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Geeks for a Valentine? Flirt, Date and Fall in Love at DateIITians

by Paul Joseph February 11, 2012 Featured

Let’s be frank about it. Geeks are socially perceived to be infamously unsocial. They are said to have big brains, but a small heart. Millions try to find love every moment of the day by logging into a social network. But how many of them think about falling in love with the person whose brains went behind making the network? Three budding entrepreneurs from IIT Kharagpur are playing cupids to geeks across the country with their social dating site dateIITians.com.  And if you are thinking it is probably another of those social networking sites that will spam your inbox with the unwarranted “Do u like friendship with me” messages, you will be in for a pleasant surprise.  After all, dating an IITian cannot be so non-technical. dateIITians is all about meeting and socializing with geeks and techies through social networking by imitating real life scenarios, from expressing ‘crush’ to sending gifts. In less than a month from its launch in January 22, over 200, 000 people have visited the website and 7,000 have registered for it. The site was earlier exclusive for only IITians and IIMites, but has now opened its heart to all. And if you are thinking why would an IITian or an IIM person, who represent the most intellectual community of our society, need a networking site to find a date? The contrasting male-female ratio in most of the engineering colleges should give you the answer. “One day we were discussing about each other’s love-life and one of us just casually commented ‘Why don’t you start a special website where IITians can hook up with each other?” Layak Singh, one of the founders of dateIITians tells YourStory about how the idea was planted. The trio, Layak Singh, Kingshuk Bairagi and Nikhil Kaushik are friends from three different departments at IIT Kharagpur and have been working on the development of the website since April last year. “People see IITians to be total geeks, who don’t have any social life. This image needs to be changed! Besides it is not just about finding a date, it is about finding the right person with whom you can have a meaningful conversation on subjects you both enjoy,” Layak explains. While, love may not have any barriers, in dateIITians one must cross three steps to get to their mates.  After adding someone as your buddy, you can request for flirting with him or her. If your flirt request gets accepted, you can then express crush on that person. And if love strikes, you can go on to propose that person and go on a date. No one likes to date a fake person, and that’s why dateIITians have created three strict levels of identity verification process. Also, the team plans to release a point rating system soon that will allow users to collect points based on the amount of interaction they have with their buddies on the site. Later, they can redeem their points into cash and opt for either sending free gifts to their loved ones or convert their membership to premium ones. The team is working on its revenue model based on members subscribing to the premium services like becoming a featured member, or by sending gifts to their loved ones. They are also looking at online advertising, sponsorships for beauty contest or events and by mobile or web based applications related to entertainment or dating/social media. We want to reach out to as many Indians as possible, helping them connect and bond with the geeky community of IITs, IIMs and NITs. “Our main target is to reach up to 0.1 million users in this year by going to all the premium colleges or universities. We are setting up the local college or universities representative to marketing our idea and reach to the students,” an optimistic Layak tells YS. “We are seeking a good investor right now, who will help us control our operations and development, so that we can focus more on the development and less on the financial and operational aspect,” adds Layak. The website is now blushing ahead of Valentine’s Day as their recent content application of “Who will be your valentine” have struck the chord in many young hearts.  The contest will have exciting prizes for winer and will close on 13th Feb 2012.The  So this Valentine’s day if you think you don’t have a chance, you might just find love waiting for you in dateIITians.com. Author: Krishnakali Sengupta

Tagged as: accounting, amazon, disclaimer, Featured, guest-columns, indian, lose-something, password, startup, technology

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Taking a shot at short films; Shamiana Arts

by Paul Joseph February 9, 2012 Featured

Good things come in small packages and so do movies. Short films have become a rage these days with several aspiring filmmakers trying out their hand at this medium of storytelling. It’s crisp, precise, engaging and most importantly brief. Welcome to Shamiana Arts – a platform that connects short filmmakers and short film lovers from all around the world to indulge in a cinematic rendezvous. With a team of 50 people, Shamiana is present across 10 cities and have featured in major film festivals like IFFI, Kala Ghoda and India Fest. They are also a regular partcipant at various college fests. Cyrus Dastur, the founder of Shamiana Arts, talks to YourStory on how Shamiana is carving a niche for itself in the film fraternity by bringing the disorganized short film society together, on a common dais. Although, India has one of the largest film industries in the world, there are very few platforms in the country that allow short-film makers to showcase their talent and more importantly a forum where budding directors can discuss their films. “The idea was to bring the disorganized short film industry across the spectrum together. And we have successfully managed to do that to a large extent, though there’s a lot of work still to be done. Each season brings in new people and new ideas,” Dastur tells YourStory in a candid interview. Right through his school days, Dastur has been an active participant and an admirer of the theatre world.  After his graduation, Dastur pursued a Master’s degree in commercial law and also writes a weekly column for Bombay Mirror on art and entertainment. “Shamiana had its first screening in a small café in Mumbai in 2009 and ever since, it has been a fun filled journey,” says Dastur. Every day, almost a dozen short films are uploaded on their Facebook page . Shamiana is also planning to launch its own YouTube channel soon. “ I always tell people to dream. Sadly in this country, we’ve stopped dreaming. We’re too caught up in little things and we keep changing goalposts. That should change,” Dastur exclaims. Dastur and his venture Shamiana Arts are leaving no stones unturned to help film-lovers take notice of the innumerable short films that our talented young directors make every year, but often get unnoticed under the glamour of our mainstream commercial cinema. We, at YourStory.in wish to congratulate them and their team on the amazing work they have done so far and pray that they continue to get bigger and better in the time to come. For the time being, I am off to their page to get my shortcut to entertainment. Aothor: Krishnakali Sengupta

