startups

Search, Compare and Buy on Comparethebazaar.com

by Paul Joseph February 10, 2012 Featured

Want to shop online but have no idea which e-shopping portal brings you the best products at the best prices? Comparethebazaar is here to solve your problem! Search, compare and buy. That’s the motto of Comparthebazaar, a free online service that allows its customers to compare a wide range of products and services (hotels, flights, bus reservations, books, electronic devices, you name it and they claim to have it!) and find the one most suited to their needs. And they don’t just stop there, they also re-direct you to the chosen website, where you can buy your pick and seal the deal! Rasesh Sheth, Founder, Comparethebazaar (and Interactive cubes, a web development firm) has had several years of experience in UK, in the e-commerce business. “I started Comparethebazaar because, today, the e-commerce business is growing by leaps and bounds in the India,” says Rasesh. Ask them how they create a unique shopping experience, and Rasesh says, “Comparethebazaar does not sell the products directly, it initiates selling so it’s not just an e-business.” A user often gets confused in the sea of online retailers. On Comparethebazaar a consumer can compare prices, select the best deals across product categories, and analyze products and the vendor as well. The ‘Deals’ model, on Comparethebazaar, is classified into Group-buying deals, Product deals, Travel deals and Fashion deals where we showcase all our products/services by segregating each deal into different cities, which ultimately helps the consumer to track all relevant deals in a given city and hence save time and effort. Besides comparing shopping options a user can also compare of flights, hotels and bus reservations. There are plans in place to expand into different internet verticals like insurance, money, utilities etc. where people can not only compare and buy, but save as well. Comparethebazaar generates revenue through commissions from merchants, click referrals from merchants, store builder options for small retailers and from banner ads and internet marketing. “We have reached the stage where we have more than 400 alliances from both online and offline merchants. We have already got around 10,000 registrations. Along with that, the site is getting a monthly traffic of 40,000 to 45,000, and it’s growing,” concludes Rasesh.

Tagged as: disclaimer, employee, guest-columns, lose-something, profile-details, search, social-networking, startup, startups, technology

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Manage your Multiple Social Accounts with ‘Grab Inbox’

by Paul Joseph February 10, 2012 Featured

Struggling to keep track of all your social media accounts? Nischal Shetty, creator of the popular twitter application JustUnfollow, and his partner in crime Sameer Mhatre have created a new portal called GrabInbox that helps manage all your social media accounts, to ensure you don’t miss out on any of your important updates. Be it your daily dose of Facebook gossips, or those crucial job updates from LinkedIn, GrabInbox allows you to customize your accounts with a clean interface and saves you the hassle of signing-in individually to each of your multiple accounts. “If Gmail helps you keep track of email, GrabInbox helps you keep track of all your social media activities. Combine that with JustUnfollow to manage your Twitter relationships and we can say we have a product combination that makes you use us at least once a day”, says developer Nischal Shetty. Both Nischal and Sameer are software engineers with over 4 years of experience in building web products and now run their company from a small apartment in Navi Mumbai. GrabInbox, which also includes JustUnfollow, has over half a million users . Launched in 2010, JustUnfollow now has its target set on the coveted 1 million users mark. Nischal started JustUnfollow in his free time, which soon caught a lot of eyeballs and was profiled on popular tech blogs including TechCrunch. “While managing all the replies we receive on our Facebook fan page and Twitter account, we realized there was a need for a new product that would help us do this easily. GrabInbox was a result of this need,” Nischal tells YourStory. Nishchal is an avid traveller who hopes to visit at least one new country every year while Sameer spends most of his free time honing his CSS skills or solving algorithms and problems on Topcoder. Nischal and Sameer were soon recognized by Start-Up Chile, a government funded program that encourages world-class early stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile and received about $40,000 for developing their solution. GrubInbox‘s revenue model is structured around the freemium model, “but most users tend to upgrade to the Premium version as they love what they see in our free version,” comments Nischal, who assured that users will always be able to access to the free version. The startup has a profit margin of around 80% on their revenues and has smartly worked towards cost minimization by going with smart cloud solutions like Google Appengine and AWS. They plan to launch a second version of JustUnfollow soon that will come with a fresh new UI and some of the most requested features built into it. The dynamic Duo are now working towards relocating their development centre in India and hopes to reach out to more social media agencies, who manage social accounts of corporate offices and celebrities. So, if your inbox shows multiple notifications pending from multiple social accounts, you may want to give GrabInbox.com a spin. Author: Krishnakali Sengupta

