Paul Joseph

Village Capital: Democratizing Entrepreneurship

by Paul Joseph May 18, 2012 Featured

The startup ecosystem is booming globally and it is one of the best times for investors to be in a developing country like India.  India has seen some exceptionally good startups coming up and we at Yourstory have been witness to the revolution. Taking a cue, Village Capital is spreading its wings and has plans to expand its footprint in India . With a radical new concept, Village Capital has held programs the world over, using the power of peer support to build enterprises and make investment decisions. Village Capital selects groups of 12-16 high-impact entrepreneurs and runs them through an education program focused on intensive peer review and “investability” training.  The process is simple: the group of entrepreneurs works together and receives training from experts.  Through the program, they come to know a great deal about each other’s businesses and about each other’s character.  At the end of the program, entrepreneurs assess one another, and vote for the best enterprises (self-voting is obviously not allowed); the top two enterprises that receive the most votes each receive INR 25 lakh in equity investment, split between Village Capital and a local co-investor partner. Cooper Swift , who leads Village Capital India, says “Entrepreneurs are empowered, because they know that someone in the group will get funded.” Over the course of the 3-4 month program, the entrepreneurs interact frequently, brain storming and giving feedback to one another, and at the end of which two entrepreneurs with the highest votes receive a cool INR 25 lakh funding. “Even though Village Capital only funds two enterprises, exposure to our network of investors means that all of the participants stand to gain through the program”, says Cooper. “For example, out of the 14 participants in a recent program at Brazil, Village Capital invested in the two winners, but another ten enterprises were funded by external funders, on account of the training and visibility that Village Capital provided them.” The progress that Village Capital has made so far has been promising. In the past two years, they have launched fourteen programs worldwide, supporting over 250 entrepreneurs, who have raised over $15 million in funding.  Village Capital recently completed its third program in India, and its expansion plans are both location-focused on certain cities, as well as sector-focused (e.g. energy, mobile/ICT).  Speaking about some of the criteria for the program, Cooper says, “We are looking for high-impact enterprises that create measurable social or environmental impact, have strong financials, and we invest where our money can catalyze change and accelerate growth.” Previous success stories from India and Opportunities In fall of 2011, Village Capital launched its third program in partnership with Dasra Social Impact, culminating in 2012. The winners of that program include Simpa Networks, which makes home solar energy systems affordable, Waste Ventures, which improves the livelihoods of ragpickers, and Daily Dump, which sells home composting kits and turns organic waste into compost. Cooper believes that Village Capital is only as good as its entrepreneurs. “We’re a small but fast-growing organization that is looking for the best world-changing entrepreneur we can find worldwide.” Also do have a look at their site and if you’re interested in applying to be a Village Capital Fellow in an upcoming program , you can sign up here right away.

Tagged as: aggregator, amazon, digital, guest-columns, investment, password, security, semiconductor

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Freshdesk Announces Future Fund to Provide USD 10M in OnlineHelpdesk Support to 501 Startups Worldwide

by Paul Joseph May 18, 2012 Featured

Today, Freshdesk  announces phase one of its Freshdesk Future Fund to provide customer support services to new companies. The fund will provide 501 startups and incubations with USD 10M worth of Freshdesk’s cloud based support solution for one year. Startups have their finger on the pulse when it comes to new technologies and disruptive ideas. In order to capitalize on this innovative spirit, Freshdesk is teaming up with technology incubators and angel funds including: YouWeb, Tandem Entrepreneurs, Internet India Fund, 500 Startups and Proudly Made in DC. Freshdesk will also be exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York next week with hopes to partner up with additional startups. “Consumers today pick their favorite brands based on the ways the business engages with them,” says Freshdesk CEO, Girish Mathrubootham. “With the Freshdesk Future Fund, we hope to help fuel tomorrow’s Virgin, Southwest, and Zappos by equipping today’s startups with the right tools to provide state of the art support to their customers.” With the Freshdesk Future Fund, startups can get up to three full-time customer support agents on Freshdesk’s Garden plan free for an entire year. The plan includes multi-channel support capabilities with which startups can support their customers through email, phone, their website, Facebook and Twitter, all from one place. Freshdesk assures Startups that they will never miss out on a customer query, lead or sales question, with the ticketing capabilities in Freshdesk. The plan even includes community management capabilities through which startups can engage customers in discussion forums and allow their early adopters to suggest and vote on ideas. Entrepreneurs with multiple brands or product lines can support all brands from a single Freshdesk account. For more information about the Freshdesk Future Fund, or if you’re a startup interested in learning how to participate, visit  freshdesk.com/startup  

