Exhibitions we presented

This is the most prestigious exposure the Panini Keypad and our technologies had so far. The Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain in Feb every year is the biggest Exhibition in the world of Mobile and Telecom. There are hundreds of stalls of some of the biggest Telecom and Mobile related offerings of the world. Even a company like Angry Birds would have a small stall and a large company like HUAWEI would have an entire Hall to itself. Oracle was one of the large sponsors at the MWC and had a large contingent. They had several large stalls.

We were invited to the MWC by Oracle who had acquired Sun Microsystems and were the owners of Java. We had been interacting with Oracle - Sun at pretty senior levels for quite some time since. We were being officially showcased by Oracle at MWC as one of four Java technologies that could play a revolutionary role for mobile usage in the BRIC countries. We were given a pod in their own large stall at the entrance of the App Planet Hall. I was given a free pass and I traveled there. Our Pod had the Panini Keypad video playing in a Plasma TV at the entrance of the Hall. We also got other speaking opportunities and connecting to people. I tried my best but you have to remember that the MWC is really a very large exhibition and there were 60,000 visitors, mostly C level executives from world over. Attention spans are short and there is just too much to see. Oracle had given us two of its own staff to attend our pod. I also used my time visiting other companies and demonstrating and pitching and did quite well actually. Got to meet people I would never meet otherwise. I showed to hundreds. There were hordes of global media but they were interested in the bigger names. They didn't see the scoop. However, we got covered by Nokia Conversations and they put us in a big league of top mobile developers.

The Secy Gen of the International Telecommunication Union, Dr Hamadoun Toure was also visiting and since I had very good relations with him he obliged to visit our stall despite his tight schedule. I fact, I had come to Spain via his office in Geneva. Here are some pictures. Oracle protocol was informed beforehand on the visit of the Secy Gen of the United Nations body.

On one night, Oracle had organised an industry networker for which they booked a building across the street and converted it into a restaurant. I was introduced to a lot of people.

On another night, there was a India get together at one of the hotels. I got to interact with a lot of people there, many familiar faces like Gulzar Azad, Vijay Shekhar, Rajen Mathews and others. After that evening I had to take an expensive cab journey to a suburb across the hills called Rubi.

The Tiecon in 2011 at Silicon Valley is another most prestigious event we attended, we were awarded as a Tiecon 50 company and we also exhibited, we had taken a stall. The stall also won an award as the best stall. The funny part is I had carried all the exhibition posters, standees etc from India and it was hard to move through public transport on the first day. However, my hosts helped me later. I got someone to support me at the stall. He had a car so going to the venue in Santa Clara from our Los Gatos home was easy on the two days of the Exhibition.

Our Tiecon stall was a big hit with the Indian community who saw a smart technology to type in all languages with. Our iPhone products were ready by then and we could demonstrate on iPads. We did some good sales from our stall. We were also covered by the Women Now TV and could hook up a lot of interests and connections. We also were covered by Startup America in their program.

We participated in the 12 day long World Telecom Development Conference which was being held at the impressive Hyderabad International Convention Centre. This is an international conference organised by the International Telecommunication Union and all member countries send their senior delegates, often ministers. We were admitted into the conference kindly by the ITU-APT Foundation, New Delhi of which we had become members recently and had presented to them. We made the best use of the opportunity and used the 12 days to show our technology personally to all the top office bearers of the ITU through official appointments, country delegates that had come, telecom regulators, ministers, industry players who had come and others. We were also covered by the media in Hyderabad, both TV and print. We made particular impression on the Secy Gen himself (Dr Hamadoun Toure) who congratulated us, assured all support and invited us to join the ITU as a sector member, which we did and perhaps are the only startup which is a member.

Luna Ergonomics was one of the Finalists of the Asian Innovation Awards by the Wall Street Journal and Credit Suisse which were declared in a function in Hong Kong during Nov 2012. Sir John Major, Ex PM of UK was the Chief Guest of the event.

The Global Mobile Internet Conference is the biggest Mobile Exhibition conference held in Asia. This time when we visited it and saw the scale of it over the sprawling China National Convention Centre, built for the Beijing Olympics, we could see that it could well be the worlds largest too. It was very well organised and very well attended and almost every big name of China in Mobile was there, like Lei Jun of Xiaomi Mobiles. We too had a tiny stall there. Oh! This was all given to us free by the organisers, including the $800 passes, two of them. I got Li Chen who worked in our company as an intern to join me from Dalian and he did everything before my visit, posters etc. I was given serious Visa trouble and so I could reach only on the day of the exhibition. It is very hard to get attention in China, specially when you dont speak Chinese and there were so many large companies which were doing so much to get it, like bikini shows. To be special in some way, I had planned to turn up in a traditional Indian dress on the second day. That worked a little better. Me and Li Chen walked about the stalls to get some traction and feedback on our Chinese product. I had sent hundreds of emails to Mobile companies but there was hardly any response. On the close of the conference, there was a get together of all the Speakers and other eminent delegates, I somehow managed to get invited to it and could network with some important people and the organisers at the famous Tree Pizza and Beer place in the posh Sanlitun Park nightscape. Vijay Shekhar of One97 and Dr Abhinav of Spice were also my companions of that evening. They left next day but I was exploring deeper into China for the next 6 days.

