finance

Differences between Revenue Expenditure & Capital Expenditure for Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph January 11, 2012 Featured

Lawyers at VakilSearch shed some light The categorisation of an expense as revenue expenditure or capital expenditure has been a perpetual ground for litigation between assessees and the authorities. The classification of an expense as a revenue expense affects the tax calculation as well as the tax liability of the assessee. The recent judgement by the Delhi High Court on the Airport Authority of India v. Commissioner of Income Tax (CIT) hopes to clear the air and bring clarity to the issue. Let us start by looking at the general understanding. The General Understanding: The general understanding given towards distinguishing the two is this: If the expenditure leads to creation of an asset or an advantage of an enduring benefit, then it is Capital expenditure. If the expenditure has been incurred in the normal course of business but does not give the business any enduring benefit, it is revenue expenditure . While expenses like rent, electricity expenses etc. were allowed as revenue expenses, purchase or construction of assets like machinery, buildings etc are treated as assets in the balance sheet. The confusion The definitions were so absolute and rigid that a lot of items that fell in the “grey area”, i.e. they were either disallowed or disputed in courts for years together. For instance, repairs and maintenance of machinery or buildings is usually treated as revenue expenditure as they are necessary for the efficient functioning of the machinery. However, a company might have to replace a part of the machinery or building to allow it to function. While the Income tax authority may argue that the addition is of an enduring benefit and hence should be a capital expenditure, the assessee might argue that the replacement is nothing but a repair as it was necessary for the machine to even carry on its operation. In comes the recent decision of the Delhi High Court in Airport Authority of India vs. CIT The Delhi High Court Bench ruled that: ‘”If the expenditure is made for acquiring or bringing into existence an asset or advantage for the enduring benefit of the business it is properly attributable to capital and is of the nature of capital expenditure. If, on the other hand, it is made not for the purpose of bringing into existence any such asset or advantage but for running the business or working it with a view to produce the profits it is a revenue expenditure.” For instance, in context of the case, if a person purchases land and incurs expenditure to level it or landscape it, the expenditure is usually treated as capital expenditure as it is of enduring advantage to the company.  However, if the company buys land and incurs expenditure to remove encroachments and any other obstacle that is going to interfere with the smooth running of the business, then it is expenditure incurred for “working it with a view to produce profits” and is therefore revenue expenditure. Before this judgement, there would have been a lack of clarity as to whether it fell under revenue expenditure or capital expenditure. While it is not certain as to how the department will act, this decision does bring some clarity to this complex subject. 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: finance, legal, legal talk

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Now, Board of Directors meetings through Video Conferencing counted for Quorum

by Paul Joseph November 15, 2011 Featured

Legal Experts at NovoJuris shed some light on this After almost 13 years of constant request by the industry, Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) considers Directors attending Board / Committee Meetings through video conferencing as valid quorum.  Read the circular here http://goo.gl/HhI1f . I remember program co-ordinating Companies Bill, 1997 held by Institute of Company Secretaries of India. Highlights: Electronic mode means video-conference facility. Notice for the Meeting to clearly provide details of the video-conference facility and how to participate. Director to confirm specifically on their mode of participation – physical or electronic mode. A roll call would be made before the commencement, re-commencement and conclusion of the meeting to ensure presence of quorum through out the meeting. Voting:  Chairman / Secretary should call the roll and note the vote of each director who should identify herself. Chairman at the end of the meeting shall announce the summary of decisions taken in that meeting and names of directors who have consented/ dissented. Adequate security measures to be taken to ensure proper video conference facilities, that only authorized persons to participate and the like. But there is a surprise. The Circular requires that every director must attend a Board / Committee meeting ‘personally’ at least once in the financial year.  This goes against the current Companies Act requirement that a director can take leave of absence and there is no mandatory requirement of having to be present for one meeting . MCA also has provided for participation of shareholders through video-conferencing.  But it is only ‘participation’ and it would not be counted as ‘quorum’.  Quorum for shareholder meeting would still be 2 shareholders physically present in a private limited company and 5 in a public limited company.  You can find the Circular here http://goo.gl/STn9s . About NovoJuris Sharda Balaji founded NovoJuris with the realization that technology innovations are fast outpacing the legal framework. NovoJuris counts over 200 small and medium business and over 10 investment houses as their customers over the last 3 years. NovoJuris values a culture of providing professional legal help and obsesses about the success of their customers. The management team at NovoJuris brings over 30 years of experience in technology and law into practice. Do check out their website for further details. You may also like to read: Green Initiative in Corporate Governance by IDBI Bank Choosing an Advisory Board for Startups InnoWhite: Online collaboration platform for conferencing on the cloud

