Pluggd.in’s deals for startups is back and we are glad to announce the first deal exclusively for Pluggd.in readers – 50% discount on Recruiterbox, a super cool job application tracking tool.

Deal Description

Hiring isn’t easy. You advertise a new job opening and soon enough you have resumes coming to your inbox, interspersed with all your usual email. It is tedious to download, open and screen each candidate’s resume, not to mention tracking interviews and the review process. Recruiterbox helps you to organize all hiring related information in one centralized online location. [you can read pluggd.in’s coverage of Recruiterbox].

Registration Link

Please register through this link only to get 50% Special Plans, exclusive to Pluggd.in readers.

Deal Expiry Date: Feb 29th, 2012.

More details @Deals.Pluggd.in.

[If you are a company whose business caters to SMB crowd, do connect with Pluggd.in’s sales team (sales@pluggd.in) to put up a deal on the site.]

Today’s ToI has a brief quote from Sanjay Guleria, cofounder of Exclusively.

Exclusively.in, backed by the same investors (Accel, Tiger and Helion), has sacked several employees and is up for sale.The founders of the fashion flash sales site are now focusing their resources on their private label portal, SherSingh.com. “Currently we are running Exclusively.in but we are focusing on our private label business which requires less human capital”. [source]

Exclusively raised $16mn funding from Tiger Global Management, with participation from Accel Partners India and Helion Venture Partners in May 2011 (and $2.8mn in November 2010) and pivoted from member only site to a traditional ecommerce model in October 2011.

“We saw the future of sales shifting on our site from a members-only to an open site due to an overwhelming demand for our products that short-lived flash sales could not meet. We felt the best way to service that demand was to move away from a consignment model in order to provide fully curated collections with a much broader selection and a full range of sizing to a wider consumer base.”  [Sanjay Guleria]

The company has laid off several employees and as per reports, the site is up for sale now. Exclusively.

As far as the company is concerned, they will now focus on Shersingh, a private label portal they launched in November 2011.

Recommended Read: Ostrich time for E-Commerce Companies in India?

Forum Discussion: Predict future mergers and acquisitions in Indian E-commerce?

People who have done it, never done it, have no plans of doing a startup, all together are calling a wolf in this deal.

This is the venture eco-system, this is how it is played. Companies are built, bought and sometimes brought down. Tejit, my previous startup went through two two (sic.) successive acquisitions in less than three years…and I’m still working. I am still below my quota of Fuck You money. Irrespective of what the end-game is, which seldom is a stalemate, the Silicon valley eco-system is built on two simple things:

1. Every startup is a success
2. No startup is a failure

This is exactly what needs to happen to India and this deal is one of the threads in arriving at that goal.

After the previous exits, the reason I was able to raise my hand and fill a gap in the Indian startup ecosystem because the startup experience gave me enough confidence to do another one, though Morpheus was on the other side of the fence and helping people getting started.

The current consolidation of Flipkart buying Letsbuy, irrespective of the dilapidated state of the latter is a good thing. Why?

1. It gives a necessary boost to the eco-system that bets can be paid off, when the vision is right but the markets are tough. If VCs are forced to write these deals off, it brings a black mark in their report card to their investors (LPs or Limited Partners). However, we as entrepreneurs need to keep the funding cycle alive and rotating every few years.
2. Venture Capital is an between food chain of money flowing from people who have it. Why have a spock mark when you can avoid it? While getting a degree, it’s okay to get a summer (or suppli) as long as you come out in that 4 years. Some of the startups are like that failed exam but the venture eco-system allows for “exits”. Would you want the annotation of “suppli” in your degree? Nor do they.
3. Entrepreneurs who did “okay” in the current startup become capable of taking even bolder bets. If the start-up simply fails, not that there are no learnings from the same, but parking an almost out of gas car securely is much better than leaving it in the middle of the road.
4. For the uninitiated who do not understand the intricacies of the deals, it’s a positive story and brings more people to take the plunge and start their own venture.

Yes, it’s a good PR. Can be written in bold in the resume and can even make you a VC, irrespective of the nature of the exit. That’s how sweet these exits are.

Off-topic: The most worry-some part of the current cynicism is not just the angst against the deals but the so called keepers of the ecosystem advising entrepreneurs to keep away from investors and also advising them to bootstrap their startups to death. They are at total loss to understand that these are venture startups and not a “baniya ki dukaan.”

[Guest article contributed by Indus Khaitan. Reproduced from his blog.]

[Adds Ashish: It’s not about being cynic etc – the key is to keep learning from others’ failure and frankly, startups cannot afford to run against wrong metrics. No matter who you are and what your venture is about, the market will decide your fate (and not blogs/media/Facebook comments/Tweets etc). At the end of the day, you will have to answer for yourself (and customers, investors). Like we have been saying ‘the access to easy money’ has been a culprit and no ecosystem evangelism will justify bad decisions made by entrepreneurs or investors. In short, exercise your due diligence. Don’t just raise money because it’s a cool thing to do, raise money because you are in a business of building business and not in the business of buying adwords/TV slots.]

Recommended Read: Notions in India on Startups – Are Few Startups Spoiling the Ecosystem?

Also read: A Perspective on Lifeblob-Printo Deal [Distress Sale vs. A Product Story?]

Here is the official press release:

Flipkart.com, India’s largest e-commerce player in physical products has acquired Letsbuy, the second largest retailer in electronics. With this move, Flipkart has firmly established itself as the leader in the consumer electronic space.  This deal will also allow for a faster rate of expansion for both companies – giving the combined entity a much larger share in the consumer electronics market.

The acquisition is a combination of cash and equity. The founders of Letsbuy along with their 350+ team will continue to function independently, with the added advantage of now being able to access Flipkart’s superior technology platform and supply chain capabilities.

Speaking about the acquisition, Flipkart’s co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal said, “This acquisition fits into our strategy of building dominant shares in all categories we operate in. We are already leaders in the books and media verticals. Given that we managed to build a leadership position in consumer electronics as well since its launch in early 2011, it made sense for us to consolidate when we saw this opportunity. This acquisition opportunity came at a very attractive price for us and the timing has also been ideal. The synergies will now allow us to accelerate faster and get to a share similar to what we enjoy in the online books category”.

Letsbuy.com founder & CEO Hitesh Dhingra said “Letsbuy.com has experienced a phenomenal growth in the last one year and holds a dominant position in e-commerce industry in India. We believe that our expertise in 3Cs* category matched with Flipkart’s superior technology and supply chain could be a killer combination. The Company had a choice to raise a large round of funding as well, however aligning our business with the largest player in the market made sense as the resultant synergies will guarantee our customers the best possible service, price and selection. ”

While the finer details on mutual synergies are being worked out by both teams at present, the move has been welcomed by investors of both firms. Helion, the lead investor in Letsbuy.com has said it believes that the combined strength of the two leading players is formidable and will be able to deliver a stronger value proposition to customers.
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* 3C’s – Computers, Communication and Consumer electronics

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Recommended Read: This is why Amazon’s Junglee is gonna SMASH the B**ls of Indian e-Commerce players

Our take: Welcome Junglee! You have set the house jungle on fire.

A general perception is that LetsBuy was doing quite well, though the reality is that it wasn’t. And here is why:

1. Cost of customer acquisition. At one  point, LetsBuy banners were all over the web and while it did helped in creating a brand, creating first time purchase etc- but that’s never a real business unless the margins are high. In the case of Indian ecommerce, cost of customer acquisition is extremely high unless you get customers to do repeat purchase.