Tagged as: accounting, creative, creative entrepreneurs, Featured, guest-columns, intel, lose-something, patents, popular-on-cloudstory-in, startup, unsexy-startups

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Archohm Consulting – Designing Infrastructures For Emergent India

by Paul Joseph January 23, 2012 Featured

Noida based Archohm introduces itself as a design office. It offers consultation for architectural, urban, interiors and landscape design. It also renders engineering services for electrical, structural, plumbing and mechanical systems. In conversation with Abhilasha Dafria for Yourstory.in, Sourabh tells us more about how he built Archohm’s strength on its design philosophy that propagates innovation and experimentation! Sourabh Gupta was the finalist of British Council’s Young Design Entrepreneur Awards, 2011. To know more about the Young Design Entrepreneur Awards, click  here . Follow the  Young Creative Entrepreneur Awards (YCE) on Facebook Sourabh, please introduce Archohm to our readers. Archohm is an international multifaceted design firm which was set up in 1999 by virtue of a design competition. Since then, Archohm has grown steadily to develop into a team of more than 50 people from various faculties of design. It has a fairly democratic structure. I personally lead all design discussions that evolve out of brainstorming sessions. Thereafter, projects are handled by teams, comprising of architects, interior designers and technical people to facilitate an interesting interdisciplinary flavor that helps evolve innovative solutions. Project heads take the responsibility, from client interaction to communications and design delivery. A separate creative crew adds value to the process through a monthly newsletter, collateral books, and product designs with the help of a graphic design team. Accounts and administration are kept separately so that the design team remains insulated from the nuances of a professional practice. Specialists on design and engineering are brought on board through multiple workshops. What are the services offered by Archohm? Archohm offers architectural and engineering consultation for residential, commercial, corporate, industrial, urban and infrastructural set ups. It also has an in house creative consulting team who indulges in various forms of creative expression such as product, communication and graphic design. Could you tell us how Archohm plays a role in the designing space? Throws us some light on the projects you have accomplished. Archohm believes in design at various levels. As a design practice it works on a wide range of projects, projects of different types and scales. From product design to urban infrastructure all projects are worked on with equal vigor and enthusiasm. This cross section of projects reinforces the design centricity of the practice. In 1999, Archohm won a competition to design DND, the expressway and the toll plaza between Delhi and Noida. Same was the case with the Delhi Gurgaon expressway. It won the invited competition to design the Dilli Haat in Pitampura. The caterpillar pedestrian underpass built at Moolchand, Delhi has now become a landmark. Its Agra house residential project was featured in various magazines and its corporate interiors for vestergaard won awards. Archohm also took the design of the year award for the ‘self’ bathroom it has conceived. Archohm’s keen interest in design detail and production lead to the inception of Zolijns to manufacture high quality design products inEurope. It has also indulged in design education as part of it journey in India. Could you tell us a little about your market size? Are you focussing on the international market?  India is in a fantastic state of flux as far as design is concerned. It is evolving and developing at a very fast pace. The exposure level of clients is extremely high courtesy globalization via Internet and the travel culture. This has lead to a phenomenal increase in hunger and demand for ‘out of the box’ solutions and Archohm thrives on such passion. The large growth in the construction sector provides enough room for everyone. It is no longer only the survival of the fittest.  Hence, for now India is Archohm’s focus market. However, saying this, Archohm does have operations in the Middle East. Could you tell us a little about your international tie-ups? Archohm acknowledges the importance of cross cultural dialogue and has established offices in the Middle East.  It also has a design outsourcing setup in Holland. Archohm has also established partnership with Zolijns, a lifestyle product store where designs from Indiaand Europe are manufactured in Europe and brought into the Indian market. This has given the design team great exposure and created products of international standard with Indian sensibilities. How does the revenue model work? Archohm is based on a typical design consulting model where employees are paid on a monthly basis and clients are billed according to the consultation charges. Are there other players in the market doing similar things? What are your differentiators? There are many people doing parts of Archohm’s similar things but none with the full range. Archohm’s multifaceted design firm, production facility and education directions give at an edge beyond its competition. Any notable accolades that you’d like to share? 2011 proved to be a good year for Archohm as its monolithic bathroom system ‘ self.ao ’ bagged the best product design award under bathrooms by Elle Decor. Later on in the year, the corporate interiors designed for Vestergaard Frandsen was the runners up in the Architects and Interiors, India award. Personally also, I was short listed by the British Council for the Young Creative Entrepreneur award and declared the winner of the Star Young Entrepreneur Award at the 5 th  Indira International Innovation Summit.   So how did you come up with this idea and what is your background like? Life for me has been a process of continuous evolution and education. Being a gold medalist from school and a scholar from the school of architecture (CEPT, Ahmedabad), I developed the necessary skill-set to pursue a career in architecture and design. My passion towards this field and my understanding of design matured from my exposure at Bouwkunde, the highly acclaimed design school at the technical university of Delft, The Netherlands. Being acquainted to another school of thought internationally, at an impressionable age was invaluable. This is where I became addicted to the notion of ‘exploration’, especially in architecture. With this as my background and a foreground of successful competitions and commissions in India, Archohm was established. The focus was always on designing at different scales. This became Archohm’s strength as a design company and helped me grow as an individual encouraging farther travel and further explorations. What are the challenges you face in the line of architecture and designs? Our greatest weakness at times is the speed at which we are growing and the engineering experience we have. This means our solutions may border the fine line between reality and feasibility. A risk, our clients have acknowledged and accepted as part of their journey to think beyond. It has also strengthened our belief  that ‘everything is possible’ and resulted in many out-of-the-box designs. Archohm’s experience over the years has come through trial and error and though popular belief says – being young and experienced doesn’t go hand in hand; I was convinced when I was invited to give a talk at the Entrepreneurial Summit 2011 at the Delhi College of Engineering, that experience is not bound by time – ‘being young is incredibly in’! Did you fundraise to start up? If not, are you looking at getting funded now?  When Archohm began by virtue of a design competition, it needed no funds; and today it has developed into a self sustainable consulting. However, Zolijns which is Archohm’s partner company needs funding to scale up to stability. Where and how do you see yourself going ‘bout this? Making it bigger? ‘Beg, borrow, steal, kill but get the job done!’ is the attitude I work with. There are no alibis for work. Beg for experience, borrow wisdom, steal time and kill egos to accomplish your task. You should do whatever it takes and the work should take from you whatever you’ve got. All these initiatives have been possible only because of Archohm’s mad passion for design coupled with its fun philosophy. Though I want Archohm to expand both in exposure and experience, spreading then and losing quality is our biggest fear. Thus we have limited the size of our design firm while expanding on other levels. Archohm’s partnership with Zolijns aims at combining international standards and Indian needs so that a perfect design and production balance can evolve. Also, in its vision to bring in the necessary design exposure to the growing Indian economy, Archohm has embarked on a journey to enter the education space. Its focus is to tap, excite and educate the future designers of the country. This would culminate all the exposure and experiences witnessed so far by building alliances and strengths that would work towards enhancing the design quotient of the country. For more information please check out   Archohm   and do share your thoughts with us by dropping a comment here!  -  Abhilasha Dafria

