Pune, July 3, 2008: Neill Brownstein and team of Footprint Ventures visited Pune to review the portfolio companies of nFactorial Software for possible investment. Footprint has one of the strongest teams amongst early stage venture funds in India, with an optimal mix of investment, entrepreneurial and operational experience. Neill has been part of the community that established the venture capital industry in the United States in the ‘70s and ‘80s and then in Israel in the ‘90s. Footprint has helped create $30 billion in value, 20% IRR and 23 IPOs over the past 35 years. One of their investments was VERITAS Software which was amongst the first global software company to outsource core product development to India in 1992, and later formed one of the most successful subsidiaries in Pune. The nFactorial founders have been part of the VERITAS (now Symantec) success story through their previous companies.

nFactorial invited Neill to present to Pune entrepreneurs on “Lessons on Leadership – Building scale in a start-up.”

Neeraj Arora, who is from the Google M&A team and based in Delhi, also spoke briefly about Google’s appetite for acquiring “cool” start-ups. Google has also invested in a few seed funds.

Over 70+ entrepreneurs attended the meeting. Pune entrepreneurs have a forum called Pune OpenCoffee Club (POCC), http://punestartups.ning.com, through which invitations for such events can be sent. Started by Santosh Dawara and Anjali Gupta of Bookeazy, POCC is an open, informal forum to enable entrepreneurs to network with each other and meet with investors, advisors and others.

The PuneTech.com website is another useful site for Pune entrepreneurs. You can read a blog about this event at http://punetech.com/pocc-meeting-footprint-ventures-and-google-report.

Special thanks to SEED Infotech (www.seedinfotech.com), Narendra Barhate (CEO) and Anil Sharma (Office of the CEO) for hosting the meeting at their office and doing a great job with all the logistics.