Bharti already has BWA licenses in four circles – Kolkata, Karnataka, Punjab and Maharashtra – and 3G licenses in thirteen circles in India. With this agreement, Bharti has secured a nation-wide broadband leadership through a combination of 4G and 3G, with its own networks in 18 circles.

Under the agreement, Bharti has made an initial investment of approximately USD 165 million to acquire 49 percent interest in Qualcomm AP’s India entities that hold BWA licenses in Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala – partly by way of acquisition of 26 percent equity interest equally held by Global Holding Corporation Private Limited and Tulip Telecom Limited, and the balance by way of subscription of fresh equity in those entities. The agreement contemplates that once commercial operations are launched, subject to certain terms and conditions, Bharti would assume complete ownership and financial responsibility for the BWA entities by the end of 2014.

Qualcomm expects to provide technical assistance to Bharti in connection with network architecture and optimization, infrastructure and device testing, as well as continuing to develop and support the underlying technology and the LTE TDD ecosystem.

It took Qualcom 18 months to get the BWA license

Group gifting on Badhai.in enables one to invite friends for an occasion and pool their contributions online to gift jointly on the same. The gift, Badhai.in voucher in this case, can then be used at leading retail chains as well as ecommerce sites thus giving the recipients complete freedom of using it for what they like. These can be delivered over phone or email or can also be handed over as print copy. Badhai.in also integrates with Facebook making it possible to track special occasions (birthdays and anniversaries) of Facebook connections and gift individually or in a group with other Facebook friends.

“Gifting is seeing a shift towards preference for vouchers over the traditional option of cash. While store gift vouchers do not give enough choice, pooling cash is a hassle and may not be practical in most cases. Badhai.in solves the choice problem by giving recipients complete control over where to use the voucher. At the same time it makes it convenient to pool money and gift jointly even when friends are in different geographical locations.” - Ajay Pandey, CEO and Founder, Badhai.in

Gifting to go social?

With a large number of young users hooked to the internet and various social networking sites these days, the concept of online gifting is growing by leaps and bounds. Infact, while everyone was going hullabaloo over the Facebook IPO, what went unnoticed was that the company acquired Karma, a mobile gift-giving app company. Considered to be the social network’s second largest acquisition till date it gives impertinence to the fact that online gifting is pegging to be a multi-billion dollar industry soon. The Indian online e-gifting market is estimated to be over $4 billion.

Whether Badhai.in will actually enjoy the first mover advantage in India is yet to be seen. Till then, send gifts via the website and let us know what you think.

The survey was conducted across 12 Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune, with over 12,300 high school students in ages of 12-18 participated (undertaken from July to December 2011 during the nationwide TCS IT Wiz program) and here are a few interesting highlights of the survey:

- 3 out of 4 students cited “Research for School” as the main reason to access the internet followed by social reasons like chatting/connecting with friends (68%) and listening to music (50%). Over 84% of the students go online from home compared to just 58% (in 2009)

- One-third of all respondents said that Facebook was their preferred site. Other platforms like Orkut and India-based networks like Apnacircle, iBibo and Hi5 are more popular in mini-metros compared to metros.

- India’s urban Gen Next is turning to text and chat as alternatives to voice. 50% of those surveyed in metros said that they used SMS the most to communicate while 45% used IM and 38% used Facebook or Twitter – all significantly higher than the number of students in metros who said they used email (34%) for the same purpose. Reflecting poorer connectivity levels, use of email (55%) in mini-metros continues to higher than metros (34%).

- The least favorite gadget is the television with less than one percent voting for it and the most favorite gadget with 28% votes is the mobile phone!

Gaming consoles are also increasingly becoming popular even in mini-metros with a little over 16% of students owning at least one gaming console as compared to nearly 45% in metros. Music players are also very popular with 60% of the respondents owning them. Tablet PCs and Tabs, though nascent, have penetrated far more intensively in metros with 15% respondents listing it as their choice of device to access with mini-metros at 7%.

- more details here.