Tagged as: board-meetings, cufon-replace, Featured, finance, human resources, krithika nelson, legal talk, mynutramart, social-media

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Kopykitab.com offers hassle-free textbook rental solutions

by Paul Joseph November 15, 2011 Featured

KopyKitab is India’s first online textbook rental portal. This interesting venture offers books that cater to students of mechanical, civil engineering to management and medicine, more affordable and accessible. It was founded by entrepreneurs Mohit, Sumeet and Sandeep. Mohit is the CEO and founder of CarWale.com, while Sumeet was the General Manager (North America) of a luxury retail chain and Sandeep has worked for Quest, and with Novo as a business development manager before establishing Kopykitab. In a candid conversation with Anisha Mehta from YourStory.in, Co-founder Sandeep, shares more. How did you guys meet? Sumeet and I were looking to start something on our own when we met Mohit who discussed his business model with us. Looking at the growth and size of Indian education industry, it was a great idea and we decided to give it a shot. We explored and tested the model and after getting positive feedback, we launched Kopy Kitab Pvt Ltd. We remembered the times when we were frustrated by the high cost of books while studying in college; when we had to borrow books from our friends or photocopy them. We thought we need to make this process affordable and therefore we thought of providing students easy rental solution. And then, with an initial capital of Rs 6 lakhs, KopyKitab was born. Why rent a book if a student can buy it from a local store? At KopyKitab, we believe in cost, convenience and saving paper. A student can save up to 90 per cent of a book’s MRP by renting the book from our site, getting it delivered and picked up later from his doorstep. Also, KopyKitab ensures availability of all textbooks provides hassle-free book renting solutions. How has the response been? It is a seasonal business. We started with two to three book orders per day and now, we are shipping 100 books per day. Is it challenging to survive in the e-commerce space especially when similar ventures exist in the market? Logistics, payment collection with payment gateway-high rates or COD are a few challenges of a start up. To add to that, hiring good talent is a challenge in any start up. There are similar players in the market but we believe that we have three key market differentiators – service, service and service. How big is the team as of now? Our current team strength is 21. How does your supply chain work? Currently, we have our procurement office inDelhiand we are using a mix of our own delivery setup and courier services to deliver the books. Do you plan to expand to other cities? By July 2012, we will be operational in six cities and by the end of 2012 we plan to be operational in 10 towns acrossIndia. You may also like to read: connex.io : Hassle free managing of your address book across various platforms EntranceForms: Apply to Colleges the hassle-free way All Events – A hassle free way to know all that’s happening around you

Tagged as: divyesh kharade, events, finance, himmath-jain, human resources, kopy kitab, krithika nelson, news, non-tech, non-tech entrepreneurs, social-media

