bangaloreinc

Lifeblob breaks new ground in photo sharing and discovery

2009-11-16T05:04:00.000-08:00

PRESS RELEASE – 12 November 2009, Bangalore
Topic Lifeblob breaks new ground in photo sharing and discovery
Details Lifeblob, a leading social network that helps you connect with your friends through photos and videos has announced yet another innovation that will change the way you discover and navigate through photos forever. This innovation pegs lifeblob as one of the most interesting photo sharing services to watch out for. Lifeblob was recently in news for being the only Indian company in the Business Week Asia's Top 25 Entrepreneurs 2009 list. Lifeblob, founded in 2007, is based on the concept that every event that happens in the life of a person relates him/her with other people, places and often specific interests. These relations have a tendency of connecting like-minded individuals together and are also a very interesting means of navigating from one event to another. This journey through relations is what lifeblob is all about. When you sign up for a lifeblob account, you are presented with a neat interactive timeline that shows you all your photos chronologically. Each of these photos can be face tagged with people present in the photo, related with the place where it was taken and also augmented with tags. If you already use an existing photo service like flickr or picasa, its easy to import all your photos to the timeline with a single click. As you start adding photos and the information around it, the lifeblob magic begins to happen. As you add a photo and build relations around it, you instantly see photos from friends or other lifeblobbers that are connected to your photo popping around it. Imagine adding a photo of your college reunion and instantly discovering other photos of your college friends. Or imagine adding photos of your picnic at a hill top and discovering photos of other people who have been there before. Or imagine posting a photo of your recent cycling trip and getting connected with other cycling enthusiasts. The possibilities are endless – with each photo you add, you have an opportunity to discover photos that you would never see otherwise, meet people you would never meet otherwise, become a part of a community that you would never find otherwise. In addition to discovering photos connected to you through people, places and interests, lifeblob also understands the time context around a photo to connect photos across time and builds a timescape for you. As an example, if you add a photo of Mahatma Gandhi, lifeblob intelligently detects that the relevance of Mahatma Gandhi is towards the early 1990s and lets you explore more photos around that era. This provides a very powerful way to skip across time and discover content that is connected with the photo that you just added. And ofcourse, there is the classic timeline visualization, revamped to discover through relations as you move through time. In addition to letting you to breeze through your photos and see a moviereel view of you life over time, the timeline also shows you how your relations and their importance to you change over time. So if you have photos spanning high school through college, you will actually see your high school friends fading away in strength as you scroll closer to your college years. Lifeblob is simply the best place to share your photos with friends and family and also instantly discover photos that are connected with yours. To take a test drive, sign up for a free account at http://www.lifeblob.com and savor the experience. For all users who signup this month, lifeblob offers unlimited photo space at no additional cost – use the promotion code NOLIMITS during the signup to avail this offer.
About lifeblob
Lifeblob allows you to share your experiences, memories and events with your friends through photos and videos. As you share your experiences, lifeblob understands the context around them and intelligently discovers other photos that are connected to it. Lifeblob is based in Bangalore, India and has received venture funding from Google backed SeedFund.

Web 2.0 effects : Israeli Start-ups not doing well either?

2009-10-26T01:25:00.000-07:00

Just landed on an interesting perspective (based on facts) about how Israeli startups aren't doing very well in the last 4 years from 2006.

From the original post

In 2006, 2007 and 2008 there have been very few "exits". 2009 is not much better. These are sales of companies or initial public offerings in the stock market. Exit(s) is a buzz word in the Israeli start-up sector. It is what Israeli entrepreneurs seek more than anything else: cash for a 5 to 10 year hard work. Selling a company brings good returns to the investors and does not involve the process of taking a company public. But the shift in technology from software and networking to Internet and software services has slowed down the investment-development-exit train. Established venture capital funds were dealt a blow, many small ones are completely gone. Entrepreneurs in many tech sub-sectors needed to reformulate their ideas and start working on new prototypes. What Israel can teach the world is how quickly change happens. In US and other large markets change does not have to happen as quickly. The market's momentum can hold up companies and financial pipelines. But then they eventually crash. In Israel small scale reveals quickly what changed and where the new developments are going.

Read the full post here.

This holds true even for India. In fact, there are whispers that are turning to murmurs, and murmurs turning to voices, that even Silicon Valley model is breaking, the VC model is melting down and so on. Is it difficult to sustain or make money purely from internet based services or startups? Or is there a silver bullet to pierce through? And what about cyclic change where innovation and money is going to be made in non-tech world? We 'll have to keep watching the startup space world over.

Mobile Application Conference, October 31 2009, Bangalore

2009-10-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

Silicon India Mobile Developer Conference on October 31 2009 at Nimhans Convention Center in Bangalore

Just wanted to let you know about an exciting event siliconindia is organizing on October 31^st (Saturday in Bangalore). This is a full-day conference that will explore the new opportunities that are emerging and ask the larger questions of the industry leaders within mobile space, shedding some light on where the industry is headed and how entrepreneurs and developers can take advantage.

Come listen to some of the brightest minds in mobile technology discuss the future of mobile technology.

SPEAKERS
Arvind Rao, Chairman, CEO and Co-founder, OnMobile
Vishwanath Alluri, CEO,Chairman and Founder IMImobile
Vishnu Sunderam, Co-founder CEO, Interchain Solutions
Selvamuthiah Somasundaram, Sr. VP & Co-Founder, Satnav
Raj Oswal, Founder & CEO, O'interface
Dilip R Mehta, IIM Bangalore, Ex-MD RPG Cellular and HMV Saregama
Prashant Dogra, Customer Marketing Manager, Navteq
Shanker Janakiraman, Director & CEO - India, Symbioun Technologies

TOPICS
Mobile applications explode. Who wins and who loses?
Carriers and handset makers want a piece, too: Where will they go?
LBS Challenge: Maximising Revenue and Engaging the Consumer
Mobile Payment Services: The Road Ahead
Mobile Marketing

Sponsors: Nokia, Sun, Navteq, Satnav
Exhibiting companies: Eterno, iPath, MapmyIndia, Mobikwik, OnMobile, ObjectSol, Satnav, ShortHand, Symbioun, Tencube, Trakut, Trademarkia, Vassoft, Wirkle

WHEN: October 31, 2009 (Saturday)
TIME: 9 AM to 6 PM
WHERE: NIMHANS Convention Center, Near Diary Circle, Bangalore

To attend this event, register FREE at http://www.siliconindia.com/mobileconference/register.php

Thanks
siliconindia Team
080 43402031

Transitioning from Wordpress to Blogger!

2009-10-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

Well! Just felt like blogging back for a while, did not want to go through setting up my domain again, so came up with a slightly convenient solution, migrate my blog from the all pervading Wordpress to Blogger.

Yes, you heard it right, transition from Wordpress to Blogger. The only downside is Blogger does not allow hosting of images, so a post has images, they have to be hosted somewhere else like Picasca. Right now, my previous posts, comments etc are transferred to bangaloreinc.blogspot.com except for the individual post images that are still residing on my previous domain, well, as long as the account exists. Will have to think of a way to get those on to other host.

But before that, how to migrate from Wordpress to Blogger, if at all you want to?

The Instructions:

Simply land at http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

For detailed roundup, here are the steps

Login to your WordPress account and navigate to the Dashboard for the blog that you'd like to transfer to Blogger.
Click on the Manage tab below the Blog name.
Click on the Export link below the Manage tab.
Download the WordPress WXR export file by clicking on Download Export File.
Save this file to your local machine.
Browse to that saved document with the form below and click Convert.
Save this file to your local machine. This file will be the contents of your posts/comments from WordPress in a Blogger export file.
Login to your Blogger or create a new user.
Once logged in, click on the Create a Blog link from the user dashboard, and then click on the Import Blog Tool
Follow the instructions and upload your Blogger export file when prompted.
After completing the import wizard, you should have a set of imported posts from WordPress that you can now publish to Blogger. Have fun!

NOTE: This hosted application will only allow downloads smaller than 1MB.

The catch is if your Wordpress Export file is more than 1MB you cannot use this appspot, but rather you will have to go to Google Appengine Blog Converters Project here http://code.google.com/p/google-blog-converters-appengine/ and download the latest release to your machine locally, and run the wordpress2blogger scripts on the Wordpress export files, to generate Blogger xml format.

Then create a new blog on blogspot, go to Settings > Basic > Import Blog, voila your blog is instantly transferred to Blogspot.

Caveat: You are very likely to get an error of the format bX-xxxxx, one of the reasons could be that your previous blog posts had tags beyond limit, either edit those posts to delete the tags or delete all the tags (which is what I did), then you ll not have a trouble uploading.

Happy transitioning!

planforme.com - Your 24*7 friend

2009-05-21T08:22:00.001-07:00

PLANFORME.COM – Your 24*7 friend

A Multi-utility web portal to plan and execute your hangouts and your fun source engine

PlanForMe.Com is a comprehensive web portal offering an assortment of services related to food and dining options across Delhi and NCR for one and all. It acts as an information bank containing all that one needs to know about food whether it is knowledge about the several food joints or health tips, culinary details, recipes etc.

The website captures the very thinking of customers resulting in high degree of customization in its services. In fact the logo deliberately says ‘You Wish…We Plan’ and the customers are free to wish any time as the services are available 24*7. So next time when you are hungry or bored of routine,

Dial 011-43104310 (30 Lines) or sms PFM to 56767.

“In a place like Delhi with its hectic lifestyle and people doing multi tasking, one hardly gets time to plan an outing, despite that there is no dearth of food outlets. Keeping this in mind, we decided to take all our customers anxieties and offer them a complete solution so that they can enjoy their food whenever and wherever they want without much effort except a Call or a SMS” said Mr. Sumit Goyal, CEO, Planforme.com

He further added, “PlanForMe presents a win-win situation for both its users and food joints registered with it as the former gets a specialized service without any charges for arrangement while the latter enjoys the double benefit in terms of exposure and potential customers. The customers also enjoy special discounts on food if they avail our services.”

PlanForMe.Com not only provides personalized dining facilities but also plans big occasions like wedding, birthdays, anniversaries, corporate parties, bachelor and bachelorette parties and so on. Its USP lies in its customized offers for every budget no matter how big or small it is, the motive always remains the same, that is, “Customer’s Delight”.

Other interesting features of the website range from novel services like Online Cakes and chocolates, flowers to pure information like Delhi Insight, Kaleidoscope etc.

Future Plans:

With its high success rate in Delhi, PlanForMe.Com plans to expand its services to Mumbai, Bangalore and other metros soon.

About PlanForMe.Com:

PlanForMe.Com is promoted by Katyani E-commerce Ltd., an ISO 9001:2000 certified company. PlanForMe.com by far is Delhi's fastest growing "one of a kind" online Food and Beverage (Dining) portal catering to diverse range of clientele. The portal is a precisely sorted out platform which enables the most specific searches in minimal timeframe. Planforme.com through its value centric approach and customer driven innovative strategy offers key service proposition in its domain.

OMCAR 2009, the Online Marketing Summit

2009-05-20T08:30:00.001-07:00

OMCAR 2009, the Online Marketing Summit, which revolves around empowering businesses to grow by leveraging the power of Online Marketing', is being LIVE blogged at OMShare - the 1st from India, Online Events Promotion Platform. This event is presented by TiE Delhi and OM Careers with Amity University as the incubation partners.

New Delhi, India : OMCAR 2009, the Online Marketing Summit, which revolves around empowering businesses to grow by leveraging the power of Online Marketing', is being LIVE blogged at OMShare - the 1st from India, Online Events Promotion Platform. This event is presented by TiE Delhi and OM Careers with Amity University as the Incubation partners.

OMCAR 2009, The Online Marketing Summit, which focuses on 'empowering businesses to grow by leveraging the power of Online Marketing', is being held on May 23rd, 2009, from 8:30 AM - 6:00 PM at Amity Innovation Incubator, Noida. OMCAR 2009 is presented by OM Careers, in association with TiE, New Delhi. The event aims at bringing together professionals from the Online Marketing industry and provides opportunities for networking, sharing of views and interacting with domain experts and thought leaders.

OMCAR 2009 brings together thought leaders into the online marketing space in India, sharing their views on topics constantly defining the online marketing space. The event aims at discussions through case studies, thus creating real value for the participants. The event should be attended by Online Marketing professionals, CMO's, CXO's, Webmasters, web developers, Media planners and buyers, Agency professionals and brand managers. The event promises wealth of information on how businesses can leverage online marketing and networking opportunities with some of the leading entrepreneurs and thought leaders in the online marketing space.

The event is of immense value, hence we would also be covering the event LIVE at OMShare. Currently in its beta, OMShare is OMLogic's maiden initiative aimed at leveraging social media for providing outreach and visibility to global events & conferences. Since its inception OMShare has covered some of India's leading events across various industry verticals. OMShare is the official social media marketing partner for PanIIT and Leaders in India, two of the biggest global events, covering them LIVE apart from creating the right buzz about the events.

“We are glad to be setting new examples of leveraging the power of Social Media in creating immense business value through innovative propositions” said Mr. Pradeep Chopra, Co-founder, OMLogic."We are proud to cover OMCAR 2009 through live blogging which will go a long way in increasing participation and creating immense value for the delegates."

"In this economic downturn, when events are taking a hit, OMShare brings immense value by establishing an ecosystem for event organizers, delegates, bloggers and other stakeholders. I feel great to be a part of OMShare", said Paritosh Sharma, Social Media Marketing Evangelist, Co-Creator OMShare. "Live blogging the OMCAR 2009 event will be a great way to have the key takeaways of the event made accessible post event".

We are thankful to our sponsors and supporting partners to OMCAR 2009 - Innobuzz, SEMPO, MILAGROW, SearchMyCampus.com, i2k2 Networks, MBAUNIVERSE.com, OMLogic Consulting and easy2communte.com.

About OMShare

OMShare is the 1st from India online platform which aims at leveraging Social Media to help conferences reach and access Global Audience. OMShare is OMLogic’s maiden initiative in taking Social Media to a new level, creating a platform for creation of focused communities around an event. There are always various facets to an event. OMShare increases Conference Outreach by reaching out to potential Delegates and converting Delegates to Attendees.

By improving the Delegates' Participation & Networking (before, during and after the Conference), OMShare helps in Information Access, Managing Feedback, Archival and Retrieval of Knowledge-base created during the conference.

Vaatsalya Healthcare gets funding

2009-05-10T07:18:00.001-07:00

Ashwin Naik CEO and founder of Vaatsalya says, Vaatsalya Healthcare announces funding from Oasis Fund and Seedfund to expand hospital network across India. The investment was led by Oasis Fund, a Luxemburg based investment fund with a successful track record of investing in emerging enterprises across the world. Vaatsalya is expanding the Vaatsalya Hospitals network from seven hospitals in Karnataka to twenty hospitals across India. Existing investor, Seedfund also participated in this round of funding. More about Vaatsalya

Proto Vs Headstart

2009-05-05T02:41:00.001-07:00

Estimated reading time [2 mins 48 sec - 3 mins 30 sec] I believe this would be a thorny and tricky post, as I really have to walk the tight ropes not to antagonize the people involved. At the same time this is a straight forward attempt to critique the flag bearers of the Indian startup system and is to be taken in the right spirit, no offense meant at anyone whatsoever. And these were some thoughts going on in my head since last few days. Most of it concerns the recent efforts and newly renewed startup nurturers, more so at the grass root to middle layers. I have been an avid watcher of startup scene in India in general, and Bangalore in particular for more than a year past now (also much earlier but nowhere as passionate and regular as in last year and half). Why the title? - "Proto Vs Headstart" Simple answer - There is a tussle going on between the two startup nurturers cum showcase platforms. More on that, read on. So how many people like and support both the entities? And how many prefer to belong to one camp and not the other? Following is a rough comparison of both events.

	Proto	Headstart
Operation start dates	Started almost 3 years ago	Started more than a year ago
URL	http://www.proto.in/	http://headstart.in/
Backing	Backers mostly from Chennai	Based mostly out of Bangalore & Mumbai
Naming	Proto from the beginning	Headstart and Kickstart, then a merger to Headstart Network Foundation and now finally settled to Headstart Network. So far so good. Headstart Network Foundation sounded awful for a while.
Format	Startup showcase event with demos, panels and discussions every 6 months across cities in India	Started with a yearly format but have switched to hold the event half-yearly after first two editions (countering Proto?) Demo pits, panels and booths. Now also across cities in India
Additional events	Startup chat session every Saturday via online Proto chat portal with topic discussion in first half of day and startup plus product review during second half of day (contering Headstart?)	Start up Saturday events spread across the country in Banglaore, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Very nice initiative from the beginning seems like the organizers had a plan to create efficieny and involvement amongst entrepreneurs and wannabes. Includes knowledge sharing, demos, pitches etc.
Google groups	prototalk@googlegroups.com Dormant	headstart-network@googlegroups.com Very Active
Popularity	Widespread	Just started, and gaining ground, especially with the Startup Saturday events in multiple cities
Response to previous event	Held in Jan 2009 at Nimhans Conventions Center, Bangalore, smaller auditorium and room full of people	Held in Jan 2009 at Nimhans Convention Center, Bangalore, bigger central auditorium not really, wonder if they over-estimated the response
Team outlook	Has approachable and friendly members, also responsive	Also have approachable members but need to improve their friendliness quotient.
External alignments	Pluggd.in looks pro-Proto but recently mentioned both Proto and Headstart in same post. Last Proto event covered by Pluggd.in. Of course, we covered it in real-time.	No coverage from Pluggd.in for the previous event. Headstart is heavily backing Watblog. MediaNama covered the previous event. We did cover startups in last Headstart.
Social Media	Using social media quite well.	Headstart has own blog and quietly spreading through the social mine.
Summing up	Proto started much earlier is popular widely. Well organized events, brining in some variety with varying formats.	Headstart has a robust and distributed team and well-trenched strategy. Gaining ground both online and offline. Event organization is good but some confusions like last minute announcements of demo-pit being free and then hearing a different story at the actual venue. Demo booths need more audience.

So Headstart is giving tough competition to Proto and with similar or extra efforts, is all set to outdo everyone. We can expect more blitz from Proto in near future. But bipolarity is always better than unipolarity, we don't really need monopoly here. I haven't compared these with other premiere events like TIE summits and Startup City held every year. One of downers is that there are only as many people in the Indian startup arena and you tend to meet the same old faces. We need more new faces and young blood coming in. The quality of startups also needs tremendous improvement. I will probably cover more players in coming posts. The interplays are setting up an interesting scene for the coming years. What do you think?

Gmail spam filter getting worse?

2009-04-27T13:41:00.001-07:00

Estimated reading time [ 37 secs - 46 secs]

It was by chance that I checked out the spam folder on one of my gmail accounts. First I was surprised to find one of Google Group approval mail to be listed under spam. If you don't believe, check out the following image.

[caption id="attachment_1659" align="alignnone" width="596" caption="Google spam getting worse"][/caption]

Second, I was even more taken aback to view a host of legitimate messages, upto 50% of valid messages ending up in spam category. I wonder what has happened with the spam filter, whether its a tweak or an algo change. To date the default Gmail spam filter was supposedly the best in my view, but alas, no longer, it seems. Third, now it forces me to check all my alternative gmail accounts for valid but lost mails or spend time adjusting the Gmail spam filter.

Do check out your gmail accounts, to see if the quality of filtering has lowered.

Brief lull, traffic overshoot, sporadic postings..

2009-04-27T09:24:00.001-07:00

Estimated reading time [ 1 min - 1min 13 sec]

We have had a traffic overshoot starting January and running into February, for which, our account was suspended.

As there is only so much traffic that is earmarked for a minimum paid account in a shared hosting environment. Web hosts advertise their plans promising unlimited bandwidth and extra storage, but the catch is in the CPU usage and memory usage. If your site traffic overloads CPU usage and memory usage beyond a lowly limited threshold, the web host can just cut you off or ask you to upgrade to dedicated hosting that costs almost 4 times a limited plan, that too monthly and doesn't really make sense for a small sites or blogs unless your advertising can break even real quick.

So I had to slow down or put in more of my time that I couldn't afford.

There is also the possibility that a heavy or gaudy wordpress theme can eat up per process memory on the server than a simple theme. Looks like that is the case with current bangaloreinc theme.

I had to reject some of the requests for reviews and PR posts in recent past, apologize for that. Sporadic posting is all I can do for a while till another door opens.

Suksh Technologies launches India’s first complete home and home services portal – www.100nests.com

2009-04-27T09:03:00.001-07:00

Bangalore, April 07, 2009:

All your basic home needs will now be addressed with just a click of a button ….

Suksh Technology, a company which develops various technology and web solutions for consumers has launched a first of its kind website – www.100nests.com, a complete home and home services portal. The portal goes far beyond just offering B-S-R (buying-selling-renting) facilities that is currently the norm with other service providers in this genre. The USPs of www.100nests.com includes free valuation of property for users, real time localized neighborhood information and trouble free availability of daily use service providers like carpenter, plumber, electrician etc. in your neighborhood. Also present was Model turned bollywood actress Aditi Gowitrikar who launched the website amidst all the glitz and glamour and became the first member of the website.

The household market in India is currently 3,483 Billion INR expected to grow whopping 4 times in next 15 years.

