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Report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute : How social entrepreneurship is redefining the meaning of return

by Paul Joseph February 1, 2012 Featured

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Credit Suisse Research Institute, in collaboration with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, released the key findings of its report entitled “Investing for Impact: How social entrepreneurship is redefining the meaning of return.” The report provides insight into the major trends shaping Impact Investing today and its ability to tackle some of the world’s most intractable societal problems. “Today, more investors and entrepreneurs than ever are proactively investing their capital in solutions designed to generate a positive social or environmental impact, while also having the potential for some financial return. A standard impact investment structure today will invest in enterprises that provide self-sustaining solutions to social problems, such as access to clean water, improved healthcare, or the provision of clean energy. Investing in these organizations provides a direct and significant impact for those in poverty, and in many cases also offers a financial return. The potential of growing efforts to deliver entrepreneurial solutions to global problems is bigger than ever before – as are the opportunities to channel private capital toward social and environmental issues. We hope this publication will offer you more insight into this exciting new field” said the research institute in a release. In this report, the Credit Suisse Research Institute explores the opportunities and complexities of Impact Investing. Primary focus is placed on Social Entrepreneurship. Here, direct investments are made into social enterprises that provide scalable, self-sustaining solutions to address global problems. Examples include access to clean water, improved health care or the provision of clean energy. Such investments create a direct and measurable impact, as well as offer the potential for financial returns. Beyond direct investments into social enterprises, other newly emerging financing innovations available to social entrepreneurs are also discussed. Click here to download the report.

Tagged as: business, database, facebook, investment, microsoft, pallav-nadhani, security, technology

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Startup Clk2C.com Makes Mobile Video Advertising Personalized and Innovative

by Paul Joseph February 1, 2012 Featured

Mobile is slowly but surely becoming the “go to” medium for most marketing and branding activities. Advancement in mobile technology has made it possible for users to access multimedia content and browse the internet even on a sub-Rs. 5000 phone. According to the latest report from Analysys Mason the number of mobile connections in India is expected to increase from 812 million (end 2011) to 1.36 billion (in 2020). We carry our mobile phone (or mobile devices) wherever we go. So, for a brand it is the most accessible medium to communicate with their target market. Ghaziabad based startup, Clk2C.com , is making the most of this opportunity. For a startup like Clk2C.com this opens up great opportunities. Clk2C.com is a mobile video advertising platform. “The main USP of a medium like Clk2C.com is the fact that it is a ‘Me & You’ kind of medium”, says Suresh Kabra, Founder, Samadhan Systems, which is the parent company. Unlike television or outdoor advertising mediums, a mobile video advertising medium is more personal and interactive. It allows brands to engage with their target customers in a more personalized manner. Samadhan Systems, which was founded in 2007, first entered the mobile video content sector in 2009 through mobile video greetings. The response to it was very encouraging and that led to the birth of Clk2C.com in April 2010. Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics was one of the first brands to like this innovative medium and approached Clk2C.com to create a viral mobile commercial. In the past year and a half they have worked with some of the biggest brands (across industry) in the Indian market, including Mercedes-Benz , Domino’s Pizza , Punjab National Bank , etc. One of the major projects Clk2C.com is working on currently is BJP’s mobile video campaign for the UP elections. They have also done major mobile video campaigns for HDFC (a pan-India lead generation campaign) and GNIIT (campaign to promote their cloud program). Clk2C.com is quite a flexible medium. It is not necessary to deliver only video content; it could also be a presentation or something else. “As any other new media format or medium we faced certain challenges pertaining to acceptance”, says Suresh. According to him it was particularly acute for Clk2C.com as brand managers and marketing professionals took some time to get accustomed to the possibilities of a mobile video advertising campaign. Samadhan Systems was completely bootstrapped. They are currently in discussion with a few VC’s and hope to complete a deal within 2012. The customer base for Clk2C.com is steadily increasing and a number of innovative campaigns are in the pipeline. Their video greeting site ifeelclub.com has also been recording 100% month-on-month increase in downloads. The beginning of 2012 has seen a 400% increase in revenue over the same period last year. Speaking about Clk2C.com’s plan for the next 12 months Suresh said, “We plan to work closely with major advertising agencies and integrate mobile video advertising with the brands entire campaign.” Exploring new verticals in terms of industry is another goal. They also want to aggressively market their mobile video invitation services, which has already attracted some traction. “This year we want to increase the number of active customers to one lakh per month”, adds Suresh. Last year for Valentine’s Day MAAC had sponsored the greetings and it was downloaded across 73 cities in India. Similar plans are in place for this year and they are in talks with some companies for possible sponsorship. “Mobile video advertising and mobile greetings are at one level connected to each other. So, a Haldiram’s can utilize mobile video greetings to send out Diwali greetings to its customers and use mobile video advertising to engage with them”, Suresh points out.