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“The dietary supplement market is growing 35% YoY”, Himmath Jain, MyNutraMart

by Paul Joseph November 15, 2011 Featured

Health care on the world wide web? A tad too risky to try? But, MyNutraMart aims to provide you with a safe, secure and enjoyable shopping environment while bringing the latest health information. MyNutraMart.com works with over 200 different vendors to offer you a wide selection of the best vitamins and nutritional supplements priced upto 65% off the standard retail price. They aim to empower you to make informed shopping decisions about the management of your own health. In conversation with Abhilasha Dafria for YourStory.in, co-founder Himmath Jain tells us how hisBangalorebased e-venture portal separates itself from other vitamin stores by truly believing in the vitamin way of life! Let us begin with a brief introduction of MyNutraMart.com and its founders. MyNutramart.com was founded two years back by myself, Himmath Jain and my brother Arvind Jain. While Arvind is a graduate in B-Pharma (State topper and Gold medalist) from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences,Bangalore, I have done post graduation Diploma in Finance from Goa Institute of Management. MyNutraMart.com is an online supplement store. The site sells more than 1000 sku’s, for which we have tied up with more than 60 leading brands. MyNutraMart.com essentially stocks Nutritional Supplements, Herbal Supplements, Dietary Supplements and Bodybuilding Supplements. So what inspired your business idea of an online healthcare venture? Being a part of entrepreneurship family involved in pharma and nutrition business, we understand nutrition business well.  We observed that lots of Indians were getting their regular intake of multivitamins and dietary supplements from US and Europe through their friends and relatives, as they were not available inIndia. This prompted us to do a research on latent demand for supplements inIndia. Upon observing good results, we decided to start this online venture. Supplements are popular in the West, but is the concept well-accepted here in India? In US every other person pops multivitamin or fish oil capsules, but back inIndiathe story is different.  InIndia, health conscious people are slowly opening up towards nutritional supplements due to the side effects of allopathic medicine.  Nutritional supplements generally do not have side effects, at the same time it provide vital nutrients required for general wellbeing.  As stringent packing and labeling norms come into play, the quality of the products is going to improve, inviting more people to consume supplements. Since these supplements deal with the clients’ health and is a delicate matter, how do you deal with doubts the customers have? Supplements as such inIndiais being included in the FSS Act 2006, this will ensure better products and appropriate labeling claims. With regards to the doubts of customers, we advice them to consult their physician before taking any supplements. Could you tell us a little about the nutritionists and dieticians you have on board? We have mutual tie-ups with nutritionists and dieticians panIndia. Expert advice, Diet plans, Condition -specific diet plans etc are some services rendered.  We have also tied up with celebrity nutritionist Ryan Fernando, who is Nutrition coach to Olympians, Guinness record holders and many celebrities. Do you charge a subscription fee for expert advice? Expert advice is free of cost, but condition specific dietary plans are charged nominally as a part of our tie up with nutritionists. What is the market size you are trying to capture? A report on dietary supplements by Frost and Sullivan estimates the dietary supplement market to be worth 10,700 crores by 2016. Another report by E and Y-FICCI forecasts the nutritional supplements market to be around 17000 crores by 2013. The market for supplements in growing by more than 35% yoy, this trend is expected to remain for atleast next 10 years.  The current market size inIndiais less than 2% ofUSmarket size! Are there any interesting trends that you have observed in this space? There are quite a few trends which augur well for this industry. There is an increasing awareness about preventive care with idea to become fit and strong. The side effect of allopathic medicine is prompting people to look out for supplements.  McKinsey estimates that, inIndia, there will be 6.2 crore people suffering from some kind of heart disease and about 4.6 crore people expected to be diabetic by 2015. Now that’s a big market for supplements. So what is your clientele like? What age group consists majority of your clientele, and what is the male: female ratio? Our clientele are from the niche segment spread across various professional and business backgrounds including lot of celebrity clients. Age-wise the clientele is equally spread. 15-35 is looking to buy Bodybuilding supplements, 35-70 is looking for condition specific and lifestyle related products. 30% of buyers are females. How many unique visitors visit your site every day? MyNutraMart.com has close to 800-1000 unique visitors a day. By March 2012, we expect this number to cross 4000. We also have a 35000 fans following on Facebook. Since when are you operational?  How big is your team consisting of professionals / experts? MyNutraMart.com though started in late 2009, it became fully operational entity in the year 2010. We have 2 in-house professionals and 5 experts on contract. How does your revenue model work? Our revenue generation occurs mainly through margins on the sale of various brands including our proprietary brands which contributes significantly to profitability. We also make some money through promoting brands on MyNutraMart.com How is MyNutraMart.com funded? Do you plan to raise funds? Currently MyNutraMart.com is family funded. We have definite plans to raise funds for the kind of expansion we are looking at. We have just started meeting investors. Are you not looking at starting your own physical stores? We have definite plans to start our own retail stores in metros and major cities in the coming 2 years. Currently we are more committed towards online market. How do you plan to deal with competition from the players in the market doing similar things such as Guardian Nutrition and Healthizen.com? Currently, we are No.1 online player inIndia. With regard to competition, the market size is so huge that we can accommodate hundred new players, as it will create more awareness regarding benefits of supplements. Our USP is the single online source for more than 1000 products at a stretch.  We have products for almost all the health conditions. Research studies, strong database and logistics add up to our USP. Currently we ship the product within 24 hours of order confirmation.  User interface and discounts up-to 35% differentiates us clearly from the competition. Where and how do you see yourself about this? As of now, we are very much passionate about this business as there is huge potential.  We see MyNutraMart.com reaching higher horizons in near future. Please do visit http://www.mynutramart.com/ for further details! If you are e-commerce enthusiast, then do register now to attend E Sparks 2011 – India’s premium E-commerce Startup Showcase, 17th Dec, IIM Bangalore! You may also like to read: Madeinhealth.com: Nutrition supplement e-store www.Healthrush.in – Your one stop shop for all things healthy CRMIT : Fast growing market specialist in delivering OnDemand CRM solutions