Household Consumption	2007-2008 (Rs. Billion)	2025 (Rs. Billion)
Rent, Utility, Repairs etc.	1,288	3,424
Electricity, consumables	731	3,000
Household services	987	5,415
Non Durable, home wares	356	1,148
Appliances	107	460
Furniture	14	15
Total Market Size	3,483	13,462

Source: Rise of Indian Consumer Market- McKinsey CO. 2007-2008

Online advertising household market stands at about 70% of total online market at 420Cr, covering personal/home banking, FMCG and consumer durables. This household market would grow to 1400Cr by 2010, as quoted by Indian entertainment and media industry, FICCI, PWC 07-2008.

Commenting on the launch, Shreyans Chopra, CEO and Founder, Suksh Technology Pvt. Ltd. said, “We are really excited about the launch of this portal. It’s unique and promises to be a one stop shop for all home needs. 100nests is in a league of its own that will offer its members a plethora of services targeting homes, neighborhood, home consumer needs, home service and utility needs etc. In short you can even treat this as your own home replica online”.

Also added Bhushan Patil, COO, Suksh Technology Pvt. Ltd., “One of the main aim of 100nests is to enable end consumers to make data driven real estate decisions and bring out transparency and awareness on price, pricing related information and factors which affect real estate pricing in India. Our extensive research teams and strong algorithms, combined with social interaction to further enable this”.

Attractive features –www.100nests.com:

Free Valuation Report - know the exact worth of your home, how your home compares across other homes across many top cities.
Your home and Neighborhood – Add your home and find out what is happening nearby, who’s who next door, events, news in your locality
Home Services – an exhaustive listing of home service providers right from a basic carpenter to high end services like interior decorators etc.
Dream Price – helps home owners specify the ‘Dream Price’ for their home, that’s the worth one assumes his house would carry, this need not be related to market it can be completely sentimental, emotional value of your own home.
City / Locality / Home index - denotes the livability and quality of the city / locality or the home. Further you can also compare locality, cities across various factors and indexes helping you decide your next home choice.

About Suksh Technology:

Suksh Technology Pvt. Ltd (STPL) is a company formed to develop various technology and web solutions primarily focusing Indian PC and Internet users, starting with realty vertical. STPL will be venturing into various online and offline software products and services targeting Indian consumers. www.100floors.com is their first product in the marketplace which has been active in the market since last year and is seen as one of the fastest growing portals among the competition on Alexa and Google insights.

STPL is seed funded by one of the Director of South City Projects Kolkata, INDIA and ex-veteran from Goldman Sachs, USA. The company’s vision is to invest and build network of easy to use, mass, consumer friendly applications. The company is headquartered in Bangalore and has operations across leading Indian cities.

Weekly Wrapup Feb 14th - Feb 21st 2009 @bangaloreinc

2009-02-21T10:26:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [2min - 3min]

bangaloreinc update: Lesser posts this week

News

Backlog

Weekly Wrapup Feb 7th - Feb 13th 2009 @bangaloreinc

PR: i-nable Solutions partners with WOLF Frameworks to create the LeaP suite ‘Learning & Productivity bundle’ for small & medium IT customers

2009-02-19T02:59:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1 min 58 sec - 2 min 27 sec]

i-nable Solutions bundles it’s Collective Intelligence(KM) Platform ‘Kreeo’ with WOLF based ready-to-use SaaS Business Applications for small & medium IT businesses to leap ahead
i-nable Solutions, a Bangalore based new age Knowledge Management(KM) and social computing solutions company, announced its partnership with Wolf Frameworks, a web application designing Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider to offer a complete business productivity & efficiency suite of SaaS applications ‘LeaP’ for small & mid size IT service, ITES, R & D and Product companies. The offering comprises of Kreeo as the portal and KM platform with key enterprise applications from WOLF, like Project Management, CRM, and helpdesk with an additional option to choose more business applications.
Kreeo is the flagship platform product from i-nable Solutions. Kreeo brings a new paradigm to the whole aspect of managing knowledge for improving productivity and innovation capacity of an organization. It enables employees to reduce time spent on web research, solving information and experience related problems faster & enables users to collectively share, organize and evolve a comprehensive body of knowledge around various concepts as they learn new things. It combines various best practices followed by knowledge professionals and provides a social computing platform driven by a knowledge framework.
WOLF is a 100% browser based Business Application Designing and Delivering Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) which offers a host of ready-to-use Business productivity applications targeting specific industries via partners. Founded in 2006, the company has developed a disruptive platform which designs & delivers web application 70 times faster without writing a single line of technical code, offers service uptime guaranteed cloud computing infrastructure with options to save customers application data in the customers own private database server.

The LeaP solution bundle is currently being deployed in multiple customer locations, having 15 to 200 employees & a live demo version is made available online at http://www.kreeo.com/sandbox/. Interested customers can click on the Kreeo My Apps section, test drive the CRM application suite and discuss their specific needs & commercials.

“Whether it’s open web or the organization, we intend to enable collective management of knowledge, learning & information without introducing complex technology which leads to poor adoption, stagnancy and organizations fail to realize the real benefits of modern internet based IT systems and social computing” added Mr. Sumeet Anand, Founder & CEO, i-nable Solutions. “Our partnership enables us to combine the benefits of KM, CRM, Helpdesk - Issue Mgmt and essential project management information into a single solution bundle, drastically reducing cost, with high scalability, extensibility and the ability to add custom business processes.”

“We have created LeaP with the 4 most essential online tools for running an IT business which even a small company can’t ignore” said Mr. Sunny Ghosh, CEO WOLF Frameworks. “With sophisticated WOLF PaaS and the Kreeo knowledge & learning SaaS framework, we are able to work backwards and offer a very lucrative monthly user based rental model with the rare ability to incorporate additional custom processes within days.”

PR: Inkfruit Ties Up with Mocha

2009-02-19T00:53:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 40 sec - 1min]

Inkfruit merchandize will now be available at Mocha Coffee Shops - starting with 3 of their outlets in Bombay viz. Churchgate, Bandra and Lokhandwala. Depending on the response this tie-up will be rolled out across all Mocha Coffee shops across the country. Both brands believe that there is a perfect match between their clientele - both Inkfruit and Mocha appeal to a young audience who is on the lookout for something new and different. Now they can enjoy great coffee and flip through some creative merchandize! http://www.inkfruit.com

Mocha and Inkfruit have entered into a tie-up! Inkfruit stuff will now be available to browse through when people visit Mocha coffee shops. Currently Inkfruit tees will be showcased in three outlets in Mumbai - Churchgate, Bandra and Lokhandwala. Depending on the response this tie-up will be rolled out all over the country.

So now you can drop in to these quaint Mocha shops and while sipping at a froody drink you can take a look at Inkfruit tees! :)

PR: mKhoj hires Anne Frisbie to head North America

2009-02-19T00:47:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 38 sec - 2min 44 sec]

Anne Frisbie’s profile is available on: http://www.mkhoj.com/home/management/

February ’09, Bangalore, India: mKhoj, the leading mobile ad network for Asia and Africa announced that it has brought Anne Frisbie aboard as Head of North America. Frisbie joins mKhoj after almost five years at Yahoo! where she served as Vice President of Category and Sales Intelligence and was charged with leading Yahoo's advertising sales strategy for its most important industries.

Anne’s experience prior to Yahoo! includes founding an online shopping service in 1996 that was ultimately funded by CMP Media. She then focused on local search at Zip2 Corporation where she served as a Director of Publisher Development until it was acquired by AltaVista in 1998. She worked at AltaVista as a Director of Strategic Alliances, and later ran sales and business development for the company until it was sold to Overture. She moved to Yahoo! when it bought Overture.

On taking up this new challenge, Frisbie said, “The growth of the mobile internet in Asia and Africa is astounding. The strength of mKhoj’s ad network in that region - combined with its strong local expertise - brings tremendous value to our North American partners as they look to grow their sales and consumer acquisition efforts in these ‘mobile-first’ markets.”
As Head of North America, Frisbie will be responsible for helping US based publishers monetize their mobile inventory in India, South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East and will also help advertisers reach their target audience in these geographies.

“We are writing a new chapter in our growth and believe that mKhoj will transform the way mobile internet traffic is leveraged for marketing in Asia and Africa. Anne is a critical addition to the team and key to our growth strategy in North America. Her deep experience qualifies her uniquely to help mKhoj broaden its base”, said Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO of mKhoj.

About mKhoj
mKhoj is one of the largest mobile ad networks in the world that offers solutions for advertising and monetizing on the mobile web. It enables global, regional and local advertisers in extending their reach in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. mKhoj allows advertisers to discover their target audience using its advanced targeting technology via mobile internet sites and it enables publishers of such sites to monetize their traffic. The mission of mKhoj is to provide business model and technology to enable the growth of mobile internet.

Entrepreneurship Cells to get mentorship from IIMs and IITs

2009-02-16T20:48:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 1 min 10 sec - 1min 25 sec]

(source)

The premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will mentor smaller entrepreneurship cells across engineering and management institutes. The decision to this effect was taken at the Global Conference of e-cells (entrepreneurship cells) held at IIT-Bombay as part of recently-concluded Entrepreneurship Summit. The summit was attended by 55 e-Cells, including major e-cells not only from IITs and IIMs but also international institutes like UC Berkeley, MIT and Stanford.

The conference concluded that 10 developed or mature e-cells will mentor smaller e-cells and create an ecosystem to encourage entrepreneurship.

“We want to replicate what MIT and Stanford have achieved in terms of creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem. The international e-cells gave a perspective to their own growth story and also shared their insight on how to create one,” said Varun Bhalla, coordinator, e-cell, IIT-Bombay.

Under the mentorship programme, the mentors will guide e-cells of institutes about educating masses on entrepreneurship in terms of patents, intellectual property rights, the way to start new ventures and build their trust in these organisations; team building; sponsorship; and faculty advisors for the entrepreneurship cell.

Also, the cells will look at developing an entrepreneurial culture on the campus itself. This is a major problem most of such organisations have faced, considering the risk-averse nature of students, their peers and parents, who would not want their prospects to get marred by a risky affair.

“We will help new colleges in forming a board and structure any event. We will help them with ideas and on how to address the problems in formation of e-cells,” said Bharat Vijayvargiya, student vice-president, C-Tides, IIT-Madras.

A key issue which the mentors will address is helping the new institutes raise finances for funding their ventures.

After Airtel, Vodafone blocks Netcore's MyToday SMS service

2009-02-16T20:44:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [50 sec - 1min 6 sec]

Netcore's MyToday SMS service, with 3.8 million subscribers to date has run into yet another blockade, this time from Vodafone. Earlier Airtel had blocked the service without giving adequate reasons in November 2008 last. Vodafone's initial remark has been that MyToday service does not

India’s (Trai) National Do Not Call (NDNC) regulations. TRAI had rolled out NDNC to curb unsolicited commercial communications (UCC), including unsolicited SMSes and pesky calls, and had even set up a registry

(just in via BS)

Vodafone-Essar has blocked the services since morning today, for which the company has not quoted any reasons. We were informed of the 'block’ by our value-added service provider Smart Wireless, while some customers also complained of not receiving the service, a top official of Netcore Solutions told Business Standard today.

The GSM operator has blocked the short-code ‘575758’ to which users had to sent-in their ‘opt-in request’. Netcore, through its service provider Smart Wireless, is in talks with Vodafone-Essar to resolve the crisis, they added.

A couple of Vodafone-Essar subscribers also confirmed the development and said that the services could not be accessed on Monday.

When contacted Netcore officials confirmed the development, but declined to provide details. Vodafone Essar declined to comment on the issue. Vodafone-Essar is believed to have blocked the services, alleging these do not comply with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India

Hungama features Orkut apps for Shah Rukh Khan movie Billu

2009-02-16T08:04:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [

Hungama has launched two new apps that will help you get back in touch with all your friends on Orkut, and all of you to share the love for Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan. To promote the actor's newest release 'Billu', Hungama has launched apps called 'Dosti ke Rang, Shahrukh ke Sang' and 'Billu's Official Makeover Salon'.

(just in via Techtree)

'Dosti ke Rang, Shahrukh ke Sang' is meant to rekindle friendships by letting users create reunions with their old friends. And the deal is -- One lucky gang planning a reunion using this application will have the superstar Shahrukh Khan attend the reunion in person. The second app, 'Billu's Official Makeover Salon' lets Orkut members play around with their friends' hairstyle -- virtually, of course!

Once the app has been added to a profile, users would be able to create a group photograph of his friends with pictures that they upload, or from their social network profile.

bangaloreinc update: Lesser posts this week

2009-02-16T08:00:00.001-08:00

You will be seeing lesser activity and lesser posts this week at bangaloreinc, I have been travelling to Beijing, China.

Meanwhile do keep updating us about newer startups, services and products anything relevant to be covered over here.

Back to the grind, soon, by weekend!

Qualcomm ventures invests $9 million in Mapmyindia

2009-02-15T11:55:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [41 sec - 51 sec]

Qualcomm ventures, the venture capital arm of global wireless technology company has ventured to pour $9 million into MapmyIndia.com (source)

In a strategic partnership with Qualcomm, MapmyIndia will leverage the former's technology to strengthen its services in the country and explore overseas opportunities. "Through the partnership, we will leverage Qualcomm's leading wireless technologies to grow in the telecom, automotive and internet ecosystems--handset manufacturers, mobile operators, automotive manufacturers, hardware vendors, chipset providers, and application developers," MapmyIndia MD Rakesh Verma told PTI.

Apart from Qualcomm Ventures, the other investors are Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Sherpalo Ventures and Nexus India Capital, who had invested USD 3 million earlier. MapmyIndia is now looking at expanding its presence overseas as well. "After the acquisition of Navteq, the field has been opened. We are examining and have plans for venturing overseas in 2010-11," Verma said declining to give further details. MapmyIndia provides digital maps, location-based services and GPS navigation in the country on handheld devices, mobile phones and automobiles.

News: Accel invests in Healthcaremagic, Apnacircle acquired by French Viadeo

2009-02-14T10:50:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1 min]

Bangalore based Healthcaremagic has received venture funding to the tune of $2.5 million. (source)

HealthcareMagic is a medical consultation and referral portal which allows users to interact live with doctors. It currently has around 50 employees, which include 34 doctors. While some of these doctors are full time employees, others are consultants on contract. The company earns its revenues through medical consultations. The interaction can be done either through internet or through mobile phones.

While payment for online consultations is done through credit cards, for mobile phone HeatlhcareMagic has signed up deals with network operators. The mobile phone consultations are done at charge of Rs 8-10 per minute, said Sinha. HealthcareMagic has tied up with five operators - Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Aircel, BPL Mobile and Tata Teleservices, while only BPL is live currently.

The company was providing its services free of cost for 10 months between January and October '08. "We would be cash flow positive in next 3-4 months," said Sinha. It has clocked more than half a million medical interactions since its launch.

French business networking player Viadeo has acquired Sabeer Bhatia's social networking foray ApnaCircle, that was earlier reviewed here. (source)

"The deal is cashless and the exisiting investors will get stake in Viadeo", Yogesh Bansal, co-founder of the Indian networking site told VCCircle.

The French networking site already has operations in China and Mexico and is eyeing other emerging markets. The cash-less deal will enable the registered users of ApnaCircle to be linked with the members of Viadeo.

Weekly Wrapup Feb 7th - Feb 13th 2009 @bangaloreinc

2009-02-14T02:56:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [3 min - 5 min]

Startups, Services, Products

Pustak - Online store with 12 million titles and best of service

Mobile VAS companies in India: a whole lot of them

VeriCar - Advisory service from experts for buying used cars

MyTVS a 24 hours roadside breakdown service now available at carsalesindia.com

Saviour - Missed call mobile service for safety and emergencies

Find-Guru - Find tutors to suit your needs

Geotrackers - GPS and Wireless based location services

Conversations

banginc Talk Time: In Conversation With Operations Manager of book service Pustak

Events

Bizwit - The national Business Idea Competition

News

Kaamsutra : A catchy viral campaign

Nielsen Online rolls out service in India

Manipal Education and TutorVista form JV with investment of $15 million

Some stats about the health care market in India

Affle’s 20% stake taken by Microsoft India

A toast to four billion mobile connections / subscriptions worldwide

Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Nagpur amongst top emerging Indian cities: KPMG

Backlog

Weekly Wrapup Jan 31st - Feb 6th 2009 @bangaloreinc

Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Nagpur amongst top emerging Indian cities: KPMG

2009-02-12T09:10:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1min]

Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Nagpur amongst top three emerging Indian cities for IT and ITeS services with the best environments, says a KPMG compilation that lists 31 locations within India.

KPMG in its report- 'Exploring Global Frontiers- the new Emerging Destinations' said, as the existing favourite locations for shared services and outsourcing have started to become saturated the newer cities are emerging, offering new and improved incentive packages and talent, that are better geared for the IT and ITeS industry.

Though the list is dominated by cities in developing countries, it also includes three Indian locations - Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Nagpur - which may be valid competitive alternatives to the existing favourite destinations.

Commenting on the findings KPMG Sourcing Advisory services in India Partner-in-Charge Viral Thakker said, "Realising the growth potential of the IT-BPO industry, Tier II cities in India have now jumped on the sourcing bandwagon and can be projected as viable destinations."

The report stated that besides Bangalore, Mumbai, the National Capital Region (NCR), Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad, which are now regarded as "emerged destinations", several smaller Tier II and III Indian cities have the potential to attract IT-BPO investments.

(Source)

Geotrackers - GPS and Wireless based location services

2009-02-12T03:17:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 48 sec - 2min 15 sec]

GeoTrackers is a location based solution and service vendor making use of technologies like GPS and wireless innovations. Some of the scenarios addressed are fleet management, vehicular tracking, children tracking via GPS, asset management and round the clock asset tracking. Geotrackers has developed their own platform know as the Geotrackers Mobile Resource Management (MRM) solution that leverages GPS location technology, wireless networks, broadand internet and fleet management software to help you track & monitor your vehicles and physical assets wherever they may be and wherever you may be. All you need is a PC with internet connection or even a mobile phone like E71 to the logon to the Geotrackers web-site with your unique username and password (basically SaaS model)

A detailed description of the features is as below:

Track & monitor your vehicle on online street level maps employing multiple zoom levels.

View present position of mobile asset(s)

Monitor direction and speed

View comprehensive trip history for each asset with time stamps

View exact trace of route driven with time stamps.

Monitor all halts with exact time & duration and location of each halt.

Monitor Over-speeding violations with timestamps

Get real time alerts in case your vehicle overspeeding

Get Milegae report with exact log of kilometres driven.

Monitor critical vehicle status e.g. opening & closing of doors, AC, Engine

2-way voice communication possible with add on vehicle voice-kit

How do they do it? - Small devices [ Geotrackers ZVT-1 : A State of the Art Tracking Unit consists of GPS, GPRS, Microprocessor Controlled, Internal Memory, Backup Battery with Power Saving Intelligence, Full Two Way Voice Communication, 100% Data buffering during Voice Call, 100% Data Buffering when network lost, RFID Support, 4 Inputs, 4 Outputs] with GPS receiver cum GPRS modems are available that are custom fitted to the vehicles and physical assets, these small devices continuously upload the location data via GPRS to a central server. This is the basic mechanism applied for fleet management. One can then accurately monitor the vehicular movement, determine the direction and speed all in real-time. Their proprietary platform would provide customizations tailored to specific requirements. They have different portfolio for business entities and normal consumers.

Some good use cases include - tracking rash driving by drivers, unnecessary route detours and unavoidable accidental happenings can be tracked thus adding efficiency and productivity to the whole setup. It could be used by corporate house with travel arrangement, taxi owners to monitor their entire fleet (they are being currently tracked manually via radio updates, but GPS would automate the whole process), medical vehicles can be tracked and helped.

We had earlier covered Interchain solutions that also provides fleet management and GPS services.

Find-Guru - Find tutors to suit your needs

2009-02-12T02:16:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1 min]

Find-guru is a simple service, aggregation of teachers and tutors profile for variety of subjects including accounting, history, bio-chemistry, physical education, hotel management, music, etc etc along with online tutoring classes and rental of books. There are similar services that offer aggregation of online courses offered by all kinds of tutors. I tried searching for dance teachers, but could find none.

Anyways, you can search for tutors and classes by location and course subject, there were courses with as low fee as Rs 1/- per course. The online tutoring classes take place via the site. The site is very tutor centric, they can create profiles, upload audio and video and anybody can write reviews about the tutors. The site also provides and exhaustive listing of worldwide and especially Indian universities, schools and colleges. You can also upload assignments.

Business model - Find-guru works on paid model.

The site works fine, maybe certain UI aspects can be improved. More information about the virtual classrooms can be explained on a separate page so that visitors and early users can get to know the service without registering.

If you do try this out, do let us know your feedback.

A toast to four billion mobile connections / subscriptions worldwide

2009-02-11T14:29:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [2 min]

A toast to the mind boggling 4 million-th mobile connection on this planet. That does not mean 4 billion people are having mobile connections, because many western countries have multiple subscription per user and emerging markets have multiple user per subscription. The number is expected to touch a staggering 6 billion connections by 2013. GSMA is celebrating the occasion well in time during the Mobile Congress to be held from February 16th - February 19th 2009 next week.

(pic)

The GSMA today announced that the mobile world has celebrated its four billionth connection, according to Wireless Intelligence, the GSMA's market intelligence unit. This milestone underscores the continued strong growth of the mobile industry and puts the global market on the path to reach a staggering six billion connections by 2013.
The growth is driven by two primary sources: the integration of mobile into previously unconnected devices and subscriber additions in emerging markets. At Mobile World Congress, the world's leading mobile communications industry event, taking place from 16th - 19th February in Barcelona, the industry will be exploring ways of sustaining this growth.