And you need deep pockets to justify those customer acquisition cost.

2. Tiger Global: The real reason for LetsBuy acquisition is their prime investor, Tiger Global. Tiger pulled off from the company and attempt to raise further money couldn’t go through.

Reason?

High valuation. No other investor was ready to touch LetsBuy owing to the valuation they got during the first round.

LetsBuy : Customer Acquisition Cost Vs.ARPU Data

Data #1: ARPU
LetsBuy’s highest selling product was memory cards and 65% of the orders placed were of size less than Rs. 300 price.

Data #2: Customer Acquisition Cost
On an average, LetsBuy average customer acquisition cost was Rs. 750/.
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Add delivery cost etc, do the math and you’d know why ecommerce is a game that either needs deep pockets or you’d need to sell high value products. (we aren’t talking about margins yet).

As far as Flipkart acquiring LetsBuy is concerned, it’s no BIG deal. In all probability, it is forced by investors and not a conscious choice (the way chakpak acquisition happened). Given that there aren’t any complementary categories/skills between the two companies, this is actually a bad news for Indian ecommerce ecosystem.

But then, this was bound to happen [read: Are Indian VCs Hedging Their E-commerce Risk?].

Welcome 2012 bash. So what are ecommerce entrepreneurs wearing this year?

PS: Welcome Junglee.

• From Pluggd.in Forum: The coming e-commerce shakeout (?)
• Opinion: Stop Blowing Our [Ecommerce] Bubbles

Update: The news is confirmed by both the companies.

* – the deal was first reported by Medianama.

The company is betting on the fact that lower payment gateway charges will get more event managers to get online and start using the platform.

Here is an interview with Naidu Darapaneni, Founder of MeraEvents

Pluggd.in: In general, what has been your insight/market understanding before taking this step?

MeraEvents: We are seeing more than 200% growth YOY. The number of event are increasing very steadily. MeraEvents sees more than 1000+ new events added every month.  We know that MICE* Industry still not organized sector and not even 20% of the events are online now so we feel there is a huge scope for this industry to be online. As the convenience of buying tickets online increasing we are expected this industry would grow very rapidly. 

Based on our experience 5% is lot of cost for the Event Organizers from their ticket value. The penetration to online ticket sales are low due to this reason. We decided to reduce the price to more affordable way. Company might loose this additional 2.5% revenue but if the transaction volume increase it would benefit the industry a lot and in turn MeraEvents would be successful.

Pluggd.in: Are you getting specific discount from payment gateways? Still have a margin?

MeraEvents: As the volume of the transactions are increasing I am able to negotiate betters rates with payment gateways.  Right now we are passing the actual payment gateway cost directly to organizers but we still make some margin on CODs. The COD transactions also increasing, usually COD Transaction cost is half the payment gateway cost. As the volume increases we can able to negotiate better rates with payment gateways and it would leave some margin to us. Currently our primary revenue generation source is promotion of events, as more no.organizers are using the platform we expect to increase our promotional revenue. We would be charging Rs.1000 for event listing from now onwards and that amount would be waived off if they integrate our ticket widget code in their website. Combination of all above actions would increase our revenue as well as more more organizers would benefit from the system.

Pluggd.in: Future plans?

We are revamping our UI completely as more user-friendly. We would release our next version in next 2-3 months. We are in the process of Releasing iPhone App for MeraEvents and soon other Mobile versions too. We are enhancing the MoozUp – Event Networking Platform with more features and Mobile Apps. We are expanding Sales offices in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi-NCR, Chennai in next 3-6 months

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* MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions.

Will Ayojak and DoAttend follow?

Apart from standard learning concept Skidos aims to impart broader skill sets which are essential for any / everyone and are at times not stressed upon in the school curriculum. These include creativity skills, hobbies, IQ, Entrepreneurship etc.

How Skidos works

Skidos platform can be categorized broadly into four sections:

1. Gaming: Once kid lands on the platform, he can select the section of his age group. With assistance of learning experts from NCERT, games has been designed which fit the requirement of particular age group.

2. Closed social network: Student can connect and communicate with peers and share his performance, activities and rewards. Communication is limited to educational information only.

3. Gratification: As student participates and learns, he is awarded with virtual medals depending upon his performance. Virtual medals can be redeemed for virtual rewards in this section which student can share with other students. As students of this age group like show-casing their accomplishments and belongings, these awards act as recognition amongst peers.

4. Report Card: Performance of a kid can be seen by parents and teachers in this section

Interview with the founding team:

PI: What made you start working on this idea and how long did it take to come up with a commercial offering?

A: Myself (Rajdeep) and Aditya, both alumnus of ISB Hyderabad have been gaming enthusiasts and wanted to build a venture into gaming. However, gaming is considered time wasting activity amongst parents and teachers. This made us think and come up with an idea into integrating gaming with academic curriculum.

We started working on project in Dec 2010, launched beta version in June 2011 and started selling in August 20011.

PI: How did you go about developing the content?

A: We involved kids and teachers. Topics to be taught and learning methodologies were contributed by teachers and subject matter experts.

Whereas, our design and creative team worked with kids of target age groups to come up with games which are engaging for the audience. e.g. we observed that boys are more excited about sports games whereas girls are more engaged with strategy games.

PI: How has been the response of customers especially teachers, parents and schools? How do you promote your product?

A: So far, response has been positive and parents / teachers are welcoming. Currently we have 6,000 registered users and 8 schools in Delhi region are using our offering.

In current curriculum, student has 2 computer classes every week (90 min). When we went to some of those computer classes, we found that there was nothing productive happening in these hours. So, we proposed schools to use our product in computer classes. This idea got support from the schools.

Sales is done to schools, which is challenging task due to involvement of multiple stake holders – teacher, principal board etc. etc. Each of these stakeholders has to be sold the benefits of our offering and this process takes months. We also do marketing on social media and internet to attract parents, however being startup in early stages have not spent on that front.

60% of registered users are from schools where we have sold the product and remaining are parents registering directly.

PI: What’s the revenue model?

A: We offer freemium and usage fee models. If user wants to use platform for free, ads are displayed else one can pay a monthly fee of Rs 199 student to experience ad free activities.

PI: How did you fund the venture and what is the current scale of operation?

A: We are a team of nine (including founders). It’s been funded by the founders so far. Operationally we have started making money but are yet to break even.

Our View: Initiative does serve a need which exists and is targeting the customers in the right fashion meeting needs of various stakeholders – parents, teachers, schools and students. Company also has done work in developing informative and engaging games.

Though, we do feel there can be improvement in UX especially navigation of the platform can be made simpler and intuitive. That will further help in attracting retail customers, who will not get training on how to use the product which might be the case in kids at school.

Do give Skidos a spin and share your opinion of the platform.

Shopveg.in is a Mumbai based startup that also has fresh fruits and vegetables to its inventory list in addition to groceries. Another way it is different from its cousins is that it is perhaps the first of its kind in Mumbai (?). Apart from Zopnow, which is located in South Bangalore, all the other aforementioned online grocery stores are located in the NCR region.