Tagged as: cufon-replace, facebook, finance, iaccelerator, mynutramart, news, social-media, soumitra sharma

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Salorix Receives $3.5mn Series A Funding From Inventus and Nexus

by Paul Joseph November 14, 2011 Featured

Salorix, Inc., a social media marketing and analytics firm developing a new platform for social media campaign management, today announced $3.5 million Series A investment, co-led by Inventus Capital Partners and Nexus Venture Partners. “Central to our development has been an unwavering commitment to providing global customers with best-in-class solutions tailored to the digital marketing needs, focused on their social media initiatives, and enabling them to respond to new market complexities”, said Santanu Bhattacharya, Salorix CEO.. “Investments from Inventus and Nexus, two leading firms with a history of promoting investments in pioneering technologies in emerging marketplaces, will enable us to advance our technology development efforts and provide our customers with comprehensive and expanded solution sets for managing their social media campaigns effectively”. Salorix works with the world’s largest brands and agencies to simplify and scale social media engagement. The Salorix Social Marketing Platform enables multi-channel listening, social media campaign planning and engagement in a unified framework. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and with offices in New York and Bangalore, India, Salorix’s customers include Blue Shield of California, AARP, United Online, HP/Palm and agencies such as Mediacom, OMD and Universal McCann. “Brands need to follow their customers, who today are flocking to social media en masse,” Kanwal Rekhi, Managing Director with Inventus Capital Partners explained. “This can be attained by listening to and influencing the buzz about them, as social media has become a holy-grail. Salorix is emerging as a leader that is enabling brands to do just that.” “Organizations’ desire to use social media to enhance customer satisfaction and improve revenue opportunities is going through a revolutionary change,” Naren Gupta, Co-Founder of Nexus Venture Partners said. “We are thrilled to be working with Salorix, a firm that is developing disruptive technology to enable small as well as large organizations, brands and agencies achieve their social media goals.” To know more about Salorix, please visit their website here:  www.salorix.com You may also like to read: Cloud publishing platform GENWI raises $4 million Series A round from Nexus Ventures Nexus Venture Partners launches Nexus Seed program Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal on raising $40 million in Series B funding from Bessemer, Nexus & IndoUS Venture Partners

Tagged as: cloud news, events-listing, Featured, finance, iaccelerator, inventus, mobile-startups, nexus, salorix