"As we enter 2009, the world is in the midst of a broad economic slowdown, one that is impacting every facet of business, every link in the communications value chain. To address the significant challenges facing the global economy, the GSMA and its membership are focused on leveraging mobility to create new opportunities and to drive productivity and prosperity," said Michael O'Hara, Chief Marketing Officer of the GSMA. "GSMA industry initiatives in the areas of Mobile Broadband, Mobile Lifestyle and Mobile Planet will help drive this innovation and growth despite the challenges of the global economic downturn." (source)

Saviour - Missed call mobile service for safety and emergencies

2009-02-11T08:08:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 38 sec - 1min 59 sec]

Softspin Services Private Ltd, a Pune based IT services company had launched Saviour, a safety service late last year. Saviour also called "service siren the saviour" is a messaging and alerting service that can be used during emergencies, or to ward off eve-teasers and miscreants or anytime when you are feeling unsafe or lonely, all with the press of a mobile phone button. The novelty of the solution lies in the implementation, the central use of missed calls (not sure what happens if the call goes through, I guess the system would work, only thing is you would lose charges for the call) to notify the server-side about an impending unsafe situation. The caller can pre-define a set of unlimited numbers that would be sent an alert via text messages about the originators (missed call's) location, mobile network provider and time anywhere in the world, all at the touch of a button. Users are generally expected to use the Saviour number with speed-dialing that is present on most of the phones these days, or they can even dial through a landline if the situation demands. Definitely useful for women if they are in a vulnerable situation, BPO workers during odd times etc.

The service has a one-time life-time charge of Rs 200 and an yearly subscription charge of Rs 120, also each emergency call is charged at Rs 9 (wow that sounds like a lot, but the service may be worth it for the really needy ones). The service also has a corporate plan that subsidizes the call cost to Rs 7.

Unfortunately the service phone number could not be located, but for more details one may contact Softspin here.

There have been similar services and products pushed in to the market by SIM card vendors, operators and mobile VAS players related to safety where one can send messages to pre-defined numbers in case of accidents, or mishaps. Such a service can also be used to track children if they are mistakenly lost or have crossed to remote areas. But what about false alarms? it is possible that such services could be triggered due to uncontrollable circumstances, there is a lot of scope for innovation in the area of context based location services.

What do you think? Would you use such a service or do you have similar killer ideas?

MyTVS a 24 hours roadside breakdown service now available at carsalesindia.com

2009-02-11T06:45:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 5 sec - 1min 21 sec]

MyTVS is a car service cum marketplace service, and one of their major features is the 24X7 roadside breakdown service. They have tied up with carsalesindia.com to offer this service nationwide.

Be it a Ghat road or the most remote village, you now have a service which you can trust, and rely upon, to be by your side when you have a breakdown or emergency. With a low package price Rs 3.50 on a daily basis costing less than a cup of coffee, it is sure to attract thousands of car owners. Customers also enjoy a host of features such as car towing, wrecker service, free minor repairs, locked out keys, wheel change and arranging cab/taxi for passengers if stranded.

MyTVS a part of the $4 billion TVS group is a market leader in providing roadside breakdown and emergency services, with over 2000 ASP’s (Actual service provider) spread all over India, waiting to respond for roadside emergencies and breakdowns. In case of a breakdown or emergency, all you have to do is call the MyTVS Toll free number. The moment you call MyTVS 24 hour’s helpline, the call centre swings into action, within moments you will be on a conference call with one the ASP’s nearest to your location. The ASP will then get to you within the shortest possible time and get you back on the road. The average response times between you calling the service centre and one of the ASP’s to reach you are 60 mins within city limits, 90 mins on state & national highways and 120 mins for ghats and remote places.

(source)

VeriCar - Advisory service from experts for buying used cars

2009-02-11T04:19:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [2min 12 sec - 2min 45 sec]

If you have online portals for online automobile and car transactions, as well have online advisory portals for insurance, we can also have VeriCar - the advisory experts for used cars. Now this site is neither a used car marketplace, nor agents for selling used cars. In fact, they aim to provide a transparent and honest platform for evaluation of used and older cars, an advisory sort of service that can be availed for a small fee. The founders of this venture are Kartikeya Singhee and Jayesh Jagasia, both mavericks and yep, they have put up a very interesting story about how veriCar came up, do read on here. Well, it turns out Kartikeya Singhee is better known for his TV stint at CNBC with 'The Auto Show', he also writes at moneycontrol and some other sites. And it is out of their pure love for cars and automobiles, that they set forth to do something very dear to their hearts, and it has turned out to be veriCar used car help service.

Sample vericar pricing for compact vehicles, other car types include compact midsize, midsize, premium midsize and luxury

How does the service work?

You call veriCar, and they thoroughly evaluate a used-car that you have identified at your location, using their proven procedure. They have their veriXpert representatives.

They give you a detailed report about the condition of the car, and tell you how much money you may have to spend on the vehicle after purchase.

They also tell you what is the right price to pay for the vehicle. You pay what the car is worth, not what the dealer demands.

You pay veriCar a small amount for our services and report. Check out their prices here.

A very detailed FAQ regarding their service can be obtained here.

Currently, this service is available in Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburbs (upto Mulund and Dahisar), Thane City and Navi Mumbai City. veriCar also provides 'Used-car inventory' to aid you in your search for used cars, this is done through a constant monitoring on the ground by veriCar representatives from various sources. However, they make sure that none of the cars are inspected prior to your notice, it may only happen if another customer shortlisted the car before you. The veriCar representatives do a thorough check of the car via inspection right in front of you in an hour or so and generate a detailed report, the procedure is exhaustive and covers all aspects of the vehicle in great detail. This includes its exterior, interior, under body and mechanicals. They take it through a driving test to learn more about its mechanicals. In all, they cover no less than 170 aspects of your future car.

It looks like a very valuable service to me for used car market is still great going even with the oncoming threat of Tata Nano. We all know how tainted the used car deals can get. And for a small fee you have an expert review about the used car selection from experts, that can only help anyone make a sound buying decision.

If you are in the Mumbai area, and want to try out this service you can call 97 6949 6929 and find out more. Do give it a try and let us know your feedback.

Bizwit - The national Business Idea Competition

2009-02-11T01:54:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [34 sec - 42 sec]

Bizwit - The national Business Idea Competition

Organized by The Entrepreneurship Club, IIIT Hyderabad, Bizwit! is the Business idea Competition for student community and budding entrepreneurs. Bizwit! Provides its winners with opportunities for mentoring and access to venture capital funding apart from cash prizes. Last year, "Bizwit! winners got a venture capitalist/angel-investors on the spot for funding their project ", shows the high standards of sentrie and opportunities available.

Cash Prizes:

Total prized worth 10,000 INR to be won

Incentives:

Opportunity to pitch your idea in front of panel of VC's and angel investors.

Opportunity for Venture Capital funding through a wide network of VCs.

Mentoring to winning teams of the final round.

Last date for Submission of Executive Summaries – 16th February 09. For registration and other details log on to http://felicity.iiit.ac.in/bizwit/

Affle's 20% stake taken by Microsoft India

2009-02-10T13:12:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 3 sec - 1min 18 sec]

Affle which was recently in news for its premiere product SMS 2.0 that allows people to send SMS in colored text and background and also exchanging emoticons, that has got backing from Airtel and in talks with other operators. Now Microsoft India has taken a 20% stake in Affle as put forth by CEO Anuj Khanna to ET.

"Microsoft's investment is important to us. We will be able to expand in regions like Europe, US and Australia where we don't have any presence," Affle CEO Anuj Khanna told ET. Earlier, the company had received investments worth $10 million from Singapore based PE firms and some individual investors in India.

Affle currently provides the SMS 2.0 service to customers through the Airtel network and recently tied up with Idea cellular. SMS 2.0 is an upgraded version of the SMS service. It allows the user to type in coloured text and add animated icons.

Affle is also in advanced talks with other existing operators like Vodafone and Reliance communications to make the service available to a larger user base. With Microsft coming on board, Affle will integrate its product with Windows Live services and MSN content on cell phone.

Affle has plans to leverage the investment from Microsoft for expanding its presence globally. It has plans to set up additional R&D facility at Mumbai and Bangalore. The company has close to 50 developers employed at its R&D centers and has plans to double its head count by the end of this fiscal. Affle is also identifying start-ups for investments.

Mobile VAS companies in India: a whole lot of them

2009-02-10T12:04:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 2min - 5min]

An exhaustive list of mobile VAS players in India. Haven't checked the links though! I have added a few, but original source here.

Intvo Software Technologies

IMIMobile

Indiatimes Mobile

Intra Planet Mobile Solutions

Niche Tech Services (NTS)

Tangering Digital Entertainment

Tech Mahindra

Telenity

TELiBrahma

Torque Technology Solutions

Some stats about the health care market in India

2009-02-10T05:38:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 12 sec - 25 sec]

The Indian health care market is $40 billion (Rs 1,94,246 crore).

This market is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 15 per cent.

It will grow to $80 billion (Rs 3,88,492 crore) by 2013.

This growth will create 3.5 million additional jobs, including 700,000 paramedical ones.

The health care industry accounts for 5.2 per cent of the country’s GDP.

(source)

Manipal Education and TutorVista form JV with investment of $15 million

2009-02-10T05:28:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 15 sec - 25 sec]

Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) and TutorVista have announced the setup of a Joint-Venture, with Manipal investing Rs 75 crore ($15 million). MEMG had earlier invested $2.5 million in TutorVista as venture capital funding, but now with an increased stake the strategic alliance is strengthened. This will be the holy alliance of primary education. TutorVista is forging the JV through is Edurite Technologies rebranded as Manipal K-12.

(source)

banginc Talk Time: In Conversation With Operations Manager of book service Pustak

2009-02-10T02:05:00.003-08:00

Estimated reading time [2min 30 sec - 3min 6 sec]

bangaloreinc spoke to Rahul Rao (RR) , the Operations Manager of Pustak, the online book service with wide range of books and free international shipping.

banginc: A little bit about the background of founders of Pustak?
RR: Anand Rao is the sole founder of Pustak. He was one of the first employees of Amazon India and was in charge of planning Amazon's long term retail strategy in India. Prior to Amazon India, Anand held various positions of Sales & Marketing in many companies. A key person who's been helping Pustak is the capacity of the Chief Advisor is Bharat Vijay. Bharat is the founding Managing Director of Amazon India and Yahoo! India's development centers.

banginc: Are you bootstrapped, or angel funded or VC backed? Are you looking out for funding?
RR: We're bootstrapped right now. However, we're always keeping an eye out for the right kind of investor.

banginc: Can you elaborate a bit more about the competition in this area like FlipKart and others?
RR: Flipkart, A1books, Infibeam and others are our biggest competitors. Even physical bookstores like Gangarams, Strand and Landmark are our big competitors. We need to spread the awareness that buying online can help folks save lots of money.
I'm pretty sure we can expect more entrants in the market because of how lucrative the business is. One thing I like is that the increase in the number of competitors means that customers will definitely get the best deal - always. In a price-sensitive market like India, getting a better deal translates into getting a better experience. Historically, that is something that has helped the whole sector (Internet) grow and mature.

banginc: What is the USP and differentiating factors of Pustak as compared to others?
RR: Simply put, we have the largest database of books in India and we offer free international shipping from the US into India. The price of a book that you see on our site is inclusive of everything, including delivery to your doorstep.
While leading players claim to have upto 3 million titles, we have over 12 million titles. We source books from a huge distributor-supplier-publisher network in the US and UK. The average shipping costs of a book that can be bought on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders is about $10 - $15. We help our customers save this much on each and every book that they buy from us.

banginc: How do you perceive the market will develop in India in the near future?
RR: India is already the 3rd largest market in the world for English books, after the US and UK. Notwithstanding the current economic slowdown, the economy is growing well and that translates into higher sales of books. We're expecting some really good times ahead.

banginc: What is your business model? And what are the growth figures at Pustak?
RR: Like I stated earlier, we procure our books from the US and UK after we receive the order here. The volumes we deal with gets us discounts that we pass on to our customers. We're just 4 months old in the market and already have notched up a good number of individual and corporate customers. I think for now, we'd like to keep our numbers confidential. :-)

banginc: Anything else that you think is relevant...or that you want to add
RR: Currently, our database consists of imported books only. Over the next few months, we intend to start offering the complete Indian edition database on our site as well. That'll complete our service offering of physical books.

If you are a VC reading this, Pustak is also looking for right kind of investor to come their way! We look forward to happenings at Pustak now and in future.

Pustak - Online store with 12 million titles and best of service

2009-02-10T02:05:00.002-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 25 sec - 1min 55 sec]

We recently stumbled upon Pustak, the online book store service. The Pustak website is bare minimum that is required to get the service going, all you have to do is key in few of your personal details, create a username, provide an email-id and you have an account registered for the service. Then you can spend all your time criss-crossing one of the largest Indian book collection online, mind you they have 12 million titles, wow 12 million sounds a lot to me. One can search for books based on author, title and ISBN number. And yeah! you can find a host of categories to narrow down your search, I can't really list all them here, but some of them are arts & photography, business & investing, literature & fiction, non-fiction, politics, science, textbooks, and teens for starters.

Curious to find out about the collection, I just tried few searches. A search for "Atlas Shurgged" popped out a mind boggling 169 results with all types of books covered, be it paperback, anniversary edition, audio cd, or be it hardcover and more. I even searched for "Slumdog Millionaire", the current rage and got 7 results including audio download and even a movie review. I guess, they are constantly updating the database with the latest entries.

One of the best and new features that I found was the free international shipping. Now you can order books available only in US without having to pay the $10-$15 shipping fees, it sounds cool, imagine if you are ordering a couple of rare books, how much are you going to save on the shipping costs? some decent amount for sure. Also, very soon Pustak is going to increase their coverage of Indian book database, stay tuned to an expansion of their database in near future.

I really don't have experience of ordering books at Pustak, but if some of you have already tried out this service, we would like to know more about what you bought, how was the service and overall quality of Pustak or any feedback that the owners of Pustak can incorporate to make the service better.

So book-worms! I mean book-enthusiasts, hop on to Pustak if you can't get your favorite books elswhere and do let us know your feedback.

Kaamsutra : A catchy viral campaign

2009-02-09T02:51:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time[ 30 sec ]

Do check out Kaamsutra.info. It's a trendy viral campaign, the catch lies in the name, 'Kaam' and 'Sutra'.

Click and enjoy. ( safe at work )

Nielsen Online rolls out service in India

2009-02-09T02:44:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 12 sec - 1min 30 sec]

Nielsen Online is all set to roll out their services in India. They would start by launching two products AdRelevance and Market Intelligence. AdRelevance is a service to track and analyze online advertising, industry trends, advertiser activities and campaigns. Whereas Market Intelligence would give detailed demographic audience Measurement reports.

(just in via afaqs)

Nielsen Online, an independent measurement and analysis of online audiences, consumer behaviour and advertising firm and a part of The Nielsen Company (formerly AC Nielsen), launched its services in India.

The company has also appointed Karthik Nagarajan, associate director, client solutions information technology practice, The Nielsen Company, to head the online venture in India.

“Our services are under trial right now by some clients and it would be ready with its first report and service offering in the next 3-4 months,” Mark Ottaway, vice-president, regional services, Asia-Pacific, Nielsen Online told Business Standard on a recent visit to India for setting up the Indian services.

The expansion is in line with Nielsen’s global plan to set base in new and emerging markets. “The growth and internet usage patterns in India are similar to that of the UK and Australia markets 4-5 years back. We see this market at par with these advanced markets in the next 4-5 years,” said Ottaway.

For instance, the Australian market for internet ad spend was about $1.3 billion (Aus $) in 2007 and has grown 30 per cent quarter-on-quarter up to September (quarter 3) 2008.

The broadband penetration in Australia also has grown from 66.45 per cent in December 2005 to 94.4 per cent in December 2008.

However, Ottaway did not have Nielsen numbers for broadband penetration, internet usage or online advertising revenues for the Indian market and was currently following the relevant industry figures published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI). According to IMAI.

Weekly Wrapup Jan 31st - Feb 6th 2009 @bangaloreinc

2009-02-07T01:23:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [3min - 6 min]

bangaloreinc wins Best Live Blogging for Proto 5th edition

Startups, Services and Products

Aptus Bangalore based startup launches infrastructure management product: Demo invite

EvoBI - Educational technology startup focused on interactive products and kits

MediaRedefined - Social media branding and consulting studio

RareIndiaArt - An arts collection portal

Agropedia - Agricultural knowledge and services portal

EveningFlavors - Restaurant booking, reviews, alert services and more

OrganicImpulse - Online store for organic products

Prepgenie - Preparing you for tests in US, UK, India and Australia

Reports

Indian IPO’s in 2008 lowest in three years

Backlog

Weekly wrapup Jan 23rd - Jan 30th @bangaloreinc

News

Google’s Saturday blunder - all sites were blacklisted

Seven Indian born investors in the Forbes Midas Touch investor list

Yahoo’s mobile platform Blueprint for advertisers and publishers launched in India

Google launches Internet Bus in Tamil Nadu, India

New virtual mobile game on Devdas launched

Nasscom Innovation Awards 2008 winners

Citibank launches new online money transfer for NRIs

Reliance ADA launches BIG Boom for movie and entertainment marketing

MTNL launches commercial 3G

Prepgenie - Preparing you for tests in US, UK, India and Australia

2009-02-06T07:43:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1 min 29 sec - 1 min 51 sec]

Welcome to the world of tests and test preparation, I mean GAMSAT, UMAT, UKCAT, LNAT,BMAT and Subject GRE types, are you bugged with it? don't you have enough resources? don't you have enough practice session? Are you not confident enough about taking such tests? Do you want to get better at it? Hold your hands, take a deep breathe and invoke PrepGenie to help you with the ultimate test preparation material and tools.PrepGenie is focused on the major getaway tests like GAMSAT, UMAT, UKCAT, LNAT,BMAT and Subject GRE which are really important to get your education and career going. One visit at their site, and you know they mean business. Yes the site is simple but well designed the color code is infectious and the team behind this initiative seem to have done their homework. And why not, the startup Ensine Consulting Pvt Ltd, specialists with a strong team have built this one. Ensine, the startup has been seed funded by group of high networth individuals and top ranking management professionals from IBM and Pepsi. The academic team has varied experience in training, assessment and testing with backgrounds in Psychology, subject matter expertise like Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English literature.

PrepGenie best strategy

Well lets dive into the website itself. Currently only the Australian GAMSAT part of the website is operational. The US subject GRE is yet to be opened. The navigation is clean and slick. PrepGenie has taken a modular approach in designing the test preparation material to suit the test aspirant's individual strengths and weaknesses and that helps create specific, independent modules for all components of the tests. You can browse the product page here. Also available is sample test paper here. One can also buy and download tests with the paid option. They also have a library with different collection of test papers.

I believe online test prepartion is going to take-off in a big way, it already is with the like of Pagalguy for CAT and MBA focussed, Tcyonline for online education, Mathtopper for K-12 grade schools and children.

So if you are preparing for one of the tests in India, US, UK or Australia do give PrepGenie a try and let us know your feedback.

MTNL launches commercial 3G

2009-02-06T04:19:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [45 sec - 56 sec]

MTNL ( Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd ) had soft launched 3G in Delhi on December 12th of last year. The service bundle code-named Jadoo has been launched in limited areas of Delhi. The Jadoo services tariff is a promotional offer only for the next three months and the charges would be revised beyond that. The current tariffs are:

For activating Jadoo, one needs to pay Rs.500 plus taxes as activation charges and a monthly rental of Rs.599.

An MTNL-to-MTNL video call will cost Rs.1.80 per minute, while such calls to other networks will cost Rs 3. The voice STD will cost Rs.3.75, and the voice ISD remains as high as Rs.30.

A voice call on MTNL's own network will cost 60 paise per minute, where calls to other networks will cost Re.1 per minute.

The domestic and international long distance (STD and ISD) call tariff will be as per the budget plan.

MTNL has already spent Rs 300 - Rs 400 crores on the 3G services roll-out. The current infrastructure can support 1,50,000 users and MTNL expects around 2,00,000 subscribers in the next few months.

PR: SearchMyCampus Helps College Students Get Internships

2009-02-06T03:45:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [2 min 25 sec - 3min 2 sec]

“As the world economy goes through one of the worst recessions in history, university students are finding it increasingly difficult to get placed after they graduate. With the demand for jobs far exceeding the supply, students need to work towards getting that extra something on their CV to make it stand apart from the crowd.”

Delhi, India, February 2, 2009 - SearchMyCampus has risen to the challenge and is working towards getting these students internship to make them more employable after they graduate.

According to Parvinder Singh, a final year student at Guru Nanak Dev University, campus placements in 2008-09 have been dismal. For most students in his batch, getting a good internship in their final semesters is their only hope of getting a job after they graduate. "If we do a good job in the 6 months that we are with the company, they might ask us to come back as full time employees once we graduate" says Singh.

Given the necessity for such programs in India, it is surprising that most colleges have yet to adapt to the concept. Very few colleges have placement cells that help students get placed for internships. Even the ones that do are unable to place all the students in the college. SearchMyCampus is targeted at these students.

"Our interaction with students from across the country has made us realize that internships are the need of the hour. To satisfy this need we are working aggressively towards tying up with companies that are interested in recruiting interns" says Peyush Bansal, founder of SearchMyCampus.com. Along with getting employers on board, the campus based classifieds venture has also set up a network of campus representatives working towards promoting the website in colleges, and encouraging students to apply for listed internships.