The site is beautifully designed and picking up and adding items to the shopping cart is easy and interactive. The checkout process is smooth, but one thing that I found awkward was the application’s confusion while adding quantities in fractions. When I tried to add half a kg tomatoes, for instance, it neither added it to the cart nor threw up a validation error, though the tomatoes animated and ‘flew’ to the cart. When I tried to add 1.5 kg, it added one kg.

Apart from this minor bug, ShopVeg is a useful app. The delivery is done in either a morning slot (10am—1pm) or an evening slot(8pm—11pm) the same day or the next day. You could also do an advance order or a preferred date and slot. They offer free home delivery for orders above Rs. 200. The current mode of payment is only COD, which makes sense if you are shopping for fruits/veggies only which would cost like a hundred or two but is a bit of a hassle if you buy groceries which can easily cross a couple of thousand rupees, till they finalize the process and start accepting cards online. The store has a carefully drafted termsofuse that also mentions a customer-friendly return and refund policy if a product is unavailable or delivered in an undesirable condition.

The founding team comprises of 2009 IIT graduates Saurabh Dhapodkar and Koushik Mandal, and the operations started August 2011. Currently they cater to a handful of localities in eastern Mumbai (Powai, Ghatkopar, Andheri(E), and Vikhroli), with a store located in each one of those localites, and plan to extend their services to other parts of Mumbai. The promovideo also talks about an android app though I couldn’t find one either on the portal or in the Android market. Looks like this is still in the pipeline.

If you are in Mumbai, give ShopVeg a spin and let us know your experience.

Will the Indian vegetable buyer switch over to a mode where they cannot handpick each and every veggie that goes in the cart? Will such a model last or is it just a new experiment with e-commerce?

How does the service works?

Company reaches out students by mix of online and offline marketing. Kiosk marketing in done in various colleges, where list of books (offered by company) is shared with students.

Books from 8-9 publishers (the ones used by students at Pune University) are available with the company at this point. Textbuk.in maintains stock of books requested frequently and rest are procured as and when request comes in.

Student can send a request online or on phone with details of subject, book name or publication. Textbuk.in team then reverts back to the student to take up the specifics of request. Book is made available to the student in 3 days with COD option. In case of used books, student has the option to accept/reject the book after looking at condition of the book.

Delivery and cash collection team is in-house due to challenges related with external agencies in cash-on-delivery model, which is key requirement of student community.

e-Commerce version of offering is still under development – inventory of books will be available online soon.

Pricing

Student has to pay 75% of MRP in the beginning of semester. 35% of MRP is treated as deposit and refunded at end of semester, on return of book. So, effectively student gets 60% discount on MRP. In addition, there are other schemes / plans available for students.

Company maintains strict return and damage policy. In case of book damage (torn pages, scribbling with pen in blank places etc.) deductions are made in accordance with the policy.

Startup has been in operation for one year now, and plans to focus on Maharashtra in short term. Immediate expansion plans include launch of service in three more universities  including Mumbai, Shivaji and Aurangabad University.

Service of Textbuk.in is somewhat similar to Chegg.com in US, who has helped 18.4 million college students solve a pain point — the high cost of textbooks.

What’s your take on offering of Textbuk.in?

The Bangalore based startup has grabbed clients like Aditya Group of Institutions, Hope College (Australia) and importantly, contract from Kerala government (to automate 13,000 schools with more than 70 lakh students and 1.5 lakh teachers) and claims to reach 20 million + students.

As an OEM, you will be able to set the price and terms for your product while Fedena helps power your solution (you have the freedom to hide or reveal about the partnership). The OEM model’s pricing start at 20,000$ for 100 installation license and will vary based on the further support requirement and geography. And each license above the 100 initial ones will cost 100$ only. The license is valid upto 3 years.

The company has introduced a startup model in the developer license model to allow bootstrapped companies to acquire developer license and start selling apps powered by Fedena. The startup price starts on 2000$ but limited to only 5 sales and only email support available for 6 months.

An interesting growth trajectory, especially given that Fedena has taken an open source approach to the solution and is competing with established players like Blackboard and Moodles.

Recommended Read: “Hiring Was Easy After We Open-sourced Our Code” [ERPNext, Open Source ERP Solution]

All you find in the beta version of Shuffls is picture stories. Every picture has a write up here. Also, you can create albums and share it with the public or a group, a la everybody else who allows photo sharing.

What’s interesting about Shuffls is the ability to watch a live stream of images uploaded, see who adds what instantly. Shuffls has plans of showing all data region based, and limit this data by having a hold on the content of the images. It also provides hot permalinks to images, so a user building a site can have all their images in a private album on Shuffls and store nothing on their server, and use that album to render images on their site. – though that has its own challenges with respect to managing copyright etc (though Shuffls makes it clear that users take full legal responsibility of images that they are uploading).

Shuffls is founded by Sharath and Dhananjay, who also owns a fashion brand by the name of Wulve, which will have a Bangalore based network of fashion designers on launch. Here is a conversation with Dhananjay Parsivamurthy:

PI: Why would anyone sign up at Shuffls when you already have Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, Blogspot/Wordpress, and even Facebook where you could upload pictures?

DP: All these places are used for specific things, Flickr is used by photographers mainly, Facebook is a social network, Blogspot/Wordpress are generic blog places. But their is no single place to do this, Shuffls provides that.

Also to add to the point, users can make money by having their profile here. Shuffls promises to pay the user the part of advertisement money to the profile owner (I mean the money made out of ads displayed in your profile, a certain %age of amount will be shared to user). So the more popular you are the wealthier you become.

PS: Isn’t shuffle logic just using a random-number-generator to have a random permutation of pictures? What is unique about your shuffle algorithm?

DP: Currently the logic is relative content search based shuffle algorithm. We need more data to proceed further. Our next shuffle algorithm will pick based on region, interest, category, and time-based images.

PI: What are the future plans wrt the features on the site?

DP: The plan is all set and will be released accordingly. Future Shuffls will have albums, streams, live stream in profile, needful album types(comics, ppts, illustrations, docs, news, technology…these cannot be called as themes but the user experience of the albums will be in that way specialized for the type of content it is going to have), hot link images albums, e-commerce product albums and payment options and unlimited space for images.

PI: What has been the traction so far?

DP: I have give very limited publicity to shuffls. The user database is still growing up. Users are uploading their images to share it on social networks and coming back to site to view some interesting images.

PI: How are you planning to generate revenue?

DP: Ads, exclusive (on order) image albums, and after the introduction of ecommerce product albums the service charge would be collected.

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An interesting project, I must say. The web application is well-built and provides a smooth user experience. But one of the main criteria for the success behind such products is the user base, which may take a while to build up. Shuffls has to have something really strong to pull users from the already established bigger players in the market.

What is your opinion? What can a newcomer like Shuffls do to attract users?

The offers will be available across all the 1174 outlets of CCD in India and Mojostreet users will need to check-in to a cafe coffee day outlet before they place their order and redeem their coupon by showing the coupon code to the staff while placing the order.

How Mojostreet:CCD Partnership Works

To claim a reward at Café Coffee Day a user needs to download Mojostreet app on their Smartphone and then check-in at the Café Coffee Day outlets. Once a user completes a check-in, the Café Coffee Day offer is delivered right on the users mobile screen with complete details. Users simply need to show the mobile screen with the offer to the Café Coffee Day staff to claim their reward.

Currently, Mojostreet has over 200+ brands using “Mojostreet for Business program” in 1,250 locations in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Noida, Gurgaon and Delhi.

