explains about juggling college, part-time jobs and a company in Ottawa, Canada. Today, it is a line-up of community events like Barcamp, Blogcamp, Wikicamp, Startup Lunch, Mobile Monday and Fix Chennai that keeps him busy. Though all these start-up events have not always received the same response, Proto.in, where he is the curator, at least, keeps him running.

The start-up event is billed as one of the best platforms for entrepreneurs to converge. It is on his mind 365 days a year, he says. All this is besides heading the incubation centre at TeNeT (Telecommunications and Computer Networking) at IIT-Madras, where he overseas technological and business development for research/ business incubation departments in IIT.

Brought up largely in Dubai, it is amazing to see this 28-year-old, just three-and-a-half years in India (Chennai), spearheading a number of initiatives for the start-up eco-system in India. “Chennai has 560 start-ups, a majority of them working from residential areas, and it is second to Bangalore.”

Vijay Anand in conversation with Liffy Thomas:

Starting the ecosystem

Barcamp and Blogcamp were our early initiatives that kick-started the start-up movement. We later formed Knowledge Foundation in September 2006, which is the umbrella organisation for all these initiatives.

Proto.in has been getting great response. I have around 3,000 people in my mailing list, though I want the count to go up to 100,000. When we started Proto we were around 10 to 15 guys. Today, I have about 120 volunteers representing 17 cities – Coimbatore, Vellore, Kolkata… the list is growing. The team functions in 12 different departments, where they evangelise start-ups, etc.

It’s true we have been getting similar feedbacks. In the next edition, which in all probability will be hosted in Pune, we hope to bring start-ups from diverse fields. I want to cut down on Internet and introduce more of bio-tech, energy, healthcare and education.

What is the success of Proto with respect to MNCs coming and acquiring them?

We have industry majors like Wipro, Siemens, Qualcomm, to name a few, attending these events. Wipro, for example, is working with a start-up in the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) space. Even at the just-concluded edition of Proto 09 we had a start-up that received an average of 40 offers from clients.

Future of Proto

Proto has a long way to go. We have to take some companies global – some have huge potential in them. To start off, we are working on taking a group of start-ups to Israel – there is lot to learn from their telecom sector.

We are having a Searchcamp – conference for website managers and developers – in February end and early March. In Facebook Developers Garage in mid-March, participants will be required to develop applications for Facebook.

I am planning to start my next venture, but it will take time. I am waiting for Proto to mature a little more. It will be something to do with the music industry. Also, like Proto, I want to bring the music industry to one platform. It will be something like ‘Eurovision’, which will showcase some of the professional artistes in to the world space. I have started taking a course in sound engineering. One more to Vijay’s many hats.