Recruiting interns works out well not only for the students, but also companies. They get low cost resources that can work with them for periods of 2 months to 1 year. They can test the capability of the interns before taking them on as full time employees. According to Reema Govil, Public Relations Officer at Pankhudi Foundation, an NGO based in South Delhi "We will be recruiting student interns to teach at a slum in Okhla over the summer and we hope they will be sufficiently interested in our activity to stay on even after the intern program is over. Ventures like SearchMyCampus are the perfect place to recruit since we can minimize our recruitment and advertising expenditure while reaching students directly"

SearchMyCampus began as a concept that was fairly alien to students in India, but due to its usefulness it has grown considerably in the past year. The process is simple. Students log on to the website and upload their resume. They also describe the kind of internship they are looking for to prospective employers. Companies can log on and list their job opening they have in universities that they are interested in hiring from. Over 70% of students listing their requirements on the website tend to be in search of jobs, particularly internships. Over 55% of job openings are posted by companies that are looking to recruit interns. "We are already seeing a positive response by both students and employers to our efforts towards creating internship opportunities. We are confident this will continue over the next few months" says Bansal.

About SearchMyCampus.com: SearchMyCampus.com is a venture of Valyoo Technologies Private Limited. The website was launched in December 2007. It is a campus and job classifieds website that serves basic student needs i.e. jobs, housing, coaching, gadgets, books, transport and events. The website presently caters to over 70 universities in India.

Reliance ADA launches BIG Boom for movie and entertainment marketing

2009-02-06T03:23:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [46 sec - 57 sec]

Movie marketing is a big business especially in India and in it's present state, it is completely disorganized. Reliance ADA has now launched BIG Boom to fill the marketing gap in the movie and entertainment industry of India. Bridging the gap between the film & entertainment world, brand owners & consumers, BIG Boom will not only be the one-stop-shop for all marketing solutions for films, ranging from associative marketing to publicity design, PR, promotions and merchandise, but also assist brands in leveraging the film & entertainment platforms to achieve their business objectives.

(just in via IPR)

Rajesh Bhushan, with a long & successful past in this business, has been entrusted the responsibility as Business Head of BIG Boom. He says: “Movie marketing has come of age in India. With breakthrough marketing strategies seen for films like Ghajini, Rock On, Om Shanti Om etc., film producers are now realizing the importance of a strategic and cost effective method to promote their films. These are times where every penny counts and Bollywood producers need marketing professionals to generate more bang for every buck while ensuring minimum excess”.

The team at BIG Boom, with years of experience in film and television marketing & creative services, will aim at delivering evolved and effective marketing solutions for films & brands.

BIG Boom is currently in talks with major film producers such as Ravi Chopra (BR Films) and others for their upcoming films.

OrganicImpulse - Online store for organic products

2009-02-06T03:11:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [30 sec - 45 sec]

OrganicImpulse is a low profile Bangalore based online retail store for organic foods. The founder is Sukant Adhikari who was behind the startup 'Knowledge Systems' bootstrapped in 2001 which was later acquired by US based Ciber Inc in 2005.

OrganicImpulse looks more like a concept store than a full-fledged online marketplace. Nevertheless, the focus in on niche category of organic foods, especially popular and widely use throughout India. Some of the products are - Organic soaps and incense sticks, organic dry fruits, organic oils, organic jams and pickles, organic dals and spices, organic wheatgrass etc.

The site is very basic and registered users can make purchases via online shopping cart. It doesn't appear that they are trying to competing with anyone.

If the founders really want to sustain and grow they need to make the site full-fledged for a wider audience and start attracting more customers.

bangaloreinc wins Best Live Blogging for Proto 5th edition

2009-02-06T01:42:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [12 sec - 20 sec]

We are pleased to announce that we got an official communique from Proto this morning, that bangaloreinc has been unanimously voted as the winner of Live Blogging Contest at Proto 5th edition. Proto took place on January 23rd and January 24th 2009 in Bangalore.

The full Proto coverage can be accessed in last week's wrapup post Weekly wrapup Jan 23rd - Jan 30th @bangaloreinc

Thanks Proto, we enjoyed the show!

Citibank launches new online money transfer for NRIs

2009-02-05T09:08:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 24 sec - 1min 45 sec]

Citibank has launched a new tool for NRIs to make remittances of money easier.

(just in via PR)

Citibank N.A. today announced the launch of Citi Online Remit, a new online money transfer service to India. Citi Online Remit provides Non Resident Indians (NRIs) the facility to transfer funds to India from any US Checking/Savings account or using a US Credit/Debit Card as a direct transfer into the beneficiary’s Bank account or as a draft couriered to the beneficiary’s mailing address in India.

Powered by the QuikRemit platform from Citi’s Global Transaction Services, this new platform leverages Citi’s deep expertise in transaction services, cutting-edge technology, digital banking, payments and understanding of the needs of the Indian Diaspora to offer NRIs a secure, user-friendly and highly transparent means of money transfer.

Suresh Bajpai, Global Head-Digital Banking and Payments, Citi said, “Making our products and services available to our customers anytime and anywhere is one of our most important priorities. Citi Online Remit is a fine demonstration of our commitment to generating customer insight and deploying technology and innovation to fulfill customer needs. The collaborative nature of the design of this new platform provides it an exceptional robustness whilst ensuring it has a highly intuitive customer interface.”

The launch of Citi Online Remit further strengthens the Citibank NRI Business’ leadership position in serving the needs of the “Global Indian,” enabling it to expand its majority share of the target customer base. Initially available to NRIs in the US, the Citi Online Remit service will be extended to other geographies in a phased manner.

Mr. N Rajashekaran, Country Business Manager, Global Consumer Group, Citi India, said, “For over 20 years, our NR Business has been at the forefront of helping many of our diaspora clients to invest in India. For NRIs remittances are an important means of maintaining both real and emotional linkages with their country of origin. The standalone nature of Citi Online Remit allows us the opportunity to extend our knowledge of the distinctive needs of this large and important customer group to altogether new customers.”

EveningFlavors - Restaurant booking, reviews, alert services and more

2009-02-05T04:30:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 6 sec - 1min 21 sec]

EveningFlavors is a Bangalore based online restaurant and pub listing for reservation services with extra features like submit a review, get alerts about offer / parties. Mind you, this is not yet another food ordering service. EveningFlavors is currently open for Banglaoreans with the service soon set to take off in other places like Delhi, Goa and Mumbai.

So what is the USP of EveningFlavors? They claim to have an exhaustive database of restaurants, eating places and pubs in the city of Bangalore. One can search the pubs, restaurants or party events in the city through their web interface. The restaurants are listed based on cuisines, flavors and attractions. The parties can be searched based on dates too. One can also search based on criteria like areas, cuisine and price, well the locations actually looked quite comprehensive to me. You can also get a taste of special offers related to eating and dining in the city.

Some of the other features include the review section, a registered user can post reviews of interesting dining / eating places. You can also register for their alert service that provides information about parties, happenings and offers to keep you informed, I guess, this is through email or SMS.

This is one more addition in the online restaurant booking arena, the players seem to be starting off small in few (one??) cities and then planning to scale, but we still see a fragmented approach by all the players. Nevertheless it gives choices to the users which is always welcomed. Services with the best quality of service and higher coverage would make a dent in the market.

Indian IPO's in 2008 lowest in three years

2009-02-05T03:14:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [26 sec - 38 sec]

A look at the IPO status of India Inc in 2008:

$4509 million was the total amount raised via IPOs in 2008 which is the lowest in past 3 years

The deals fell both in terms of volume and value with only 44 transactions last year, while there were 64 deals worth $5521 million in 2006

Total funds collected through IPO was $4.51 billion which is 18.34 percent lower than the amount raised in 2005

Fund raising was at its peak in 2007 when $9920 million was ventured

Reliance Power's $2.56 billion issue was a big one and the largest public issue of 2008

Several other IPOs that were launched in 2008 were Rural Electrification Corp - $410 million, IRB infrastructure developers - $236 million, and KSK energy ventures - $208 million

(Source)

PR: naaptol launches 'Knowledge Store'

2009-02-04T07:41:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 1min 27 sec - 1min 49 sec]

'Knowledge Store' - Comes up with a portfolio of articles on latest technologies, brands, market trends and more

naaptol, India’s leading comparison based social shopping portal is known for serving shoppers with its exhaustive listing of products, product categories and sellers. It has now moved a step forward and added a new offering in its portfolio. Named the ‘Knowledge Store’, this new value add is a repository of articles on latest technologies, brands, market trends and more. The aim is same as before- to help shoppers make informed decisions.

Speaking on the occasion Manu Agarwal, CEO, naaptol Online Shopping says, “This depository of content will help shoppers to avail more knowledge about the market, brands, technologies and future prospects. It will be generic content catering to a wide range of audience and serving multiple purposes. naaptol has been able to establish itself as a strong brand and it is constantly thriving to deliver the promise associated with it. And this is just the beginning. There is much more to come.”

The content will range across varied categories and will cover topics as diverse as the product listings on the site. From emerging tech to buying guides, expert speak to gifting ideas, Knowledge Store will cover all. It is open to anyone who wants a better insight in to products and ensures a valuable buy.

naaptol is also close to completing a year since its inception and has gained wide acceptance. The site gets around 10 lac smart shoppers a month which is increasing with each passing day. At present it boast of 20,694 products listed across a wide range of categories.
About naaptol
naaptol, www.naaptol.com, was established as an entity in January 2008. It is the leading comparison based social shopping portal launched in India. Be it consumer electronic goods, automobiles, health and fitness products, laptops, mobiles, cameras, LCD TVs, or home appliances, you will find all on naaptol with the latest deals and the lowest prices available in the market. Find the product of your choice from the extensive product reviews and ratings from experts compare it with others, get feedback and purchase it at the best available price.

Nasscom Innovation Awards 2008 winners

2009-02-04T04:28:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1 min ]

Following is the list of eight companies and products that were selected out of final 32 for the Innovation Awards 2008.

Sloka Telecom - Produces very low cost and compact base stations for fixed and mobile Wimax and 3G LTE

MobME - The Trivandrum based startup by youngies, develops featured products helping social-networking on mobile phones, bluetooth applications and alerts application for the enterprise

Persistent Systems - A data processing solution using RF tracking, hand held mobile devices to improve the accuracy of data collection, and productivity in real time.

Aegis Ltd - Essar group's BPO unit devised a scientific process to facilitate the smooth integration of an acquired company

Dhristi-Soft Solutions Pvt Ltd - developed DACS Ameyo, a communication suite for call centres and SMBs.

Indiagames Ltd - Mobile and online games publisher has a big hand in popularizing gaming in India and opening up the Indian gaming market for the big bucks

Kritikal SecureScan - It is a technology system for vehicle license plates recognition in real-time and targeted at non-standard environments

Intel Dunnington - The world's first six-core microprocessor and first CPU designed and developed in India by Intel Corp. The new processor completes the transition of the entire Intel Xeon family to Intel's 45nm hi-k manufacturing process.

New virtual mobile game on Devdas launched

2009-02-04T02:54:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [24 sec - 36 sec]

Close on the heels of launching 3D game based on the Bollywood hit 'Ghajini', a brand new mobile phone based game was launched in Mumbai on Monday. This game is based on the Hindi classic Devdas, and is being launched on the eve of the release of yet another Bollywood incarnation of Devdas in the form of Dev D.

(just in via Reuters)

The game is the second Indian offering to be inspired by Bollywood, the world's biggest film industry in terms of volume, and comes at a time when Indians are enjoying more disposable income while the spread of cable TV has also opened them to newer cultural experiences.

Once just outsourcing sweatshops that sketched, painted and digitised ordered content, Indian animation and gaming firms are now aiming high -- claiming ownership of their products and sharing copyrights and profits.

The market is expected to grow to about $1.3 billion this year from about $300 million in 2006, and employ about 30,000 animators alone, says the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the main industry lobby.

EvoBI - Educational technology startup focused on interactive products and kits

2009-02-04T01:47:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [3min - 4min]

EvoBI is a niche Bangalore based startup that focuses on bringing technology right into the experimenting hands of children in a novel way, thereby stimulating practical exercise building in classes and homes rather than learning by plain theory. So what is the product that Evobi brings to the table? Well, it's called Bi-box, an electronic kit that is more of a digital brain that can be connected to various toys, other devices and accessories to bring more functionality. Many play toys and kids stuff are dumb, enter Bi-box which intends to give life to these physical, dumb artifacts thereby introducing high class interaction not seen before. There is also a software component which runs on any normal PC that helps design simple programs (basically to add intelligence) that work in co-ordination with the Bi-box. The best part is the kid is really exhilarated when he/she sees that the program they created produces actions on physical artifacts, and then they try to show off too. This builds the sense of sharing such programs amongst kids. Certain things can spread virally which is great for education. Don't you believe, go ahead and watch this short video, it's a workshop that Evobi conducted in the town of Shimoga (300 kilometres in Bangalore) for 5th grade kids. I was really impressed by the video where the kids are enjoying creating programming things on PC and then interfacing and interacting with the toy devices. It' great to see the interactions and is only encouraging to what team Evobi is doing.

Link to vide : http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=mDKNVihvBq0

Watch the Youtube video of Evobi workshop held at Shimoga(300 km from Bangalore)

Evobi Bi-box interaction

Bi-box software in action, PC based version

Evobi intends to partner with schools and has already begun making inroads not only in Bangalore but Tier-II and Tier-III places. We spoke to Sandeep Senan who is member of founding team of Evobi, and he was really thrilled to report from Shimoga that their workshop was a great success which they never expected, coming from a tier II town. Even the tutors at the school were full of enthusiasm, mingling and learning with the kids.

Team Evobi plans to expand the operations in and around Bangalore from April. The initial focus will into pumping up the content development. They also plan to bring in internet based applications some time in future.

While the effort is similar to Project Scratch from MIT, that is also focused on kids of 8 years older and above, it is commendable to see the progress shown by Evobi by producing a low cost version that is already being launched on ground and producing results.

We wish Evobi the very best in their en devour, and hope they succeed in producing great results.

If you have school going kids at home, would you be willing to test Evobi kit? do let us know.

Google launches Internet Bus in Tamil Nadu, India

2009-02-03T09:05:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1min]

As per the statistics 19% of Indian internet content in India is in Tamil language, roughly the same percentage as Hindi content. So Google R&D has launched a novel way of getting across to remote rural and semi-urban areas via the mobile, travel trekking bus dubbed as the 'Internet Bus'. The routes and the timing in each location around Tamil Nadu is detailed here. The concept and implementation is very similar to Intel's 'Net Yatra' program that we projected earlier, it can be accessed here. The bus themes would include - information, communication, entertainment and channels. It will also introduce Google SMS channels for first timers.

Watch the video

Some pictures

(just in via ET)

"Much of Tamil content is actually created and consumed by the Tamil Diaspora; but that can be simplified and made relevant for the local population," said Google India product manager Prem Ramaswami. The company plans to customise some of its major products in Tamil, and demonstrate the ones already available in Tamil during its tour.

"We are also looking at licensing useful information like bus routes and ticket availability; as well as including more of Tamil media content like newspapers in our archives and search," Mr.Ram said.

Aptus Bangalore based startup launches infrastructure management product: Demo invite

2009-02-03T06:36:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 2min 30 sec - 3min 7 sec]

Aptus is a brand new startup in the infrastructure monitoring arena and we have exclusive access to their demo setup, if you want to try out the demo, please leave a comment with email-id or contact us.

Aptus is a budding Bangalore based startup in the area of Infrastructure monitoring and Management.

They recently completed an important milestone of launching a beta version of their product. On this occasion, bangaloreinc took the opportunity to have a conversation with Ramakrisha Prasad Balasubramaniam, one of the Co-Founders of the company.

Congratulations on your beta launch! can you tell us about your company?
We are working on the opportunities in three lines of business:

Consulting services for the data center setup

A software product for infrastructure monitoring

Remote infrastructure management services

Can you elaborate on the Infrastructure monitoring product?
By providing monitoring service in a proactive way, we are helping our customer's to make sure that their system is available on a 24 X 7 basis. Our infrastructure monitoring product is built on an intelligent algorithms that monitors servers, operating systems, and networking components throughout the architecture. While monitoring, if it encounters a server down status, the situation is handled gracefully and the system automatically restarts. If it fails to restart after a specified number of tries, the system sends alert via email, sms and through voice interface. There's also an escalation management component for further action. The dashboard comes with current monitoring measures as well as the history of the usage over a period of time for the trend analysis. This proprietary algorithm will be covered under IP. This can be used by both engineering and IT support. In addition, we recommend some server tuning on a need-by basis.

How do you differentiate yourself from other players in the market?
We differentiate ourselves in terms of reporting and ease of implementing. Also, our USP is speed at which our service can be setup. We boast of keeping our services up and running within 2 weeks of signing the contract.

What is your revenue model?
Basically, this is done on subscription basis. We have two ways of pricing, one by number of hosts subjected to monitoring and another by number of monitoring points per server. Standard package comes with 25 monitoring points that can be extended upto 50 monitoring points at an extra cost. We sell the licenses for our monitoring product and adopted SaaS model for consulting services for the data center setup and remote infrastructure management.

How are you planning to market your offerings?
Primarily banking on the customer references for leads. Also, planning a strategic partnership with the hardware vendors to sell it as part of hardware solution packages. We are channelizing through data centers as well.

Who do you consider as top two competition?
HP Openview, AdventNet and SolarWinds are the top competition.

Do you have any customers yet?
Prospective customers are identified and we are in the process of finalizing the contracts.

How did you come up with the name for your company?
Aptus in latin meaning "to be connected" and also "Apt" standing for the right solution. We thought this name would suit to our business services.

You chose to start your business during recession period.What are the challenges faced so far?
Recession did hurt us in terms of VC funding. However we decided to start through some personal savings. Down the line, our product will be funded through the revenues generated from consulting services that we are offering.

bangaloreinc wishes luck and grand success to the team of Aptus!

Please try their demo exclusively at bangaloreinc and let us know your feedback. If you want to try out the demo, please leave a comment with email-id or contact us.

Bethel Cottons - City based T-shirt and garment vendors

2009-02-03T05:40:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [58 sec - 1min 12 sec]

Bethel Cottons are manufactures and suppliers of T-shirts and allied knitting garments. They are in the field of supplying various range of T-shirts, having the facility of full fledged manufacturing unit at Tirupur and marketing office at Bangalore .

More about Bethel Cottons from their team:

Bethel Cottons was started in the year 2005 at Bangalore. Bethel Cottons is one of the largest manufactures and exporters of knitting garments . Over the year, we have gained an excellent reputation as a company which fulfills all its commercial commitments , domestic and abroad in a professional way and in the stipulated time frame . Our success at Bethel Cottons stems from the fact that we have always laid solid emphais on quality for instance, the fabric sourced is put through some rigorous tests for color fastness, shrinkage etc. Similarly the trimmings used are also checked for their quality. Each and every pieces is thoroughly checked at the finishing stage before it is finally packed and shipped to its destination. We use state-of -art technology based machinery for producing your exact and perfect requirement . Besides, our cost is very competitive and affordable. Our proud list of clientele of corporate, on-profit organization and institutions, vouch for our quality and service.

We also take orders for printing various logos on T- Shirts [ Company’s, schools, colleges, Institution Logos.]

CONTACT :
BETHEL COTTONS
No:17, Shaneshwara Temple street, Lakshmi Ramiahalayout,
Hennur cross , Kalyan nagar post , Bangalore -560043

Agropedia - Agricultural knowledge and services portal

2009-02-03T01:52:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1min 10 sec]

Agropedia is a wholesome agricultural knowledge repository and aims to be the one-stop content shop for the whole ecosystem of Indian agriculture.

agropedia is a comprehensive, seamlessly integrated model of digital content organization in the agricultural domain. It aims to bring together a community of practice through an ICT mediated knowledge creating and organising platform with an effort to leverage the existing agricultural extension system. It is a very impressive digital content portal with excellent data and content about agricultural cycles, crop prices, crop calendar, knowledge bodies about individual crops etc. They have ongoing partnerships with IT Kanpur (agropedia platform); IIT Bombay; IIITM Kerala (multi-modal delivery); NAARM, more about other partners here.

The site has features like Agroblog, Agrowiki, library, forum and user discussions. The library shows extensive information about different resources like groundnut, litchi, sugarcane, wheat, vegetable pea etc. The content generation is supposed to cover more Indian languages.

I think this is one of the best and comprehensive ICT resources pertaining to agricultural knowledge across India, that I have touched upon. So if you work or life relates to agriculture or related spheres, it makes absolute sense to check out agropedia and also make some contribution.

RareIndiaArt - An arts collection portal

2009-02-02T08:21:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [45 sec - 1min]

RareIndianArt is a portal to showcase the best of Indian arts from all parts of the country and also an avenue to sell and buy the artifacts. According to the site, the art collection brings out some of the best from tribal and folklore. The art forms could include idols, metal artifacts, fabric based, paintings etc. We had recently previewed Artjini - Online store for art lovers that was a central portal for art lovers to search and find online art choices very easily.

On the other hand, RareIndiaArt is really for the rare type, to bring you closer to remote and old stuff from unknown people. The site has sections to rate the artifacts, region based, paintings section, handicrafts section, gifts and accessories, new products and some more.