The challenge for Mojostreet lies in ensuring that the deals are respected as CCD employees are quite often clueless about such partnerships and they aren’t even trained to answer queries related to ‘check-ins’ etc (standard answer is ‘Sorry sir, I don’t know‘).

» Links to Mojostreet’s app: Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Nokia

» Mojostreet Funding: LBS Startup, Mojostreet Secures USD 350k Funding

* Foursquare:CCD Partnership- It seems, 4sq is still a CCD partner, but practically speaking, most of the CCDs are unaware of 4sq partnership (speaking from my experience of Bangalore CCDs).

Mumbai based Flo is in-taxi entertainment network and in-taxi Digital OOH advertising medium that aims to tap the radiocab/taxi advertising market. Flo is a wirelessly managed, sound enabled, tablet-like device embedded in radio taxis, strategically located behind the passenger seat.

Flo has four distinct channels – Entertainment, Around the World, Fashion and Lifestyle, and Cars and Technology. Each channel holds a bouquet of videos delivering something for everyone. These videos are procured through company’s national and international content partners like, CNBC TV 18, Zee News, Fox Traveler, Red Bull, Bollywood Masala and many more.

The viewership of each video is monitored through Flo’s backend server which helps the company decide on the popularity of a certain video, or genre. This analysis is then utilized while wirelessly adding new videos to the content loop on Flo, making Flo a product made for the passengers, by the passengers. In the near-term, Flo also aims to bring additional information and services to the passengers including live news and sports updates, local maps, location-based services and other interactive features. Flo offers multiple advertising options to brands. The Video Wall allows for advertisers to display engaging TVC’s and the Side Banners give them an opportunity to leave powerful call-to-action messages.

Technology Behind Flo

The client-side software used for Flo is a proprietary Qt-based application (running on Linux). The software monitors each and every event on Flo. These are collated in the form of log files and are automatically transferred to the servers. In the last few months, over 20million events have been collated, which enables the company to have a deep understanding of viewing patterns and the effectiveness of campaigns. Each Flo device is wirelessly connected to company’s central servers over the internet using EVDO (3G CDMA) technology, and also immediately upgradeable to 3G GSM technology. To ensure that no data or logs are lost, En Route has developed complex protocols with robust error-detection and handling of file-corruption.

The company has roped in advertisers like Volkswagen, The Economist, Garnier, ET Now, McDonalds and Tata Docomo.

Parent company, En Route Media has been started by Indo-German duo, Varun Jain and Paul Schwarz who were college mates at Warwick University, London.

Here is a brief QnA with Flo team.

1. What has been the traction so far?

Despite the initial challenges of educating marketeers about a new medium and not yet having critical mass in terms of reach, we already have a strong sales funnel. As of today we have a backlog of more than 100 leads, around 45 prospects and 12 existing clients. A few examples include brands such as the Economist, Kotak, Volkswagen and Tata Docomo.

2. Partnering with taxi operators – what have you guys done w.r.t this?

We are currently partnered with Carzonrent’s EasyCabs and have launched in their Mumbai fleet, where we are already installed in over 250 EasyCabs. In the near future, we plan to move to New Delhi and expand to over 1,000 cabs. Beyond this, we are also in advanced talks with almost every major fleet operator in the country.

3. Given that there is a hardware cost involved, what’s the breakeven timeline you are looking at?

Given the traction we have seen, we anticipate that each screen will have repaid its cost within just 6-8 months, once the industry has been adequately educated. This might take some more time.

4. Is this an ad supported model? What’s the business model?

Since the uncluttered environment and targeted audience in radio cabs delivers good value to brands, advertising is and will be our primary revenue source. However, we are already looking to compliment this with rich media offerings and in-car shopping.

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What’s your take on Flo model? Is there an advertising market big enough to cater to this audience?

Having been in the Event Management industry for 14 years, Pradeep Chandran, or Eddie, as everyone calls him, brings this resource pool online at Exchange4Artist.com where you can look for an artist, and contact E4A to manage an event for you at your place. There is an interesting gallery of artists and a youtube channel containing performances that you can browse through if you do not have a clear idea of what kind of performance you want to host. E4A also provides services to budding artists who need a platform to perform, quite literally.

Eddie had tried his hands on building up an event management bible and an online platform for the event management industry several years back, but that seemed ahead of time. Exchange4Artist is an extension of that service.

Here is a quick Q&A with Pradeep Chandran aka Eddie:

PI: An online Exchange for Aristists sounds interesting. How did you conceive of this?

PC: Have spent 14 long years producing and directing shows so this idea after years of struggling to have a resource pool of artists readily available . I also own the one and only official yellow pages of the event management industry called “eventmanagementbible” so this service is a natural extension of that product.

I have forever strived to get the pieces together in the entertainment industry together, had tried putting together a platform for event industry called eventsdomain.com about 6-7 years back, but alas that was way ahead of its time and the internet last mile was not sorted so I spun it into the directory for the event industry over a period of time.

PI: How do get various artists sign up to you? Do you have a pool of artists or do you even get new artists based on demand?

PC: We are not looking at artist signing up, we have a database of over a 1000 artists anyways so we can source artists on demand. Plus have hired a team who are working on creating and validating the data we have and making new contacts with the artists.

PI: What kind of artists do you source?

PC: We are working with only artists that are 5 lac and below, also the max threshold will be TV stars since in Bollywood costs are a big grey area and the same artist can give u different rates over different calls and different dates. So we have a parameter to work with artists that have a sort of fixed budget and can help us in turn around time in closing the deal.

PI: Roughly, how many shows do you conduct per month?

PC: The website is in a pre launch phase, we plan to launch in the first week of march, we plan to do over 15-20 shows a month atleast. I have an experienced operations team to tackle and produce queries that we hope to generate (expecting 15-20 per day ) so together put together we have over a 1000 shows that we have produced or directed over the past 14 years.

We were hoping to get some VC funding so we can create a marketing blitz to take it to another level, we however will go ahead and launch in March first week in the absence of the funds, since we have a dedicated marketing budget and have made a very surgical precision marketing plan.

PI: How big is the team? Where all are you located?

PC: We are now 5 people team and are planning to put a back office set up (3-4 people) to handle calls/ clients also planning to hire an ops team (2-3 people) and plan to run operations with the resource pool of free lancers we have. We are based out of Mumbai.

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An online directory of artists and events could be a useful one, but the portal needs to have more functionality, like a form for submitting your requirements and maybe a section highlighting success stories from previous users of their service. Right now, it’s positioned as a service, but a marketplace approach could probably be a bigger story.

If you are planning to throw a gala party and need someone to entertain your guests, give Exchange4Artist a shot and share your feedback.

Talking about the pricing, cofounder Niraj mentioned that:

We figured that since we’re a tool for businesses, they should pay us if they see value in our product. I think it works like a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ – charging for it might actually MAKE them see the value.

Grexit lets you unleash the knowledge hidden in emails and enables team members to create a knowledge repository, shared with the right ACL (access control list).

As far as pricing is concerned, Grexit offers 30 day trial plans and does not offer any freemium model (recently, another Indian startup Mobstac too killed its freemium model).

Pricing SAAS Applications

While one could debate on whether killing freemium model is a good act or not, companies who decide to kill the freemium model are essentially eliminating bootstrappers (casual customers) who could potentially become a big customer in due course of time. And in a way, giving them a taste of their competition which might just be offering pay-as-you-grow model.