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Entrepreneurship Workshop by IAN in association with IMI Ecell on 19th Nov,New Delhi

by Paul Joseph November 14, 2011 Featured

Indian Angel Network is proud to present an entrepreneurship workshop for Startups, and anyone who is looking at the answers to “what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur”. The event also promises an opportunity to interact and network with some of the finest minds in this space. Agenda: 2.30 – 3.00 PM: Registrations/ Introductions 3.00 – 3.15 PM: Presentation by IAN Incubator(Introduction of IAN Incubator ) 3.15 – 03:45 AM: Session By Mr. Maheshwari on Basics Of Entrepreneurship; 03.45 – 4.15 PM: Networking Tea 04.15 – 4:45 PM: Session by Mr. Vinayak Nath on How to be a successfull Entrepreneur SPEAKERS Mr. D. D. Maheshwari, Director, Essaram Business Consultants Mr. D.D. Maheshwari, Mentor IAN Incubator, is the Director of Essaram Business Consultants. An Engineer and IIMA graduate, having about 30 years rich industry experience in manufacturing, projects, import & export, business development and retailing. He has specialization in optimization of project implementation schedules and implementations. He has set up SEZs for very large groups in recent past. Mr.Vinayak Nath, Chairman and Managing Director, Natco Solutions An MBA in Marketing and HR, NLP Master Practitioner, Balanced Scorecard Expert, Extended Disc Assessor and a Behavioral/Leadership Trainer, Vinayak has nearly 10 years of exposure to Sales, Marketing, Human Resource Management, Corporate Communications and Startup Management. He has worked with industry leading organizations in the areas of mergers & acquisitions, marketing strategies, sales, leadership development, employee engagement, workplace skills/productivity enhancement, assessment centers and various other transactional HR activities. You may also like to read: Third edition of entrepreneurship workshop TouchStone on 18th and 19th Dec Low Cost Marketing Secrets: Workshop at IIT-Delhi Entrepreneurship Summit — YS Exclusive IIM Indore Workshop on Entrepreneurship Business Ideas andOpportunity Evaluation Workshop 2009

Tagged as: cloud resources, cufon-replace, events-listing, finance, human resources, iaccelerator, krithika nelson, news

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Why did WiFi win in the race for wireless access to networks?

by Paul Joseph November 14, 2011 Featured

After my previous rant on Apple , I thought I’ll stay light this time, and share some stuff on wireless! Can you try and remember the time, when there was no WiFi? The only way to access the network was to be tethered to a corner of your office with an Ethernet cable. At home, you could connect using a dial-up modem, or even better, DSL. Possibility of accessing the internet on the move was to browse WAP sites on a micro-mini display. (Those were the times when a ‘color’ display was cool) – Your productivity was minimized to downloading some wallpapers or some ringtones. If God totally wanted to dump you, you would get strange ideas of tethering the phone to your computer and access internet (screaming in the background) Coming back to WiFi, which seems quite the normal way to connect to your network, was not the default choice! Way back in 1998-2001, you would not believe that Bluetooth was touted as the alternative to WiFI. (WiFi, is actually name of the Forum that support Wireless LAN standard, technically, the IEEE 802.11 family of protocols) So, why did WiFi win in the race for wireless access to networks? (Bluetooth did create its own market for peripherals, and created a niche in Personal Area Networks (PAN)) – The reason is because, WiFi seamlessly integrated into networking stack already built into computers (the OSI stack). So, the browser or any internet enabled application did not need to know if there was Ethernet or WiFi that was used to connect to the network. On the other hand, Bluetooth required a complete stack and the applications required to be Bluetooth ‘aware’ So, quite naturally, 802.11 won! Now WiFi is ubiquitous in Laptops, Phones, Tablets, TVs, Blu-ray /  DVD players and what not! WiFi has shrunk in size. Way back in 2000, you need to have big PCMCIA cards that you need to insert in your laptops to use WiFi – It used to look like this: They’ve greatly shrunk in size, and grown less power thirsty over the years – So much that they get even embedded into phones! WiFi is now considered a default part of laptops and even desktops! (Pioneering work done by Intel and their ‘Free Radio Initiative’ that they launched early 2000s (2001/2002?) with their vision to add a PAN (Bluetooth), LAN (WiFi) and a WAN technologies along with their main processor. I think they’ve delivered most of what was promised! (WAN is work in progress, though!) So, why did I talk so much on WiFi? If you thought that 802.11 won because of their compatibility with existing equipment, you thought they’d extrapolate this and win on the WAN / Mobile Data side too? Hold on to your seats, and in the next part, I’ll talk about the story of Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) About Sriram V Iyer Sriram V Iyer is CTO, Co-Founder of United Mobile Apps , and also the Technology Editor for YourStory.in. His interests are Mobile / Wireless / Broadband technologies (esp LTE), Mobile Operating Systems (Android, iOS, Symbian) and Programming. He has a special liking for dynamic programming languages (esp Python) and dabbles in Ruby, F# and Lisp occasionally. When he is not doing anything tech, he keeps stressing his motorcycles and dreams to race one day. Talks more and works out less when it comes to martial art forms. Do read Sriram’s earlier columns on YourStory.in You may also like to read: Future Wireless Landscape AirJaldi networks: Wireless Mesh Network in India Bluetooth Low Energy Forecast to Dominate Wireless Sensor Network Market