It is an interesting site. But we feel that site is very Web 1.0-ish and may be running on low funds. The site needs a better design and navigation system. The quality of the artifacts and handicrafts looks ok. The whole concept requires a ramp up.

Go ahead and give it a try, you may find something that you may find interesting.

PR: Artin Dynamics focuses on product SPARA and innovation

2009-02-02T06:49:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [4min 50 sec - 6min 2 sec]

Artin Dynamics is proud to announce itself to be the first company in India to be certified by Exnora International as a Green Company.
Exnora International is a wide spread environmental movement founded in 1989. It focus on mobilizing and empowering communities to participate in preserving nature and preventing environmental degradation thereby improving the quality of life of the common man. EXNORA is now focused on global warming and this is where Artin Dynamics steps in with their product SPARA, which is aimed at reducing phantom power losses and losses due to computer usage. The 99999 lights out campaign was launched in Kerala by Exnora, where people have been asked to switch off their lights and computers for 9 min on 9th of September, 2009 at 9 pm. Artin Dynamics is given the responsibility of 99999 campaigns by EXNORA in Kerala.

SPARA is a device which eliminates the Phantom Power loss from Computer Systems and its peripheral devices. Even though a system is switched off, some amount of energy is lost. This is called the Phantom Power Loss. The following are some of the features of “SPARA”
•    Zero Phantom Power Losses
•    100% ROHaS compliant
•    Fully automated operation
•    Capability to directly interface PC dependant Peripherals like Printers, Speakers
•    Direct Client Scheduling capability
•    Extensive Reporting
•    User Based Reporting
•    Independent control over client’s power state
•    Capability to learn and adapt to existing conditions
•    Three tier architecture
•    ETL Technology
•    Zero Modification Policy
•    Ease of use, Zero training required
Functions of SPARA
(a)Hardware functions
The major function of the SPARA hardware is to prevent Phantom Energy Loss
The Hardware helps in cutting down the Phantom power completely. It senses the device in Shutdown, Hibernate state where the phantom power is generally wasted. After that it cut downs the power and makes the device power consumption to Zero Watt.
(b) Software Functions
The SPARA software module is LAN based software which helps to prevent power loss over idle system in a network. Following are the basic functions of the Spara software module.

1.    Enables an administrator to remotely control the power states of nodes in a network. The administrator is given options such as
-    Shutdown
-    Hibernate
-    Reboot
-    Screen Lock
-    Standby
-    Monitor off
2.    Generates a view of all the nodes on the network with idle time of each node, which enables an administrator to track systems that are unused for a long time.
3.    The administrator can also schedule an operation on either a single or a group of computer.
4.    Generates reports and logs to track the operation and usage of Spara .
5.    Provides CPU throttling and core shutdown features on individual systems. This option reduces CPU performance thereby reducing power consumption when necessary. ( Applicable for Linux version only)

Working of SPARA
SPARA performs the normal power management options like Hibernate, Shut down, Stand by etc on a distributed network and high level power management features like Monitor control, Core handling, CPU throttling as well as the software gives the administrator a detailed report regarding the usage statistics. The hardware unit works on our patented technology known as ETL or Enhanced Trigger Loop. This eliminates the 'Phantom Power loss' completely. SPARA is capable of remotely powering a system ON from anywhere in the world. The installation and deployment of SPARA is quick and it does not require alteration in the infrastructure of the client.

In today’s world power scarcity and power wastage is happening simultaneously. This led us to the thought that saving is actually generating itself. This was the motto behind our efforts to find a solution to the power scarcity from which our country is suffering from. This is one of the reasons which compelled us to build SPARA. Our company basically aims to save green through these efforts. We wanted to bring out something which is innovative to prevent the power loss. The statistics got from the data collected gave us the true loss happening in the world in terms of power loss. Often the smaller amount of energy loss which go unnoticed account to a huge loss annually.

To save is to generate is the basic philosophy our company believe in.
The technology used in SPARA is ETL (Enhanced Triggered Loop). This is a Patented Technology. ETL or Enhanced Trigger Loop and interfaces with the computer using a USB port. Once the computer switches to a power down state (Shut down or Hibernate) the module terminates the power supply from the system and the supply point. This eliminates the 'Phantom Power loss' completely

Corporates are the major beneficiaries of “SPARA” as the power loss can be prevented to a large scale by corporates who are using a huge number of computers. SPARA will help them to reduce the electricity bill to a large extent. SPARA corporate Edition as well as Home Edition is completed. So corporates as well as households will benefit from SPARA. They could save energy, reduce the Electricity Bill as well as provide help to save environment. It also helps corporates in the matter of remote controlling of the network. The society as a whole will benefit from using SPARA because a huge amount of energy can be saved annually which can be used for any other productive purposes or to help the villages to light up their streets and homes. We started working on SPARA in April 2008 and it took 6 to 7 months for us to develop it. SPARA was launched on 29th October 2008. We have applied for patent for our product SPARA and the R&D Division is now fully engaged in bringing out new user friendly power saving products to help corporates, Households as well as to save environment.

In the current Scenario, all corporates are trying to reduce the power consumption and there by save energy money and environment. So we are here to help them with this objective. To save green is the motto of our company. Our preliminary estimate shows that 1000 computers can save up to 40 MWH of electricity per year if our product SPARA is deployed. This is equivalent to the complete power requirement for a small town for a week and it helps in saving a huge amount of money. There are other products in the market which reduce power losses from a server point of view, but no product deals with the biggest wastage, the Desktops and the Work Stations.

It’s obvious that scarcity for power will continue to exist. It is also possible in the future that the power supplies to households; corporates etc will be controlled to a certain limit within which they will have to operate. Even if this occurs or not corporates are always ready to reduce the consumption of power and reduction in Electricity bill.
Innovation is the power of every organization. It is the result of vigorous thinking experimenting and finding out something new. Coming up with new ideas determine to a large extent the existence of any firm in the competitive era. The innovation made should be useful to the mankind as well. It should also be an agent of change which should propel a series of useful activities in the society in which it operates and to the whole world.

Yahoo's mobile platform Blueprint for advertisers and publishers launched in India

2009-02-02T02:03:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 21 sec - 1min 42 sec]

Yahoo has gone ahead and launched it's mobile platform named "Blueprint" for advertisers and publishers in India. Under Blueprint, Yahoo would provide a software package to brands and content generators that will help them to develop and design mobile web sites or applications that can be hosted on the mobile network. The Blueprint platform is enabled to run on any GPRS enabled phone in India. As per latest tracking, 70 million subscriptions out of the 310 million have GPRS enabled, but only 7-11 million subscribers are active mobile internet users. The core idea is for Yahoo to insert ads on the mobile sites and content to monetize the same.

(just in via Afaqs)

Speaking to afaqs!, Vishal Maheshwari, senior director, connected life, Yahoo India, says, “The content owner can decide to do the ad sales of the mobile content on his own or rope in our mobile ad network to get advertisers for it. For instance, we are responsible for the ad sales of the mobile site of Idea Cellular.” If a publisher uses the Yahoo mobile ad network, then he has to share the revenue earned through the ads served by the mobile ad network with Yahoo.

Advertisers will be offered the option of display and text advertising and they can purchase ad inventory on cost per thousand ad impressions (CPM) and cost per click (CPC) basis to carry out pure brand building or lead generation campaigns. Advertisers who route their ads through the Yahoo mobile ad network will be allowed to target their consumers based on age, sex, location and mobile handset.

Talking of the effectiveness of the mobile ads served on sites created through the Blueprint platform, Matthias Kunze, director, mobile monetisation, connected life, Yahoo Asia, tells afaqs!, “Globally, we receive a click through rate (CTR) of around 6-8 per cent on mobile ads served on sites.” This CTR is much higher than the average CTR of 0.5 per cent received by ads displayed on the online medium.

MediaRedefined - Social media branding and consulting studio

2009-02-02T01:43:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 21 sec - 1min 41 sec]

Mediaredefined is a very new social media branding and consulting digital agency launched very recently, I guess through the new year 2009. "Mediaredefined" the name appears to be a very strong one, something very big and I am sure the young team behind this initiative is aiming for the stars. They aim to be the stepping stone to SocialMedia 2.0. They are also into developing social media tools to create brand buzz online.

Essentially the broad functions of this digital agency include brand marketing, creating brand strategies for the online media using social media tools, provide next generation solutions for professionals, corporates, businesses and events. There is also the possibility of including and making use of traditional media for leveraging extra coverage. Some of the other functions of this company also include:

Creating an online reputation for corporate entities and brands and building and sustaining the same with social media solutions

Online reputation enhancement and campaign management

Help in getting your products and services the right traction amongst the target audience

Evangelizing products and services amongst the crowds

Help you and your business stay ahead of the competition

Also, content generation for your blogs, website and communications depending on market research

Blog consulting is something new that I have come across

We really liked the website design of Mediaredefined, it is refreshingly new and fits in the kind of message that they want to send to their prospective customers. A young team is behind the initiative, more about the founders here. And what's more they already have names like GreyB Services, USWaretech, MaritimeLogic etc in their portfolio. We also like the focus on content generation of blogs and websites from a social media perspective, features like blog consulting which is very much niche and required for the corporates of today and tomorrow.

If you are a company or a business in need of social media service or even otherwise, do give MediaRedefined a spin and let us know your feedback.

Seven Indian born investors in the Forbes Midas Touch investor list

2009-02-01T13:14:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [24 sec - 36 sec]

Seven Indian born people, in total figure in the latest and most coveted Forbes investor list. It' s called the "Midas Touch List", for their midas touch with investment money, that helped turn around small startup ventures into some of the biggest money spinners. Following are the names with their rank on the top 100 list:

(1) Ram Shriram - Ranked 3rd
(2) Navin Chaddha - Ranked 11th
(3) Arjun Gupta - Ranked 32nd
(4) Deepak Kamra - Ranked 70th
(5) Raman Khanna - Ranked 72nd
(6) Ravi Adusumalli - Ranked 75th
(7) Promod Haque - Ranked 96th

Any comments or additional details, do throw in.

Google's Saturday blunder - all sites were blacklisted

2009-02-01T12:45:00.001-08:00

Following is the real-time image taken showing Google's January 31st (Saturday's) blunder. Every search result on the Google page was blacklisted showing "This site may harm your computer", and when clicked on that link, it showed a warning page citing Stopbadware.org. Ultimately, it was found that the mistake was due to a human error in the listing algorithm.

Enjoy the pic.

Image showing Google blunder on Saturday

Weekly wrapup Jan 23rd - Jan 30th @bangaloreinc

2009-01-31T11:09:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [4min - 8 min]

Startups, Services and Products

Nalini Networks - End to End services for networking domain

ActiveCanvas - All about arts

Outdoormedia - Outdoor and OOH advertising startup

Startupforstartups.com - A building ground for early stage startups

India’s first mobile content search engine ActiveSearch.mobi

Foodathome - Healthy and hygienic food as good as home made

Zibika - Financial services and financial networking community

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Introductory talk by Atul Chitnis

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Yoplr and Lifemojo

PROTO5 Live Coverage - iFlapp and Lords Automotives

PROTO5 Live Coverage - Noddler and IndiaKhelo

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Freemium vs paid business models

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Building a business that impacts lives by Abhishek Sinha from Eko

PROTO5 Day 2: Keynote by Bob Young CEO of Lulu

PROTO5 Day 2: Ashish Gupta from Helion Ventures on Building winning teams for startups

PROTO5 Day 2: Nualgi Nanobiotech and Remindo

PROTO5 Day 2: Ooha Internet Services and Inkfruit

PROTO5 Day 2: Fachak and Taroby

Doctorsworld.org - Complete health advice to make sound decisions

Mathtopper.com - Study portal for school children

Editorial

Opportunities during Recession - Editorial by Chintan Sheth, CEO of Nalini Networks

Backlog

Weekly Wrapup Jan 15th - Jan 22nd @bangaloreinc

Reports

10 top companies to work for in India

Smartphone survey by Microsoft India and Synovate

News

DoT and BSNL partner to expand rural wireless reac

Firstnaukri.com job portal from InfoEdge for entry level hiring

Remote pump access and battery saving mobile apps reach Mobile World Congress

Nivio takes the technology pioneer award at World Economic Forum

Web entrepreneurship course by Hyderabad based Trendyworks

Zibika - Financial services and financial networking community

2009-01-30T07:52:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1min]

Tagline - where minds meet over money

Zibika is a money portal offering information, advice and financial products related to insurance, banking, credit cards, mutual funds, markets, and tax. It is also a community oriented site with personal profile and further scope to build a financial community with like minded people. The various sections provide following information:

Insurance - Product index for health insurance, life insurance, auto insurance, home insurace, travel insurance, and personal accident. Insurance forms and latest products from vendors like IDBI, Religare, HSBC etc and also access to agents discussion forum are provided.

Banking - Information about personal loans, home loans, auto loans, accounts stuff like current and savings, fixed deposits information is presented. Again latest products from different vendors like barclays, IDBI, Dena bank concerning banking can be accessed

Credit cards

Mutual funds - various mutual funds alternatives are given

Markets - Stocks, commodities, derivatives information and advice here. Daily tracking of market information also

Tax - An important section helping those of you who might want to file tax returns. We previously covered related startup Taxyantra for tax filing here.

Very much similar to Apnaloans in concept, do check it out and let us know if this helped.

Foodathome - Healthy and hygienic food as good as home made

2009-01-30T02:46:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [40 sec - 58 sec]

Foodathome.in is a Gurgaon based startup in food vending area. No they are not really specialists in online food ordering neither they are a food portal with aggregation of hotels and restaurants, but they bet on the quality of serving the most hygienic and healthy food that you could eat outside your home. F@H primarily caters to students, bachelors and working professionals in the Gurgaon area. And F@H delivers the food at your doorstep , all you have to do is call 0124-3212929 or 9311232929 and place an order.

Foodathome is one of the startups in first batch of the MVP (Morpheus Ventures Partners) portfolio. The food is available in two packages -

Premium Solutions- Rs 55/Per Diet:- Daal, 2-Vegetabes, 4 Chaptis, Rice, Pickle, Salad, Raita or Curd , and Complimentary Sweet Dish packed in aluminum foil with cardboard packets.

Economy Solutions- Rs 40/Per Diet:- Daal, Vegetable, 4 Chapatis, Rice, Pickle and Salad, packed in hot case tiffin delivered at yours doorstep.

The areas currently covered in and around Gurgaon are -

Sector-17

Sector-14 & Old DLF

DLF Phase-2,3,4

Sector-18

Sector-23A, Small Part of Sector-22 is Covered

Sector-15 II

Old DLF

If you are in the Gurgaon area do give F@H a spin and let us know your feedback.

PR: Impel Is Offering Franchise Business Opportunities To Expand Its Business All over The Nation

2009-01-30T02:25:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 51 sec - 2min 18 sec]

“Be the leader in the Overseas Education Industry by consistently delighting students through unbiased, innovative and customized value added services.”

Impel Overseas Consultants Ltd has aimed to become the market leader of the overseas education industry and stretch its hands to provide its services for the students from their own city. Hence, to assist students in reaching their study destination through qualitative and beneficial services, Impel initiated to propose franchise opportunities of the company at different parts of India.

Impel has well established infrastructure, professional counselors and expertise team members, which are the main pillars of the organization. For the other Franchisee businesses, Impel also facilitates the requirements and training for the branch counselors for all the study destinations.

Impel is a fusion of values and abilities. Diversity is its cornerstone and its employees reflect its commitment to work across cultures. A combination of extensive experience, global presence, in-depth industry knowledge and strong dedication to help students in reaching their study destination, enables Impel to provide result-oriented career solutions. Impel has a panel of advisors and experts who have the latest knowledge on overseas education and ready information on expected changes. This expertise in the field gives a solid edge for Impel making it an undisputed leader in the Global education process.

One of the unique features that Impel provides is that, it facilitates students to change their course program from their study destination. For the students who are dissatisfied with their study abroad decisions, either it may be in choosing the course or the university, Impel assists them through providing proper guidance and helps them in choosing a suitable course/university and change to it from their study destination.

Thus, for the one who are seeking for franchisee opportunities and interested to begin their own business at their own place, this would certainly be an exhilarating prospect.

About Impel

Impel is a rapidly growing overseas education consultant company based in Hyderabad, India with an overseas branch at Sydney, Australia. The organization was established with an intension to be the market leader of the overseas education industry and assist students to study abroad. Impel offers broad portfolio of excellently managed services varying from career counseling to pre-visa and post-departure services.

Impel is committed to provide education consultancy of International standards with a Human touch, at optimum cost and to bring in continuous improvement in line with evolving student needs. This we will achieve by a holistic approach and the integrated team work of constantly learning and committed professionals, interfaced with state-of-art-technology.

Impel, an emerging giant in the field of overseas education, it aims to rigorously and actively promote foreign education in every city of India by offering franchise business opportunities.

For further details contact us.

Web entrepreneurship course by Hyderabad based Trendyworks

2009-01-30T01:18:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 40 sec 55 sec]

It is very much evident that there is great demand for web development and web consulting in India over the next few years. This could be a niche area to take up for entrepreneurs. This thought is widely supported by the following statistics:

There is an increasing demand for web consultants in India

There are over 1000 web hosting providers in India but are mainly concentrated in top tier 10 metros

Smaller cities and towns have absolutely no presence of web consultants

There is a projected demand for additions 1,00,000 web consultants to meet current requirements

There are upto 20 million businesses in India but only half a million websites

The websites are poised to grow 10 times to 5 million websites in the next five to ten years

With this in focus, Trendyworks Technologies Pvt Ltd is launching the Web Entrepreneur Program to tap into this market and bring out the spirit of entrepreneurship. The course is of three month duration and the fees is fixed at Rs 24,500.

If you are an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, would you avail of such a paid course? Well, the fees may a deterrent for many, nevertheless there is something being offered where there is none. What is your take?

(Source)

India's first mobile content search engine ActiveSearch.mobi

2009-01-29T13:01:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [45 sec - 1min]

ActiveSearch.mobi is the touted as the first mobile content search engine that is only accessible on mobile phones and provides easy access to content like ringtone, videos, wallpapers etc. Active Search is a single-window search solution, which enables the user to search for multimedia content through Mobile. For example, if the user types the keyword Bipasha, the search window will display multimedia content such as Videos, Ring Tones and Wallpapers which feature Bipasha, as-well as the Latest News and Gossips about Bipasha. It is the front end for all kinds of multimedia content and information by searching and displaying results from Premium Content, Mobile Content and Web. To get started, users can simply type www.activesearch.mobi on their mobile internet browser and search for their favourite multimedia content or they can sms ASKMM to 58888. They can then download wallpapers, ring tones, and read the latest gossip about their favourite film stars, cricketers, and celebrities. It is that simple and convenient to use!

ActiveSearch is launched by Times Internet Ltd in association with Israeli based Unicell Advance Cellular Solutions Ltd. Very much suitable for a targeted advertising model.

(source)

Smartphone survey by Microsoft India and Synovate

2009-01-29T07:22:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 18 sec - 1min 36 sec]

Microsoft commissioned a Mobility Survey in APAC in conjunction with Synovate to gauge people’s perceptions, attitudes about smart phones and how they put their phones to use in their everyday lives.The survey throws up some fascinating revelations and definitely makes for an interesting read. The How Mobile Are You survey polled nearly 2,500 respondents (513 in India) in five countries across Asia. What the survey found:

Indians have the highest incidence of shooting voyeuristic pictures/photos with their mobile phone at 33%. Japan and Taiwan have the lowest at 6% and 7% respectively.

32% Indians believe that giving out mobile phone details on social networking sites and forums is okay

Women, across countries, are more likely to check their husband’s mobile phone for sms/caller lists than men. While Chinese women ranked the highest at 61%, Indian women weren’t far behind at 54%.

Asians are extremely open to using mobile phones to manage their personal relationships. In fact, in taking relationships to the next level, the Chinese (58%) and Indians (54%) are most likely to find it acceptable for marriage proposals to occur over their mobile phones.

Mobile advertising is clearly gaining acceptance with 57% of Indians polled agreeing that mobile advertising is good if the information is relevant to their needs and current location.

65% Indians consider the brand of the phone to be the most important factor while purchasing phones. Music quality and storage capacity rank next. (57%). Only 7% tend to buy their mobile phones basis recommendations at the shop outlet they buy their phones from.

68% of Indian parents who have children between the ages of 7 – 15 years buy their children their first new phones while only 20% hand down their used phones to their kids.

Clicking pictures on mobile phones is a rather popular activity across countries according to the survey. 44% Indians take camera quality into consideration while purchasing phones. 39% Indians also take into account the software of the phone than the mere physical features.

(source)

Startupforstartups.com - A building ground for early stage startups

2009-01-29T04:21:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [2min 17 sec - 2min 51 sec]

Tagline: Your Vision + Our Expertise = Great Product!

StartupforStartups is a Nashik based incubation setup rom Wissen Systems, that intends to help build early stage startups in return for some equity at a later stage or after products are rolled out. It is quite similar in concept to Morpheus Ventures Partners that was floated a few months ago by Sameer and Nandini but a bit different in scope. Morpheus Ventures Partners acts more as a a advisory and mentor providing inputs regarding direction of the startup and related matters in return for equity. But StartupforStartups acts more like a service provider providing, web development, software development in mobile and enterprise segments and most other areas for early stage startups where the founders may still be having a full time job on hand and may just want to try out a product concept for the market.