Tagged as: aggregator, amazon, digital, enterprise, guest-columns, india, kiran-kumar, password, social-media, trademark

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fJungle: A Social Media Aggregator with Extra Punches

by Paul Joseph May 18, 2012 Featured

fJungle allows you to send tweets longer than 140 characters Whenever a discussion concerning social media pops up, current favorites naturally include the big three- Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.   What if all three of them could be accessed and used equally efficiently via a single sign in? This is what a couple of entrepreneurs from Chennai asked themselves and eventually came up with fJungle. KM Muthukumar, co-founder at fJungle says, “ fJungle is a Value-Added Social Media Aggregator. While all the other social media aggregators like hootsuite concentrate on business users; we have always kept in mind the average social media user since we started building it. ‘f’ denotes friends, family, facebook – we wanted fJungle to be a great place where you could hang out with your friends. ” The core team at fJungle comprises of co-founders Tony Varghese and Muthukumar Marappan , graduates of Visual communication and commerce respectively, at Loyola College, Chennai. They started working on fJungle from mid-2009 before there were platforms to integrate multiple social networks in the market. Devoid of technical expertise, Manjush, who currently is the technical head at fJungle, filled in the vacancy. “ Initially we didn’t even know what API or oAuth meant and thought we would just store the usernames and passwords into our database for signing into multiple networks, which would of course, be illegal. I strongly believe that it takes non-technical people to identify a real need in the environment. A technical person would have built a product based on what he knows, whereas non-technical founders focus and build the product based on need ,” says Muthukumar. Being a self funded venture providing a free application, a huge 38000 USD has already been invested on their product . I visited their website earlier today and this is how the process works. The user signs up with fJungle using his/her email, adds his/her facebook, LinkedIn and twitter accounts following which he/she will be signed into all three networks. Also, these are some of the features of fJungle that one can observe: All three of these social networks can be accessed upon a single sign in to fJungle All three social networks will have similar layouts associated with their original websites. All features permitted by the API’s of the social media can be used- like status posting, uploading pictures, commenting, messaging etc. Talking about more features, Muthukumar adds, “fJungle is not just a social media aggregator – we have added a custom feature with this release – where you could send out long tweets which your followers could read entirely within their twitter stream” This is made possible by breaking the tweet and sending it out as a bunch of tweets together. Talking in the literal sense, the tweet size is same but all your tweets are bunched together and hence the continuity remains. Also, there are plenty more features that fJungle are coming up with in future versions. Says Muthukumar, “ Since the features allowed by the API’s are limited, we have planned to equip fJungle with customized features that fJungle users can use themselves.” Some of them include: Chat with LinkedIn contacts who use fJungle. Real-time chat with twitter followers who use fJungle. Manage multiple Twitter and Facebook profiles with a single sign-in. Right now, you can post a tweet that is longer than 140 characters on fJungle which will be posted a single tweet in your timeline, so that your followers can read your long tweet easily without moving out of the twitter interface on their mobile devices. Integrate more social networks such as Yammer, Google+ and Pinterest in next releases. Matching these targets and getting a huge user base on the platform will be no cakewalk but the reticent planning and a strong foundation might make it big for them. Check them out at – www.fjungle.com

Tagged as: aggregator, deploying-word, digital, guest-columns, investment, password, security, startups

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Qualcomm Ventures Announces the QPrize Venture Investment Competition in India

by Paul Joseph May 17, 2012 Featured

Qualcomm Incorporated today announced the third edition of its venture investment competition in India to identify the industry’s most promising early-stage technology companies. The Qualcomm Ventures QPrize ™  competition was first launched in 2009 to promote innovation in the technology industry and is managed by Qualcomm’s venture investment arm, Qualcomm Ventures. The Qualcomm Ventures QPrize competition is open to start-ups whose business plans accelerate technology development in the following business sectors: Consumer/enterprise applications and services Communication devices Semiconductor and component technologies Mobile platforms Digital media and content Healthcare technologies and services CleanTech The deadline for business plan submissions is August 17, 2012.  From the pool of competing entries, Qualcomm Ventures will select one winner of the QPrize India competition who will receive US$100,000 of convertible note funding from Qualcomm Incorporated.  The QPrize India winner will then be eligible compete against other regional finalists in the QPrize Grand Finals competition for an additional US$150,000 in convertible note funding.  Sponsors and partners for the QPrize India competition include Mumbai Angels and YourStory.in . Last year’s winner of Qualcomm Ventures India QPrize competition, Bengaluru-based company Reverie Language Technologies, provides technology and solutions for local language (Indian, Perso-arabic and other South Asian complex scripts) processing of digital media in mobile and other devices. Qualcomm Ventures, the venture investment group of Qualcomm Incorporated, was launched in the United States in November 2000 with an initial US$500 million allocation. Qualcomm Ventures’ aim is to support Qualcomm’s mission of enabling and fostering 3G and wireless Internet markets through investments in privately owned startup ventures.  These investments include companies focusing on wireless communication technologies and products serving consumer, enterprise and vertical markets worldwide. After successfully expanding its activities in Korea, Japan, China and Europe, Qualcomm Ventures set up its India presence in 2008 with a direct equity investment in Tessolve. It has also invested in Kirusa and MapMyIndia. Additional details on the Qualcomm Ventures’ QPrize competition, candidate eligibility and submission guidelines are available at  www.qprize.com .