Tagged as: business, database, investment, learning, microsoft, mobile, paas, Sponsored, technology

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Ecopoint: Asia’s First and Biggest Green Platform and Database

by Paul Joseph February 1, 2012 Featured

Ecopoint™ is Asia’s first web-based collaboration platform and resource hub for SMEs and professionals working in climate change, environment, clean technology and sustainable business. The idea was born out of frustration and a lack of transparency the founders experienced when it comes to the environmental/sustainability industry in Asia. As Jochen Kleef, the co-founder was transitioning from a background of successfully turning around Professional Services businesses in real estate in both Europe and Asia into the sustainability space, he wanted to help early stage and SME type businesses in the green sector and he couldn’t find them easily. Jochen Kleef “As economic growth will predominantly happen in Asia for the next 10-15 years, I am passionate for that growth to be as sustainable as possible and in order to achieve this, these small innovative firms need to be positioned for exploiting this growth commercially” says Jochen. Rather than on a small 121 consulting scale where impact is limited, Ecopoint enables to do this on a larger scale with three main purposes: – Make environmental / sustainability companies in Asia searchable, – Help these to raise their profile and make them more visible for customers and potential partners – Provide a platform for the practitioners and B2B community to connect with likeminded players Ecopoint started out as a directory based web site with a strong B2B focus and has since developed into a collaboration hub with an exclusive social networking element supported by community services such as a jobs board, an events calendar and a clean tech investment matching functionality. The features of the platform include: – Community lead features and contributions as opposed to a journalistic focus, – A green business directory exclusive for Asian companies, – A jobs board, – An events calendar, – An investor matching platform and – A social networking functionality called “My Ecopoint” “Just to give you an idea on traction, we had 500 Followers on Twitter within the first week of launch which has since grown to over 3,200. In total, we now has a combined social media reach of over 12,000 connections which helps enormously to raise people’s and company’s profiles that feature on Ecopoint. Our jobs board grew from zero to over 380 jobs within a couple of months.Traffic numbers are also demonstrating that there is a real appetite for an Asia focussed SME collaboration platform for the eco industry” adds Jochen on the growth of Ecopoint so far. “From a standing start and purely through personal networks as well as our combined Linkedin and Twitter connections, Ecopointreached several thousand unique visits a month within a few months from going online. Whilst that in itself was impressive, what surprised us even more was that these visitors were staying on the site for over five and a half minutes on average which means that Ecopoint generated very targeted traffic right from the start.” With the public beta testing out of the way, Ecopoint is now fully operational and currently has a team of 15 across various geographies including Hong Kong, Singapore, India and Korea. The initial revenue model is focused on advertising and sponsoring, with a move towards a freemium model involving different layers of services / access for some of the current and future support services that will be provided. “Whilst Ecopoint is a for profit organisation, we consider ourselves a social enterprise as we are passionate about enabling the Asian eco industry to unleash its full potential so that the economic growth of the future is more sustainable for the benefit of the planet and our children. As such, a personal My Ecopoint will always be for free”, Jochen shares on the pricing. About plans for India, Jochen says “We were positively surprised about the interest and take up from the Indian online community. After Hong Kong and Singapore, India has been the third largest number of visitors since launch. In order to address this, we have a team member in India who supports our efforts locally on the ground. We also launched an India specific site to allow for future growth and the building of the B2B community locally. This will also allow for local language capabilities and more targeted, local advertising”. Click here to visit Ecopoint website.

Tagged as: database, guest-columns

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2011 Starting Thought – What if we were not Slaves of our Egos?

by Paul Joseph January 1, 2011 Featured

2011 has arrived – I wish more power & success to new venture ecosystem in India. If one asks me to name one defining characteristic of entrepreneurs, the answer would undoubtedly be the fact that we are all slaves of our Egos – slaves of a wish to be seen as different from others. A strange question crossed my mind as I started 2011 – What would I do differently if I was not a slave of my ego? The answer touched me as nothing else so far in my life – I would create purely for the pleasure of just plain creation and not for the appreciation, or lack of it, it generates from others. Three cheers to the new venture creation that we are all part of & a very happy new year to all who are part of this game.

