So I’m off to India. I meant to post this yesterday when the media embargo was lifted but I went through a mad rush to pack and prepare.
Last year there was a call to join a Young Entrepreneur Boot Camp supported by the New South Wales Government. I applied and was lucky to get be accepted into the program. For myself and another 40 startups it’s an opportunity to head over to India and learn about one of the most interesting countries on the planet.
This is a huge opportunity to get experience on the ground with some of the most innovative and dynamic startups, companies and investors on the planet. I’m really looking to immersing myself in the culture and absorbing as much as I can during the 10 days we’ll be there. It’s a short trip, but it’s an incredibly rich itinerary that we’re booked into, and we’ll get to visit some of the key centres of innovation in India – Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru.
I’m taking our Chickon idea over to India as we can see a huge role for our technology in helping to feed world. Chickon itself is a vision based weighing system, using video and AI we can provide producers with real time measurements across a much larger sample size than current technologies. The aim is to use this data to drive improvements in animal health and to make dramatic improvements to efficiency right along the supply chain.
In plain English – we can help ensure that the chickens you buy in the store are the healthiest and freshest that you can possibly buy.
I’m going into the trip with a pretty open mind. I want to learn as much as I can from the time in the country and hopefully make some meaningful connections. It would be great to find out more about some of the investment opportunities in India, but also opportunities to collaborate on projects. I think there’s a huge opportunity to develop ties with regional Australia and to leverage the unique resources, skills and talents that are available.
There are actually 3 startups heading over from Wagga Wagga – all alumni of the AgriTech Incubator program. Jake from Rugby Matcher and Mackenzie from Outback Wings. They’re doing a great job stimulating and supporting the local startups and this is a good testament of that work.
This is my first trip overseas to somewhere really foreign to me – language, culture and customs. I’m quite nervous about it shows how naive I am about so much of the world. I’m currently up to my ears reading about India and trying to get familiar with some of the cultural practices and customs so that I don’t make a complete fool of myself.
The plan it to write up the trip as we go along. I’ll try and document as much as I can and share it with you here – a return to actual blogging :-). It’ll be a good opportunity to capture as much as I can from the experience.
So at the moment I’m in Sydney to meet with the rest of the cohort and Sunday we fly out. It’s going to be a mind blowing experience!
This is the first blog in the series logging the whole trip:
Heart | Soul | Machine 
One reply on “Into India”
[…] the month was out I was on a trade mission to India with 30 other startups and that was a truly mind blowing experience. Myself, Ben and Rob had been […]