Tagged as: amazon, cartoon, deploying-word, digital, guest-columns, india, investment, kiran-kumar, lose-something, trademark

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The Original Blog Profits Blueprint Audio Version

by Paul Joseph May 17, 2012 Featured

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link. Download the MP3 [ 101 Minutes - 24 MB ] Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes. I realize you probably already have my Blog Profits Blueprint since it has been available for over five years now and has been downloaded … Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged as: internet business, podcasts, podcasts pillar, small-business, young

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Twelve Charter Angels Join VentureNursery, A Startup Accelerator

by Paul Joseph May 17, 2012 Featured

VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed start-up accelerator , today announced that twelve angel investors have joined its Charter Angels program. The Charter Angels program is an anchor element of VentureNursery’s value proposition and is meant to give a platform to graduating start-ups to pitch for on-going mentoring and seed funding by seasoned and active angel investors. “We had earlier announced that we would be looking at enlisting the support of six to seven angel investors to join our Charter Angels program. As Shravan and I met potential angel investors individually, we were pleasantly surprised by the strong support we received from everyone and finally ended up signing up almost double that number.” commented Ravi Kiran, Co-founder, VentureNursery. Shravan Shroff, Co-founder, VentureNursery added, “All of our Charter Angels have made several angel investments and understand its risks and joys. They are truly committed to mentoring young companies and giving them a fair opportunity to make an impact through enterprise. We value their support to our endeavour to make a meaningful contribution to India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.” The Charter Angels, in alphabetical order, are: Mr Amit Patni – Co-founder and Chairman, Nirvana Venture Advisors Mr Anand Ladsariya -CEO and Promoter Director, Everest Flavours Mr Arihant Patni – Director, Nirvana Venture Advisors Mr Ashok Kumar Damani -Co-founder, K Damani Group of Companies Mr Bhanu Chopra – Founder, Rate Gain Mr Bharat Banka – CEO, Aditya Birla Private Equity Mr Kaushal Kumbhat – Managing Director, FMS Group Mr Nitin Agarwal – Managing Partner, N M Fashions&CEO and Promoter Director of Devesh Agriexim Mr Sadeesh Raghavan -Member, Global Advisory Board, Acumen Fund and Former MD, Accenture North & South Asia Mr Sanjay Mehta – CEO, MAIA Intelligence Mr Siddharth Raisoni – Executive Director, SGR Advisors & Fund Manager SGR Achievers Knowledge Fund Mr Sameer Brij Verma – Vice President, Nexus Venture Partners As reported recently, VentureNursery has received an enthusiastic response from over 120 entrepreneurs for both its acceleration programs – the 90-day boot camp and the ParallelTrack process . This is what some of the Charter Angels have said. Mr Amit Patni, – Co-founder and Chairman, Nirvana Venture Advisors “Venture Nursery is a great initiative to incubate and encourage young budding entrepreneurs of India to make their dream project come alive. There are very few such opportunities where start ups can be trained for future success. I wish all the best for VentureNursery.” Mr Bharat Banka, CEO, Aditya Birla Private Equity “There is a visible market gap between ‘angel investing’ and ‘mentoring approach to angel investing’. Venture Nursery is a platform, modelled on mentoring approach to angel investing and I am sure will be instrumental in germinating multiple successful ideas” Mr Sadeesh Raghavan- Member, Global Advisory Board, Acumen Fund and Former MD, Accenture North & South Asia “In India today for entrepreneurs who are just starting out, with an idea, little funds and probably not much else, there is a vacuum in the support infrastructure that they can tap into to further develop their idea and take it to market. VentureNursery is focused on this need and will enable more entrepreneurs take their ideas from paper into reality” Mr Kaushal Kumbhat- Managing Director, FMS Group “The mission of VentureNursery is to democratize venture capital. Talented entrepreneurs, even those who are bereft of godfathers, should still have access to India’s best venture investors prepared to hand-hold, mentor, back and build the next generation of successful businesses. That is our goal.” Mr Anand Ladsaria- CEO and Promoter Director, Everest Flavours “I am very pleased that Shravan Shroff and Ravi Kiran have started this angel backed accelerator. A large number of our youngsters have ideas and dreams to start their own venture, but lack the experience and resources to take the plunge. An accelerator fills that gap by providing resources, mentorship and investment. This initiative by Shravan and Ravi is very timely and I wish them a grand success. This is a very encouraging move for the startup ecosystem in India and you can know more about the accelerator on their website .