Tagged as: disclaimer, Featured

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First Class of Startups of JFDI Innov8 Bootcamp in Singapore Announced

by Paul Joseph January 19, 2012 Featured

JFDI.Asia , the first TechStars Network member in South East Asia has announced its first class of startups who will taking part in JFDI Innov8 Bootcamp 2012. Starting next week these startups will undergo 100 days of mentorship with JFDI and mentors as they build their businesses and prepare to pitch to international investors at a Demo Day at the end of the bootcamp. The startups were chosen from over 300 applicants and 1,000 participants at 6 Startup Weekends in Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, India, Indonesia and Thailand. The founders come from 12 different countries: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, India, New Zealand, Canada, France, Argentina, the United States and the Netherlands. Indian startup ‘Jobs Bolega’ were chosen from Airtel Startup Weekend held in Gurgaon. The startups are: Fill8  from Thailand is a social commerce application for mobile. We met this team at AIS Startup Weekend Bangkok. They have tremendous design skills and we can’t wait to see how they address the female markets of Southeast Asia. Flocations  is a travel discovery service that has been  featured on the BBC . Based in Singapore, its founders come from France, Canada, India and Singapore. They love to travel and are scratching their own itch. We think they’re geniuses because every weekend they disappear off to some resort town in Southeast Asia, and it’s a business expense. Gradeful  is a Singaporean startup creating a mobile app to help parents, students, and teachers work better together. At first we thought they were going to build an app that would tell parents when to cane their children, and we were very excited about that because the revenue opportunities were obvious, but we realized that Singapore was too small a market and maybe parents elsewhere don’t beat their kids enough. So we pivoted. Hobby Mash  were the top team at Startup Weekend Manila. They are building a web app to connect communities of shared interest, with monetization models that Meetup can only dream about. Jobs Bolega  were chosen from Airtel Startup Weekend Gurgaon. They are building a voice based social network aimed at blue-collar workers throughout Southeast Asia. Kark Mobile Education  won 1st place at Telkomsel Startup Bootcamp in Jakarta. They are an established mobile gaming company and will be exploring new directions in educational games. Wildby  puts toys on the cloud. No one is more passionate about toys than these Singapore-based founders; they have deep experience in robotics and design. They built the resident robots that live in Hackerspace.SG. Ontheroad  make  a mobile app for traveling sales professionals . The founding duo hail from New Zealand. Look out ladies, they’re pretty beefy. Rocket Science Concepts  are traveling the farthest to join us at JFDI. The Dutch trio are building a collaborative travel application to help friends decide where to go together. In fact, they used the app to decide to come to Singapore. Qryo  are a team of chain-smoking übergeeks from the Philippines. This will be their first time outside the country, but they will see nothing of Singapore because they will spend all their time in the JFDI bunker building apps based on QR codes that threaten to revolutionize the future of print. TribeHired  is a referral recruiting application, founded by an extremely deliberate Malaysian who personifies the word “grit”. In a good way. CloudCFO  are a small team in stealth mode who promise to disrupt the accounting and financial recordkeeping industries for both small businesses and households. Two out of the three founders have very fast motorbikes. The third doesn’t mind walking, he’ll catch up with the others later.

