The Pune Open Coffee Club helps young entrepreneurs set up their businesses and strengthen their network, over a cup of coffee

A lot can happen over coffee, reads the tagline of a popular chain of coffee shops. And the Pune Open Coffee Club (POCC) will testify to that.

For POCC members, hanging out at coffee joints is not just about leisure. Over a cup of coffee, they often brainstorm and come up with ideas to encourage young entrepreneurs and provide support to their start-ups.

The beginning
POCC is a brainchild of Santosh Baware (31) and his friends. Santosh, a MBA graduate, started an online movie ticket-booking firm with Anjali Gupta in 2006. During the course of his business, he faced hiccups and thought that lending a helping hand to like-minded aspiring entrepreneurs would go a long way in boosting their confidence. This gave birth to POCC, a community of young businessmen, in early 2007.

"An entrepreneur can feel lonely and frustrated, as starting a business is a struggle. The idea is for like-minded people to get together and provide a platform where they can exchange thoughts. Here, start-ups receive the much-needed mentoring and encouragement," said Santosh.

1,300 membersu00a0
The group, which comprised only two members initially, grew in popularity and today boasts of 1,300 young businessmen. Coffee shops would be the venue for meeting when the community was first formed and hence they christened themselves as the Pune Open Coffee Club.

"Coffee helped break the ice; it ensured that the meetings were informal," said Navin Kabra (38), a PhD in computer science and also one of the core members of the club. However, as numbers grew coffee shops could not accommodate all members and they shifted the venue to Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, where they meet on the second Saturday of every month.

A blessing
POCC came as a boon to many young Punekars like Unmesh Mayekar (41). "I came to Pune from the US three years ago and wanted to launch a start-up. I met Santosh and Navin over coffee and they encouraged me to go ahead and build a website that provided information about the city through a map," said Mayekar. "POCC provided tremendous support to help me put up www.sadakmap.com and in networking," he added.

Joining the club is no big task and all one needs to do is log on to the web site and put up your profile. "You just need to put in details of the start-up and the kind of people you would like to network with," said Navin.