Tagged as: cartoon, deploying-word, lose-something, marketing, news, password, security, trademark, venture

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Tumblr’s David Karp on Why NYC Beats Silicon Valley

by Paul Joseph May 17, 2012 Featured

The microblogging-site founder dishes about the evolution of Tumblr and why he loves the Big Apple. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Tagged as: david karp, entrepreneur, load, new york, script, silicon-valley, tech startups, tumblr

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Google’s Rajan Anandan Backed, Aurality- An Instant Podcast Tool

by Paul Joseph May 17, 2012 Featured

Aurality, as the name suggests, is an app which deals with auditory senses. Aurality converts text into audio streams so that you can listen to articles/news pieces instead of reading. A cross between Pulse and Spotify; Aurality delivers an audio stream of news and blogs to your phone so you can listen to them. One can tune in to recommended content, create one’s own radio-like stations or even discover new content through his/her social graph.  Aurality’s vision is to build a complete audio browsing experience for mobile so you get relevant content delivered anytime, anywhere. Founded by Bhavin Badheka and Janhavi Parikh, Aurality’s beta is currently available on the Apple iTunes Store. Aurality recently raised a seed round of USD 280k where prominent Indian angels such as Rajan Anandan (Google India MD) and Blume ventures participated . Aurality will be making a presence at TechCrunch Disrupt next week. The founders will be in New York where they will unveil new features at the event. Currently, Aurality allows the user to swap between the modes wherein one can choose if either to listen to just the headlines, a snippet from the article or the full story. Bhavin Badheka How did the problem surface? While working for Yahoo! in Singapore, Janhavi always faced a small but niggling problem. Being a frequent cab traveler, the radio services were one thing Janhavi didn’t vouch for. See wanted something useful to happen in this space. Also, looking at the amount of time one spends while commuting, much more can be done with it. Reading is not always good while commuting and hence the idea for Aurality germinated. She asked Bhavin, a friend to have a dekko at the idea. Bhavin, who by then had quit his job with Microsoft in U.K and was working with PRAUM Technologies, a services startup, lapped up on the idea. They started working on it and after a few months of concentrated effort, Aurality saw a soft launch. How does Aurality do it? Janhavi Parikh It’s fascinating to know how such a thing works. What Aurality does is that it scans through the entire article and strips off all the HTML tags after which a 3 rd party service converts the text to audio which is then hosted on the cloud. Being comfortable with Microsoft, Bhavin and team (which has now beefed upto a total of 4) used Microsoft stack to build the product on. Challenges and the road ahead The app still is pretty much in an iteration mode wherein constant effort is being put on making the voice more familiar. It is also difficult to parse all kinds of text on the net for which the algorithms need to be immensely strong.  These are the two aspects on which work is being done. Also, moving ahead, Bhavin and Janhavi plan to launch the Android app and also a desktop version. More about them here and you can directly download the app here . Talking about apps, you might want to check out a Paginative , which allows to convert ebooks into mobile apps.