Tagged as: Featured, news/newsflash, singapore, startup accelerator

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Buy Indian Art by Indian Artists at IndiaArtIdeas.com

by Paul Joseph January 17, 2012 Featured

Art is an investment for the rich and wealthy. A healthy collection of exquisite creations adorn their savings. In this high-end medium comes in IndianArtIdeas.com , a website that has a rich collection of Indian Art by Indian artists. “A consolidated art platform with comprehensive user control and intuitive interface, focusing on Indian Art—contemporary, modern, traditional and tribal art.” This is how Shilpi Agarwal, creative director and cofounder , describes her venture. Since 2008, she has been working with Anuj Bairathi , the co-founder of IndianArtIdeas.com to make it the one-stop solution for buying Indian arts. Shilpi finished her B.Com (Hons.) and an MBA in Finance and Marketing and is a member of The Institute of Company Secretaries of India. She was with HCL working directly under its CFO for three years and was awarded the “outstanding performer of the month” by the company twice for her innovative solutions and creative ways to present ideas. Anuj Bairathi , another cofounder and director, graduated from State University of Rajasthan in commerce and has an MBA in IT. Besides IndiaArtIdeas, Anuj is also the founder and CEO of a $2 million software/BPO company Cyber Futuristic (India) Pvt Ltd. operating from Jaipur and Noida with marketing offices in US and UK. The backend support for IndiaArtIdeas is provided by their company Ansh Ventures Pvt. Ltd., which has its office at the Noida Special Economic Zone (NSEZ), a strategic location chosen especially to avail export benefits for the venture. Buying art online Shilpi, when asked about why they chose online, says: “Online buying has become the most convenient and cost-efficient way of procuring artworks. Our portal www.indianartideas.com is promoted well on search engines, social networks and art affiliate sites. We bring artists and buyers of art on a common platform.” Visitors can browse the website and choose artworks either by artist, by color, by art style or subject. After the order is finalized, the customer is directed to checkout through a fully secured payment gateway post and then his order is delivered at his doorstep. Shilpi adds, “We act as trustee to artists’ money and remit the price of his painting, once buyer confirms satisfactory receipt of order, by deducting our agreed commission therefrom.” Typically, the margins are on an average 20%. Why IndiaArtIdeas? Shilpi and Anuj felt a lacuna in the market for Indian art, which is flooded with a lot of players. But it lacked a one-stop platform that would focus on Indian art and Indian artists. So this online venture sprung up in 2008. Shilpi is quite excited when she says, “The portal is dedicated entirely to Indian art and is a place where art lovers can upload/share and sell their existing collection; appreciate and buy collection posted by other artists; get customized art services; network with each other; blog; express opinions on a dedicated Indian art forum; keep themselves updated with latest art news and happenings and seek expert advice. So much from an art portal was not possible before.” And besides the sale of artworks like paintings, IndiaArtIdea offers customised art solutions (like posters, cards, calendar art etc.) including innovative usage of art, which is additionally marketed via cold calling, telemarketing and also customised in discussion with customers to suit their needs and delivered to them in the most appealing manner. Exhibitions are organised at public places and the portal participates in art events in India and across the globe to establish links and shoot up sales. Shilpi on how is this online gallery different from a physical gallery “An online art gallery offers access to a huge variety of works at the click of mouse as against a physical gallery where the choice of works is limited. Though in a physical gallery people can touch and feel the work before they buy but in an online model the work image can only be seen before ordering; you can, at the same time, be an audience to a much wider collection of art in an online portal like ours.” The journey so far The work on the portal started in 2008 and it became functional from the first quarter of 2009. Shilpi feels that the journey so far has been very encouraging. Shilpi adds, “On an average we have 10,000 unique visitors every month.” Search engine optimizations resulted in a respectable number of collectors in first month of operation. On artists’s response, Shilpi explains: “The response from artists has been truly enthusiastic. More so as their works get sold they put in more and more works on the website for sale. It’s been q uite encouraging and much above our expectations. We have more than 1000 artists associated with us as of now. ” With time, the base of collectors is getting stronger, resulting in good sales every month. For example, 30 sales per month at an average value of Rs 25,000 each make an annual revenue of Rs. 90 lakhs and the portal is growing at 100% on an annual basis. The market and target audience The Indian art market valued at Rs. 1500 crores growing at approximately 30% per year. A recent report by Fortune claims that the Indian art market has risen over 485% in the last 10 years, making it the fourth most positive art market in the world. Shilpi says, “In a true sense, the target market would comprise anyone who takes interest in art, sans any national/international boundaries. Moreover, basically the idea lures all those who believe in lifestyle that creates an impressionable identity and serves as a style statement as well.” So, in effect, the target is beyond boundaries connected by a common chord of love for arts. Challenges The impact of global slowdown was felt a bit. Mushrooming online art portals and the competition from established art portals with an added threat of copying of idea by competitors are other challenges. Internet marketing also attracts customers to unorganized market for traditional Indian art, which adds up to the competition. The differentiator in Shilpi’s words “A click and buy model offering a broad portfolio of uniquely innovative and dexterously crafted products. An idea combining the ease of online buying coupled with reliability of buying original artworks, convenience of choosing from an extensive yet customizable portfolio of art related products, a choice that becomes a style statement besides creating an impressionable identity.” Future plans IndiaArtIdeas plans to launch art prints and also promote art gifting on a large scale. This would involve printing art on various objects including coasters, cushions, curtains, dresses so as to make art accessible to all. Shilpi and Anuj were featured in CNBC-TV 18 show Enterprise Inc. and have won accolades from venture capitalists for their unique concept and convincing presentation. Secrets of success in Shilpi’s words “Follow your dreams as they bring out the best in you. Also perseverance and hard work is the key to success. So if one wants to realize his dreams he should be ready to toil hard and put in his heart and soul to make his venture a success.” We at YourStory.in wish IndianArtIdeas.com all the success that they deserve. For all you art lovers, you can get a taste of art at www.indianartaideas.com Credits: Rohit Rohan