PS: Before you blindly trust the survey, read this: Why and how to read survey reports? [Data, Intuition and Truth]

“The smartphone segment is growing by a CAGR of nearly 70 per cent. We as a company want to focus only on this segment. By the end of September this year, we plan to phase out all our feature phone models,” [Sony India, MD/source]

He also adds that while smartphones are 10% of the sales (in volume), they contribute 40-50% in terms of value. The company recently launched XPeria U in India, priced at Rs. 17,399/.

With some of the multi-nationals focusing solely on smartphone segment, do you think there is an opportunity for Indian companies to tap the feature phone segment?

This service, powered by Vidyo, allows users to initiate and experience high-definition (HD), multi-point video collaboration beyond conventional conference rooms, without dedicated networks and on multiple devices – mobile phones, tablets, desktops, laptops and room systems. The adoption of this service does not entail any capital expenditure for the customers.

Videomeet Details

1. Video collaboration from anywhere – No longer confined to a conference room
2. Not limited to a dedicated network.
3. Works on operating system (OS) – Windows/MAC/Linux/Apple IOS/Android.
4. Can connect multiple devices – Mobile phone (iPhone/Android), tablets (iPads/Android), laptops (Windows/Mac/Linux), desktops (Windows/Mac/Linux), dedicated room systems, real telepresence systems
5. Cost of call is less than Rs. 3 per minute
6. Seamless adoption with existing infrastructure reducing infrastructure cost
7. Zero capex: Video conferencing-as-a-service

Customers could pay a fixed rental for getting unlimited video conferencing access or avail the ‘pay-per-use’ option. This service also eliminates the need for a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) or any other video conferencing device at the premises of the customer, thereby reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

If you go after an awesome market – growing fast, has excellent demand and a great growth curve, then you’ve got 90% product-market fit, even though technically 50% of the challenge in any startup is coming up with a good product.

Lets assume you are going after a great market.

How do you know its a great market? Besides the fact that its large (obvious) the speed of adoption is tremendous.

What then makes a product “fit” a market?

First there are 3 important assumptions I make:

1. The best team does not necessarily create the best product.

2. The best product does not necessarily win in the market.

3. It is rare for startups or entrepreneurs to create markets.

A product “fits” a market when

1. Your metrics for adoption of your product exceed adoption of all your “competitors” combined (Instagram had more downloads in 1 week than other competitors did in 6 months)

2. There are so many missing features in your product but its still being sought after (HotorNot had no other features except an upvote and downvote)

3. The problem you solve for the user is such a big one that they are willing to forgive the lack of “nice to have” capabilities (during its early days, Twitter kept crashing daily)

The first point (metric) answers the question – What should I measure to know when I have achieved PMF?

The second point (features) answers – How can I tell?

The third point is the most important. To know about problems that are painful and large there’s one thing you need to learn, i.e. Learn how to ask the right questions!

–

Relevant links that I would highly recommend you read:

1. Jeff Bussgang on why early in the product cycle entrepreneurs should be hunch and not data driven.

2. Andrew Chen on “When” has a product-market fit been achieved?

3. Ash Maurya on the 3 stages of a startup and why problem-solution fit comes before product-market fit

4. Patrick’s perspectives on steps to product-market fit.

[Guest article contributed by Mukund Mohan. Reproduced from his blog]

Featured Companies

Tradus.in is hiring (location: Gurgaon).

Lead Engineer – Order management group  |   Senior Software Engineer Testing   | Senior UI Engineer  |  Lead UI Engineer

BuyThePrice is hiring (location: Hyderabad)

Senior PHP Programmer   |  PHP Programmer   |   Graphic Designer   | Online Marketing Manager    |  UI Expert

Snapdeal is hiring (location: New Delhi)

Software Engineer / Senior Software Engineer  |  Software Engineer / Senior Software Engineer – UI @Snapdeal  |  Engineering Manager / Sr. Engineering Manager  |  Database Architect/ Sr. Database Architect  |  Database Architect

——–

And several other startups are hiring:

• Full-Time UI Designer
• Software Engineer
• Lead developer
• Business Development Executive / Manager
• Marketing and Community Manager
• Senior Software Engineer – Java
• Social Marketing Intern
• Manager – Deliver Assurance
• Business Development Manager – Chennai
• VP Engineering
• Senior Software Developer
• Software Developer
• CTO
• Business Development Executive
• Software Development Engineer
• Engineering Team Lead
• Creative Content Developer and Writer
• VP – Product Management
• Web Designer & Developer
• Web Front End and UI Developer

+ whole lot of other startups/businesses. Do hop to the site (http://www.pluggd.in/jobs) and subscribe to the email notification for categories of your interest.