Tagged as: advertising, children, database, facebook, india, innovation, marriage, technology

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How to Hire 5X Faster – Sourcing Channel Integration

by Paul Joseph December 7, 2010 Featured

If you are a recruitment firm or recruitment head in a company, and you are serious about adding efficiency and effectiveness to your recruitment process, here is something that may be of interest . ——- If your recruiters waste a lot of time going from one job board to another and yet not find the right candidates on time, its about time you looked at Automatic Sourcing / Hiring Channels Integration seriously. Click here to visit HireMantra recruitment software blog for complete post.

Tagged as: advertising, business, database, energy, environment, india, indian, marketing, marriage

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An incredible SAAS recruitment platform – HireMantra2.0

by Paul Joseph October 22, 2010 Featured

HireMantra announces launch of its game changing online recruitment platform at HireMantra2.0 – An incredible SAAS recruitment platform. According to team HireMantra, powered by Artificial Intelligence driven resume parsing & power search capabilities, it can save recruitment time by as much as 5 times and make your job board investment pay 10 times over. There is free account to help companies get started without incurring any additional costs. Check out http://www.hiremantra.com to experience and decide for yourself.

Tagged as: archives, business, database, indian, innovation, marketing, marriage, saas

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How to NOT have a high blood pressure and migrane when running a small business

by Paul Joseph April 9, 2009 Featured

In a recent inner entrepreneurs circle meeting, I came across a common theme of “pressures the entrepreneurs face everyday and impact on their physical & Mental health”. So we got together with people who have made it big & brainstormed the common Dilemma. What came out was very powerful wisdom.   Interesting Read – something that very closely reflects what almost 99% of startup entrepreneurs go through. My doctor recently diagnosed me with High Blood Pressure & said I need to de-stress. As a small entrepreneur I spoke with my mentor, a seasoned entrepreneur (a very successful one), and shared my problem of over involvement, ensuing stress and results such as burn outs, headaches, stress & high blood pressure. Above all I don’t have time left to think about important things and issues important to grow my business. He didn’t seem surprised and said 100% of the small business owners have this problem and the solution is simple yet difficult. Nevertheless, solution is required if business owners have to take company from status of a small enterprise to medium or big one. So what is the solution? Sounding skeptical, I asked politely yet impatiently Solution is a simple word called delegation. It is not a noun, it is a verb & signifies action. Delegation frees up owners time to work ON the business and not IN the business. Owners should never work in the business, they should have capable people doing low to medium value execution jobs so that they can focus on tasks critical to grow the business and to make it successful and big. You mean let someone else do what is critical for my customers? Business Operations? are you crazy? They can sink my business. Yes, that is what I mean & that is exactly what is required to not die young as an owner of a small enterprise, but to die old and happy owning a billion dollar business. Ok, ok, I got to believe you for all the problems I have. But how do you do it? and make sure people do not kill your business? It is simple to to delegate effectively. But beware, If not done properly, it can kill the business itself. All the steps are necessary, you skip one and you are doomed. You do it all and you have an easy life. Yes I am all ears to listen, please tell me how to do it? 1. Before doing anything and everything ask a simple questions, Can any one else do it? 2. If the answer is yes (it is yes for most of the non-strategic & execution related things), identify that person who can do it for you. 3. If you don’t have that person HIRE him/her. It may sound like unnecessary expenditure, but your job is to grow business to cover that expense. Tell yourself, you have two options, do it & keep doing it and never have time to grow the business or take some risk, hire some one capable & focus on growing the business. 4. The most difficult part is to Give him/her the job It is simple but you gotta be careful .  Beware your business depends on that job being done on time & accurately. Follow these simple steps and you are on the way 1. Provide the person A> Complete information on what needs to be done B> Skills required to do the job. Don’t assume people automatically have skills, if required arrange for training C> Empower and provide authority & access needed for the job D> Provide practical time that would take to complete the job E> Instill a sense of urgency and importance. Make sure you say that it is important that it is completed on time. Dont assume people would automatically take the job seriously. D> Define what do you mean by completion. Can you check for A, B, C, D items & verify that it is complete? Tell him/her the deadline and need to deliver A, B, C, D, E items and meet you or communicate to you the completion on all of them. Dillegently track completion – People would not take you seriously the next time, if you didn’t! Simple isn’t it! If you followed these simple steps, soon you would realize you have all the money to pay all the people working IN the business because now most capable of them all YOU has enough time to work ON the business. A simple test of leadership is to count how many leaders have you grown to run your business. Happy Growing! ——- Subodh Vinchurkar is founder of  ADPS Consulting  &  Ghoomo.com  and can be reached at subodhv AT adpsconsulting dot com