Tagged as: creative entrepreneurs, Featured, women entrepreneurs

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The deal that even god of death Yama can’t resist, from Snapdeal

by Paul Joseph January 16, 2012 Featured

Snapdeal, the burgeoning daily deal e-commerce site in India, which has attracted considerable interest among the tech community and the media, launched an interesting campaign to further its reach. Called Yam-Dude (meaning if Yama visited earth, how would he have enjoyed Snapdeal vouchers and deals; to put it mildly, even people from heaven can’t resist such deals), this campaign was yet another innovative thinking to entice customers. Sandeep Komaravelly, Head – Marketing & Alliances at Snapdeal.com, talks to YourStory.in on Snapdeal’s latest marketing campaigns. Sandeep graduated in engineering from BITS Pilani followed by MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. He co-founded a company Grabbon in Bangalore with a couple of friends before joining Snapdeal. In this conversation, he elaborates on the thought behind Snapdeal’s marketing campaign and its expected reach. He also points out that new audience is being sought for its new products deals that is being rolled out everyday apart from daily deals. YourStory: Why did Snapdeal go TV? Sandeep: Actually, Snapdeal was one of the first e-commerce sites in India to do TV advertisements. In fact, we started our TV campaigns in December last year. The reason why we chose TV is because of its unparalleled access and reach to a large number of people in a very short duration. Our intention was to reach out to younger audience via TV as medium, as our services are generally very attractive for youngsters. What products sell well on Snapdeal? Which daily deal is more sought after? Within local merchant services, restaurants and health & beauty are the biggest categories, and in products, we are the the largest e-retailer of watches, sunglasses, jewellery and one of the biggest is mobiles. What was the concept or thought process behind the Yam Dude campaign? We believe it’s a campaign that even Yama, god of death, can’t resist… So the thought process was very simple. We wanted to communicate a few things via our campaign. Snapdeal is a very interesting platform with a mix of both services and products deals. The whole idea of the campaign is to talk about the whole range of products and services we offer, and with it also to showcase the experience a customer has on using our deals. We want anyone who has not yet transacted with us to try us . What is the expected outcome of Yam Dude campaign? There are a couple of objectives out of the campaign : 1.       Communicate the broad variety of services & products that Snapdeal.com has to offer to its consumers. Along with the offers on all of these, there are functional benefits like Cash on Delivery and Deals within nearby locations which are also promoted through the campaign 2.      The campaign also aims at ensuring that users who have not purchased before on Snapdeal.com, try out the services. Is TV better as a medium or Internet, in your view? Both the mediums are different and do have very different outcomes. While TV ensures wide reach within a short span of time, and is very good, at brand building, internet is purely performance driven medium which is useful to drive transactions. How do you measure ROI on any of these campaigns? Unlike in online media, we don’t have exact metrics to measure ROI of offline campaigns. But there are some agencies that help you track the ROI of the offline campaigns using some rough parameters. Can you tell us about your target demographic via the offline TV campaign? So, through this campaign we plan to reach out to a wider audience. In fact the first campaign we did with MTV and V was targeted towards college-going students, typically early twenties group, but through this campaign we plan to target a larger audience. As a platform we diversified to product deals as well. So now, anyone who is buying anything online is our target audience. Can you give us a breakup of the audience that visits Snapdeal? 35% of transactions happen from Tier 2 cities, we see traction from places like Nagpur, Vijayawada, and Vizag. Tips marketing tips for sellers online? Social Media is obviously the most economical way to reach out to a large audience. But, the usage of social media should be in such a way to get maximum traction out of it. But, other than that, having a great product/service helps. Because, word of mouth now is becoming a very powerful means to acquire customers. The probability that a new customer has heard about you from an existing customer is very high. How do your day-to-day operations look like at the helm of Snapdeal? There are new deals that go live across cities everyday and there are new product deals that are added across cities everyday. So a typical day would like reviewing some of the campaigns that we are doing in the online and offline space in the last 48 hours and figuring out how to sustain or increase the ROI of the campaigns. We do a lot of analysis on the investment that we are doing both online and offline on a daily basis, also brainstorming on how we can do this better. How is the marketing spend breakup like? 35% of our marketing spends will go into TV. The rest of the budget is split into online, outdoor and radio. What do you like the best about your job? The best thing about this job is that I don’t hate Mondays any more . Also, the best part about small companies is that they are very entrepreneurial in nature. Snapdeal is a mix of smart and young bunch of people. The average age of employees in our company is around 25. We are very young and dynamic team that wants to do a lot of innovative stuff, and that is the part of Snapdeal that I like the best. Your view on the e-commerce industry in India . . . What is striking about e-commerce industry is that it is at an inflection point in India now. What happened to mobile penetration 7 years back is now going to happen to internet and online penetration and e-commerce. It is an industry waiting to explode and for all those interested in e-commerce, this industry is certainly on a unprecedented growth path. 