Tagged as: amazon, guest-columns, investment, kiran-kumar, lose-something, mobile, password, popular-on-cloudstory-in, startups

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OrangeScape to expand global footprint after IAN’s USD 1 million Bridge Round

by Paul Joseph May 17, 2012 Featured

Indian Angel Network, with over 200 highly influential members, comprising India’s most successful entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs, has invested US$1 million in priced bridge round in OrangeScape. OrangeScape is a leading, Chennai-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider inIndia. Founded by CEO Suresh Sambandam and CTO Mani Doraisamy,OrangeScape provides Visual Platform as a Service (PaaS), a modeling driven visual development and deployment environment for creating business applications. OrangeScape is the only cross-cloud provider in the world that supports all major public cloud platforms. With this funding, OrangeScape plans to expand its services to mature economies likeUSA,UKandWestern Europe. Additionally, the company will focus on US based marketing, sales, customer support and remove any geographical, psychological and enterprise support related barriers that exist in US and Europe. OrangeScape’s  patented rule engine technology  can be leveraged by both large enterprises and Independent Software Vendors building SaaS as well as “Enterprise PaaS”. The Visual PaaS platform is particularly suitable for high volume enterprise usage giving a superior price-performance edge. OrangeScape, that has customers and partners spread across India, USA, UKand Europe, features in the list of  Global 10 Cloud PaaS providers , by IT intelligence firms Forrester and Gartner. Forrester expects the PaaS market to reach $11.9 billion by 2020, up significantly from the $820 million in 2011 . Suresh Sambandam said, “Using funds from IAN and the network strength of Members of the Indian Angel Network, we are now set to add global enterprise customers aggressively. With the strength of our technology we will quickly move up in the Global Top 10 Platform as a Service listing.” OrangeScape’s  major enterprise customers  include United Biscuits, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Citibank,Fullerton, Geojit, IndiaInfoline, Pfizer and Sterlite. IAN investors also build a strong foundation for their investee companies, helping them with their key management, introduction of customers, building global footprint, and assist in the next round of investments or acquisition by global players. For more information, please visit their website and you can also read guest columns by Suresh Sambandam here .

Tagged as: cartoon, digital, kiran-kumar, lose-something, marketing, news, popular-on-cloudstory-in, security, trademark

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Common Job Test: An Entrance Exam to Premier Entry Level Jobs

by Paul Joseph May 17, 2012 Featured

It’s no secret that unemployment rates both in India and across the world are booming and are showing no signs of backing down. Buoyed by a steady population growth, unemployment looks like it will become a major problem for India to counter in the not so distant future. Prashant Pitti, the co-founder of Common Job Test (CJT), looks to tackle the problem. Because 50 lakh Indian students graduate every year, not all of them would make the cut and find jobs. Purely talking numbers, he says, “ I n India, every year 4-6 Lakh people pursue MBA. Upon graduation, MBA students would look at a minimum salary of 3-5 Lakhs per annum, as they would have taken loans of 5-10 Lakhs to enroll themselves for the degree. But in terms of statistics and realities, a recent survey concerning 5565 MBAs shows an avg. earning of 1.9 Lakhs yearly .” Funded by the Spice Group, this was precisely the reason behind the inception of CJT a year and a half ago. Plainly speaking, CJT is nothing but a competitive exam. It comprises of a written-test and a personal-interview (which is also recorded) to rate candidates on communication, problem-solving, personality and presentability. “ CJT is a premium gateway to gain access to 3-5 Lakhs per annum jobs ,” adds Prashant. The exam is conducted every month in which no less than 3000 students take part, of which less than 100 qualify & become CJTians.  The candidates can either have a graduate degree in B.Com, BBA, B.Sc, B.Tech or MBA. The candidates who make the cut are then inducted into jobs which mainly concern the sectors of finance, marketing, H.R or Information Technology. “ The March’12 batch of CJTians landed premier jobs with Godrej, Yes Bank, Idea Cellular & others companies offering good remuneration ,” says Prashant. The one’s who do not qualify are given good feedback and also a video to see how they fared in the interview along with the reasons for failure. These candidates are allowed to apply again after 2 months. Also, the advantage for companies is that they get to interview candidates who already have gone through a strict filtering process. Currently, the 15 member strong team is led by Prashant and co-founder Govind Wakhlu, who have both worked abroad at HSBC and AT&T respectively. They made the switch looking at education and employment in India as a potential sector and the rest, as they say, is history. CJT has tie-ups with more than 250 companies and Prashant also adds that there are no tie-ups with colleges. Also, their revenue model is a really straight forward one. The income is from candidates who pay Rs.999 to register for the test. The marketing model is helped by social media and with nearly 100 candidates registering every day, the demand for CJT seems to be ever increasing. The vision for the future seems well laid out. By the end of the year, the plan is to have the exam across ten Indian cities. “In five years, we plan to venture into 100 cities all over India. We want every candidate who graduates to give the CJT,” says Prashant, signing off. Do visit their site here .

Tagged as: cartoon, guest-columns, investment, lose-something, marketing, non-tech entrepreneurs, popular-on-cloudstory-in, trademark, venture

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