POCC: Lot happens over Coffee
By Suneetha

Coffee is just one of the many items on their menu. They have 3894 members as I write this, including investors, lawyers, accountants and freelancers who work with startups. They usually meet on the 1st Saturday of every month in Pune. Attendance is open to everyone and admission is free, and you can actually network and grow under the umbrella of experience and fellow feeling.

This is the Pune Open Coffee Club, or POCC, which has nurtured many an entrepreneur in overcoming the initial hiccups. The POCC will soon be celebrating their third birthday.
 
The Pune Open Coffee Club was started by several individuals in their own ways. The Open Coffee Club movement had become fairly popular abroad before it reached its pioneers in Pune.

Harshal Vaidya was the first of the lot who attempted to get the OCC off the ground by organizing the first meet up in February 2008. The first meet up helped send out the first few sparks in the community. Simultaneously, they had also initiated an e-mail list for Pune-based start-ups.

Later, Anjali Gupta and Santosh Dawara put together another POCC event and they worked hard to invite all the movers and shakers of the start-up community in Pune to the BookEazy office terrace for tea, coffee and networking, says Santosh.

“This time around, the conditions were right and the word about the Pune Open Coffee Club spread out quickly. Our first meeting was very well attended by over 75 individuals including some very well-known names in the Pune circle such as Anand Deshpande (Persistent Systems), Chetan Shah (Synygy), Jaspreet Singh (Druvaa) and more.

Our second meet up was a great success, but there was still a lot more work to be done. We had experimented with meeting at cafes, but it was not working out as our meet-ups were attended by more than 40 at a time. Navin got us a regular venue at the SICSR in Model Colony. With that, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. The next few set of events was a mix of exciting talks and discussions that resonated very well the start-up community in Pune and the movement began gathering momentum.”

They are easily the largest online community out of Pune now with over 3,800 members. They have a website punestartups.org and a mailing list and tremendous goodwill in the Pune Start-up and Technology community. Of late, entrepreneurs have been using the website to create visibility about their start-ups and find customers, partners and even investors.

Consequently, the team made an attempt to go deeper into Pune by replicating the Open Coffee Club across Pune, including one in Aundh, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Kalyani Nagar, Kothrud and Tilak Road.

“I have my fingers crossed that these will be just as successful as the original, if not more so. They are all backed by a very impressive set of individuals who want it to succeed.”

Amruta Ranade now brings out a fortnightly newsletter to cover start-ups in detail for the benefit of the community.

So is it all serious and work?

No, says Santosh, “We also have a very "fun" side to the Open Coffee Club. In the past, we have had a group paintball competition, football games, dinners and movie nights where entrepreneurs and their families can relax, mingle and enjoy. Apart from this, we intend to meet regularly every month over the weekend.”

POCC has been creating POCC subgroups in each region of Pune and Santosh says the team has high hopes about the new initiative.

“Anyone who has been an entrepreneur will tell you that entrepreneurship can be very rewarding and at the same time very unforgiving. For those who have quit their jobs to become entrepreneurs, the pressure to perform is fairly intense. Moreover, there is no going back to the same skill-based boxes as entrepreneurs are expected to excel at multiple roles.

By replicating the Open Coffee Club, we hope to encourage those who have been unable to participate actively due to distance to come forward and seed their own groups just as we have done so. In good time, we are certain that each of these groups will build their own camaraderie and dynamics locally and at the same time contribute to the overall development of start-ups in Pune.”

The Open Coffee Club was always intended to be a support group of entrepreneurs who get what each other are going through and can intervene to help each other out, share ideas and motivate each other. It looks like POCC is going in the right direction since Day One.

Don’t all the books that matter to mankind advise just this?

(Photo: POCC Startup Football Gang in August, 2010)

(In Techgoss syndication arrangement with Punetech)