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I don’t know if the weatherman had forecasted rain in Bangalore today; but it definitely did rain Startups at the Startup Saturday event held at IIMB. The thunderbolts were from 3 entities viz eLagaan, TaxSpanner and Mr. S R Gopalan from Dawn Consulting. Ample showers were provided by six lightening pitches by Letsolla.com, WiseTech India, Rangde.org, Brains ‘N’ Skills, Marrygold Matrimonial Services and Indigo Stripes.

eLagaan covered in StartupNews earlier and TaxSpanner gave insightful demos on their product offerings. Filing tax returns online has become an easy and hassle free way for many individuals. Online tax filing sites are growing by the day and one has a range of prices and services to choose from. Sumit Grover from TaxSpanner replying to a query stated that for a startup the “customer is the boss” which indeed needs to be taken seriously by many others. TaxSpanner has been ranked as the most usable personal tax filing web application by Money Today.

Lightning Pitches as the name suggests are quick presentations for a duration of 2 minutes or less followed by a Q & A session with the audience. This is a new feature and format of Startup Saturdays. A good move considering that a lot more startups get exposure and some of them may really not want to give a 30 to 60 minutes presentation. Personally, I do find 2 minutes a bit less but the team did oblige a few more minutes to all who had the “last bit” left!

Notable among the pitches were Letsolla.com, an online sharing & bartering portal, Rangde.org – An organization which connects social investors with people who require micro finance and MarryGold Matrimonial Services which is a personalised, offline, matrimonial matchmaking service based on matching, regardless of caste, language, community, history or horoscope.

Mr. S R Gopalan from Dawn Consulting took a very interactive session on Corporate Taxation with emphasis on entrepreneurial ventures. The interaction was so intense that before he went to his slide number two, more than 25 questions were asked! Mr. Gopalan who has extensive experience and deep understanding of the subject patiently answered to every single question put up by the startup entrepreneurs. His session came to an end after which some noisy networking took place over coffee among the 100 odd attendees.

If you were one among them do let us know what you think about the session. Which of the speakers you liked / disliked the most? And would the coffee break not be better in between the program, rather then in the end for better networking?