Startup for startups provides one-stop solution for all resource requirements of an early stage startup. they work closely with founders on all aspects of the product and not just development. It is not necessary to outsource entire product development though, they can be part of larger development team or they can handle specific modules or even smaller tasks. their main goal is to bring in expertise and resources that are not available with in the core team of the startup and help in every aspect possible.

As their website says, Wissen Systems enables:

Focus on evolving the idea : Most of the companies develop first cut of the product with a very small number of resources. This puts pressure on technical founders to actually participate in the development work instead of focusing on the product road map and bigger picture.

Quick start development : Wissen Systems has created pool of resources having wide range of expertise. Its very competitive market and hence very difficult for startups to find correct talent in short time. This creates unnecessary delays in development cycle. Wissen Systems can help to quick start the development by using its pool of resources.

Product building expertise : Core team of Wissen has hands on expertise on building new products in Web 2.0, mobile and enterprise applications space. The core team together has expertise on most of the leading technologies. Startups can use such expertise in designing better performing products.

Short-term resource requirements : Startups have limited amount of funding available. This funding should be used optimally. Some of the resource requirements can be outsourced to take advantage of time and material billing model. Instead of hiring a full time employee, startup can utilize Wissen resources on need basis.

They are adopting both services model and consultancy model or even shared resources model.

If you need startup development help, then you can look out for Startupforstartps.com They can be reached here: startups AT startupforstartups.com

I think StartupforStartups.com could be a good model to pursue for people who have a nascent product idea but are not sure of taking up entrepreneurship. They can take some time to see an initial release before plunging in full time. But would StartupforStartups survive on this model, are there enough entrepreneur minded people who would venture out to try out new ideas. Would they get a constant stream of startup ideas to be tried out?

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, would you give this one a try? Do let us know about your feedback.

Outdoormedia - Outdoor and OOH advertising startup

2009-01-29T01:55:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 22 sec - 1min 42 sec]

Outdoormedia.co.in is a Chandigarh based company that caters to advertising related to the physical world, and out-of -home like billboards, unipole or hoarding, mobile billboards on bus, vans, trucks, mall advertising, airports, taxi advertising, wallscape, bus shelter, and kiosks or posters. It is in the same league as Cashurdrive the vehicle advertising startup that we reviewed earlier. The site provides exhaustive listing of outdoor locations where billboards, kiosks or posters can be installed with picture, location details, state, city, and pricing of advertising. One can browse through the listings on the site and add each listing to a 'quote list' for further research. It's more like a search engine for outdoor advertising sites and avenues. Currently, the states of Chandigarh, Punjab, Himachal, Haryana are the only ones that are covered in their database.

Website view showing location along with billboard details llike price and size

A detailed explanation of various outdoor options, the pros and cons of each methods is very well described at their site here. Outdoormedia.co.in right now has a database of over 800 agencies spread across the country. A similar service for outdoor sites with location, and price is provided by http://timesoohmedia.com/, but only for properties owned by Times group.

The site is open to vendors who want to submit their outdoor spaces. A separate section of the site is dedicated to these vendors who can list their out advertising spaces thus growing the database. Outdoormedia also negotiate and help customers to get the best placed and best priced advertising campaign, they do the deals with vendors. They also take care of the the campaign from start to the end.

Business model - The service is based on commissions earned by Outdoormedia when customers sign on for the campaigns.

This is a niche segment and certainly, Outdoormedia is turning the tables with the right use of technology for helping outdoor advertising campaigns. If you are in need for such a service, hop on and do let us know about your feedback.

Nivio takes the technology pioneer award at World Economic Forum

2009-01-29T01:05:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [2min 20 sec - 2 min 54 sec]

Nivio the four year old startup providing virtual desktop and OS services for any device with net connectivity has taken the Nivio Technology Pioneer award at the World Economic Forum summit.

Excited about being a part of such an important event, Sachin Duggal said, “Nivio is the manifestation of our dream to create a simple and affordable computing ecosystem that fosters education, connects communities, creates dreams and empowers people. We are the world’s first cloud computer that will make computing as simple and affordable as Cable TV. At the World Economic Forum we will discuss how use of Nivio can help revolutionise the world’s future, wire up five billion people who do not have access to computing and those who remain disconnected from achieving their potential.” Nivio has the potential to help provide computing access to over 1 billion people in India without a computer. It promotes complete computing freedom, liberating the users from current problems of data loss, technology obsolescence, viruses and accessibility. Nivio provides its users with a personal, secure virtual Windows desktop running in the cloud, accessible through Net-connected devices and computers. (source)

Nivio's virtual OS technology aims to provide always on and connected experience to anybody with a connected device. The files can be accessed from any device, anywhere in the world. The core idea is to make computing as affordable as cable TV to the masses, and the technology of Nivio has the potential to bring 5 billion people without computing access on-board the internet world. Behind this company are the two young entrepreneurs, Sachin Duggal, the 25 year old NRI & CEO of Nivio, and Saurabh Dhoot, 24, founded Nivio whilst both were studying Engineering at Imperial College, London. Both of them happen to be the youngest Indian names to be present at the World Economic Forum.

A great interview with the founder is reproduced below, the original is here.

Explain your business to my Mum.
"Imagine if your computer could be like the telly: just switch it on and choose what you want to do; share your photos with your kids without worrying about FTP; travel light with no laptop - just get onto any PC, anywhere and access all your personal files and folders .

"Nivio takes away all the awfully complicated parts of using a computer and makes it so very simple and affordable as you pay for what you need."

• How do you make money?
"Subscription and, in the near future, ad-revenue."

• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?

"About 30,000 users since April 1 2008 and we aim to be at about 200,000 users within 12 months."

• What's your background?
"I started a tech company while I was at Imperial College and then worked in investment banking at Deutsche Bank."

• Name your closest competitors.
"Hmmm... desktoptwo.com and other web-OS players. Products which offer some similar capabilities, primarily the ability to store and edit files, without delivering the full Windows XP experience are Google Docs and Zoho."

• Any weird business experiences so far?
"Every day is a little weird and wonderful when you are trying to do something new and different, but most importantly because you realise no one ever uses anything the way you designed it to be used. Also, communicating with a team that is quite dispersed can be wonderfully entertaining at times."

• What's your biggest challenge? "Trying to explain the service in one line - we are still figuring this out!"

• Are we in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
"Arguably not. I think it passed a year ago (the credit situation has not helped) but I do not think we have had the burst like it happened last time. I see the bubble re-expanding again in six to 12 months."

• Which tech businesses or web thinkers are the ones to watch?
"I regularly use Basecamphq.com which is really lovely software, and the Outlook email tool Xobni - I use that about 30 times a day. Auctomatic is a great tool for eBay people, HTC is doing some very very cool stuff on the mobile front and Asus are re-inventing the laptop world. Getdropbox.com I also use a lot."

• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"At least one million users globally with a content smile on every user's face when they think of our brand."

Remote pump access and battery saving mobile apps reach Mobile World Congress

2009-01-28T05:41:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [2min 16 sec - 2min 50 sec]

Two companies Ossian Agro Automation and Mobimonster 2.0 are all set to showcase their applications at the Mobile World Congress.

Most of us would have heard about the remote application installed on a phone to control water pump's activity in the farms. Well, the application is called 'Nano Ganesh' and the entity behind this application is Pune based Ossian Agro Automation. Santosh Ostwal the CEO of Ossian divulged that the application was officially launched in September 2008 and has garnered 5000 paid customers. The farmers of Maharashtra being the customers, have found the utility of the application very high as it helps to remotely control power supply to pumps that are sometimes placed far away in the fields and are difficult to access in inclement weather. Also, power supply to these farms is usually at night, and the pumps have to be manually handled in the dark, which is again improvized. This remote pump application has now been seleted by Nokia to be featured at the Mobile World Congress to be held on February 17.

Another application from the company Mobimonster 2.0 based in Delhi that is used to alert users about their bluetooth, WLAN connectivity thus indirectly saving on power will also be featured at Mobile world Congress. The application is called GreenPhone is a paid app, $15 cost based but free for trial use. The application constantly monitors the non usage of bluetooth, WLAN and backlight and informs the user to switch them off thus saving battery and reducing the carbon footprint.

(just in via livemint)

Ostwal and his engineer wife Rajeshwari have been building wireless solutions for the past 12 years, but he said his big breakthrough came through the low-cost water pump activation system. His small-scale unit employs 22 people, mostly women.
“No one has thought of it so far, and my product is affordable and the farmer has an option to buy his own mobile phone,” he said. The system alerts the farmer if the solution is stolen or tampered with.
Farmers in most states get power to run irrigation pump sets only at night. The erratic supply and remote location of pump sets increases the hardships of farmers. Nano Ganesh aims to make life easier for them.

Greenphone - GreenPhone allows one to save on the phone’s battery and charger life. “It alerts you to several power consumption modules of your phone so that you can remove the charger or shut down the unwanted services to preserve power,” says Mobimonster’s website.
“The idea behind this (application) is to make mobiles really eco-friendly and conserve battery power,” said Ankur Srivastava, the 31-year-old chief executive of Mobimonster 2.0.
The firm allows users to download the application free for trial, but charges $15 (about Rs730) for constant use.
“The user can recover the money in around 10 months (from the power saved),” he said. The device alerts the mobile owner to switch off the wireless local area network, or/and Bluetooth if it is not in use.
The six-year-old firm, with 25 professionals, has built applications such as a SMS timer for Nokia, and is also a partner with BT Group Plc., the British telecom firm.

It is refreshing to see small firms with small people develop niche interesting applications that have big impact and serve customers in a big way. It's the spirit of entrepreneurship that propels such people to go on their own and produce amazing results.

What do you say?

Firstnaukri.com job portal from InfoEdge for entry level hiring

2009-01-28T05:12:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 26 sec - 32 sec]

Firstnaukri.com, a new dedicated job portal has been announced by InfoEdge the company behind naukri.com. Infoedge is investing close to 12 lakhs to created the new portal. The move is centered on creating innovation and bringing best practices to hiring of entry level candidates or freshers.

(source)

Speaking to Business Standard, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Info Edge co-founder and CEO, said, "We are in the process of announcing our new job portal for freshers, firstnaukri.com. The purpose of launching firstnaukri.com is to connect first time job seekers and campuses to potential employers. Initially we will use our naukri.com database and sell firstnaukri.com to the same clients. We will gradually expand to include internship offers, campus placements, part-time jobs, and other features."

Mathtopper.com - Study portal for school children

2009-01-28T01:51:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [48 sec - 1min]

Mathtopper is a portal for teaching school curriculum via online resources for school children below the college level. Mathtopper was launched by Edutopper Pvt Ltd in November 2008. Primary level education may not be the cup of tea for lot for lot of educational websites but mathtopper wants to be distinct in this area. Basically they provide 24X7 online self learning CBSE math tutorials from class VI to class XII.

You can invite friends at the site too. They have an affiliate program where teachers can sign in with a lot of incentives to be gained. The teacher community targeted is worldwide and hence registered members can network with K-12 tutors worldwide, provided the site grows.

Why Maths is the only subject that is targeted? Is it because Maths is fundamental and more students are weak or uninterested in Maths. Well, that's a wild guess, the founders know better.

Business model - They have paid services, more information here.

The site is basic and simple with most required features to get going. The success will mainly depend on content generated and the push from teaching community. If you have school going children do give mathtopper a spin.

Doctorsworld.org - Complete health advice to make sound decisions

2009-01-28T01:34:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 12 sec - 1min 30 sec]

Doctorsworld is a health service formed by a group of medical professionals with the sole interest of patients and general public in mind, to help them make informed decisions regarding their health care choice. These doctors believe that there are variable treatments, and masses have poor knowledge of what treatments to go for. People should be made aware of all the possibilities and they should have the power to what kind of health care they should opt for. Those are the core goals of doctorsworld. Some of the help sections include:

Specialty - This section covers anaesthesia and general medicine for diabetes and hypertension

Operative - videos - This section provides videos of surgeries and operations

Investigations explained - Blood investigations and radiological investigations are explained

Trauma and orthopaedics - Section dedicated to orthopaedics covers trauma surgery and elective surgery

Obstetrics and gynaecology - Pregnancy, ante-natal and pre-natal health care are covered. Women's health concerns are also addressed here.

Opthalmology - Physiotherapy, acupuncture, yoga and orthotics are detailed in this area

First aid - all the best information that you need to know about first aid, infact this is quite useful for everyone

Ask your doctor - This is a form to get in touch with doctors and ask your personal questions

Doctor's directory - One can search for doctors by name, not sure how complete is the directory and what specialized doctors are covered

Overall, the site is new and provides pertinent information related to select areas for common public by practising doctors. So the information may be more reliable than going for Google search to find self-help and solutions for your problems. One suggestion from us is to add forum section where people can openly discuss medical problems and treatments, thereby building a community and growing the stature of the effort.

PR: Siliconindia Leadership Summit @ The Park, Chennai on 29 Jan

2009-01-27T03:43:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 12 sec - 1min 30 sec]

Siliconindia is conducting the siliconindia Leadership Summit on Jan 29 at Trident, Chennai, which will kick off an active dialogue amongst leaders in the Indian industry. This is a platform for evoking thought leadership in a global business environment. The summit is an ideal platform for today's eminent leaders to meet and inspire the leaders of tomorrow. Leaders will also share their personal pathways that helped them achieve professional successes.

At the Summit, you'll find the people from Top 100 companies, who excel at innovation, are engaged in business transformation, and are building workforces that are efficient, engaged, and effective.

The Siliconindia Leadership Summit is an opportunity for leaders like you to get a true insider's look at what's new today, and what's coming over the next 12-18 months. It's an exclusive preview of how companies, such as yours, will change the way other companies do business. What's more, we want to hear your professional views on how we can make the next wave of business even better.

This is a closed-door invite only Summit, which allows for free exchange of idea's and experiences among the attendees. Leaders gather in a dynamic forum for lively conversations and penetrating questions about the business, technology, innovation, and opportunity.

There would be four panel discussions on subjects such as:

Great Leaders Think Big, and Small

Great Leaders take Risk

Managing the Most Talented

How Successful Leaders Think.

WHEN: JANUARY 29, 2009
WHERE: Trident, Chennai
TIME: 8.30 AM to 5 PM

Over 200 executive-level professionals from Top 100 companies will be attending this year's conference. Executive-level invitees include CEOs, Managing Directors, Presidents, VPs, and Directors. Many of these executives are leading companies today or are going to lead companies tomorrow.

There are LIMITED SEATS. Registration Fee: Rs 1000

For more details, log on to:www.siliconindia.com/Leadership/index.html

PR: CBSE Math Made Easy with MathTopper

2009-01-27T03:38:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1 min 54 sec - 2min 22 sec]

No more nightmares about algebra, geometry or even that dreaded trigonometry for CBSE Math students. Solutions to math problems are now just a click away with MathTopper.com. The website provides K-12 students with interactive support material in the form of videos, audios and text to master CBSE math.

Launched in November 2008, MathTopper is a novel venture by Edutopper Private Limited. It is an online math guide devised to help students of classes 6 to 12 crack the most complicated of math problems in the CBSE math syllabus like algebra, geometry etc. The website provides solutions to unsolved questions in the CBSE math text book along with the fundamental concepts of each chapter. Support material for the ICSE curriculum will soon be added to the website.

Using this online solution, students can access videos and study material from the comfort of their homes. Parents can be confident that their children are getting the support they need without having to worry about hiring a tutor thus saving time, expense and effort. Students can revise formulae and clarify concepts using the additional practice material at any hour of the day.

The primary selling point of this solution is that it uses interactive videos to explain complicated concepts thus effectively replacing tutors and an actual teaching environment. Moreover, the material is designed in such a way that students can grasp the concepts quicker and have fun while doing so.
As the pressure on students to perform well increases, the number of students looking for external support is beginning to outweigh the available resources. Online tutoring thus becomes an effective yet affordable solution for every student. Not only does it offer the benefit of unrestricted access to any number of students, it also provides each child with the individual guidance he or she requires.

Math topper offers assistance not only to students, but also parents who want to be a part of their children’s academic growth. It helps them recall concepts they had learnt during their own time at school, so that they can provide their children with the support they require.

With the increasing popularity and accessibility of the internet by people of all age groups, solutions like Math topper are set to become the next big thing in India just as they have in international markets. Cost effectiveness and flexibility of usage ensure that Math topper will be a part of every student’s life in the near future. Currently we are offer one week sample CBSE math solution demo for all classes, Register to get all CBSE math solution.
About MathTopper - MathTopper being a product of Edutopper Private Limited targets mainly students and presently is catering to approximately a thousand of students and in India its daily reach has increased a total of 200% in the last 3 months starting November 2008.

DoT and BSNL partner to expand rural wireless reach

2009-01-27T01:51:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 24 sec - 3min 3 sec]

The average number of mobile phone subscriptions has be 8 million per month for the past one year almost as per TRAI numbers. The broadband numbers in the country stands at 5 million. To introduce greater incentive and act as a catalyst, the Department of Telecommunications and BSNL are now partnering to expand the wireless connectivity and wireless broadband reach in the rural areas in a big way. They are signing a MoU (memorandum of understanding)

BSNL will provide wireless broadband at 29,000 rural exchanges across India.

Each exchange will have 31 connections along with a public usage kiosk. 6 of the 31 connections will be used by institutions, schools, and the rest by individual users

Target is to reach 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010

DoT will fund BSNL to the tune of Rs 1800 crore out of which - Rs 700 will be used for upgrage of 2700 BSNL exchanges in the country for providing wireline broadband, Rs 700 crore of the kiosks, Rs 400 for computers

(just in via Business Standard)

However, private telecom operators have opposed the extra funds being allotted to BSNL from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund. In a letter to the Union telecom secretary, the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (GSM operators’ lobby) and Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (CDMA operators’ lobby) have alleged that there is huge corpus lying unutilised under the USO Fund (approximately Rs 15,000 crore).

The USO fund is created from a 5 per cent universal service obligation levy that the government charges all telecom operators in India. The fund is meant to support extension of connectivity to areas where private operators do not enter due to lack of adequate profitability.

Well the kiosk model has really failed to take off, there have been numerous government initiatives and research initiatives from companies like Microsoft, IBM etc to pilot kiosks for various usages. But that has not borne fruit, and installed kiosk base is struggling to be maintained. Will renewed efforts help the cause that the money is being spent for. Only time will tell, I gues

Nalini Networks - End to End services for networking domain

2009-01-27T01:04:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 42 sec - 53 sec]

Nalini Networks specializes in providing high quality services in the networking domain including 3G, 4G, Wimax and latest technology. It is a Bangalore based startup running into 2 years now and with well established client base. Key focus areas being Mobile Wireless, Internet Broadband, Network Management and Monitoring, Telecom, Web Services. The services can be summarized as:

Services - All kinds of networking services including latest protocol stacks, security solutions that enables very fast deployment of technology for its partners

End to end product development - Full scale product development solutions

Product enhancement and maintenance -

Product test solutions - Includes Feature testing, Systems testing, Integration testing, Stress, Scaling and Performance testing, Regression testing, Buf fix verification, Test harness, framework solution, Test automation, Product certification, 3rd party inter-operability testing, Early Field Testing

With a ground up team and good client base Nalini Networks is poised to make a great show in the market for telecom, and networking services.

Do check it out and let us know if this information was helpful.

ActiveCanvas - All about arts

2009-01-26T02:47:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [50 sec - 1min 5 sec]

Activecanvas is all about art, as the founders say - your very own space to unwind, explore, express, create, share and enjoy. It's a hub to get-together for like minded individuals interested in pursuing or keeping in touch with art forms, may it be as continuation of past hobby, or developing new interests, or spending spare time in exploring something productive.

Activecanvas conducts courses, organizes and manages events, maintains gallery and provides numerous opportunities for arts related activities. Events include childrens summer camps, music shows, plays and theatre, band performances, Ikebana shows, music shows and concerts. All these are very convenient for weekend marooning.

Tamara is a gallery space that exhibits contemporary, indigenous and traditional arts. Tamara will actively promote the work of both established and emerging artists. Doodleden also has similar concepts, more of it later in this post.

Activecanvas provides a platform for visiting and resident artists to showcase their talent and creations in this vibrant city of Bangalore. Anybody can get in touch with the team at Activecanvas to hold or organize workshops, demos, and performances to display for the city audience. Also anybody interested in art can act as volunteers and get involved during the demos, events and performances. Apart from these one can get employed or offer educational services based on different art forms, these include, novices, amateurs, and experienced professionals to act as instructors. The other side of this provides opportunities for interns and apprentices.