Tagged as: Featured, snapdeal, snapdeal yam dude, tech, tech news, yam dude

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Experiential Learning Solutions with KNOLSKAPE

by Paul Joseph January 12, 2012 Featured

 Rajiv Jayaraman, with a sparkling academic background, an undergrad degree from BITS Pilani, Masters in Computer Science from the US and an MBA from INSEAD, started KNOLSKAPE in 2008. Before going to INSEAD, the place where he found the push to start up KNOLSKAPE, Rajiv Jayaraman had an experience of 6 years working with Oracle. KNOLSKAPE thrives to provide the best solutions to managers, students, academicians and recruiters through experiential learning. Yourstory.in caught up with Rajiv Jayaraman to know more about KNOLSKAPE. Excerpts from the interview: What led to the creation of KNOLSKAPE?   KNOLSKAPE was started in 2008. When I joined INSEAD, I wanted to startup something in the space where technology and creativity would intersect. I had a background in theater and film-making, so my week days while at Oracle were all about cranking code, and weekends were all about being creative and doing on-stage theater. At INSEAD, I came across a simulation based change management program; and that was an eye-opener for me. It was a technology based product around story telling, the simulation had a scenario and you had to play a role in it, and I thought that was a brilliant way to teach. That experience was the genesis of KNOLSKAPE. We started up in Singapore, and Singapore being a great startup friendly city, we got set up in a day. I had Vijay Kalangi with me who is the Chief Products Officer at Knolskape, and we were a two member team sitting out of INSEAD for the first year. We worked very closely with INSEAD, we worked on simulations and multi-media case studies focussing mainly on management training in the first year. In year two, we moved out of INSEAD, and we also had our first employee here in India. Then we started working for other B-schools such as Kellogg, ISB and S P Jain. Early last year, we also entered the assessments arena, and the state-of-art today in assessments is that, if you want to judge someone’s managerial capabilities then you have to do it via multiple choice questions, but we feel that simulations are a better way to assess a person’s skill set. Broadly, we are now into training, assessments and business research. Was it challenging to start up immediately after B-school? It was tough, INSEAD was not a very economical program, and I had a student loan to pay off. But, I decided not to run behind things that I don’t want to do in life. I told myself that I would treat this as a two year MBA (with one year project), if things did not work out. That is how I framed the situation for myself and took the plunge. How did you go about acquiring your first few customers after INSEAD? We were lucky on that front! INSEAD being one of the Top 10 B-schools, it was relatively easier for us to acquire the next few customers. We were INSEAD’s academic computing partner which means INSEAD’s most academic computing projects were done by us. That was a great start for us, and after we have proved ourselves at INSEAD it was easier for us to convince the other B-schools to use our simulations. Can you tell us a bit more about the features of the product itself? For most academic institutions, we have off-the-shelf products. Most corporates however have very specific needs, off-the-shelf products do not work, in such cases we customize the products for them. The beauty of our products is that, they can be customized very easily in two to three days. For academic institutions, we have at least one simulation product for each of the major management courses starting from accounting to supply chain to marketing to finance to IT. We tried to cover as many management domains as possible through our simulations, in addition to that we are also developing general management simulations that cover parts of all the courses. Our philosophy is that learning should be through doing. One way teaching is not going to work anymore, as the attention span of students and managers is going down. Clearly, there is a need to offer something that would engage the participants, let them participate and not just be passive. What is different about our simulations is that is they are very experiential. How many customers do you have? At this point, we have 15 customers. Out of which, 5 are corporate clients and the rest are academic institutions. One of our clients, MeritTrac uses our products for their pre-recruitment assessments. We have done pilots with companies like Wipro and Cognizant wherein these companies are hiring big time from B-schools, and they need a way to filter candidates very effectively, however, the state-of-art so far is multiple choice and we are trying to replace that with something more sophisticated and more real world like. How big is your team now? We are 17 member strong now. Are you hiring? Yes, we are looking to hire folks for marketing as well as technical roles. As a startup, how did you overcome the challenges of hiring right people for your team? During the interview process, it is made very clear to people that they have to wear multiple hats. And, most of the times one is expected to give their 120 percent to the product. Luckily for us, KNOLSKAPE is a very fun environment; we are developing games at the end of the day, and being aware of the impact that the games we develop create on learners is helpful. Are you looking to fundraise? Yes, this year. When did you break even? Luckily, we broke even in the first year of operations itself, as we were doing a lot of services for INSEAD and Kellogg School of Management. We funded our products through our services. How is the product priced? The product pricing differs on whether it is for corporates or for B-schools. For example, we have a product for B2B marketing simulations; a great product for marketers to learn though experiences; priced at 1,250 euros per use for a class size of 25. Can you please share your expansion plans with us? We are looking at geographical expansion, we are currently in talks with many Universities outside of India, especially Australia, Middle East and the US. We see the need for our product globally. Assessments is a big market, and we have barely scratched the surface. Also, apart from the management courses, we would soon look at the intersection of engineering and management. We would love to venture into vocational training space as well. Three trends that you see in Education today. Very soon traditional, physical text books will be out. Two way engagement in learning will be a big trend. Social learning is going to be big. Do visit http :// knolskape . com for further details