Tagged as: advertising, children, database, delegation, economics, entrepreneuship, environment, innovation, investment, marriage, new business resources, technology

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Entrepreneurial Upside of Gloom @ IIM Placements

by Paul Joseph March 8, 2009 Featured

Shaken Global economy is showing its impact at IIM Campuses as never before. Gloom is palpable and to say the least things are rough for students graduating out of even the top most management & engineering institutions. The most visible proof of such a scenario is an abrupt switch of Indian media obsession from stratospheric salaries offered at IIM Campuses to sensational stories of availability of top end brain pool to start-ups at bargain basement prices. I see a significant positive scenario emerging from this gloom that can expedite the Indian transformation to the top of innovation & entrepreneurial league. World has seen and talked about two kinds of entrepreneurial activity, one that contributes to more than 90% of the business starts, namely no-other-option scenario that pushes people to start on their own. Generally such businesses are commodity driven & do not count for much of innovation in the world. The second more interesting category of ventures are High Expectation Entrepreneurship . These are the ventures that are started by people who are highly capable, who have very high earning potential options in corporate world. Today’s gloom scenario creates an Interesting melting pot of the two types. Very high potential people left with no options but to start on their own can give rise to innovation on unprecedented scale. This interesting merger gives us a significant reason to smile (if not cheer) at this ironical seminal moment of opportunity for innovation, enterprise & change (Pun not intended). ——- Subodh Vinchurkar is founder of ADPS Consulting & Ghoomo.com and can be reached at subodhv AT adpsconsulting dot com

Tagged as: carbon, database, economics, facebook, india, indian, innovation, investment, marketing, marriage

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UGC Play YouMagix goes Vertical

by Paul Joseph November 4, 2007 Featured

Here is official Press Release In spite of all the buzz about Internet products, Internet landscape in India lacks basic & reliable services that people take for granted in western world. Today, Indian Internet story requires not merely cool technology but a reliable service delivery & content infrastructure that can deliver powerful productivity enhancements to millions over world wide web. In this context Ghoomo.com ‘s launch of movies & show time finder services signals an important value addition milestone in Indian Internet consumer space. What makes Ghoomo.com unique is the breadth and depth of movie finder services that Ghoomo makes available to consumers in India. At present, Ghoomo covers 25 Indian cities and over 500 movie screens. In near future, Ghoomo plans to make movie finder services available to 50 cities & over 1000 movie screens in India. Another significant aspect of Ghoomo services is an effective marriage of User Generated Content & credible content driven by robust backend processes to provide a powerful and useful movies & show time search experience. Ghoomo.com is a part of YouMagix.com , an experimental stage family of products. YouMagix product range intends to fill content availability gaps in countries such as India by innovative application of User Generated Content. As Ghoomo.com rolls out complete service offerings in coming days, a hassle free & seamless movie planning experience can no longer be a dream for movie goers in India.

Tagged as: archives, database, economics, environment, india, indian, internet, investment

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Corporate Venture Investment Revisited

by Paul Joseph September 5, 2007 Featured

In one of my earlier writings on corporate venture investment I had discussed economic fundamentals of venturing and why it may and may not work. Today, I see a very elaborate analysis of Google’s venture investment activity in business week . The article lists strategic reasons why corporates may want to invest in early stage startups. Some of the notable reasons given are 1. To get first right to acquire the startup in case it succeeds and a potential bidding war can risk invaluable IP going to competitor’s hand 2. To deploy oodles of cash lying undeployed & get better returns on idle cash. While I accept the first as a valid strategic reason, I reject the second as an inferior way to deploy idle cash as this can potentially harm investors interest. In short, Google’s core competence is technology innovation and not financial investment and that’s what investors would like Google to do first (For theoretically inclined, there is vibrant literature available on why it is better to return cash to investors by buying back shares or paying dividends rather than venturing beyond core competence.) Well, again, as an entrepreneur, one can only be happy to find competition for the right to acquire a share in future.

Tagged as: advertising, carbon, children, database, entrepreneur, environment, facebook, india, innovation, investment, marketing

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