Tagged as: cufon-replace, divyesh kharade, events-listing, expert talk, finance, human resources, iaccelerator, mobile-startups, sriram iyer

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When and how to pay a ‘bonus’ to employees? Must-know for Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph November 14, 2011 Featured

Lawyers at VakilSearch answer As the name suggests, ‘bonus’ is an amount given to an employee in addition to his / her salary. There are many reasons why a Company gives a bonus, but the basic purpose is to encourage an employee to go the proverbial extra mile . Most often, Companies give a ‘performance’ bonus, or an ‘incentive’ bonus. In an age where productivity , as opposed to production has become the key factor, an incentive bonus can go a long way in increasing employee productivity. It works out cheaper to pay a few employees more than to pay many employees less. Here, we shall analyze the common and recommended basis for giving a bonus, sector by sector. Bonus for Sales and Marketing Employees Even a performance bonus can be given on many criteria. The first is the overall growth or revenue brought in because of the employee. In sales and marketing , this is the basis used. For instance, if an employee has brought in Rs. 200,000 in revenues in a certain year, he deserves a bonus to ensure that the performance is repeated. You have to be very clear in the employment contract what the numbers are going to be. For instance, you could set the target at Rs. 2 lakh, but also be clear how the Rs. 2 lakh is going to be calculated. Many employer–employee disputes arise because there is no clarity on how the employee’s contribution is going to be calculated. Bonus for Manufacturing Businesses On the manufacturing side, bonus is given on the number of units produced. So if you are a company manufacturing, say, Stainless Steel Products, you could use this as the criteria (i.e. pay your workers based on how many sheets or units they produce). Remember that using this [number of units produced] criteria to determine bonus is fraught with one danger – you have to accurately calculate the number of units produced by the employee – else you will have an employer – employee dispute on your hands. Bonus for the Software & IT Sector Bonus for the IT Sector is tricky – It all depends on what the priorities of your business are. If the priority of your business is on time delivery , it should be the basis on which you give your employees bonus. Higher on-time delivery = higher bonus. If on the other hand, the priority is the product or features in a product, you can even structure the bonus to ensure that an employee gets an additional bonus if he / she can program those additional features you want [naturally, within the stipulated time frame]. In certain cases, it is mandatory to pay bonus The payment of bonus for a small company is an option. We recommend that you pay a bonus because it offers an incentive to your employees to perform, and that is the only way in which you can grow. Most clients who include this see benefits in the near term itself, so a bonus has a short gestation period. However, for a larger company with more than 20 employees, you have to pay bonus as per the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965. The Payment of Bonus Act 1965 states that for any company having more than 20 employees, bonus which is equal to at least one month’s minimum wages has to be paid to the employee. The bonus can be paid at any time, and businesses usually pay the bonus during Diwali. You can also divide the bonus into 12 equal parts and add that to the employee’s salary every month. The preamble of the Payment of Bonus Act reads: “An Act to provide for the payment of bonus to persons employed in certain establishments on the basis of profits or on the basis of production or productivity and for matters connected therewith.” Therefore, the Act gives you flexibility to pay the bonus on any basis (productivity or returns / profits), as per your convenience. Remember to include this aspect of bonus in your employment contract. 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. You may also like to read: Startups, Look Out for Unfair Employment Terms in the Contract How to Plan Stock Options for your Foreigner Employees: Startup Legal Talk Lean Manufacturing Scheme for MSMEs

