TiE Delhi Sets Up Special Interest Group For Internet; On Conferences And Unconferences

The Delhi chapter of the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE Delhi) has set up a Special Interest Group focusing on the Internet: the SIG will provide a platform for entrepreneurs and professionals in the sector to share their experiences, network and receive advice and mentoring. On the agenda is a plan to raise issues and present them to policy makers – something which the Internet And Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has also tried to do, but they don’t appear to have had much of an impact there; a two-pronged effort (IAMAI and TiE), hopefully, will help.

TiE Delhi will host a series of group meetings – each with a specific theme and agenda – every alternate month, and 1-2 bigger events in the year. They’ll launch the SIG with an evening with industry veteran and venture capitalist Ram Shriram, but we’re told that Sriram’s involvement with the group is limited to the launch event. However, quite a few senior industry executives are backing the Special Interest Group: it is co-chaired by Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Naukri.com) & Mahendra Swarup (Smile Interactive), and the core group includes Pradeep Chopra (OM Logic), Manish Vij (Quasar), Harish Behl (Smile Interactive), Anurag Batra (Exchange for Media), Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners), Samir Sood (Google) and Piyush Shah (angel investor).

But this appears to be a Delhi thing, and I wish something like this was replicated in other cities as well – with smaller issue specific events, and mentoring on the agenda. At larger, regular conferences one often finds sponsor promotion on the agenda/panels (I have sponsorship mailers that guarantee sponsors place on panels), and the cost of entry is often prohibitive – there is a reason why one runs into more sales and business development execs than entrepreneurs, product execs or strategists in the audience at conferences. Not that there’s anything wrong with them attending, but high costs often deter the entrepreneurs who would rather deploy the funds elsewhere. One should also take cue from the Barcamps and Mobile Monday’s where one finds more entrepreneurs, more people seeking or offering feedback or support, or sometimes even seeking others’ experience on how to tackle a particular troublesome mobile operator — there’s an energy there that one rarely sees at conferences. This is why I really don’t understand why unconferences sometimes try to ape conferences, since they have their own role to play, though they don’t always get the support. I hope the SIG will keep the ecosystem on the agenda.