Eight conception-to-products shape up in 32HourStartUp

Madhumitha Viswanathan of Lakshya, SSN College of Engineering E-cell, writes about the event:The Central Library of SSN College of Engineering buzzed with activity on the morning of 24th September, Saturday. It was the second edition of 32HourStartUp, a 2 day product building sprint, put together by the SSN E-Cell, Lakshya.

A bunch of spirited souls poured in – participants and mentors, eager to ideate, collaborate, and create products. The event kickstarted at 10 am with the Idea Pitching session. Android applications topped the popularity charts, closely followed by web applications. Mentors - Dorai Thodla, Senthil Nayagam, Suresh Sambandam, Prasannan, Vasudha, Syed Suffiyan, and Hari gave feedback, suggestions, pointers on implementation, and those little tweaks that could take the product places. Mentor introductions ensued. The session concluded withInterview Streetco-Founder Hari’s inspiring words: “Next 32 Hours, Don’t sleep, Don’t eat, Write code, and have a kickass product to show off tomorrow!”.

The action began. Teams sat down with mentors, who polished their ideas. Designers Suffiyan and Vasudha threw in help on creating awesome user interfaces. Individual contributors teamed up with those who needed coding help. The comfortable ambience of the library rendered it perfect.

24 hours passed by. It was demo time. Eight awesome showcases, most striking being the Karaoke Player by Mukund and Shahin, that swept the audience off their feet, and voilà! Senthil, CEO, RailsFactory, was impressed, and ready to fund them!

The eight demos:

• Can You Remember! A memory game android app.
• News.Wav – a web application for the blind – Text to Speech NewsReader.
• Karaoke Player on android with live lyrics and recording feature.
• E-Diary, send a text message and log your diary online.
• SlamMe! – Social Networking site for exchanging testimonials/slams with your friends.
• E-Consultant, an online consultancy service for Students applying for national and international universities.
• Online Gatepass system for Hostel - easing the process for students.
• An attempt at making a much better Anna University website using Pinax.

As each participant walked away with heads high, a new found confidence, and a fresh zeal to excel, realization dawns for the Lakshya team, yes, 32HourStartUp had created its magic, once again.

Dorai Thodla, CEO of iMorph, brain behind this event, gives his impressions:

We need to have more events like this. They will take time to build and will have lots of teething troubles but that should not deter us.

I have only a few metrics for these types of events.

1. How many quality ideas came out and have the potential of becoming a product or a startup? In this event, there were 2 Android apps, 2 apps for micro-niches, one potential social app, all done by first timers who have never done anything like this.

2. What is the ratio of people who walked in knowing nothing and went out knowing a lot. These will be the evangelists for future events. When they come back, they will be better prepared, know what to expect and will bring more people.

In all these cases, my expectations were exceeded.