Tagged as: account-details, biggest-country, guest-columns, password, patents, random-member, social, social-networking, startups, technology

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Attention to individual kid is the USP of Funtoot, an intelligentpersonal tutor

by Paul Joseph February 7, 2012 Featured

Rajeev Pathak, Suryaprakash Konanuru, Haris Poonthala, once part of Wipro, quit their respective jobs to give wings to their startup dreams. Haris says, “I was interested in teaching. I was teaching as a part of voluntary educational projects and am keen on educational aspects.” What they have on offer is FunToot, an intelligent and adaptive personal tutor that observes, assesses diagnoses, interacts, encourages and helps every child based on each child’s individual characteristics. Suryaprakash says that they started building this product to create a global education technology company out of India.. Even more important is their belief that ground up innovation has not happened in technologies for children. Another reason is giving back to society as the three of them are from a middle class background. Artificial Intelligence for individual kid development They had conceived five products originally for education space and took it to 100 schools across India through conferences. “We realized that we have to address fundamental issues rather than some superficial things. Static content, ERP and Interactive white boards are being done by a lot of companies. But we wanted to understand what the fundamental issues are in education system. We discovered, “ It was individual attention to each child, ” says Suryaprakash. He reasons why AI was used by explaining, “ Treating everybody as equal in a class is okay but not sufficient as every child is different. That made us think that we need to provide a personal tutor. If you want to provide a personal tutor there are ways to do that and we found AI to be the significant technology element.” Partnering with select schools, they started off their journey. A few products out of the original five fell by the wayside due to market research and user feedback. The partner schools adopted their products and gave continuous feedback. Explaining the challenges, Suryaprakash says, “ Ours is not only a disruptive technology product but it’s an intersection of education pedagogy, artificial intelligence and cloud computing . Complimenting strengths in pedagogy, AI, Cloud, and animation is important to build the product”. Suryaprakash points out, “Having the right skills in each one of the areas is the key – to bring the best teachers, best usability experts, to bring the pedagogy experts and the best technologists, has been critical success factor for us so far. Each has value and each has to work together. One cannot override the other guy.” Haris adds, “ children, by nature, like to experiment and handling children is a challenge. As more data is given as input, more intelligent our product becomes.” Finding a way to understand each child Using features such as ‘Discovery’, ‘Observation’ and ‘interaction’, FunToot adapts to each child’s unique characteristics. Suryaprakash says “FunToot knows the child’s characteristics and what the child has done until yesterday and until now. So, it has all the information about the child –, based on which Funtoot helps the child in the same way as a good human tutor will do in one-on-one scenario. How was Funtoot developed? Aided by a full-time pedagogy team to design subject matter, Funtoot is capable of self-correction of a problem thanks to the robust effort of the R&D team. Another USP of the product is “it can accept input in numeric form, text form and in geometric form, which is a pretty complex procedure. Three schools have signed up already and 20 more are in the pipeline for next academic year. So far, 1000 students have used the product. All the schools have given impressive feedback on the product. Science and English are waiting to be added to the repertoire of Funtoot, which now has content in Mathematics. FunToot is Device Agnostic eDreams is not focusing their effort in hardware, as the innovation in intelligent personal tutoring is the focus and not the devices. Rajeev says, “We are partnering with device vendors to take FunToot on to multiple devices like PCs, Tablets, Notebooks and Netbooks” and FunToot is device agnostics and can run on any device through private, public and hybrid cloud models. Trends in education as captured by eDreams About trends in education, Rajeev says, “One major trend which we are seeing is a holistic development of a child, rather than being traditional rote type of learning. Every parent expects their child to get best possible education. So the parent pressure on school and schools in turn changing themselves seems to be a good development.” Another interesting development is curriculum that matches global standards in good private schools, and students from South-East Asia and Middle East are coming to India for studies. The residential schools of this type are only in the premium segment though. Private schools are preferred even in rural areas. Big private schools such as Edify, VIBGYOR, and Euro Schools are setting a new benchmark in the educational space in India, according to Rajeev. Talking of rural forays, Rajeev says, “In future, we desire to work with Government, NGOs etc to localize the product and take it to rural masses. Rural primary and secondary education is constrained by the non-availability of good quality teaching staff. FunToot is our attempt to help address this issue. Learning Made Fun It has been a big challenge and lot of hard work for the eDreams team to build FunToot, but it gives immense happiness to the team when they see kids enjoying and learning with FunToot. FunToot is a bold venture in a niche segment of education and we at YourStory.in wish eDreams all the very best in their endeavours. Website: http :// www . edreamssoftware . com / In News : Recently raised first round of investment from Mumbai Angels. If you are an early stage education startup, then apply now to join the Edustars – a YourStory.in initiative powered by Accel Partners & Intel AppUp to recognize and showcase outstanding education startups.