10 top companies to work for in India

2009-01-26T02:20:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [24 sec - 36 sec]

Business Today has come with the listing "Top 10 companies to work for in India". The high profile IT/ITeS companies do not figure in the list. Now is that surprising? Microsoft tops the list and it was on top earlier too. iGate has broken ranks and is at second place. The listing is across all segments and industries including hotel & lifestyle, finance & banking, FMCG, technology etc

(source)

Previous years listings

Weekly Wrapup Jan 15th - Jan 22nd @bangaloreinc

2009-01-25T08:26:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 4min - 6min]

Startups, Services and Products

Tatvic - the web analytics company

Wolf frameworks - SaaS development platform for business applications

Elbee Express - Fast mail delivery services all over India

RangDe and Dhanax - Community lending and social investment

DataSISAR - Cloud computing services with Wolf Frameworks

BiigPiic - Social site for media and entertainment and more

Meshlabsinc presents Zimesh knowledge networking and enterprise products

BPOSutra - Career, Lifestyle and Professional Networking for BPO industry

Ingandhisshoes.org - Bringing Gandhi to masses in collaboration with Publicis India

Jobeehive - Review companies, ratings, salaries, layoffs, network

iDiva : Portal for Indian women

KTwo Connectivity - Bridging the last metre wireless connectivity

Press Releases

PR: Webdhaba - New logo, price comparison, deals on meals, quikorder for online food ordering

SearchMyCampus Enables Student Placements across India

Reports

Active rural users in India stand at 3.3 million

Worldwide mobile industry atlas from Visionmobile research

Webinar about entrepreneurship with Sramana Mitra: Video

Indian retail food industry to grow by 400%

India still has room for 80million - 90million jobs in various sectors

Healthcare in India at $10.3 billion by 2010

Editorial

5 rules for operations planning

Weekly Wrapup 7th Jan - 14th Jan 2009 @bangaloreinc

News

IndyaRocks launches free SMS based calendar service, BigOye launches OOH ad campaign

mChek and Airtel reach 1Million milestone, launch more m-commerce services

Global: Twitter software TweetDeck receives seed funding

Youtube symphonyin to showcase Indian music

Indian National Knowledge Network switched on

Flavafrika - African social-networking site to be designed by Indian company

Gates foundation partners with Ashoka for agricultural innovation in India and Africa

Harvard business publishing sets up Indian subsidiary

Bharati’s Airtel Digital TV Interactive - IPTV Triple play with Telephone, Broadband and TV on a single line

Hover - In-text content and ad delivery platform gets funding from Media2win

Suno Dil Ki Awaaz: Tata Indicom enters Second Life

News: Ghajini 3D game, iXigo hotel search, mKhoj - VuClip partnership

PROTO5 Day 2: Fachak and Taroby

2009-01-24T04:42:00.001-08:00

Fachak is a playground for aggregation of all your online content in any format and share the same with your network of friends and family and more. "Users don't care about formats, all they care about is the information". Thats the motto behind Fachak as a web service. Allows you to connect you with any content, of any format all at one site.

You can basically search for all kinds of content on any subject be it youtube, slideshare, flickr etc and save it. You can create previews and add to your panel, also create mashups. There is all recommendations for the searched content.

Q&A

Metacafe is very similar to this service, so what is different at Fachak? We don't download anything on the computer. If you have any content on the desktop the same can be uploaded to the Fachak service.

Whats the revenue model? Two things - it's a UGC website, so definitely advertising, then there is the premium accounts for the uploads from users.

How is it different from Yahoo Glue? Fachak is very comprehensive in getting content of all types like youtube videos, presentations etc all at one place which Yahoo Glue does not do!

Taroby is the next generation SaaS based, unified messaging and collaboration web application software most suited for teams and workgroups to reduce their communication workload and boost productivity.

Taroby is centered around the idea of making all your communication whether it is snail mail, voice, sms, fax or email to be gathered at one universal mailbox. But before proceeding, one has to setup email accounts, maybe multiple and build the team that is intended to use the system. They have created a differentiation system by allocating various marker icons to display visually, each state of the messaging system. Once you get the communique in your universal mailbox, you can share it or assign it to a particular member of the team instead of forwarding action that we usually do. And the shared mails are visible to everyone who has the permission. In addition to the messages being tagged with icon, the users can comment and attach notes to the messages. This provides extra context and real-time updation that makes searching of messages easier. Once can see the nifty advantages of Gmails conversation view feature where all mails related to a particular subject and mail chains are shown in conversation view. This was an improvement over Outlook’s clunky bland mail system. What Taroby is set out to do is address the communication overload and similarly provide better solutions to handle the same. And they aim to make it simpler by adhering to the SaaS philosophy. We had earlier covered a startup service Circleup with similar theme for routing mass messaging.

We had reviewed Taroby earlier. Read the full review here.

Q&A

Is it a client or built on top of other services? Taroby is an interface to handle for a team that connects to all mail servers.

Is the product targeted to B2C or enterprise? Taroby is not really for end users but mostly targeted for enterprise domain. There is a ticketing mechanism that is helpful for support

What is the revenue model? Right now, we are signing it for free users. But later we want to introduce paid premium features

PROTO5 Day 2: Ooha Internet Services and Inkfruit

2009-01-24T04:18:00.001-08:00

Ooha is an internet services company that intends to build internet infrastructure to be accessed for browsing by the masses for free supported by advertising.

Oo-ha wants to setup internet kiosks bundled with physical advertising boards. The areas targeted are universities, public places. The advertising is currently static but in future there will be adaptive digital advertisements. The ads will be shown depending on what the user is browsing on the web which is served by an intelligent ad engine. But the internet browsing is completely free.

Q&A

How long is the browsing time? It is 15 minutes browsing time per person, automatically exits after that

What about security? The kiosks are manned and very secure. Recently they have introduced facial recognition through a camera setup.

Inkfruit is a startup built around the world of t-shirts, selling, designing, a crowd-sourced, democratic setup for buyers, and designers of t-shirts.

Inkfruit aims to be much more. They propose to be the first democratic design comapny. It is open to designs and submissions from around the world, and by the way, they have got it going as well. I was expecting the designs to be limited to India or part of India but the mere thought that they are getting t-shirt design submissions from around the world is a great thing. There is a community aspect also built into the site. Anyone can design and upload their work to the website by having an account and thereby sharing. Registered users are allowed to vote for the designs and here comes the democratic setup of Inkfruit in spotlight. The best designs that win maximum votes from the community are then processed and sent for production. This is a neat way of getting your voice heard and submission seen. We are not sure how big is the Inkfruit community, some numbers would give us more insight.

The front page of the website greets us with a plethora of t-shirt thumbnails, that present larger image previews when hovered on. The selection of t-shirts is quite good and one can spend quite some time just browsing the t-shirt designs, its a pleasure. The site has other web2.0 features like forum, newsletter, vote and share. They also have couple of rewards programs in terms of points that can be converted to money later on. Any registered used can upload photos of themselves wearing Inkfruit t-shirts and upload it at the site. If it is accepted they earn 50 points to be redeemed.

Business model - Inkfruit has some interesting monetization models. They have an affiliate program for owners of websites and bloggers with 2 different options.
(1) Inkfruit can create a custom store of t-shirts around a specific theme about your website and one that caters to the visitors of your site. The appearance and ambience would be prefect fit to your website. You can earn 20% of the sale for every t-shirt that is sold through your site.
(2) Alternatively, you can choose the best designs you like and then have them displayed on your website, blog or forum as an advertisement. In this case, you can earn 15% for every click that converts into a sale.
Please contact affiliates(at)inkfruit.com for the above.

We had earlier covered Inkfruit before and you can view the full post here.

Q&A

Do you share revenues with democratic designers? There are competitions on the site, different ones that give money for the participants. Revenue sharing is being looked at. Royalty model of sharing profits with contributors will be shortly brought in.

How do you protect your designs? They have a legal backup that monitors the space for copying and infringement. The legal notice generally works.

Any other features? They have a section on the website to sell t-shirts at retail outlets. This has been growing and generated 2 crores in sales

PROTO5 Day 2: Nualgi Nanobiotech and Remindo

2009-01-24T03:51:00.001-08:00

Nualgi Nanobiotech focuses on growing phytoplankton (diatom algae) in seas, rivers, lakes, and aquaponds for plankton generation and solving global warming problem. Avoids mass fish kill.

Wow, here we hava nanobiotech company!

It is a nano-tech nutrient cleaning up sewage, water pollution etc. Used in Taj Banjara Lake August 2008. It comes in a packet, just open it and put it in the dirty lake. You start getting oxygen bubbles released by diatom algae. Very economical. After sometime the lake becomes dirtier, because of throwing out of algae, but later the dirt segregates due to dissolved oxygen in the water increasing. For 8 and half acre lake, 100 million litres of water, only 10 kg of Nualgi was required. Can use it also for home aquarium, to oceans. In India 33 million litres of sewage is generated every day and in US its 100+ billion litres of sewage water everyday. Potential for 8 tonnes of market everyday.

In production for 1 year, patent pending, product in development for last 10 years

From their website:

Growing Algae has the property to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen due to photosynthesis. There are several species of algae. Out of this diatom algae are the most prolific growth and food creators that are responsible for the productivity of the oceans. All along it has been quite difficult to grow diatom algae in water in large quantities. ' NUALGI ' is a research product that can grow diatom algae on almost any water substrate be it the Sea, high saline water, fresh water, sewage water, effluent water etc. ' NUALGI ' contains trace, special and appropriate nutrients that can deliver in a biologically available form. Upon application to the water body in the presence of macro nutrients like N, P, K and sunlight, phytoplankton predominately in the form of DIATOMS, bloom and is soon converted to live food like zooplankton which is attractive to fishes and prawns. The live food boosts fishing and marine resources.

' NUALGI ' can be used for the following purposes -
1. For growing phytoplankton in the seas to absorb global carbon dioxide and reduce greenhouse effect thereby solving global warming problem.
2. For preventing growth of toxic algal species called 'RED TIDES' in the sea.
3. For generation of plankton and live food in aquaculture ponds to boost the growth of prawns and fishes.
4. For treating sewage, Polluted and effluent waters by growing diatoms and reducing COD and BOD and COLOUR.
5. For reclaiming and bringing life to lakes, rivers, and water bodies that are polluted by sewage and other pollutants and those in a state of eutrophication.
6. For preventing wild growth of waterweeds, water hyacinth, green algae and blue green algae and other waste plants in lakes, rivers, ponds and other water bodies.
7. Avoiding mass fish kill due to oxygen depletion, growth of toxic algae in ponds and lakes.

Q&A

Are there any side effects? Absolutely no side effects, oxygen liberated doesn't affect the fishes either

Have you studied carbon credits? Yes

What is the overall market? Can be directly used in sewage treatment plant. Also for plankton ridden water bodies.

What is cost of production? How effective is it than sewage treatment? Cost is Rs 275 per kilo for Nualgi, it will not convert into potable water, water quality will be bathing quality

In a sewage plant what is the downtime for the effect of diatom to kick in? Average time is 7 days. No re-organization required

How will you market the product? Planning to go with the government, right now fish farmers are using it.

Remindo - The fun way to get stuff done at the office

There are two polarizing trends - that of enterprise work management solution not being used by employees where you want them to use it, and social-networking sites that employees frequent often that you may want to block.

Remindo is a office management solution to control productivity as well provide socializing features. It has project management, CRM, address book, birthday reminders, employee communication features , calendars already built into it. The company managers can get reports about what employees are doing.

Q&A

How different are you from similar applications? Did you do some research about companies and products? We looked at different products like Basecamp, but the adoption level in the company was very low. So we have tried to incorporate personal dashboard, personal profile, private interactions, twitter integration etc in to our product.

Will it prevent social-networking activities? I do not think so, it complements well for in-company employees to interact better

Business model? Its a paid enterprise product

If employees leave the company, will they lose their social features? Partially, they can reconstruct the network once they join another company.

PROTO5 Day 2: Ashish Gupta from Helion Ventures on Building winning teams for startups

2009-01-24T02:48:00.001-08:00

Ashish Gupta from Helion Ventures - Building Winning teams for startups

Characteristics

Attitude - Willingness to take on inconvenience, puts organization before self, respect for others

Intellectual honesty - Driven by facts, willing to accept errors

Learn continuously

Resilience

Organization structure - Startups should not think that organization structure is an overhead, however small the team the responsibilities have to be defined

Complete clarity on organization - one person can have multiple roles

Most people do not scale - remove people from wrong roles

Change org structure as needed - no correct answer, drive by issues not by the people. Roles pop up as business grows - An example is NGpay which is a portfolio company. They needed to handle partnerships with merchants and banks which are quite different. You can't put a sales guy for this, you need a new role to be setup specifically

Accountability

Identify metrics of success - very hard - Most startups believe that measurements are not for startups, which would delay the core, but that's not true. If you don't give time now, it would only delay matters later

Process and discipline - Don't confuse a conversation for a prospect, a prospect for a lead, a lead to a conversion, and conversion to money

Applies to all functions - Engineering, Sales, Operations

Q&A

Q: How do you balance between resilience and letting go, when do you do each?
A: 80% of the intellectual honesty factor gets you the method to differentiate between resilience and letting go

Q: Size of people and composition of teams?
A: I am quite afraid of single member teams because of single point of failure. The best is a 3 member co-founder team, so even if one goes down, there are 2 more left. If there are 8 founders its too tough to manage. The process and organization goes hay wire. A 3-4 member core team is the best size

Q: Question about recruiting, how do you go about it?
A: Get help from someone. Skeptic of generic advisors, but one place for advising is recruitment, get people who have already hired similar candidates in the past, even if you have to pay.

Q: If somebody doesn't scale what does one do? Can they work as shareholders?
A: If they are nuisance shareholder figure a way to get such people out. If one doesn't scale try fitting him to other roles, if one is totally unfit, try objectively to make the decision

PROTO5 Day 2: Keynote by Bob Young CEO of Lulu

2009-01-24T02:23:00.001-08:00

Bob Young CEO of Lulu and beter known for being former CEO of Red Hat, entrepreneur of the year by Businessweek.

(in Bob Young's words)

Let's start by talking a little bit about open source software

What's happened in the open source world?

I was always interested in technical stuff since childhood. And I was one of the world's worst students. So I never got into an engineering school. Whenever I went for job interviews, I always got a negative response. I started in type-writer sales in 1976. And you realized that customers where all throwing out type-writers and buying mini-computers so we transformed our job to renting and selling mini-computers. We survived quite well and sold my company in 1999.

I was almost unemployed in 1990 and we wanted to take our business to sell Unix workstations. There I was getting brilliant insights with new requirements that were routed from me before the purchasing officers. That gave an opportunity for me to start a newlettter. I used ask the engineers about what I should be writing that other magazines weren't doing. My newsletter had 5000 odd subscribers and it was just time that Linus Torvalds released Linux. This led me start selling Linux to the engineers, books related to Linux and also software applications, But it was starting to get difficult just selling free software in a capitalist setup. Which led me to conclude that there was no future to selling of free software.

Fast forward, at one of the Linux user group meetings I ran into the guy developing ethernet drivers for Linux, which he was giving out for free in return he got the whole Linux OS that could be used on as many computers as one liked. During the same time big companies like IBM and GE were selling free copies of Unix for various reasons. Seeing these things it struck me that there is a business model to be built around the setup. This was during 1994-95. OK, we are shipping software for free and we could not make money in the software business and what if we were not in the software business. This was a similar analogy to legal profession where once a technicality is proved in the court of law to defend a victim the same can be used by other lawyers everytime as a precedent. So this was similar to a open source model. Same was the case with Heinz ketchup. They built a brand that captured 60% of the market even though anybody could introduce a ketchup product with off-the-shelf preparation and sell. A brand stands for consistency, quality and reliability, that's what Heinz brand stood for.

The top thing we did while selling open source was give away things for free with license to modify the code, that any engineer could modify. And engineers were the target audience. We were making money by selling support services. And it turned out that 10% of the customers who were ready to pay for the services offered by Red Hat was enough to sustain the business, voila! we had a business model. This is the case with a horizontal technology. What if you are in the vertical market? You have to look for one or two predominant feature that customers are willing to pay for. And there is a chance to turn your customer to engineer features in your product. But open source model does not fit all domains or all areas

Q&A

Q: Do you see potential for companies in open source model looking at the projects like OLPC targeted at bottom of the pyramid?
A: The strength of Unix and Linux was servers, Apache server, DNS server, virtual servers etc that helped us compete with Microsoft that has all the applications. So if somebody had used Amazon or Ebay which were running Linux servers, then people were already using Linux albeit indirectly. During 1995 it was my prediction that small devices like Net applicance and Net books were the future. Because we find a decade later that more and more applications sit on the server.

Q: What is the big idea behind Lulu?
A: Most of the code that goes into Linux comes from the altruistic engineer who code in their free time. That used to bother me. And similarly I ran into authors who could not publish books that were refused by publishers. But then there is the Internet which was connecting people for a trivial cost. The concept behind Lulu is to give the advantage to whoever has the creative writing capability be it photographer, designer, businessmen etc. We want to help readers identify the long tail products. We also merged with a team here in Bangalore called WeRead that made social-networking application to discover long tail products.

Thank You

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Building a business that impacts lives by Abhishek Sinha from Eko

2009-01-23T07:28:00.001-08:00

Most companies and startups in India are Internet centric, we want to see the brick and mortar product, the real product from real companies. So we take a look at building a business that impacts lives by Abhishek Sinha from Eko

Abhishek says - What does Eko do? Imagaine MVNO, Eko is a MVNO for a bank. Business correspondent for the SBI, leverage the existing infrastructure. Getting an account is very simple like getting a pre-paid connection. All you need to have is a cell phone. Last year we did a pilot with 2000 customers. Launching in Delhi and Bihar by Jan, Feb to tap domestic the remittance space. Target customer base are the ones who don't have a bank account, we teach just one transaction to the customer, that debits and credits. All prepaid user just do *123# to view bank account balance. All transactions are designed to be missed calls, there is no call center or IVR or employees. There is a particular syntax that the customer dials. Low cost RSA paper device for authentication.

Clapping from the audience!!

Q&A

Wouldn't there be fraud? No the missed call syntax just works fine due to RSA paper device for authentication

What kind of market research or customer research have you done? Honestly, Eko has not really done market research but we have done pilots. G-Cash, mPaise are previous examples that have worked already. There are standards being formed in association with RBI, banks and telecom operators which will help in the long run.

There are a lot of companies getting into the same act. What is beyond mobile payments? The game really changes when you have millions of customers when you get into BOP and microfinance.

Are you doing is there as NGO? Is there money in rural India? No we are not a NGO, we a for-profit company. And there is a lot of money to be made in rural India. But the services model is not the same in rural conditions. Leverage existing infrastructure, no creation of new infrastructure.

What similar companies don't have? Everybody can adopt technology, but what is lacking in India is the distribution channel. There is tremendous opportunity in rural services, it may even take going and living in rural India for a month to know the ground situations. The telco model is phenomenal.

Branding in rural sector? Not much experience, but you can look at the moneylenders and take a cue. I go with the SBI brand and not Eko brand. Lower the barrier of adoption. Look at customer service and evolve it with local call center in their own language.

Any other thoughts? I am on the remittance and savings side but lot of other microfinance institutions are in the credit business. We are the DSA of the bank.

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Freemium vs paid business models

2009-01-23T06:37:00.001-08:00

Conversations section of Proto 5: Shalin from 10miles.com and Amit Ranjan Slideshare were the panelists

Amit says - Not an expert just have a headstart as against others in entrepreneurship and monetization and web 2.0
We are tending towards what can be described as freemium model. His previous engagement had a transactional model it was online research application. He did read books on monetization,feels that technology can change, companies can change,but laws of economies don't change, there are no free lunches. There is no such thing as completely free model for a significant amount of time. Many products that look free are not actually free, there is something called cross-subsidizing where certain products of a company are paid by revenues from some other products.
Basic rationale behind freemium model - Rationale lies in the Long Tail concept explained by Chris Anderson. There is an oversupply in the market. Traditional demand and supply model says there is a scarcity problem. But that is not true when seen in the context of technology businesses. The cost of setting up the business is going down, due to various reasons, open source software, hardware costs going down, labor costs are going down, the combined effect is cost of creating something has drastically gone down. What it essentially means is that for freemium model, the marginal cost of production goes down day by day. Paid part would be very small part of the whole deal but still the business is able to make profits. For example, Skype and Skype services. Slideshare always has internal discussions about growth and monetization. If you try to monetize, the growth starts falling. The goal is see values in the products. Try to monetize the parts that create extra value for a small number of willing paid customers. Take advantage of the free model to drive more users. There are on right and wrong answers, choices have to be made depending on the features and customer strength. Build your product with features such that is used by large number of users.

Shalin says - They produce desktop products, make it shareware version, where users pay after trial
1omiles started designing banners in flash for free. A canadian player came and said that it's not a good way to sell the product for free, it's worth some money. Entrepreneurs generally undervalue their own products. Learing pricing is something entrepreneurs have to get learning. Started pricing our products at $99 and today it sells at $500. When your product is paid, the feedback that you get is generally stronger and better. Pricing your products need not be a bad idea.Pricing it right comes with experience.Both models work but the space your products is targeted.

Q&A

How long can the advertising or the Google's free model can last? As long as you can hold the users eyeballs. Internet advertising today has almost become akin to media advertising model. The larger the risk and the time you wait in the market, the larger is the payback. Some of the great companies on the web are really innovative and the pay back comes from larger acquisitions.

Will users revolt against services that are free someday? Not really, websites with hoards of Google ads are still watched by people. Skype has 8% users who pay for the service but is still works

What is the future of Slideshare? We may try to introduce features like webinar, online classrooms etc and see how they can be monetized

What are the advantages or disadvantages of growth and freemium? The technology companies sometimes may find it hard to handle growth and security risks for large sites may increase. Working capital is covered and ROI is growing. Shalin says that he never thought Google Adsense would never work. But they experimented with a Web 2.0 product that was search engine optimized and they could make 5% more money that the cost of hosting. Companies don't make money in a short period of time, it mights take upto 5 years to break even.

PROTO5 Live Coverage - Noddler and IndiaKhelo

2009-01-23T04:40:00.001-08:00

Proto live coverage at bangaloreinc

Noddler - provides heavily customizable and personalized speech or voice technology for setting up IVR related applications. Company incubated from IIT Madras. They think voice is the next most popular interface. Mainly create voice interfaces. Services to farmers, business to make voice based speech recognition applications.

