Enter a Hack Day event. The Hack Day event provides the perfect opportunity for passionate employees to block times on their calendars, bring their favorite idea to the forefront, form teams with like-minded employees within the organization, and just hack away. I’ve seen this concept work like magic in companies like Yahoo and Intuit. Today, we’re having our first Hack Day event at Druva!

A Hack Day Event

The Druva Hack Day, a 24-hour code marathon, began today at 9AM. The participation from engineers and QA has been almost at a 100%, which is amazing! We have 19 teams (1-3 people) working on their passionate ideas as we speak. We also have our fearless leader, Jaspreet, hacking his favorite idea. Common sights as you walk along the offices are huddles, whiteboard discussions, intense coding, and camaraderie, all of which one would expect to find in a successful hack day event.

We have the final presentations scheduled tomorrow morning at the end of the 24-hour event, so everyone can share their latest and greatest creations with the rest. Exciting awards await the winners, whose works will be judged based on their creativity, technical difficulty, and most of all, the impact in the market and on our customers. Can’t wait to see what the teams have in store!

Yes, I said calf, or rather, Tom did.

But this is the great thing about bloggers and writers, and presenting to your peers. They look at things differently, offer different opinions and insights. And to Tom, the rise that Druva has had, amassing over 600 customers globally in 3 short years, was nothing short of miraculous, reminding him of how a calf can stand on it’s own a few short hours after being born. I’d never really thought of it that way, but after reading it, felt it was a fitting comparison. It means we must be addressing an important problem, and the way we’re addressing it, is in the right way.

Of course, to piggy back off of this, the question now is, can Druva grow from a calf to a bull. We’d like to think so, – the recent press coverage we’ve received on our launch was pretty compelling, picked up by InfoStor, StorageNewsletter.com and NetworkWorld among others. In an article on Network Computing Howard Marks said:

“I am constantly amazed at how frequently organizations leave the data on those laptops essentially unprotected. By taking a unique application aware approach to data deduplication, Druva’s Insync may be the best solution to date to this seemingly intractable problem”

Bullish words indeed…

As Silver+ sponsors, we’ll be making our presence felt at Booth no. 56. Save the dates, register free* now!

The SNW Europe ‘Power of 3’ event is a high-value educational conference program addressing everything from the latest in data protection and business continuity, through desktop, server and storage virtualization to the cutting edge of cloud services. It comprises three events, spread across two days, held under one roof, at the Congress Frankfurt, Germany.

SNW Europe has co-located with Datacenter Technologies and Virtualization World to bring forth the event.

Click here for free* online registration. Our promotion code is S6210.

*Registration will cover entrance to all 3 events. Promocode is only valid until 25th October – any on the door registrations will be charged at full price.

The event also offers attendees:

• NIA Europe Storage User Roundtable - interactive session where a select group of storage end users can learn from and share experiences with their peers about the latest trends in storage technologies

• Elevator Pitch - vote for the best sponsor pitch and win free badges and accommodation for 2 people in 2011

• Sales-pitch free zones – A revised the agenda so that time in the conference sessions is spent learning and understanding, and wherever possible, avoiding the dreaded ‘sales-pitch’.

For more details on the event and schedules, click here.

See you there!

Closing series-A investment with Sequoia was probably a good enough reason to hold the first “All Hands” meeting. Everyone from all 5 offices travelled to work 1 week from the  Pune (India) office. And it was great fun.

To begin with, the Iceland volcano made sure everyone flying from Europe and the east coast had to reschedule their flights. And soon after Borja and George boarded flights, Madrid and Istanbul were closed as well. And just before the event I broke my laptop

Finally when everybody arrived, it was a great cultural mix. The office was no less than the Heathrow airport.

It was mostly work and brainstorming sessions in the mornings and some serious fun in the evenings. We discussed pretty much everything from next big product feature to recipe for Garlic Naan. The week concluded with spending the weekend at a nearby forest resort.

Take away for me – There is no substitute for meeting in person.

I plan to attend the same with couple of more guys from Druvaa. Would love to catch and talk all things  tech, statup, life and beyond.

