In Chennai, India, a DEMO-like event called Proto.in was held this week to showcase 30 new technology companies. As of now there is no information on the official blog about the presenting companies, but organizer Vijay Anand sent me a list of the companies along with descriptions. The event wasn't just for web 2.0 type companies - as with DEMO, there were also Telecoms, consumer hardware and other product types on show. I've summarized the Web products below.

A blogger named Gokul has an excellent overview of the proceedings. Gokul noted that he didn't see any disruptive products, but he said companies like Unleash Networks, Taazza and Wizdom.in "showed the potential to create disruptive products." He also wrote that "quite a few number of companies had social networking woven around their products."

Here is a short summary of the Internet companies on show at Proto.in:

Stringbeans Portal Platform: "Nabh is creating a "Portal 2.0" platform, code named "Juggets", that brings Web 2.0 selfpublishing features to the enterprise portal market. "Juggets" offers a unique WYSIWYG portal building capability and a WebOS environment along with a comprehensive feature set addressing enterprise concerns regarding security, application integration, standardscompliance."

SaffronConnect: "SaffronConnect.com is a social networking portal centered on user generated audio and video content from the Indian sub-continent. SaffronConnect allows independent artists, music labels, bands and video content owners to upload, share, distribute and monetize their content to a community of users rooted in South Asian culture."

Ixigo: "Ixigo is more than a travel portal, and more than just air travel as most travel portals these days seem to cover. The next interesting aspect is that Ixigo is built around a community of people who have their views to share, recommendations on places to see, hotels to stay and food to try. Ixigo, plans on being a neutral platform and enable all this to happen."

SEraja – The Event Web: "SEraja – The EventWeb is a web-based event-centric publishing system. The service has the capability to provide users a 'near real' experience of even remote, time-displaced events through multi media content. SEraja’s target audience is anyone, anywhere, with a mobile or Internet connection."

SpotEazy: "SpotEazy makes buying decision simpler through a search engine that will give products in the order of best choice. The application delivered over web and mobile platform will offer unbiased advice to consumers to determine the best bet among the deluge of products - fast and easy. SpotEazy is built on top of technology that aggregates and analyses product details, expert reviews and user opinions to rate products. The application is focused on consumer durables for now."

Picsquare: "Picsquare’s vision is to build a platform for the Indian community to share memories through photographs. Currently, Picsquare provides online photo sharing and printing service to NRIs and local Indians. Users can also create photo gifts like photo-tshirt, calendars and personalized greeting cards."

Taazza: "Taazza is a fresh perspective to news which provide a holistic, context aware & content rich experience that empowers the news reader. Our mission is to make news easy, enjoyable & complete! Taazza is in the online news space."

DEMOs all over the world

Also noteworthy is Vijay's day 1 blog post, in which he says he hopes Proto.in will encourage Indian startups to stand on their own feet:

"India is an amazing country, but we see the long-term problems we are going to race. We are tolerant, and perhaps even grateful for the companies and individuals who have enriched this soil with offshore projects and skillset requirements and have brought in foreign exchange. But that won't sustain us for long. Proto, is an earnest effort is trying to get India on her feet... so that she can stand on her own, and not depend on anyone else."

This kind of event is an excellent way to encourage web innovation in various countries, so I hope to see more of this. Send me an email if you know of similar events in other countries.