Tagged as: account-details, disclaimer, education, graphics, great-angel, guest columnists, india, learning, learning-market, startups, tech

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Why Startups should resort to Social Recruiting

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

Every successful entrepreneur will tell you that hiring the right people during the initial stages of a startup’s lifecycle can be the difference between success and failure. “Ideas and business models will inevitably change and evolve in a company’s early lifecycle. But the right people will always create (and recreate) the right business idea,” says Valerie R. Wagoner , Founder & CEO, ZipDial. Most startups are on a tight budget, so a HR consultancy firm is out of the question! Posting an opening on a job search site is the most common practice, but the process of selecting the right person uses up a lot of time and resources. So how can a startup ensure that they have the right person without burning a hole in their pocket? Social recruiting is the answer! A Ma Foi Randstad Workmonitor survey revealed some interesting facts about the Indian workforce’s social networking habits: 84% Indian employees use social networks to learn about an organizations culture. 78% use social networks to keep a track of developments in a company before an interview. 75% are deterred from joining a company based on negative reviews on social networks. The number of people on social networks is currently large enough to constitute a credible pool of possible recruitments. Right now only 2% of all hiring are done through social networking sites. It is expected to grow to 20% of all hiring in the near future. A social network like LinkedIn or Facebook allows a startup to understand if the person can adapt to the work culture and ethos of the company. Also, it is possible to check out the various assignments that the person has worked on. This basically turns into a digital resume and the start of the pre-screening or filtering process. For the person being hired, he/she can keep track of current projects the startup is working on and understand if they fit in. Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2011 revealed: LinkedIn is the most preferred social recruitment medium with 87% companies depending on it. Facebook second at 55% and Twitter third at 47%. If we look at the Indian social recruitment space, Monster.com’s social recruitment app BeKnown, which has been designed for Facebook, is targeting to capture this space. Another initiative by Monster.com, called Monster College, works as an integrated placement platform. So colleges, students and companies can connect with each other. This can be the perfect tool for a startup to hire interns or even full-time employees. Tips for startups to become preferred employers Make use of your Facebook page or Twitter account to connect with your audience. Post interesting developments happening at your startup, on these platforms. Be part of LinkedIn groups and engage with possible candidates. It lets a possible employee/team member to be familiar with what the startup stands for. It could also get someone interested to apply. It is quite clear that ‘the team’ is any startup’s biggest asset. The fact that we spend a significant part of our time online on social networks (for both work and leisure) is also established. Social hiring takes both these realities into consideration and functions as the perfect recruitment process. As Valerie says, “Given the impact that every team member has on the organization, it is important to discuss ways to ensure that the people really are a strong asset rather than a risky investment.” We could not agree more.