Since I had stayed in Pune for over 3 years, here are some nice recommendations to raise a toast -

1. Thousand Oaks, E-street
2. All Stir fry, Gordan House, E-square
3. ZKZ, near NIBM

Overall it was a good year for us. The economic slowdown actually brings new opportunities for small company like ours. Where most of our big competitors have deferred new products, scrapped new initiatives and reduces sales force – Druvaa demonstrated almost 300% QYQ growth rate

Last quarter we released a new major upgrade (v3), launched new website , acquired some great new customers and established some fabulous case studies & benchmarks.

In the next few posts, I would like to highlight some of these wins and how the road ahead looks like.

Druvaa is one of the fastest growing startup in enterprise storage and backup domain. The flagship product Druvaa inSync is fully automated laptop backup software which protects corporate data for office and remote users. It features simple backup, point-in-time restores, and patent-pending deduplication technology to make backups much faster.

The new beta includes the following features -

1. Full PC Backup (with data deduplication)
2. Bare Metal Restore
3. Search functionality in restore
4. Performance improvements for large files (e.g. Outlook PST)
5. Usability Improvements

Find our more about beta and download a free copy from – http://www.druvaa.com/insync/beta

Over 80% of corporate data is duplicated across users. Druvaa inSync uses data deduplication to save “only a single copy” of content (emails/docs) duplicated across users. This delivers 10X faster backup with 90% reduction in bandwidth and storage.

The product uses Continuous Data Protection to create near-infinite restore points. On restore the user sees a timeline view of data and can restore from any point in the past.

Key Product highlights includes -

1. Data Deduplication – Saves 90% backup time, bandwidth and storage.
2. Continuous Data Protection – Timeline based, from the past restore
3. Backup for Remote Users – WAN Optimization for faster backups for remote users over WAN/VPN
4. Security – 256 bit SSL and 256 bit AES encryption
5. On-demand Restore – GUI and browser based restores from any point in the past
6. Advanced Reporting – Six different reporting options for flexible and detailed reporting

Product Page – http://www.druvaa.com/insync/laptop-backup

About Druvaa
Founded in 2007, Druvaa Software is a leading provider of Continuous Data Protection and Disaster Recovery solutions. Since inception Druvaa has released two award wining products products – Druvaa inSync and Druvaa Phoenix. Druvaa is privately held and backed by Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Accord International (HK).

Corporate Website – http://www.druvaa.com/

Nasscom showcases emerging product companies at Product Conclave 2008.

Chaired by Dr Ganesh Natarajan, this session was a showcase of three of India’s emerging Software Product companies. Dr. Natarajan started by sharing his excitement on the NASSCOM’s Emerge Forum. He then briefly introduced the companies.

OrangeScape: OrangeScape is the creator of DimensionN, business application development platform for non-programmers. It is one of NASSCOM’s Top 100 Innovative Companies. <snip> …

iViz Technologies: Started at IIT Kharagpur and based out of Kolkatta, iViz Technologies is an IDG funded venture. IT offers world’s only end-to-end On Demand Automated Penetration Testing service on a SaaS based model. <snip> …

Druvaa Software: A startup in the area of Storage Solutions, Druvaa Software is also the winner of the recent TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurship Challenge. Based out of Pune, Druvaa is an Indian Angel Network funded company.

Jaspreet Singh, one of the founders presented their technology. Druvaa has developed a product that provides continuous data ­back-up. It’s targeted at medium-sized firms in sectors that rely heavily on data accuracy, such as financial services. Druvaa inSync v2.1 offers upto 10 times faster enterprise Notebook backup compared to traditional methods with 90% reduction in bandwidth and storage utilization.

While talking on their uniqueness, Jaspreet shared why they could acquired a Fortune 500 customer who was earlier using data backup solution, offered by Veritas.

Dr. Natarajan concluded the session by acknowledging the entrepreneurs for the confidence they displayed in their venture and also assured them that NASSCOM is there to provide them the platform to take their venture to the next level.

Please read the full blog post at nasscom emerge blog  -http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/08/11/nasscom-showcase-of-emerging-product-companies/

cheers ..
-J

Team Druvaa was selected as presenters at Proto.in 2008 FE for the product – Druvaa inSync.

It was a great event with major focus on Indian entrepreneur ecosystem and innovation. Druvaa inSync got a good response, and helped us to understand the target audience better.

Product Presentation -

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Pictures -

More Pictures – http://www.flickr.com/photos/protoin/sets/72157603817064023/

Other finalists – http://blog.proto.in/2008/01/20/protoin-jan08-finalists-web/

Jaspreet