As a customer, do you prefer to go ahead with services offering try-and-buy(later) or pay-when-you-grow model? Importantly, payment frequency is one significant factor that needs to be kept in mind while deciding on pricing – not every company’s IT/finance system is geared to make recurring deposits automatically.

What’s your take?

Recommended Read: How to Price your SaaS Application – The Definitive Guide

Analysis: How SAAS Pricing Plans Have Evolved Over a Period of Time

Kookoo developer has developed KooKooVBX that will help you build your own business phone systems. That is, Indian businesses can setup their own drag and drop business phone system on the cloud on top of KooKoo, using Twilio (OpenVBX’s) service.

Steps to get started:

1. Download code
2. Host it on your PHP enabled web server
3. Open the site in your browser
4. Login as admin@kookoovbx.com and password test123
5. Create your flow and paste the URL of the flow in your KooKoo settings page.
6. Call your KooKoo number and listen to your flow. [via]

Cool hack? Watch this vide of OpenVBX

Similar Startup: Exotel

At the core, SearchDeals is powered by Hardeal (by the same developer), a site that aggregates and brings rating to deals (provided by companies like Snapdeal/Crazeal/Deals&You etc).That is , HarDeal is more about aggregation and SearchDeals flips the HarDeal model upside down and is positioned as a search engine to find good deals/product discounts.

SearchDeals is currently available in 34 cities across India and searches through deals from 6 daily deal Websites – SnapDeal, Crazeal, Dealivore, TimesDeal, Rediff, Deals&You for daily deals and in addition to these, MakeMytrip and Yatra for Travel Deals and ecommerce sites like Flipkart, Indiaplaza, LetsBuy etc. for product specific deals.

The search engine does a good job of categorization (for e.g. search for Lumia offers 3 categories: Mobile Cases and Covers, Mobile Phones, Screen Guard)) and while we aren’t going to get into the user interface (which really needs to be reworked), SearchDeals takes a slightly different approach to deal aggregation which is mostly navigation based.

Given the current state of deals category, what’s your take on SearchDeals concept? Is there enough meat to build a BIG business around deal space?

The founder,  Gurinder Pal Singh needs input on whether to go for campus placement or take up entrepreneurship.

——-

“I’m in a hell of a Fix right now.

I’m pursuing my MBA from the prestigious Indian Institute of Foreign Trade – New Delhi, the campus placements are ON and I’ve not been sitting for them as of now. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, even in my engineering college days and have had very successful ventures like UploadJockey.com and FiletTwt.com and right now I’m pursuing my new ventures www.SearchDeals.in and www.HarDeal.com.

Now what I am thinking is that I’m going to pursue my own ventures, and if it doesn’t work out by the end of one year or so, I’ll go in for a job. But my peers have been strongly advising me against this and saying it is very difficult to find a job Off-Campus.

Is this True? Is it really that difficult for a MBA from a Top 10 B-School to find a job Off-Campus after pursuing your own start-up?” [Campus Placement OR Entrepreneurship?]

——–

What would you suggest him?

[Our coverage of Student Startups is supported by Lenovo's DoNetwork initiative.]

[If you are you a student working on a startup idea, we would like to talk to you. Fill in the form at http://www.pluggd.in/students/ and we will get in touch with you.]

GKBOpticals is led by Dhruv Gupta, who earlier was cofounder of Desimartini (which was acquired by HT). Some of the key features of GKBOpticals are Try on Virtual Mirror & Face Shape guide, that helps customers choose and try the best product while sitting at home.

“In the last few months, the online store is experiencing a 50% growth month on month, and has shipped orders to over 200 cities/towns across India. Dhruv says “The wide choice of products, fast & free shipping, warranty, 100% money back return policy, which give the customers peace of mind while shopping online. We have over 25 qualified eyecare specialists on call, 7 days a week” [release].

An important point to note about GKBOpticals’ online foray is that they are leveraging a strong synergy between the 60+ GKB Opticals retail outlets and the online store. That is, customers can avail service facility or take delivery of their product from any GKB retail outlet in 17 cities/towns. This has a dual benefit- of ease of service to online customers, and leveraging its strong brand awareness, from its customer base of 1 million.

Here is  a quick QnA with Dhruv, CEO of GKB online

1. How are you sourcing products (vs. the offline store) ?

We source products through direct tie ups with brands & their representing companies. We leverage the same inventory as the retail stores, so we have a large stock, without additional costs.

2. How much of revenue contribution does GKB believes the online store will bring?

GKB Opticals has revenues of 100+ crores, along with being in a growth stage. Online retail helps us reach a much larger audience, where customers can get quality, variety, and other services, like COD, free shipping, etc. So, it’s a good value proposition for the customer looking to buy any kind of eyewear. Thus, the online store, will be a strong contributor towards revenues of the overall group.

3. What has been the traction so far?

Since launching a couple of months back, we have been shipping orders to over 200 cities/towns across India.

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Very recently, Pharmacy Chain MedPlus Forayed Into Ecommerce with the launch of MedplusBeauty.

Do you expect more such offline retailers launching their online store in 2012?

• Original – a pioneering new idea or novel use of an existing tool
• Scalable and sustainable
• Potential or demonstrated health impact
• Beneficial or applicable to developing countries

Three innovations from India who made it to the list (announced last month) include:

1. Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala for Uniphore’s VoiceNet platform: Personalized Voice based Information Retrieval and Transaction System (PVIT) of mobile phones with authentication and local-language voice-recognition to effectively aid healthcare delivery in India.

Since 1981, Dr. jhunjhunwala has been teaching at IIT Madras, where he leads the Telecommunications and Computer Networks group (TeNeT). This group works with industry in the development of technologies relevant to India. It has incubated over 35 companies in the last twenty years. He chairs Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) at IIT Madras and Mobile Payment Forum of India (MPFI).

2. Derek Treatman for CommCare-Sense: Localized multimedia to improve quality of care in four districts spanning Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan, India. With support from a team of adept software programmers and field engineers at Dimagi, Derek develops multimedia CommCare applications using locally recorded audio messages and culturally appropriate imagery that are used by community health workers to spread information on maternal and child health in low-literate areas of rural India.

Derek’s experience in information and communication technology, human computer interaction, and medical informatics has driven him to explore methods of information exchange in healthcare using mobile technology that crosses linguistic and cultural barriers.

3. K.S. Shankar for a mother and child tracking system (MCTS), based on SMS technology that provides updates from auxiliary nurse midwives in India.

Mr. Shankar works for Government of Karnataka Government, as Deputy Director in the Demography wing of Health and Family Welfare Department. He has initiated lot of IT activities in the Health department, MCTS being one among them. He has customized the MCTS software according to the state needs with the technical support of NIC, Bangalore. Karnataka state is the only state in India who have brought SMS based Mobile Technology for updating the records of MCTS which gives the real time data on MCTS portal.

HyCa’s core innovation is the HyCator design algorithm that allows it’s reactors to create targeted cavitation bubbles required for the specific needs of the process.   This technology has applications across industries ranging from chemicals, bio-chemical, water purification, petrochemicals and several other industries.

Seed funded by Godrej Industries, company is in the process of setting up their manufacturing plant at Patalganga (near Mumbai).

Interview with Mr. Anjan Mukherjee, Co-Founder of Hyca Technologies

Q: What made you start working on cavitation?