Tagged as: education, enterprise, guest-columns, india, online marketing, startups, technology

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Toubé Bäs: An Online Store for T-Shirts that make a Strong Statement!

by Paul Joseph February 2, 2012 Featured

“No-nonsense t-shirts about a passion, or a cause.” That, dear readers, is Toubé Bäs for you! Based out of Mumbai, Toubé Bäs is an online store for funky Tee’s with a message that portrays a passion. The USP of Toubé Bäs is that the t-shirts are more ‘customer-centric’ as they talk about passions (like football or tennis) or emotions about a certain thing, rather than being ‘design-centric’. Other t-shirt companies generally create cool designs first and then push them to the customer. So if you are expecting floral prints or butterflies, ‘Error 404’ . You are at the wrong webpage! What you may seek and what you shall find in the t-shirt designs here is a print with a purpose. Not an erratic design but a meaningful statement. A mysterious thing about Toubé Bäs, that I’d love to tell my readers about, is their policy of new releases. So a new print t-shirt strictly releases on the 13 th of every month. Spooky, eh? And with that, the t-shirts are limited edition. Another quirky fact about the company is that only 501 t-shirts of a kind are sold. Ever! That means, Toubé Bäs will keep making t-shirts and release one t-shirt on the 13 th of every month; of which, a particular design will only sell 501 t-shirt units – after which they just burn the frame! So who is behind this wacky label? Sorabh Sodhani stirred up his creative cells to materialize this business idea. He did his B.Tech followed by an M.Tech from IIT Bombay, specializing in Metallurgical Engineering and Material Sciences. He then completed his MBA in Sports Management from Coventry Business School, UK. “I wouldn’t call it a business idea yet. It’s just that I make t-shirts about certain passions and put them up just in case someone finds them interesting enough to buy” , Sorabh points out. Speaking about how Toubé Bäs started, Sorabh says, “It all started when I made a t-shirt about football, my biggest passion, and my football playing friends in Bangalore started buying them. That was when I was getting frustrated as the CEO of MeraSport Technologies in Bangalore. We were not getting anywhere as a startup, so I decided to make things roll with an online store!” And so it did! With an initial capital of Rs. 2500/- Sorabh launched Toubé Bäs on February 13 th , 2009. He gets the printing done in Bengaluru and sources the shirts from Tirupur. As he successfully managed to get Toubé Bäs organically funded, he doesn’t plan to raise funds for now. He is not even looking at starting his own stores since it may become an expensive affair and then he’d have to push the costs down to the customers. A one-man team, Toubé Bäs has close to 100 unique visitors each day in the age group that ranges from 15 to 50. Their market size is equivalent to the number of people who are passionate about something in their lives. People who have ‘spotted their flower’, if I were to borrow a phrase from ‘Adaptation’. With that, they make 90% domestic and 10% International sales each year. “People have warmed up big-time to the idea of t-shirts not being just a piece of cloth, but a statement of intent, a medium of expression. T-shirts do not hide as much as they really reveal!” says Sorabh. Preachers of passion have to be passionate people themselves. And Sorabh is no different. A sports freak, Sorabh has represented Mumbai in the Ultimate Frisbee sport with the Mumbai team: Storm Chasers. He has been a professional football referee with WIFA affiliated Bombay Football Referee Association and has organised Ultimate Frisbee clinics for children in rural areas for community development through sports. He’s a passionate runner, cyclist, football player (playing in the MDFA league), volley ball player and owns “Run Bombay76”, the official merchandise store of IIT Bombay. And how has the response so far been? “Heart-warming. I don’t care so much about the sales, but I have made some really cool friends who are so, so passionate in life, that it is inspiring!” he chirps. To wrap it up in a nutshell, I rephrase V, of the Vendetta fame, to put this any better, for “Beneath this shirt there is more than flesh. Beneath this shirt there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.” J So whilst I search for an Arsenal jersey on Toubé Bäs , please share your thoughts about this venture by dropping a comment here! Author – Abhilasha Dafria