- Follow Pluggd.in jobs on Twitter (@Pi_Jobs).

Starting today till July 1, 2012, Microsoft will receive online applications from startups. Any application that can be built using the Cloud platform and can operate in any business or market segment is eligible to apply. Ten applicants, selected through screening process will be invited to join the program in Microsoft’s office in downtown Bangalore, starting September 3, 2012. For the next four months, they will have access to the workspace, infrastructure, mentors and all the tools needed for their startup.

The selected startups will also have access to all the resources of Microsoft’s BizSpark program and $60,000 in Azure credit through the Microsoft BizSpark Plus program. They will be able to leverage the unlimited  possibilities enabled by an open and flexible cloud platform, the Metro user interface on Windows 8 and Windows Phone, and much more (details here).

The incubator is different from its peers in many ways:

- Participants pay tuition fee and give away a stake of 3.5% to be divided among FI, peer graduates and mentors. No funding whatsoever is provided.

- Sessions are held at weekend, so participants don’t have to quit their jobs.

- FI boasts of a massive global network of 750+ mentors.

- Startups which don’t show progress are made to leave the program and invited to join future programs. Success rate is less than 50%.

- If a startup receives financing of $50,000 or more from third parties, it pays a one-time tuition of $4,500 to FI and many more….

In short, FI provides a fast paced course for budding/ideating entrepreneurs to assist them create startups in just 4 months while significantly reducing their risks!! This makes one wonder, how relevant can be FI’s franchise based model in India.

Almost virtual nature of the program would mean participants won’t have to quit their 9-5 jobs to attend the course. This would enable the program to reach out huge and untouched segment of budding entrepreneurs with low risk propensity (Quad 3).

Categorization of people based on propensity to pursue entrepreneurship can be done using a simple framework as follows,

Quad 1: Happy with their day job, may think about entrepreneurship at some point if it looks like an ‘easy’ option

Quad 3: Are enthusiastic about entrepreneurship but risk aversive due to various reasons

Quad 2: Very easy for them to pursue entrepreneurship, generally strong financial backing may pursue entrepreneurship along with a Quad 3/ Quad 4 guy

Quad 4: Born to be entrepreneurs!

1. All Pervasive Growth: Being a franchise based model, it can be scaled up to many cities in India, with each franchise invariably focusing on developing entrepreneurial ecosystem in specific region, as majority of the participation would be local. Also the nominal initial and running investment would ensure a low entry barrier and easy scalability.

2. Being an academics driven program, it would provide necessary hand-holding and motivation to participants, which may prove to be panaceas. Founders will be liable to do necessary homework and start a company by the end of the course or they would be chucked out.

3. Indian mindset is driven by ‘exclusiveness’. Current entrepreneurship programs are not huge successes as they tend to be percept as something for the “losers”. Low selection and success rate would not only create a buzz about the program among people (especially the youth) but also a perception of being something one would feel proud to be associated with. This would also excite parents and family members (who happen to be the decision makers in many cases).

4. Peer/Mentor networking: Peer to peer networking, especially, among budding entrepreneurs/entrepreneurs is missing big time in India primarily because there neither a focused platform nor a compelling incentive for them. Since all the peers and mentors would have a stake in the company, they would be more than motivated to help others.

Let us assume a hypothetical scenario wherein a FI like organization with a charter to foster entrepreneurship is constituted in India but through public-private partnership. Majority of the funds are pooled-in by the government and managed by professional fund managers and investors. As a pilot, Bangalore chapter is opened with initial intake of 10 startups (or 20 budding entrepreneurs). Subsequently, chapters in other metropolitan cities are opened. Timeline would look something like this,

The number of startups graduating by 2020 adds-up to a decent 3212. Assuming a 75-80% conversion rate, number startups churned out by 2020 would be somewhere around 2500. Further assuming a 40% success rate, 60% of startups would shut their shop by 2020 leaving 1000 functional startups. Now, the 1000 startups which are running their operations generate $1m of revenues on an average, their cumulative revenue adds to $1b. A direct impact of $1b on national GDP!! Not to mention the employment opportunities created. This would create a vicious circle in itself by creating more demand (more number of budding entrepreneurs) and in turn creating more supply (more incubators, more Angels/VCs, more investments), thereby further pushing scale of the program.