Tagged as: divyesh kharade, events-listing, finance, iaccelerator, krithika nelson, legal talk, resources, soumitra sharma

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Dealsnow.co.in: An online market place for corporates

by Paul Joseph November 14, 2011 Featured

Based out of Bangalore, Dealsnow is a benefits and rewards partner for organisations and other closed user groups. The enterprise leverages e-commerce and other technologies to provide these services to its clients and their associates i.e. its employees, customers or members. Corporate employees can purchase  quality   products and services  such as appliances, electronics, mobiles, cameras, holiday packages, jewellery, toys, wellness, flowers, cakes and gifts from  well-known   brands through a single platform at affordable prices in a convenient and hassle-free way . Co-founders Sagar Chadhuri and   Jagadish Velagapudi share more with Anisha Mehta from YourStory.in Sagar, you and Jagadish always wanted to be entrepreneurs? My co-founder Jagadish has 15 years of industry experience in technology, corporate finance and operations. I, on the other hand, have worked in areas like analytics, CRM, online advertising and operations. Over the years, we have seen brands and merchants approaching corporates with corporate plans or employee schemes. We have also seen corporates trying to negotiate with these parties to secure better offers for their employees. We then realised that it might be a good idea to create a platform where brands and merchants can interact with corporate and their employees and strike a deal which will be beneficial for both the parties. As corporate are constantly faced with challenges while hiring and retaining good talent, they need to regularly work on their benefits and rewards programs and now they can do so with Dealsnow. How much capital was required to set up Dealsnow?  We have invested more than Rs16 lakhs over the last 14 months in Dealsnow. We have entirely bootstrapped this venture. What are your challenges as an entrepreneur in the e-commerce space? Few of the challenges we face are similar to what other players in the industry face such as murkiness about commercial taxation regulations and unreliability of the supply chain i.e. poor IT integration, lack of real time inventory data, etc.   We did get a slow response to our venture from corporates, suppliers and investors initially given that our approach to the e-commerce business was quite different from the usual B2C model. However, we stuck to our business model and made several tweaks along the way. Thanks to the initial support from our early corporate clients, merchant partners and mentors, we have been able to make reasonable progress over the last one year or so. Also, most websites compete with each other on one parameter which is price but for us, we give equal importance to our service, customisation techniques user experience. Also, we don’t spend money on online advertising or search engine optimization unlike our B2C counterparts but makes it difficult to survive but since we stress on excellent customer service, we have managed to earn and edge over our competitors. How has the response to your venture been? We will be reaching out to about quarter of a million employees by the end of this month.30 per cent of the employees in mostly all our client organisations have already signed up for our programs that keeps us going. Our average ticket size for transactions is about five times of mainstream e-commerce websites. We have also garnered a significant share of the employee rewards and recognition budget in many corporate organisations. How does your supply chain work? At this point, we do not keep inventory, so everything works on a back-to-back order concept. We promise a certain level of service to our customers and have established similar level of service with our partners. As we scale up further, we will tweak our supply chain model. Which delivery service and payment gateway do you use? We use multiple logistics partners depending on the product category, value of product, nature of delivery (regular versus express), etc. Our current payment gateway is CCAvenue. You are planning to branch out and extend your product portfolio? We want to build on our relationship with existing clients and expanding our client base. At an appropriate stage of our expansion, we might look at external funding. Go to  www.dealsnow.co.in  for further details! You may also like to read: Priyank Kharge, QuadMo Solutions: Online & mobile solutions for gifting, rewards & recognition systems Consim Info to expand footprint in online property market Entrepreneur Saurabh Bhatia of Vdopia, in a candid conversation with YourStory.in on being the market leader in online video advertising