Tagged as: creative, creative entrepreneurs, education, guest-columns, indian, investment, learning, namrata-shah, pallav-nadhani, startups, technology, unsexy-startups

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The Entrepreneur Duo behind 21 Fools spread the “Be foolish, Be happy” Mantra; plan to add a personal touch to greeting cards

by Paul Joseph January 31, 2012 Featured

When two Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) graduates start a company and say that their mission is to make people smile and spread foolishness, you need to pay attention to what they have to say. They want to make people smile and feel optimistic, which is quite a bold statement to make. (Needless to mention here, quite an interesting venture to start!) Divyanshu, co-founder of 21 Fools , says that the seed idea for starting the e-magazine came as they were tired of reading negative news stories and reports in newspapers and magazines. The idea first surfaced during a road trip around Rajasthan. They wanted to create a positive impact on the readers and present negative news in a different way. Divyanshu met Surendra, the other founder, at D CE and that is where the journey of 21 Fools started. On the 12 th May, 2010 the e-magazine was launched. 21 Fools is a fortnightly e-magazine and includes Daily News , Podcasts, Video Diaries and other interesting content . Their goal is to become a full-fledged online media house. Shifting base from Jaipur (where they were based out of) to Mumbai was the natural next step. The 21 Fools family is growing rapidly with a number of freelance writers, graphic designers, etc joining the team. YourStory caught up with the founders of 21 Fools and had a fun chat with them. Both Divyanshu and Surendra actively participated in DEC’s annual cultural festival. While still in college Divyanshu tried his hand at entrepreneurship. He started an informal society called ‘Endeavour’ in the first year itself and by the fourth year he started a city based social network called www.boljaipurbol.in . Surendra wanted to become ‘the best coder in the world’, but meeting Divyanshu put a brake on that plan. He made a full-length feature film with industry level equipment and a budget of over Rs. 15 lakh. The film was premiered on Doordarshan on 5 th September, 2010. Interestingly, 21 Fools says that it was less of a challenge at the beginning. The real challenge has begun now. According to them putting together the right team was the biggest challenge. They did not want professional writers or journalists. The passion for writing was what they were looking for and also people who were willing to work as volunteers. Over a period of time the founders built a great rapport with the writers and they have now become part of the family. The initial challenge has now become an asset. Besides Divyanshu and Surendra, there is Samarprita Mukherjee, who is the editor, and Kaumudi Bharadwaj, who is developing content for the greeting cards portal. Then there are numerous volunteers who contribute articles, photographs, graphics etc on a regular basis. The 21 Fools family is taking their mission of ‘We Make People Smile” to the next level. So how are they doing it? They are poised to expand their offerings and launch a greeting cards portal. In the age of instant messages and Facebook status updates, 21 Fools is passionately trying to bring the personal aspect of greetings back in business. The portal is under construction currently and 21 Fools is collaborating with another startup called Zepo, for the same. It is slated to be launched on the eve of Valentine’s Day. There is no revenue model in place for the e-magazine and they want to keep it like that. If things go according to plan the greeting cards portal will bring in the revenue and support the magazine as well. So far they have not approached any VC or angel investor and are channelling all their energies towards making the new portal a success.

