When you think of Bengaluru’s startup founders, VCs and CEOs in a room, networking and learning together, you probably imagine star hotels or large conference rooms set up with neat round tables and notepads while someone imparts wisdom on stage and everyone else diligently takes notes. Perhaps afterwards, the group, dressed in formals mingles and exchanges business cards. A new wave of founders’ communities in the city is turning these notions on their heads. Young founders are pitching during a run in a park, discovering each other’s working styles through treasure hunts and networking over game nights. “We’re seeing these newer formats for founders’ events in the last one year to eight months because people have realised that sure, networking is great, but you also need to bring in meaningful experiences to really make people feel like they belong in a community,” says Samridhi Jain, community builder and co-lead at AI Collective Bangalore, which hosts founders’ events on a weekly or biweekly basis.
Among the events Jain’s team has hosted, they try to combine workshops and informative talks in a more casual atmosphere. So far, they’ve had AI discussions over chai, a women-in-AI segment and a treasure hunt too. “In our treasure hunt, although it was about having fun while solving challenges at each location the clues led to, we saw people introducing business ideas, figuring out how each team member works and understanding each other.” She adds, “We’re also exploring pizza-making, crocheting workshops and bringing an AI element to it.”
Apart from learning each other’s working styles, informal events like Srikanth Prabhu’s Agara Walks, which invites founders for an early morning walk around Agara Lake on Saturdays and cofounder of Minimi, Ojasvika Sahu’s gatherings held in the living room of her startup’s villa-office, allow deeper and newer conversations in a specially-curated group. They list their events on Luma, a platform for AI and tech events in the city, which allows hosts to handpick invitees. “At one of the first events I attended in the city, there were too many people and I had no idea who to talk to. Often these big events are not going to be fruitful because everyone is trying to meet a lot of people at one go, there’s no filter. We want to create a very non-transactional environment where people can sit and connect,” says Sahu, adding, “We ask a few simple questions, like what they’re building. If their answers make sense in the context of others who will be at the event, we take them in free of charge. We’ve had themed nights with just power users of Claude, game and movie nights and even ‘mangomaxxing’, an event where we served different mango dishes.”
For others like Prabhu, who is also the vice president at Qapita, though, the curation is more open. “The gatekeeping is the early morning format. If you turn up for a walk on a Saturday morning, you’re probably committed to your cause.” Part of why there’s been a boom is the discoverability with these online platforms. He shares, “Informal events for founders used to happen privately. Now the biggest difference is discoverability, especially in areas like Agara and HSR Layout with a large migrant and founder population,” he says.
For Mitali Purswani, a luxury brand strategist and cofounder, it’s also about engaging with people outside her niche. “I wanted to meet founders in tech and AI too, even though most people would say there is no correlation with what I do. I beg to differ, because the lines are blurring, and the important thing for a founder is that you need to have cross-platform knowledge. I’ve been the only woman in the room or the only one not in tech or AI but in the process, found new knowledge, interesting people and perspectives.”
For early-career founders and established ones, the outcomes have ranged from finding employees and co-founders to gaining key skills and support systems. “There have been a few major outcomes: people finding business opportunities organically and seed funding, multiple cases of mentoring, hiring and even getting references, because you get to know the person a little more than regular networking events,” says Prabhu.