I am a marine engineer and start or my research was motivated by environmental challenges of ballast water in marine industry. Once I started reading about hydrodynamic cavitation, I came in contact with Dr. Pandit (Co-founder of Hyca) who is world renowned expert in cavitation.

Commercialization of technology in marine industry is subject to policy changes, which are yet to come in place. This made us look at other avenues of applying this technology which today appear to be a multi-fold opportunity as compared to our initial target market.

Q: What is your innovation and what can be the potential applications?

Cavitation is an existing process. Our innovation lie in developing algorithm / mechanism to artificially control the process and utilize the energy released. To give you an idea – when a bubble collapses, temperature at point of collapse if 10,000 degree Celsius which is twice the surface temperature of Sun. This energy can significantly expedite several biological and chemical processes.

Applications can be found in different industries ranging from petrochemical, chemicals, biogas, ballast water treatment, effluent treatment, cooling towers etc. Each of these industries, can offer $1B+ market for our technology.

Q: Which applications are currently available for commercial use?

Technology’s application in cooling tower is commercially available right now. It is being used by corporate like TATA, Hindustan Unilever, and Godrej.

Technology helps in cutting down

- Chemical requirement by 40-60%

- Drained out water by 50%

- Down time for maintenance / cleaning

Customers can realize the payback in 1.5 -2 years in the form of savings made (chemicals, water etc.)

Q: How do you plan to monetize your innovation – licensing, selling complete solution etc?

A: We are in the process of setting up a plant for commercial production. We will focus on developing and commercializing applications till a point, techno-commercial viability is established as per industry standards. After reaching that point, we will look at licensing the technology to industry leaders.

Our core competence is technology, and there ample companies across globe who are very good in scaling up and commercializing technologies.

Q: You are traversing the road less travelled amongst Indian entrepreneur community – innovation with pure science instead of developing Web/Mobile based product. What have been the key challenges?

Structurally Indian system does not support such innovations. India is a difficult place to do business – regulatory approvals and bureaucracy makes the time to market very long; whether it is acquiring land, getting taxation approvals or environmental approvals. Also, there are no incubators designed for non-IT startups, where one can start pilot production.

Though, during the process we also learnt that Indian regulatory and academic system has hidden gems. It took us some time to reach the right set of people, who have contributed significantly towards where we are today.

Lack of investors focusing this space in India is limited, which is another key challenge. Investor community is predominantly focused on IT startups due to low gestation periods. So, it becomes difficult to find investors who understand our business and are interested in the venture.

PI’s View

It’s exhilarating that entrepreneurs in India are coming up with innovations based on Fundamental Science and Indian academia is acting as a catalyst. Though, it also highlights systematic bottlenecks for such endeavors and poses a question for Indian policy makers, innovation eco-system and investor community.

1. Tell us more about TechBuddy Consulting and its operations.

Techbuddy is a socially responsible company of dedicated people which is aimed at stressing the importance of inculcating the Self Learning approach in students focusing on individual’s strengths and interests, delivering quality learning for an educated world. We envisage along with our team, a vision to build a robust education environment, where the creation, exchange and sharing of all forms of knowledge is highly effective & meaningful, & is easily accessible to everyone.

We believe that education is a great segment to build a successful business in,but only if done ethically with high social responsibility. Thou who would believe in learning by sharing, will be regarded as pioneering educationist.

2. Where did you meet your cofounders? When did you guys actually decided on starting up with this idea?

My initial cofounders are two of my best buddies from my college IIT Roorkee where we graduated from in 2009. Together,we had been part of some great success stories at campus and always aspired for better and bigger in our lives. We sincerely believed that an awesome company can only be built by an awesome team, which was already our strength.Spark was there since long,planning had been underway for months,before it actually began on the November 30,2008 with our first board meeting that took place inside our hostel room. TechBuddy was born with the punchline ‘Don’t Just Create,Innovate’ and has been constantly innovating education & learning since then.

Though we initially started with 5 of us as cofounders & while two of them left few months down,few of them from the present team joined us later. As everything that begins has to evolve with time,we also did & that too with the right pace. The idea with which we originally started no longer forms the core of our business today.

3. Some of your cofounders wanted to go for higher studies. Tell us about this part of your journey.

I was a devil & had worked very hard to ensure that none of us prepares for the CAT and is engaged in much more interesting stuff,planning our to be venture.Catching us early,TIME coaching did make a good business out of us and scored A+ on customer Care when their guys kept ringing us requesting us to attend classes,till we stopped picking up their calls. In the end, being from middle class families, we did take the CAT only to ditch our families’ ambitions and fail the prestigious entrance examination with honour. As they say,its all written and everything thereafter has been history and counting the dots backward now,it all seems so easy,so simple and so glorious not just to us,but also to our family & friends.

Sad part, one of our cofounders did give in to his family’s aspirations & opted for higher studies in US over TechBuddy,and another followed a few months later to separate. But the good part is that we all are still the best of friends and laugh over all the good and bad experiences we shared together as the founding partners of TechBuddy. Defining the norms of exit apart from everything else very clearly on papers in the very beginning is utmost important to prevent all such complications and we were lucky to have done them at the right time.

4. Post college, how did you guys bagged consulting projects? What were the challenges faced?

We were lucky to get our first project within the first month and so the numerous business problems which followed.The transition from students to teachers,from boys to men,from clients to a service provider,from innocent college going kids to shrewd businessmen was sudden. It did not come upon us easily to accept the fact that there is something known as the Legal Contract that would from now keep a strict watch on all our actions and the scope of committing errors had shrunk to amazingly low,while  any mistakes would only take us from a protected campus of IIT to an overprotected Tihar Jail.

As mentioned,challenges had just begun. From figuring out the scope of work to getting the work done,from motivating ourselves to hiring motivated enthusiastic student employees,from struggling with the burden of semester load at college for non-dropout entrepreneurs to getting almost succumbed under the aspirations of an overpromised client,all of it had just begun and had begun too well. The ball kept rolling,we kept moving,TechBuddy started growing,is still growing and confidence speaks that would keep growing for decades to come with just one belief,

‘Opportunities are ample,we just have to prepare ourselves with time.’

5. What’s your first reaction when you see your college batchmates going to US (for job/higher studies)?

If you will let me speak my heart out,I would waste a lot of time into coining something extraordinarily diplomatic for the couplet ‘educated fools’ and might hurt a lot of genuine dreams. But as I speak from a businessman’s perspective,while India is the place where the world wants to be,I don’t know why some of us are still aspiring to escape. I wish to quote it from somewhere I am not able to recall at this moment,”If India can beat the corruption fast and develop its basic infrastructure soon enough,21st century will be written in India.”

Everything said,its actually a free world. We all are responsible for our own actions and thus the choice has been solely left on each one of us to decide and plan for a much better future not just for himself,but also for the generations to come.So be wise,let your heart speak for yourself and keep dreaming.

6. What’s the current strength of TechBuddy consulting?

For us at TechBuddy,our strength can be summed up in 3 words,’Team,Team & Team’ which are the only constants,rest everything is adaptive with situations.

7. Your recommendation to students who want to startup?

Idea is a myth,team is a blessing.

Valuations are virtual,revenue is real.

Law is common sense,documentation is religion.

Great businesses are created by man,not God.

& While character is strength, passion drives entrepreneur.

[Our coverage of Student Startups is supported by Lenovo's DoNetwork initiative.]