Tagged as: business, disclaimer, facebook, forbes-india, investment, pallav-nadhani, partners, random-member, startups

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“Each of the 1,250 projects published has been inspirational”, says B Karthik (General Brand Manager, Mahindra)

by Paul Joseph January 26, 2012 Featured

The Event Spark the Rise is a stage for Indians to present their ideas and propel India on the path of progress. The chosen sectors The following categories were chosen to help structure submissions to Spark the Rise: Technology, Infrastructure & Transportation, Energy, Agriculture & Rural Development, and Social Entrepreneurship. “These categories were chosen after several months’ study of online and offline conversations and consultation with experts on the critical focus areas for India’s development. We believe that making progress in these sectors will catalyze India’s growth and improvements in living standards”, quotes an authority from Mahindra. Participation and previous winners Employees have been participating across the widespread Mahindra Group, which spans 100 countries and includes 144,000 people and apart from this, the event has seen huge participation. Each month, 8 grants are awarded—5 to the top-voted projects, and 3 to projects selected by an expert jury. These projects stand out because their project plans are detailed, practical, and implementable—and will truly have an impact on people’s lives. So far, 24 winners (8 each in Round 1, 2, and 3) have been recognized from about 1250 projects published on the site. People hailing from different backgrounds, ranging from a passionate innovator to an ex-IT professional running an irrigation solutions company to a set of brothers crusading for the environment took part. An example would be entrepreneur who decided to tackle the problem of dangerous cycle rickshaw driving in Delhi. Because of the energy required to start the cycle rickshaw from a full stop, many rickshaw-wallahs weave in and out of traffic dangerously, never coming to a full halt. This causes reckless driving and many accidents. Instead of advocating better traffic policing, this entrepreneur tackled the root cause of the problem. He designed a spring mechanism that is activated when the rickshaw-wallah presses the brake. When he removes his foot from the brake, it propels the cycle forward. Presto! The disincentive to brake is removed. “Each of the 1,250 projects published on Spark-The Rise has been inspirational thanks to their champions’ vision and determination. The ones we find most exciting build on a simple insight to create a profound change, whether large or small”, says B Karthik. Partnerships Mahindra partners with TIE to provide project champions with the mentorship they need to take it to the next level. They work with VML Qais, a leading digital agency based in Singapore and India, to design, implement, and manage Spark the Rise. And Ernst and Young is their process partner. Future Plans As the first year of Spark the Rise comes to a close, new ways to improve it for next year are being discussed. The focus would be on building partnerships and creating an ecosystem of individuals and organizations working towards driving change in India. Criteria to participate People should implement their ideas, not just guide or shape them. Applicants must have been residents of India for at least a year prior to submission; the projects must be based in India; and project plans must be robust and implementable. Previous winners can be found here and more about Mahindra Rise here . Any questions? Shoot a comment or mail in to feedback@yourstory.in

Tagged as: 2up2down, amazon, cloud, event news, forbes-india, investment, mobivi-popular, namrata-shah, random-group, startups, story-in-rehan, unsexy-startups

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InRev Systems Raises Investment from a Kolkata based IT investor

by Paul Joseph January 25, 2012 Featured

InRev Systems , a social media product company based out of Bangalore recently announced that they have raised investment from a Kolkata based investor, with a focus on IT. Simplify360 is InRev’s software product, which is a social media brand monitoring and analytics tool. Organizations like Café Coffee Day, Beehive Communications, Impetus Research, Narayana Netralaya, etc use Simplify360 according to their release. This is the first institutional investment that InRev Systems has raised. They have defined their plans for the Indian market till 2015, which includes setting up sales offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. They are also working towards setting up a fully functional sales mechanism. Post the investment, Raj Mishra has joined the company’s Board of Directors. He has more than 18 years experience in IT sales. Bhupendra Khanal , the CEO of InRev Systems said, “This is the beginning of a long journey for InRev. I see this investment as a means to reach our goal. Our goal is to build a world-class tech product company in India, catering to the needs of customers across the globe”. The company’s CTO, Rohit Gupta feels this investment will help them add more market centric features to Simplify360. Raj Mishra sums it up perfectly by saying, ““Both we and InRev Team, have a firm belief in innovation, quality delivery and the India Story. Thus, it was a natural fit for us to join forces”. InRev was also one of the TechSparks of 2010 and we wish them the very best in the future. And a TechSparks 2011 report can be found here .