Tagged as: Featured, knolskape, tech, tech entrepreneurs

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Understanding Stamp Duty for Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph January 6, 2012 Featured

Lawyers at VakilSearch tell you more As an entrepreneur, a word you might have heard very often is ‘Stamp Duty’. As per the Stamp Act, practically every document and agreement you enter into with another party has to be stamped. Here, in this piece, we will be introducing you to the basic concepts surrounding Stamp Duty payment. Why do we pay Stamp Duty? We owe the concept of Stamp Duty and Stamp Paper to the British, who used Stamps as a way of raising revenue in the aftermath of war, when the treasury had been completely drained. The British themselves stole the idea from the Spaniards, who had used it to raise revenue as well. Who levies Stamp Duty? The Parliament (Central Government) has the power to levy stamp duty on the instruments specified in Article 246 read with Entry 91 of the Union List in Schedule VII. The Union list consists of items of national relevance. The State Government has the power to levy stamp duty on instruments falling under Article 246 read with Entry 63 of the State List in Schedule VII. The State list consists of items of relevance to a particular state. Your agreement has to be printed on non-judicial stamp paper provided by the State Government, and not by the Central Government. How can I save Stamp Duty? There are multiple ways to save on Stamp Duty. For instance, if you are transferring a property to a loved one, it makes sense to enter into a settlement deed wherein the property is settled in favour of that person, rather than a gift deed or a sale deed, where the Stamp Duty is very high. While the Stamp Duty for a settlement deed is a fixed Rs. 10,000, the Stamp Duty on a gift deed can be as high as 5% of the value of the gift. If you are entering into a Rental or Lease Agreement, you can enter into a 11 month rental agreement. Except in a few states like Maharashtra, a 11 month rental agreement need not be registered, and the Stamp Duty is also lower. If you are entering into a Contract, there are a few ways to minimize your Stamp Duty liability. So for instance, unless it is necessary, do not include an indemnity clause. An indemnity clause in Bangalorewill mean that you have to pay an additional Stamp Duty as per Article 5 of the Karnataka Stamp Act. If you are leasing out a commercial premises, (or even a residential premises), having a security deposit in Mumbai increases the Stamp Duty, since Stamp Duty has to be paid as a percentage of the value of the rent + the security deposit which is paid to the landlord. Conclusion All these suggestions and prescriptions are general guidelines and not set in stone. In many cases, paying additional Stamp Duty may not be avoidable, and you may not have any recourse but to pay it. But if possible, look for ways to minimize your liability. You might end up saving a considerable amount of money! About VakilSearch VakilSearch is India’s leading online legal services provider for businesses and individuals. As the official partner of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and knowledge contributor to Sulekha.com, the Hindu Business Line, Entrepreneur Magazine and the All India Rubber Association, VakilSearch reaches out to thousands of businesses, entrepreneurs and individuals on a regular basis. So when you visit vakilsearch.com , you can be assured of quality legal guidance and comprehensive documentation for your business and personal needs, at affordable prices.

Tagged as: Featured, legal, legal talk, vakil search

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Making Business Sense of the Internet – Segmenting The Web