Noddler today launched Noddler Sandbox feature at Proto 5. With the sandbox businesses can build speech menus that are very user friendly.

Q&A

Accuracy of speech to command translation or speech recognition? Patent pending algorithms, currently targeted to English, Hindi and Tamil, plans to extend it to 10 more languages.

How are you different from big guys like Nuance? Off the shelf technology, what is different is patent for a new way of doing speech recognition. Nuance speech recognition engine being used.

Are businesses really interested in going of your service and what's the resources required? What about user acquisition? Yes, Noddler would not have too many users, but businesses can themselves promote this technology platform. Specialized numbers are generated for businesses.

What is the competition for you in India and globally? Uniqueness of Noddler is letting customers themselves to create voice interfaces. Ubona and OnMobile in India but our technology is quite different

How will you be profitable? Companies more than decades experience are not making money. So how will you break it? Tellme was acquired by Microsoft. Ubona and LatticeBridge that have worked on the services model are being profitable. But the product model has to be figured out

IndiaKhelo - reinvent the way India play sports, privatize it. Affiliate system where corporates, schools and organizations would register to IndiaKhelo and conduct matches.

IndiaKhelo provides connecting people living in different parts of the country who are sports enthusiasts. IndiaKhelo report card helps you track many things. PT teachers conduct inter-class, inter-school sports events and uploads the same to their site. This allows as an incentive to the people involved also who can brag about their IndiaKhelo scores. They also showed a demo of the profiles created by affiliated schools. Uploading of results by authenticated users. Is it a website? Not really, there could be an IVR system to update the results. Affiliation with 100's of schools and colleges are not really able to show their talent to other people. Its a platform for everyone to show off their talent. Even gullies and streets are open to participate. Finally its a talent website and empower sports people

Q&A

Honesty rating - Teams and affiliates can create and rate trust of the users of the system

Credibility? They will have authenticated users upload data to the central site. Even gullies and streets are verified

Whats the motivation for monitors? Looking for sports passionate people.

Is it same as Merasports.com? Not really, they only provide messaging system, we provide complete profile to be preserved on the site

What is the coverage of sports? Many sports like Golf and Squash are also included. Lot of politics in Indian sports selection, so IndiaKhelo is looking at big scenario of privatizing and spreading a fair culture amongst India sports system

Revenue model? Charged to end users via the schools and colleges. Revenue sharing with affiliates

What are the rules? The rules are fair and same for everyone

Stay tuned for more updates

PROTO5 Live Coverage - iFlapp and Lords Automotives

2009-01-23T04:08:00.001-08:00

Stay tuned. Get the live coverage of Proto 5 first at bangaloreinc

iFlapp - is a usb device specialist making all kinds of softwares and applications and utilities to be available all on a mobile USB device

I-Flapp Apps-D, an all new technology that will add a spark of innovation and ease that will liberate you.

I-Flapp enables you to transform portable storage device into a private PC.

Carry applications ranging from Photoshop, Microsoft office, Adobe reader and much more.

Copious backups and copies. Just innovation, mobility and convenience in your palm

Q&A-

Is it a case of application virtualization where any application should work with any OS? They have plans to extend the offering to Mac, right now its a windows only product.

Lords Automotives is into R&D of alternative fuels and services for the automotive industry. Solution designed is a two wheeler LPG kit

Drastic reduction in emissions and totally safe

Dual fuel operation ie runs on LPG and petrol

Nearly 50% saving in the operations

Strong IPR

Fulfills national and international safety norms

How they will launch?

70% indian vehicles are two wheelers

Launch through dealership across entire India

Then showed pictures of Lords kit fitted to a Kinetic Activa, it was beneath the seat and from outside it is never evident that the fitting exists

Q&A

Is customization possible? Can be customized according to requirement, but currently system is only fitted to Kinetic Activa. Cracking bikes is a tougher challenge

Cost of the kit? Expected to be Rs 8000 on road

Are there enough CNG or fuel stations? Yes LPG stations are 10 times are higher

How is the warranty handled and what is break even? For warranty, no problems, doesn't make great changes to the vehicle. Break even within 7 months

Competing with electric charging and compressed air models? Electric models have to currently comprise on weight and other limitations. Our solution is more flexible with LPG and petrol. Compressed air will take a lot of time to come to the market.

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Yoplr and Lifemojo

2009-01-23T03:39:00.001-08:00

LIVE COVERAGE

Kiruba Shankar and Miss Chakravarthy giving an introduction for the event showcase section. They are playing a movie Proto.in for the dummies [ it's a spoof on American Idol] for us about startups, supreme confindence, pitching to the VC, user acceptance, user generated content, synergy, user delight, WOW, and more, validation, mentoring, scaling, closure.

They talked about NEN startups content that had 588 nominations this year also.

THE SHOWCASE - Six(6) companies would give elevator pitch in the forenoon session. Each company gets exactly 6 minutes to make the pitch.

Yoplr is a travel planing, sharing travel diary and more for all the travel enthusiasts out there. Travel planning in 3 stages, inspire, plan and personalize

Yoplr online travel planing site

We checkout the site, and it is instantly clear that the design is infectious and very well laid out. The sections and UI are well made. The destinations are summarized into categories based on facilities, attractions, features like temples, ports, statues, holy rivers, hills, lakes, theme parks, palaces etc. You can also select whether you are traveling with friends, family, family with kids etc. Each location when clicked also shows a locative map on the left. You can create detailed itineraries for multiple day trips. Route planner and way to destination to visiting places is also shown. Itineraries can be downloaded as documents and shared via mail. You can also request price quotations from travel agents at a short notice.

Q&A

And what is the revenue model attached? Consolidate the distribution channel, follow a B2C model and revenue sharing with specialized holiday makers.

Do you have timings and ticket prices about services at tourist destinations? Yes

What does Yoplr mean? And how is planning done by holiday makers? Yoplr mean Your Personalized Planner (could not find a better name) They have a dedicated messaging platform to interact with holiday makers and travel agents. Holiday makers and agents are screened and added and they actually bid for customers on Yoplr

Sustainability of business model? Entire software is copyrighted and patent protected. The whole site is automated and highly scalable. We are lead generators and point of traffic origin for all concerned

The site basically gives location information and and helps in a great way to plan for a trip. Additionally you can update about the travel in your travel diary. We had covered similar startups and services two of them being Mustseeindia and Greatescapes

Lifemojo is a personal health tracker portal providing body analysis, lifestyle analysis, weight tracking , various health reports based on your entered data, health tips, nutrition tips and host of personal heatlh care-taking measures, as well as recommendations for your busily scheduled techno-work life.

Lifemojo features - Before that an update of the latest addition Lifemojo GTalk bot that spews out calories for keyword food items. Just add calories@lifemojo.com to your Gtalk and have access to calories for the food instantly on the IM.

The tracking section allows one to keep count of diet, activity levels, weight, body measurements. But one has to enter all the food data and activity data, you have to at least be enthusiastic enough to enter required data to get the tracking going and working for you. You can maintain calender wise data, view and print history.

One can set goals, like reducing weight in a given time period and track the diet and other factors for the same

Weight and measurements data can be stored date wise and viewed on a monthly variation chart

Generate reports pertaining to weight variation, measurements variation, daily essentials, calories etc

Get a lifestyle analysis also

Jot down and preserve notes ( AJAX powered )

Peruse lifestyle related articles under top rated, nutrition, fitness, wellness, motivation sub-sections

Additionally, you also get access to health guides, health tips, nutritional of food items, activity-to-calories burnt information

They currently have a B2B offerings that directly provides services to business customers like doctors, medical practitioners etc. They want to expand as a B2C platform for the entire country to showcase healthcare, fitness related products that they are going to monetize. Revenue sharing between the platform users and Lifemojo. They are also going to sell fitness and health products.

We has covered Lifemojo at bangaloreinc here. READ more about Lifemojo here.

PROTO5 Live Coverage: Introductory talk by Atul Chitnis

2009-01-23T02:29:00.001-08:00

Vijay Anand, the organizer started off welcoming everyone to the startup event in Bangalore. He pointedly referred to a new government initiative by introducing a special fund for supporting the entrepreneurs across the country aimed at taking the lowdown of recession and economic downturn (we ll let you know more about this as and when we have information). So he says this is the best time to go do startups with the best talent available to be hired.

Atul Chitnis giving the introductory talk -

He says - "The World is Changing" - Realignments happening

A colored man with an Islamic name is the president of USA ( something unbelievable a few months ago )

The largest banks in the world are collapsing and this is markedly leading businesses to redefine

Google just declared a loss ( Oh! what went wrong )

Microsoft is laying of 5000 people ( for the first time??)

The Personal Computer is dying

The world is changing - Parameters of doing businesses are undergoing transformations and it has happened before

A recap from the past -

1987 - Lesson #1 - If the product is built well and sold at a good price, people will buy. We sold bundled utilities at Rs 100 per diskette

1989 - Lesson #2 - A product is more than just code, its a lot more. Understand what the customer wants, it' just not about buying and selling, the customer is looking for a solution

1990 - Lesson #3 - You can create markets. Never think that a certain new product would not work, because there is not market for it. If the market doesn't exist you can create one.

1992 - Lesson #4 - It's not the tools you use, it's how you use them. It doesn't matter how you build a product, what framework or tools you use, as long as the customer exists and buys your product, just improvise on how they are used.

2008 - Lesson #5 - All lessons will be forgotten. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Be ready for change

Hints for building products -

Today is history

Anticipate the future and build for it

Assume connectivity - For technology products look at connectivity, the bandwidth is always increasing and connectivity is getting better

Local storage no longer matters

Business models - Advertising doesn't pay (unless you are Google or Yahoo)

Small is big

Biggest sellers today are mobile products

Build products for your customers

Don't build products for VCs

VC funding is not a viable Business model (unless you ar ea VC)

MORE COMING... STAY TUNED...

News: Ghajini 3D game, iXigo hotel search, mKhoj - VuClip partnership

2009-01-22T12:57:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 2min 52 sec - 3min 36 sec]

(1) One of the first 3D videogame's in the country is going be based on recent Bollywood smash-hit "Ghajini" being developed by FX labs. The Indian animation and gaming industry has been predicted to touch$1.3 billion this year from $300 million in 2006 by NASSCOM . The PC game is being marketed worldwide by Indian film distributor Eros International.

(just in via reuters)

"There are no Indian games so we wanted to bring Indian games to the audiences here and we built India's first 3D game," said Sashi Reddy, head of FX labs, which developed the game.
"We are seeing that actually there is a lot of interest for games in India and this is showing that there is a big future for the game industry," Reddy added.

(2) iXigo launches one of the largest hotel search engine inventory - iXigo has launched one of the worlds largest hotel search in real-time with more than 2,20,000 entries in the inventory catering to hotels, hostels, heritage properties, serviced apartments, home-stays, guest houses and villas.

(just in via IPR)

Speaking on the occasion of the launch, Mr. Aloke Bajpai, Founder & CEO remarked – “With our ability to integrate niche hotel aggregators quickly, we have gone from being India’s biggest, to being the world’s biggest hotel search in just over eight months, now, aggregating nearly 50 hotel booking providers globally”. Nitin Gurha, VP, Travel Partnerships added - “Now travelers have a uniquely comprehensive, unbiased and easy-to-use metasearch platform for narrowing down their choice of hotels based on their preferences of location, amenities, rates and hotel booking site. Hotel sellers worldwide get a neutral and unbiased ‘hotel marketplace’ that not only acts as a marketing medium, but also generates highly qualified online-leads for fulfillment. Our platform allows consumers to choose hotels based not only on price, but also on the unique value each and every property delivers”.
iXiGO.com had launched its Indian hotel search engine in April, 2008 and has since established content partnerships with multiple hotel aggregators including HostelsClub, HotelsCombined, Travelguru, Inasra and Intech. These relationships allow travelers using iXiGO.com to search and compare prices across nearly 50 hotel booking websites worldwide and give consumers more than 6 million real time bookable hotel-rooms. In addition to descriptions and pictures of hotels, this launch also introduces some cutting-edge features and usability tools never seen before on hotel search sites, including city-maps with hotel markers, city-landmarks and pictures, search by distance from an address, location-based search, filters for amenities, property-types and hotel-chains, aggregation of travel reviews from multiple review sites and comparison of hotel room-rates for the exact same hotel-room from multiple hotel websites on a single page.

(3) VuClip and mKhoj have joined hands to form a mobile advertising partnership. Vuclip is a specialist in mobile video search and delivery with its mobile video platform and mKhoj is a leading mobile ad network. Both of them compliment well to provide combined services to their users.

(just in via IPR)

Amit Gupta, Co-Founder and VP Business Development, mKhoj said, “We are happy to be working with Vuclip. Videos, which have always been some of the most popular mobile content for users around the world, are the key driver for this partnership. Vuclip is the most widely used mobile video search and delivery portal in the world and we look forward to assisting Vuclip in its efforts to monetise its mobile traffic. mKhoj is committed to delivering targeted ads backed by advanced analytics. We will also assist Vuclip in expanding its network of online-to-mobile content publishers by introducing our own publisher clients to Vuclip’s video API platform. We look forward to a fruitful partnership.”
“We are excited about the prospects for our partnership with mKhoj,” said Ashwin Puri, VP of Business Development and Marketing at Vuclip. “Firstly, we are confident that mKhoj will enable us to maximize our monetization efforts around the globe. mKhoj’s proven high fill rates and impressive eCPM’s were key elements in our decision to work with them. In addition, we look forward to working with mKhoj’s publisher clients to power their online video content in mobile through our proprietary “plug and play” video search and delivery platform. Our goal is to bring video content to mobile consumers around the world – whenever and wherever they want it. We believe that mKhoj will help us in that effort.”

KTwo Connectivity - Bridging the last metre wireless connectivity

2009-01-22T03:21:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 1min 21 sec - 1min 42 sec]

KTwo Technologies provides last meter connectivity products in the wireless domain. The company specializes in design of products like bluetooth modules, bluetooth protocol stack, handheld wireless transaction terminals, audio devices, biometric ignition system and bluetooth safety solutions.

Some of their products include:

Bluetooth Modules & Starter Kit CE, FCC & BQB certified - Bluetooth® Modules can transform wired products into wireless products. These are ready–to–use radio / baseband modules that can be implemented in any kind of electronic device to provide a complete wireless solution.

C – Blue™ – The World’s Smallest Memory Footprint Bluetooth Protocol Stack - C - Blue^™is the Bluetooth^® protocol stack certified for BQB Version 2.0

Legion - Integrated Wireless Transaction Terminal - KTwo's Legion handheld device addresses all Last Metre Connectivity™ needs of field personnel by GSM/CDMA capability along with features enabling biometric device, camera, card swipe and printer.

Cytosight - CytoSight is an integrated system capable of digital image capture from Microscopes, assist in analysis, provides for composition of a report and communicate the report with embedded images over secure electronic media such as Email, Internet, LAN, WAN and also on to mobile phones.

Krystalk™ – Wireless Audio Kit - KrysTalk™ Audio kit is a bi-directional wireless Audio device based on Bluetooth® technology. KTwo's KrysTalk™ Audio Kit provides a low cost, low power, small form factor, short – range wireless audio solution.

SecureStart - KTwo's Biometric Ignition System is a product designed to improve vehicle security by authenticating the users of the vehicle before ignition. The product has the ability to enroll valid users of the vehicle by storing their fingerprints in a database. The ignition is allowed to turn on only when there is a valid match of the fingerprint of the user and the one that is stored in the database. The product also provides an option for bypassing the biometric system in case of failure, or for any other reason.

KSpeak - K – Speak is a Bluetooth^® based solution for safe & easy use of mobile phones while driving

iDiva : Portal for Indian women

2009-01-22T01:48:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [1min 19 sec - 1min 39 sec]

iDiva is a women's portal launched by Times Internet Ltd dedicated to the Indian women. It encourages women to be more internet-savvy and get all kinds of help and guidance plus a space to hang out on the net. It is basically a content portal with access to general and specific information like relationships, style and beauty, entertainment, fitness, travel, money, love and more.The portal provide following sections:

Style and beauty - One can find information related to beauty, fashion, style, glamor and bridal needs in this section. Home remedies for beauty, celebrity style consulting is provided

Lounge - provides access to latest gossip, divas in focus, food, entertainment, books, gizmos, travel, games, events and parties. Perfectly cool stuff to browse in leisure or fix party events

Relationships - provides information related to dating, love, sex, men, family and friends, and mainly rediscovering yourself.

Fitness - features fitness data, detox and spa info, gynecology needs etc

Work & life - Provides money tips, academics info, career grooves, balancing life acts and more

Astrology - This a special section focusing on astrology and advice for those interested in getting to know a bit more about the trends. It includes horoscope, tarot, numerology, feng shui, chinese zodiac and downloads

iDiaries - is a blog like section to share writings, thoughts and ideas. A sphere to open up yourself and listen to what others have to say. You get to interact with all kinds of people with different backgrounds and professions and their thinkings.

My Corner - is a section to aggregate your preferred content like RSS feeds, favorites, alerts and mails, astrology, articles etc

It appears as yet another initiative to tap into a vertical that is focusing on women. It greatly depends if they are able to provide great content and replenish it periodically.

If there are female readers, do let us know what you feel about iDiva. Would you use it? What are your expectations?

Healthcare in India at $10.3 billion by 2010

2009-01-22T01:24:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 36 sec - 44 sec]

The annual report on health care in India by Boston Analytics has pegged the healthcare industry to grow to $10.3 billion by 2010. The report is titled "Healthcare in India" and factors affecting the growth are

rising life expectancy

rising household income

increasing penetration of health insurance

government action

rising incidence of lifestyle-related diseases

(Source)

This report is part of a series based on the results of monthly surveys for the Boston Analytics Consumer Sentiment Index (BACSI). It focuses on India’s healthcare sector and captures consumer responses to questions in lifestyles and attitudes towards healthcare, emergency and specialist medical care, prescription and OTC drugs, health insurance sources and coverage.

“The BACSI provides a wealth of information on consumer attitudes that is useful to policymakers, companies, and investors involved in consumer-centric industries,” Rashid Bilimoria, CEO and Co-Founder, Boston Analytics stated in a press release.

SearchMyCampus Enables Student Placements across India

2009-01-21T07:36:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [ 1min 40 sec - 2min 5 sec]

Summary: As a result of popular demand by users, SearchMyCampus is expanding its reach to include universities from across the country. Jobs classifieds will now be promoted among students and employers in universities like Viswesvarya Technical University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and others that have recently been added to the website.

Students from colleges across India can rest easy knowing that their placement needs will be taken care of by SearchMyCampus. The campus based classifieds portal has widened its focus to serve the needs of universities from all over the country. “Until now, Delhi University and other universities in the Delhi-NCR had been the primary focus of our marketing activities. However, we have realized the need for similar services in campuses across the country, and are gradually expanding our reach with the help of campus representatives and other forms of promotion” says Peyush Bansal, the founder of the website.

While the level of demand for housing and coaching has varied from university to university, jobs classifieds have been popular with students from every college in India. Apart from Delhi and Amity University, the concept has already become popular in IIM Lucknow, Punjab University, Mumbai University, Osmania University, Anna University and Bangalore University among others. Several new universities have been added to the website in the past month based on demand from users. Some like Viswesvarya Technical University, Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University, Lovely Professional University, and Dr MGR University have become popular with students within weeks of being listing on the website.

The ultimate objective of SearchMyCampus job classifieds is to enable students to connect with employers on a common platform with minimum interference from external parties. Students benefit from access to hundreds of employers interested in recruiting from their university. Employers benefit from targeted advertising to students from universities that offer courses relevant to their job openings. An employer looking for software engineers can view resumes exclusively from IIT, while an employer looking for management executives can view resumes from Amity Business School to make the recruitment process more efficient. “We hope that there will be active participation from both students and employers in each campus portal so that our objective is met” says Bansal.

About SearchMyCampus: SearchMyCampus is a venture of Valyoo Technologies Private Limited. The website was launched in December 2007. It is a campus classifieds website that serves basic student needs i.e. jobs, housing, coaching, gadgets, books, transport and events.The website presently caters to over 70 universities in India.

Suno Dil Ki Awaaz: Tata Indicom enters Second Life

2009-01-21T06:54:00.001-08:00

Estimated reading time [23 sec - 29 sec]

Tata Teleservices Ltd becomes the first Indian telecom operator to enter the Second Life online virtual world. We had recently covered Indus Geeks and now Tata Indicom has partnered with this Virtual World startup to launch a brand campaign "Suno Dil Ki Awaaz" on Second Life. It is basically a talent hunt competition wherein Tata Indicom would create an identity through an island listing the company's products and offerings. Second life visitors can drop in at the island and participate in the talent hunt.

(just in via tech2)

"With the exciting Second Life initiative, we continue with our tradition of launching many industry-firsts," Tata Teleservices Limited's Chief Marketing Officer Lloyd Mathias said. "The digital world is evolving at a fantastic pace - cutting across geographical and cultural barriers - and we firmly believe that the Virtual World has a huge outreach potential for businesses. As a company at the cutting edge of technology, TTSL always scouts for relevant and innovative technologies and opportunities. We feel our association with Second Life will redefine the concept of outreach and take digital interactivity to the next level - for this will allow Tata Indicom to engage with the growing digital audience in a manner that is relevant to them."