Tagged as: cloud, cloud-telephony, disclaimer, funding & deals, indian, mobivi-popular, pallav-nadhani, startups, unsexy-startups

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MakeHappy.in: Germany based Christian W. Atz merges E-commerce with Social Entrepreneurship!

by Paul Joseph January 25, 2012 Featured

Chris (27) is a law school graduate from Germany, participating at the iAccelerator program right now to kick-start our web project in India. His startup runs some cash-back portals with the difference that the commission money is not given partially back to the user, but is forwarded to charitable NGOs to support good causes. This product for the US and European markets is called “bioddicted”, from the Greek word “bios”, meaning life, and the English word addicted. Bioddicted helps user to offset their carbon emissions by forwarding commission money to NGOs, who plant trees, build water or solar power plants to reduce their carbon footprints. Coming to the Indian side of things, the project is called ‘makehappy’ and uses affiliate commissions, which are forwarded to multiple NGOs, who care about the major causes in India. Makehappy.in is a website that features online partner shops, who signed an affiliate contract with them. So when they link customers from their website to the website of their affiliate partner, they receive a certain commission, a fixed amount or a certain percentage of the transaction done by the user. This commission is split and largely forwarded to a single NGO until Rs. 50,000 has been “donated”. Afterwards a different NGO comes in and gets a similar amount and so on and so forth. And how does the NGO get chosen? Users decide that via a Facebook voting. “Within the near future, however”, says Chris, “we will implement the possibility to login to makehappy and to select the NGO from a portfolio of 10-20, that shall be supported with the individual commission money. We also plan to integrate “social features” into the next version of makehappy, so users can post and tweet their contributions.” To fund makehappy, Chris is looking for an Indian Business Angel, who likes their vision and idea and whose priority is not a quick and multiple exit, but contributing to the good of the society. Until now Makehappy.in has tied up with around 30 affiliate partners, including the major travel websites, such as Makemytrip, Yatra and Cleartrip. They also partnered with some India based NGOs, who support different causes. They keep around 30% of the commission money and are also looking for corporate partners, who might use makehappy for some form of CSR or marketing. They themselves do not have any budget for marketing yet, so they need many supporters. Individuals, NGOs and Media Agencies, who spread the news and tell their family, friends, colleagues, donors, members and audience about the services they offer are most welcome. It’s interesting how Chris went about his journey as an entrepreneur in this space. “When I started to prepare for the final exams – it takes around one year of repetition – my mind uncontrollably came up with many different business ideas, distracting me from my actual studies”, he recollects. “In the beginning I thought about offline products, such as a new concept of an organic restaurant chain, but very soon I found out, that internet services are much easier to implement and fitting much more to my lifestyle.” He read an article about affiliate marketing and thought, that this money should be used to support something good and sustainable! As a student, sauntering on the dreams of entrepreneurship, he too had his portion of challenges to overcome. He founded the bioddicted UG (haftungsbeschränkt), which is equivalent to an Indian Private Limited company in 2010, while he was still in law school. So he always tended to work for his startup, but had to stay focused on his actual studies too! “It was also difficult for me to write the first annual tax declaration, even when we had hardly any revenue or expenditures. I also wasted a lot of time writing redundant business plans instead of working on the realization of the project”, Chris tells us. Chris launched Carrotshop.org (a website similar to makehappy) in June 2010 as a side project. It is a not-for-profit website and has generated around $4000 so far – to support NGOs, protecting the environment in Germany. Bioddicted is set to be launched in spring. It will be headquartered in The Black Forest, Germany. However, they usually have team meetings in Linz, Austria. The team for bioddicted consists of six people. Christian Leeb (CVO) from Austria, he is also investing in it, Jav Mayans (Designer) from Spain, Jochen Dieckfoss (Developer) and Sebastian Hallmann (Marketing) from Germany. Akiko Takahashi (Developer) from Japan and Chris are members of both bioddicted and makehappy. Rukmani Mohindra fromLudhiana is makehappy’s first team member from India. She is to take care of the business in India. “Hiring people will be an option, when we see that there is a demand for our service; until then we will be looking for freelancers”, says the German. According to their research there are no other similar services in the Indian market. And how did he benefit from the iAccelerator program at IIM-A, I asked him. “Wie war das dann?” To which he replied in his heavy Deutsch accent “Oh wirklich schön! iAccelerator was very valuable in two ways. Firstly, it was a great personal experience. I met many cool and interesting people, especially from the other teams and made new friends. I could use the IIM-A campus as a base-camp to explore different Indian cities such as Delhi or Bangalore and come back to familiar surroundings. Secondly, iAccelerator provided great support to us so that we could setup our project in India. Tanvi and Pranay, who are in charge of iAccelerator, and the entire team were welcoming and helpful. They introduced us to many important business contacts and gave precious advice on how to startup in India and in general!” – Abhilasha Dafria