by Paul Joseph January 6, 2012 Featured

If you see a man walking on the road, what conclusions can you draw by observing him? He could be – A. In-transit to a pre-determined destination (passerby) B. Trying to look for something he hasn’t found yet (shoppers) C. Doing an activity walking/strolling/mugging D. Stochastic noise (drunk, aimless etc.) All these conclusions can be made by analyzing the person’s appearance, pace of walk, direction etc. – pretty simple even for a 10 year old. Now, if we were to extend this to the web world, what could you say about Internet users. Its not as intuitive now, is it? You can’t see the whole picture; people are invisible and even if they were visible, one wouldn’t be able to judge their characteristics to make sense out of them. Fig 1: This is how the Internet would look like in real life. Vehicles are users with T-1 lines What makes this even tougher? In the real world, the person walking could either be a 45/Male/shopper or a 30/Female/in-transit, but not both . In the Internet world, from the same browser, I can be a shopper one minute, checking email the next minute, and one hour later my sister can book a movie ticket online. Clearly, this requires an understanding of not the demography, geography etc., but the intention. Drawing on some ideas introduced by Andrei Border, a Chief Scientist at Yahoo Research, one can explain Internet pretty intuitively too. Internet users can be classified into 4 mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive groups – Informational, Navigational, Transactional and Gray areas. i.e users can fall under one of the categories as follows: Informational – the intent is to acquire some information assumed to be present on one or more web pages.  Example: using the web to find tips to prevent swine flu Navigational – the intent is to reach a particular site.  Example: heading to cnn.com to check news Transactional – the intent is to perform some web-mediated activity.  Example: booking train tickets online, checking mail Gray areas – all other situations.  Example: Find a good hub, click on ads etc. The above cloak is a proven method to understand Internet users better, and hence also used by advertising search engines base to determine query intent. Utility to businesses Ok, so how is this useful for me? Let’s see how businesses can leverage user intention effectively. And once again selecting a random business, say, a merchant for baby-care products. Lets use the hypothesis tree to break down our user groups based on intention. A hypothesis tree is simply a way to insightfully breakdown a problem in a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive way to answer questions of “how” and “why”.  Sounds complex, but it’s pretty simple. Fig 2: Hypothesis tree for a baby-care products merchant targeting its customers In the Fig 2, the problem that directly relates to revenues for the baby care merchant is, how do I tap that user base that requires baby care products online? This problem statement can always be tweaked according to your business. We use our proposed classification as a starting point to breakdown one level, in order to identify users with intentions aligned with our services. Problem Solving for advertisers Navigational: These are people who know their websites. They can either come to your website, or to your competitor’s website. Remember, they are both mutually exclusive (no overlap). I’ve not shown the users who navigate to your website because there’s no value addition in acquiring already acquired customers. Looking at your competitors, a user can either go to a competitor site (say huggies.com), or a competitor service (huggies customer helpline). Together, they make up for the universe of users looking for competitors, and they are both venues that users may have an intention to buy your product. Again, this is only a hypothesis. You can choose advertising keywords specific to these ideas and see how many users click on them. Along with your own website, these users make up the universe of Navigational users (collectively exhaustive). Similarly, extrapolating this idea for the others … Informational users: These are users that everyone likes to target. They look for information on a product/service, and can be swayed towards your business. They can either look for educational info, or product info. Transactional: These are users looking for a particular service that can be offered by your business. If you were a subscription/service-based business, this would make a lot more sense. Gray areas: These are users with the least intent, but can still be swayed towards your product. For example, users looking at review sites on baby care products. Targeting these guys can be very lucrative. Finally, my Revenue Each of these has been broken further into end-targets, and these end-nodes will form different strategies to target your customers for your business. You can now head to Google/Bing/Yahoo and advertise with keywords specific to these intentions and figure out the strategies with the most clicks per dollar. Embed an API or use your site analytics and tie the clicks to revenue numbers – use a combination of the most profitable strategies. Good Luck! About The Author Sajid Shariff is currently a graduate student at Stanford University in California. Most recently, Sajid worked as a strategy consultant in New York and New Delhi with Fortune 100 clients in Financial Services and Information Technology sectors. Prior to that, he helped develop market predictive models at Allianz Global Investors in Munich, Germany. Sajid is also a passionate guitarist and an undergraduate from IIT Bombay, where he served as the General Secretary. While at Palo Alto, he advises a healthcare startup, HealthTap, on its customer acquisition strategy. You can contact him at  sajid.iitb@gmail.com

Tagged as: business-ideas, customers, Featured, internet, marketing, marketing & sales, sajid shariff

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Developers Are The New Super Heroes Of The Cloud

by Paul Joseph January 5, 2012 Featured

I always believe that the developers are the most powerful resources in the IT ecosystem. Entrepreneurs may dream, VCs may invest and architects may design highly scalable applications. But it is the developer who will turn all of this into reality. He breaths life into an idea that otherwise will just be yet another idea confined to a setof slides and documents. If you compare software project with a commercial movie, a developer is like the cameraman. The director may have a great plot and an enthralling storyline, but it is the cameraman who let’s the world sees through his lens. So, developers are always powerful. In the current era of Cloud, they are more powerful. If you are curious to know why, read further! During the application lifecycle, two set of individuals play a critical role. One is the developer team and the other is the IT operations team.  Typically developers complete their job of coding and hand over the final output to the operations team to deploy and manage the application. After the handover, developers have little idea of where the application is actually running and what configuration powers their application. The influence of developers to control the deployment environment is very limited. But that dramatically changes with the Cloud. Developers suddenly become important even after deploying the application. That’s because of a unique attribute of Cloud called “The Programmable Infrastructure”. Developers are familiar with multi-threaded components. Running more threads will make the application more responsive and faster especially when running the code on multi-core processors. They can also go a step further and run code in multiple processes. This will make applications more robust and fault-tolerant. Many modern applications leverage the concepts of multi-threading and multiple processes. When developing for the Cloud, the developers have a new resource at their disposal. That is a server!Imagine the power of creating a new server on demand and attaching it to your application on the fly! Not only that. Developers can now write a for-each loop to enumerate all the servers in the virtual data center and perform action on each. Finally, most of the tasks that the IT operations team performs can be completely automated through the code. This includes everything from creating new servers, new disk drives and attaching them to a running application to requesting a public IP address and configuring the DNS to point a domain name to the new IP. Now developers not only write code to develop applications but also write code to deploy and manage them through out the lifecycle. Does this make developers more powerful? Absolutely! With a few lines of code, they can launch a high performance cluster or shutdown the whole virtual data center running on the Cloud! I sincerely hope that the developer community makes the best use of Cloud to increase their power and influence! As Peter Parker says in Spiderman,  “With great power comes great responsibility.” -  Janakiram MSV , Chief Editor, CloudStory.in   Note:  This article is taken from the YourStory’s new initiative  CloudStory.in  - One stop platform for exclusive Cloud Computing Insights, News, Analysis & Reviews

Tagged as: cloud, cloud news, Featured

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