[If you are you a student working on a startup idea, we would like to talk to you. Fill in the form at http://www.pluggd.in/students/ and we will get in touch with you.]

“As part of the rollout of our integrated publishing product, we’re also announcing new pricing plans that include our new Touchsite product for tablets. The most significant change we’ve made is that we’re now dropping our free Basic plan entirely and replacing it with a $5/month plan. Our loyal readers will remember that we supported our free plan through an ad revenue sharing program. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to foot the bill of serving all that mobile traffic so we did what every startup must do: make a tough choice. We thank all our publishers for supporting us and helping improve our product leaps and bounds with their feedback and active involvement.

Our new pricing plans are the result of data we’ve gathered from new customers we’ve signed up, feedback from potential customers we’ve spoken to, and an analysis of how different publishers on our network have been using MobStac. We believe the new plans align better with how publishers want to use our product and have also updated our pricing accordingly.“ [mail]

Mobstac Pricing Plans

Mobile/Widget Platforms

The key challenge for India based mobile/widget platforms is not just the lack of early adopters, but also lack of early-adopters-who-are-also-big-players in the country. For instance, how many active bloggers in India can really help Mobstac in monetizing the traffic (so that they can keep the service free)? Very few – I can bet that there are hardly 20 blogs which have more than even 200K pageviews/month for mobile site (and by the way, 200K pageviews means nothing!).

Having said that, Mobstac is looking at cracking the US market and killing freemium model probably works if they have a strong pipeline (especially in the enterprise segment), otherwise it just might backfire as the market is getting too competitive and freemium provides the friction-less entry.

Aside, Pluggd.in has been using Mobstac for the last few years  and very recently, we announced our touchsite for iPad (http://m.pluggd.in) – so do give it a shot and share your feedback.

Video: The Mobtac Story

All investors have exited and Netmagic founder/CEO, Sharad Sanghi has only sold a very minor stake and will continue to build the company.

The addition of Netmagic Solutions’ datacenter services and sites will expand NTT Com’s capability to provide one-stop ICT solutions in the fast-growing Indian market, as well as accelerate its offering of globally seamless cloud services through expanded ICT infrastructure Asia-wide.

Netmagic Solutions, an experienced provider of managed IT hosting services, currently operates seven datacenters in major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, Noida (Delhi-NCR) and Bangalore. It provides services such as colocation and managed hosting to more than 1,000 customers, as well as ISP and cloud services to many other customers. The company was named India’s Datacenter Service Provider of the Year 2011 by Frost & Sullivan. Established in 1998, Netmagic Solutions is headed by CEO Sharad Sanghi and operates bases in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi. It employs about 500 people. The company’s headquarters are located at 2^nd Floor, (North Side), Block B-2, Phase I, Nirlon Knowledge Park, Goregaon (East), Mumbai.

The Netmagic Story

At Unpluggd, Sharad spoke at length about Netmagic story and he did talk about IPO and acquisition. Watch the video

RTINation is a startup by Prashant Gupta, a student at IIT Kanpur. The site enables one to file RTI (Right to Information) online and so far, the site has enabled 3,000 RTIs [from 5,000 registered userbase].

Once you file a RTI from the site, RTINation generally takes 2-3 business days to process an application. The PIO (Public Information Officer) takes 30-40 days to reply to your application and replies are sent directly to the individual.

The site charges Rs. 150 (including government fees, service charges and taxes) and receives around 30,000 visits per month. In terms of technology implementation, the site is a basic implementation of Joomla, though what matters is the focus on solving a specific pain point.

Do give the site a spin and share your feedback with the team.

[Our coverage of Student Startups is supported by Lenovo's DoNetwork initiative.]

[Are you a student working on a startup idea, we would like to talk to you. Fill in the form athttp://www.pluggd.in/students/ and we will get in touch with you.]

In 2010, these losses translated into annual losses of 600 billion rupees ($13.3 billion) and number is expected to rise to 1 trillion rupees ($22 billion) by March 2015, according to the country’s finance ministry. Over 50% of Indian utility companies are operating at loss levels between 45-60%.

Chintan Soni co-founded Ecolibrium Energy two years back with a conviction that information technology will be an answer to this problem. Ecolibrium Energy provides smart grid solutions using its multi functional platform for industries and power utility companies to improve their efficiency and energy economics.

Incubated at CIIE – IIM Ahmedabad, startup holds 4 patents and has 6 industries as their customers. In 2010, company also implemented Gandhinagar Smart Grid Pilot Project in partnership with Govt. of Gujarat and Torrent Power.

What Ecolibrium Offers?

For industries

- Real time energy tracking

- Monitoring & control of specific equipment / appliances from a central location wirelessly

- Rule based engine for scheduling of loads, to maintain peak load at time when power tariff is low.

Benefits:

- Check energy wastage and cut down energy bill by shifting power consumption pattern to hours when cost of energy is low.

For power utility companies

- 2 way communication / control with consumer

- Demand prediction

- Remote meter reading

- Remote outrage and fault detection

- Theft detection

Benefits:

- Cut down of thefts and pilferage

- Capital reduction on manual meter tracking

- Demand prediction helps optimizing supply planning to increase revenues

Below is a brief Q&A with Chintan Soni, Co-Founder of Ecolibrium Energy

PI: How has been initial response from customers? You are also targeting government bodies (state utility companies) which can be difficult customers. How are you going about selling to government companies?

Response from industry has been good so far. We have 6 paying customers at this point. Our products are competitively priced, and few customers have realized return on their investment in less than six months (in form of energy bill cut down).

Regarding, government customers – most of these are loss making companies. Moment you tell them, your solution can help them turn profitable they listen to you.

PI: You became a revenue earning company in 18 months from inception. That is very aggressive. How did you go about it?

One year back, we wanted to raise capital and our business plan showed revenues in 12 months. This was challenged by some of the prospective investors. We took that as a challenge, and turned into a revenue earning entity in 8 months from that point.

PI: What is your vision for Ecolibrium Energy?

We believe, that energy saved is the energy produced and we want to be the largest virtual power plant in India.

On one side we have Fortune 500 companies like GE, CISCO etc. eyeing smart grid markets in India and on the other end homegrown companies like Ecolibrium Energy are coming up with solutions for India. As smart grid become India’s priority, it would be interesting to watch how this eco-system will evolve in India.

Another startup in this space: HameshaON

MunchWithUs partners with high-quality restaurants that agree to offer discounted pre-fix meals and you can use the site to reserve your seatch to either meet new people or meet someone special (celebrity et al) or even plan your own group meal.

For instance, the Bangalore based startup has currently launched ‘Lunch with Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners)’ that costs Rs. 2,500 (proceedings go to Akshaya Patra Foundation), inviting entrepreneurs and others to meet Alok for lunch (aside, we appreciate Alok’s openness towards being an early adopter of the site).

Somewhat based on Grubwithus model, Munchwithus concept can potentially evolve into a big play by simply connecting the dots and helping people ‘move forward’ in their career/venture. For instance, there is potentially big money in enterprise version of this concept, after all there are enough ‘VIPs’ in corporate world too.

To start off, the site needs to convince more big shots/VIPs to offer their time (for lunch) and target the audience that is willing to pay to meet these VIPs.  Maybe there is a way to reverse the game – i.e. have people vote for their favorite VIPs and have VIP pay to meet his/her fans? I don’t know! But for sure, there is a need for informal business meetups and Muchwithus can potentially provide that opportunity.