The India International Trade Fair that is held in the sprawling Pragati Maidan every year in November. Its the biggest exhibition of India and gets over a lakh visitors everyday for about 14 days. we had a large team of ten - including two foreign interns, Sara from Morocco and Yoshi from Japan. One innovation we did during this was - we had flex jackets made with the Panini product images printed on it which all members were wearing most times. Occasionally we went in a group wearing those jackets and walked about in the crowds to get attention and get people to visit us. This worked somewhat I am sure, apart from the visibility of the brand amongst curious thousands who would not visit the stall.

We participated in the 2011 trade fair also and may do in 2012. The NITEE which is an organisation of entrepreneurs of NCR helps us get a stall in Trade Fair in collaboration with Techmart and MSME. The stalls were a little discounted and the Hall No 14 is near the Gate No 7 and gets a lot of crowd and the Hall has other engineering related exhibits. We were busy on all the days creating awareness, putting the Panini Keypad into hundreds of phones and selling scratch cards. The Rs 150 scratch card that gives the lifetime license to use.

Luna Ergonomics was invited to be part of the Innovation Pavillion during the Vibrant Gujarat festival held in Jan 2013. Mr Shyam Kumar represented in a stall on Panini Keypad. Here is a picture of him with Mr Narendra Modi, to whom he demonstrated the Panini Keypad.

The CMAI or the Communication Manufacturers Association of India is a industry body whose leadership is offered by Mr N K Goyal. We were invited to be part of the first Indo China sourcing fair that was held in Shenzhen. The organisers paid for our travel and hotel stay and it was a very eye opening experience for some of us in the Exhibition. We were also taken to factories like CoolPad and others. I used every opportunity to explain our technologies and leave our visiting cards behind. Because the cards were in Chinese, they were quite interesting and memorable to a lot of the Chinese representatives. We were trying to tell them about the importance of the presence of Indian language fonts in the phones that come from China. All big supplier companies, ODMs were there.

The Convergence India is one of the prestigious IT Exhibition and Conference organised by the Exhibitions India Group of Mr Prem Behl. We had taken a stall well located right next to the entry to the Conference Hall. This gave us an opportunity to showcase this technology to the entire Mobile, IT community many of whom also had their own stalls. This was important. All stake holders should get to know and they should keep seeing us again and again.

This is held at the NIMHANS centre and quite popular with very good attendance. This was the first Exhibition we did. Our team traveled to Bangalore and we kept everything low cost but put up a great show. Our stall was very popular with the crowd and we had a plasma TV where the product was being showcased. We did get to pitch in the function inside. This was the first time that we were installing the Panini Keypad into the phones of the general public. Most phones in India still did not have the fonts of Indian languages on them.  Know More..

We liked our experience in the first year and this was a nice break and team building activity - traveling, staying together. The opportunity to interact with other startups, be witness to their struggles, just like ours was a nice thing to be in. This time too we did very well in our stall. We had found a very economic place to stay and travel from.  Know More..

This was our third time in the Start up City event. Again our stall was very popular with the tech enthusiasts in Bangalore, some of whom had already known about us over the last two years. This time, Christiaan, our Dutch intern was also with us. Its important to have a good show in Bangalore where so much of our software and technology companies are located. It is they who visit this kind of exhibitions held on a weekend. All these big companies like Google and Yahoo got to know about us first from these Startup City Exhibitions.  Know More..

A Pan IIT conference was held at the Greater Noida Convention Centre. It was a large alumni get together of the IIT community and was very well attended with delegates coming in from overseas. The FICCI offered us discounted stalls within their own enclosure as a Lockheed Martin Award winner. We had good success in showing this technology to hundreds of important people from every sphere. During the conference, Surjendu had an opportunity to get a moment with Mr Sam Pitroda to whom he mentioned about what we do. Mr Pitroda said he had heard about the Panini Keypad.

We had so far not done any exhibition in Eastern India. This particular Exhibition is the largest IT fair held in Kolkata and Eastern India, organised by the (Telegraph) Ananda Bazar Patrika group. The response of the crowd in Kolkata was actually the most passionate as people discovered in delight that they could write and send messages from their phones in Bengali. There were also many Reseller interests. We had good fun. I was also a speaker in one of the events held during the conference.

During the mBillionth Award function, we had also taken a stall. It was held in the Hotel Eros, New Delhi and it was a nice excursion for the whole team which was present at the stall and also witnesses the show. By now we were good at setting up our Exhibition stalls quickly. In the evening, we got the mBillionth Award.

The National Informatics Centre along with IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) organised a conference in India Habitat Centre, New Delhi in which we had a stall. We also had a speaking opportunity and this was a good occasion to demonstrate this technology to the stake holders in the govt, specifically NIC. We did our part; the technology was heard about and witnessed by several senior people of the right departments. We told them we could do what they said they required. We have not heard from them though.

As winners of the award, we were invited to a industry interaction exhibition in Chennai. We were also given a stall. I was happy to go to Chennai because we had not exhibited there so far. The conference was good and quite well attended, but the exhibition stall was not very well attended.

There was a similar networker arranged also at the newly renovated Taj Mumbai subsequently, but I could not attend it, to save some money.

The CMAI Sourcing Fair was held at the NSIC grounds in which we were invited and had opportunities to interact with many Indian phone companies.

This Exhibition was organised by the NITEE (Network of ICT Entrepreneurs and Enterprise) based in New Delhi for entrepreneurs of NCR. This was held Constitution Club, New Delhi. We had a stall there.

The EDC at IIT Delhi had held an Exhibition called Startup Showcase. We had a stall during the event.

During the IIT Kanpur Techkriti festival, we had a stall and that was very well attended. A lot of college students had come from colleges as far as Tamil Nadu.