Tagged as: 2up2down, amazon, disclaimer, indian, investment, pallav-nadhani, sameer-guglani, startups, story-in-rehan, student startups, unsexy-startups

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Legal action against hackers and data theft

by Paul Joseph January 25, 2012 Featured

Lawyers at VakilSearch tell you more As entrepreneurs in the digital world, a threat we all face is of our data and information being hacked into. We live with the constant threat everyday that someone may get access to our business data by hacking into our computers or using your Wi-fi networks. While most of these can be easily and cheaply secured, a question we get asked a lot is what legal action can be taken against a hacker. More specifically, Does the Indian law protect us like the law in developed nations does? What action can we take against data theft? To begin with, it is reassuring to know that our law actually does protect us. The Information Technology Act contains two sections relevant to us. We have decided to extract the sections here because it is important that we all know what the law says: Section 43 of the Information Technology Act: Penalty for damage to computer, computer system, etc.- If any person without permission of the owner or any other person who is in charge of a computer, computer system or computer network- accesses or secures access to such computer, computer system or computer network downloads, copies or extracts any data, computer data base information from such computer, computer system or computer network including information or data held or stored in any removable storage medium. Introduces or causes to be introduced any computer contaminant or computer virus into any computer, computer system or computer network; Damages or causes to be damaged and computer, computer system or computer network, data, computer database or any other programmes residing in such computer, computer system or computer network; Disrupts or causes disruption of any computer, computer system or computer network; Denies or causes the denial of access to any person authorised to access any computer, computer system or computer network by any means; Provides any assistance to any person to facilitate access to a computer, computer system or computer network in contravention of the provisions of this Act, rules or regulations made thereunder; charges the services availed of by a person to the account of another person by tampering with or manipulating any computer, computer system or compute network he shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation not exceeding one crore rupees to the person so affected. Section 66 of the Information Technology Act: Hacking with Computer System – (1) Whoever with the intent of cause or knowing that is likely to cause wrongful loss or damage to the public or any person destroys or deletes or alters any information residing in a computer resource or diminishes its value or utility or affects it injuriously by any means, commits hacking. (2) Whoever commits hacking shall be punished with imprisonment up to three years, or with fine which may extend up to two lakh rupees , or with both. Conclusion: Therefore, contrary to public perception, there is a lot that we in India can do. If you suffer from hacking or data theft, immediately file a complaint under both these Sections before the cyber-crime authorities in your city. You can find the address of the cyber-crime authorities in your city online. Remember to prepare and file the complaint under Section 43 and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Although the fine of Rs. 1 crore is quite substantial, in reality Indian courts are unwilling to grant high compensations, so be prepared for a much lower quantum of compensation in practice. 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.

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