How much would you pay to meet a VIP/celebrity (for lunch) you always wanted to meet?

Aside, Silicon Valley based LetsLunch too is launching in India.

Education in India is all about “How much marks a child is getting” or “Whether he will make it to IIT / IIM or not”. Child’s academic report card is considered to be a determinant of his/her IQ.

This approach has been questioned by Howard Gardner (American developmental psychologist and professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education) in his Theory of Multiple Intelligences. According to him, current approach only evaluates two types of intelligences – linguistic and logical. There are five other types of intelligences which one should access to understand overall intelligence level or areas of core competence of an individual.

Mysuperbrain is attempting to bring this theory to practice, thus helping in overall development of children and helping them make career choices in which they can excel. This is done by a mix of learning, competitions and recognition in areas of 7 intelligences.

Below is Q&A with Mr. Bojja Raghavendar Reddy, CEO & Co-Founder at MySuperBrain.com

Q: What can a student do on your portal?

We have found that overall development of child is not a focus for majority schools and stress is laid only on academic performance. We help in overall development of children, going beyond academics.

At MySuperBrain.com, we believe that there are three main aspects of all round development: Learning, Competing, and Recognition. We offer the following to students:

1. We offer learning material relating to diverse topics – health, science, vedic mathematics, current affairs, leadership etc.

2. Student can participate in Educational Games, Quizzes and Competition – puzzles, Sudoku, painting, creative writing etc.

3. As student keeps participating and performing, he /she keeps gathering points. Each month we recognize winners with prizes and medals. Also, students get visibility amongst audience and mentoring from our team of experts.

Q: You are working in the area of child development, which is very sensitive area and needs in-depth expertise. Is the content & approach accredited by any industry body?

No there is no accreditation. However, we have researched and talked to several subject matter experts in India and abroad. Also, we have few child psychologists on board as consultants who work with us. All learning material is prepared by subject matter experts.

Q: Which classes / age group are you targeting? Is the content same for all age groups / classes?

We cater to students from 3^rd to 9^th standard. We have separate quizzes / contests for different age groups.

Q: Are schools and especially parents open to this idea?

I think, several schools and parents realize this problem and are open to this idea. To demonstrate effectiveness of our offering, we conduct free workshops in selected schools. We also provide free pass to our website few months if schools are interested in our offering. We also interact with parents in parent-teacher meetings to make them aware about our offering.

Q: What is the business model?

For us, customers are schools but success will be determined by students coming back to our website again and again on their own. At present, we offer two models:

Freemium model: Students get access to the site for free. In this case, we will be having ads as source of revenue.

Premium model: In this case, student will get access to our monthly publication apart from educational content on the website. Also, one will not get to see any ads. Annual fee for this offering is 720 Rs.

We started 10 months back and 25-30 schools in South India are trying our offering.

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“The Do Network from Lenovo is a platform for turning ideas into action. Every 90 days Do Network will introduce a new theme and will call for participation. You could win a Do machine or a $25,000 USD grant to help bring your idea to life.”

Here is our top picks from the submissions at DoNetwork, though not in any particular order:

PartiallySubmergedBridge: This is an innovative idea using Archimedes’ principle to design and construct bridges that are partially supported by the upthrust of the water underneath that. The idea is to have cable-stayed bridges, with the suspended part partially floating in the water. The bridge may have to have a part of it above water, allowing considerable height for ships to pass under that. The major advantage that could be achieved with this design is a reduction in cost, and an architectural marvel, and maybe permit construction of bridges across unimaginable spans of seas. There may be an extra cost involved in providing non-corrosive materials and coatings, and reinforcements to brace the kinetic energy of water, and maybe tides in certain cases, but longer spans means reduction in the total number of piers required, bringing down cost considerably.

TheUnstoppableUnstoppableMagneticWheel: The project page does not talk much about the applications of an unstoppable magnetic wheel created by means of four static bar magnets strategically placed around a four-pronged fan that has horse-shoe magnets on all its prongs, so that one side of the horse-shoe, say S-pole, is attracted by the N-pole of the static magnet and when it comes closer and the axis of the horse-shoe passes that of the static magnet, the N-pole of the horse shoe, which is now closer to the N-pole of the static magnet, is repelled. This wheel would need an initial push start, but once it maintains a kinetic equilibrium, it can perhaps run perpetually, providing a non-conventional source of cheap energy. Industry applications of this may have to be studied.

IndiaEngineered: This is a simple project, a kind of social network, aimed specifically at bringing students together from engineering colleges across the nation, and also with engineering alumni. India Engineered also aims at providing sharing of books and tutorials, online lectures, organizing contests and promoting tech fests, and providing answers to questions, a la Quora, only for engineers. While this type of model can easily go out of control with students trying to look out for other things besides engineering, but like every other social network, the success depends on the initial members that decide to become a part of it, and the lucrativeness and utility of the product, before it goes on to become viral and hugely popular.

Car-Com: This is an ambitious project aimed at reducing traffic congestion by making all vehicles on the road communicate with local and central servers. The idea is to use GPS to know the current position and speed of vehicles sharing the road on all the roads leading to the next traffic signal. Complex algorithms will then calculate the optimized timings for the red and green lights to allow minimum waiting time. While the number of calculations being done can easily reach astronomical levels in a metro city with hundreds of roads and thousands of vehicles, a real life implementation for this would mean all the vehicles on the road fitted with the GPS devices that send the location details to a configured set of servers in the vicinity, and also setting up those local servers that receive the data and sync up traffic lights. Nevertheless, it is an interesting idea, and can be put to other uses like finding parking slots, assisting in partial or complete auto-drive cars.

GravityAssistedMicroHydroelectricity: This project claims of a solution of providing hydroelectricity by lifting water from a large tank into two overhead tanks in tandem, and then letting water fall through turbines that would generate electricity.The overhead tanks will have siphons that would be raised by means of counterweights, thereby creating lesser pressure inside the tanks, forcing water to rise up by means of several smaller pipes with valves, ensuring very fast filling of the overhead tanks. The project’s files section provides detailed diagrams and there are quite some convincing animations that make you feel it may work. If successful, such eco-generators could be used in individual households or apartments as an alternative power source.

KeepSafeSafeDistance: This is a straightforward and simple though useful project that could bring down accidents on the road. The proposed system would consist of two indicators, one on the back of the car, meant for the car following it, and the other on the dashboard, for the driver of the car. The indicators would warn you if you are driving too close, within the breaking distance for the current relative speed at which you are driving. The safe distance may not be precise as it would depend on the road conditions and the quality of brakes, and the mass of the car, but can give you an approximate idea with some buffers added.

FriendsinFlights: This could well be an interesting application of social networking. As the name suggests, the application’s core would be an algorithm that puts like-minded people together and comes up with a seat allocation plan taking into account the passengers’ age, sex, likes, dislikes, profession, etc, or even the degree of separation between them Facebook, Google+ etc. The seat allocation would aim at coming up with an allotment which puts like minded people together or closer, in the hope that these passengers easily strike a chord and have a pleasant journey. Privacy concerns aside, this can be an interesting use for social networkers allowing airlines to use their public data and make the stranger next seat less so.

[Disclosure: DoNetwork is a sponsor/supporter of Pluggd.in’s student startup theme]