Tagged as: cufon-replace, dell-innovators, divyesh kharade, events-listing, facebook, finance, human resources, iaccelerator, non-tech, non-tech entrepreneurs, social-media, startups

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This Tool Helps You Download Pictures from Flickr

by Paul Joseph November 12, 2011 Featured

Bulkr promises of helping you do really cool stuff with your pictures. The tool’s creator Prakash Bajracharya, shares that you could download all your photos in a bulk seamlessly from the popular photo-sharing site Flickr in one click – hence it makes up for what Flickr missed on. It has been installed more than 200,000 times and has been featured on 2,000 blogs. Jubin Mehta, from YourStory.in chats up with extremely bright developer to know more about Bulkr and a bit about himself as well – If you have uploaded, say 10,000 photos on Flickr over the years, it can be a daunting task to get them back to your computer, or you might want to have a copy of all those on your new laptop. Bulkr, the desktop tool comes to your rescue and lets you easily download photos from Flickr. “Contrary to the already existing tools, all of which are platform specific, Bulkr is platform agnostic,” explains Prakash enthusiastically. “The tool is capable of downloading tens of thousands of photos and comes with an auto-resume feature which will resume download if the connection breaks,” he adds. Bulkr was built from scratch to version 0.1 beta in three weeks. Many features were added in the next one year. He says from experience that new features should be added only when a lot of users ask for them. This works out well in the long run and the product will have what users actually need – not what you think the users need. How successful has Bulkr been? I created Bulkr because I needed to download all my Flickr photos. I wasn’t chasing success or anything back then. But apparently, a lot of people have the same problem I had. And because Bulkr solves that problem, it’s used by a lot of users. It’s been used to download more than 56+ million photos as of this writing and it’s the #1 desktop app on Flickr App Garden. Does Bulkr generate revenue? Bulkr is always free to install and use. You can try out almost all features without paying anything. But some features are available only after Bulkr PRO is unlocked. For instance, you cannot download original size photos from Flickr – only large images. And you can download 100 photos in a batch using the free version – the PRO version lets you download 500. We generate revenue by selling Bulkr PRO licenses. How did you get hooked on to coding? Is it a knack or something you mastered along the way? I’ve been interested in computers since I can remember. And programming has always felt very natural. Back in school (When I was 13), I would be coding games, when my classmates would struggle with the basics of programming. I have always been fascinated with the idea that you could make computers do what you want with code. That kept me interested, and I have spent a major portion of my life learning and mastering the art of programming. These days I’m more into the business side of things, but I code frequently to bring different ideas to life. How do you spend your non coding hours? I am very passionate about photography. So it’s always on the list-of-things-to-do when I’m out and about. Many of my photos are uploaded to Flickr -  http://flickr.com/prakaz . Other than that, I sling angry birds at pigs and play other casual games on my Android. And of course, playing with my cat is a daily chore! The tool also has an option to download Creative Commons licensed photos uploaded to Flickr by other users. Read more interesting tidbits and download Bulkr at http://clipyourphotos.com/bulkr You may also like to read: YourStory, in conversation with Niraj Ranjan Rout and Nitesh Nandy, the founders of GrexIT, a tool that helps you build a shared knowledge base out of your email easily Firefox 5 – Now available for download Teaching Your Kids Hindi Alphabets is One Download Away

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