As an article on Techcrunch mentions, Founder institute is looking for expanding to many global locations including Bangalore but I don’t know when exactly would that happen. If Indian government, along with the private stakeholders can come up with a scalable plan for incubating idea stage startups, it can really accelerate the growth of Indian startup ecosystem. What are your thoughts about it, do share.

[Guest article contributed by Ashutosh Garg (@gargashu0)]

However, although it does have its advantages, the compliance checklist for an LLP is by no means significantly shorter than it is for a Private Limited Company.

Remember that both are incorporated entities – and you as a member enjoy the privilege of limited liability – both are new institutions created with a life and existence of their own. This is unlike a proprietorship firm or a partnership, which are both just loose groupings of individuals.

Just to start with the facts, the compliance checklist for an LLP is as follows:

1. Filing of annual returns: Within sixty days of close of financial year

2. Filing of notice with the Registrar within thirty days in case of a new partner or removal of a partner

3. Filing of notice with the Registrar within thirty days in case of change in the name or address of a partner.

4. Decisions taken by partners are to be recorded in minutes within thirty days of taking such decisions.

5. Auditors (CA) to be appointed, for the first financial year – at any time prior to close of financial year and in all other cases 30 days prior to the close of the financial year.

6. Filing of form within thirty days with the Registrar for changes in the LLP Agreement.

The only exception, and where an LLP scores above a Private Limited Company, is that audited financial statements need not be filed in case the revenue of the LLP is less than Rs. 40 lakhs per annum.

But is this a real advantage?

I must state here that the advantage which an LLP gives you is not so significant, and is in fact more than countered by some of the disadvantages – for instance, issuing ESOPS to your employees is logically impossible, getting investors into your Company is relatively more difficult and diluting or liquidating your stake on the secondary markets is not possible either.

So am I suggesting that you should not form an LLP at all? Not really. There are cases in which an LLP may in fact make sense. When the vision of the entrepreneur is to build a business which will be funded by accruals and internally driven, an LLP makes sense.

But the moment the goal is to build a scalable start-up which can draw in investors from the outside, and you forsee bringing in external capital, an LLP begins to make lesser sense. The Company mode of doing business has been around for 60 odd years now, as opposed to the 3 years that LLPs have been around. So the law around bringing in capital, diluting and liquidating stake and secondary market transactions is very evolved for Companies.

Also, while an LLP gives you a single option – bringing in a person as a Partner, a Company gives you multiple options. You can even have a person in your Company as just a shareholder, with no position on the board of the Company.

It’s no wonder then that practically every large enterprise, or every enterprise with large aspirations, chooses the company mode of doing business.

[About the author: Contributed by Hrishikesh Datar, founder of vakilsearch.com, online legal services provider (Legal Advice, Legal Documents & more.]

- More resources on company incorporation in India.

We earlier reported or rather broke the news of Way2SMS acquiring 160by2 in December, 2011.

The VFirst transaction is one of the largest acquisitions in the Internet industry in India that makes ValueFirst (as claimed) the largest digital media company in India in terms of revenue as well as the number of users. With this acquisition, ValueFirst will cross 50 million profiled registered users, add 40,000 fresh registrations daily and get to 250 crores of revenue this financial year.

“V. Raju – the founder and CEO of way2sms and his dedicated team have created a great asset that has huge scale, traffic, monetisation and has created excellent engagement with consumers. The potential to build further on way2sms.com, 160by2.com is immense as ValueFirst can now leverage the huge inventories that these sites have through its large sales infra and 4000 strong client base.

Way2sms has grown completely virally and despite Facebook’s popularity in India way2sms still adds an amazing 30,000 new registrations daily. Its one of the top searched keywords in India and more than 500 million contacts have been saved on way2sms.com. There is massive potential to explode the traffic further by creating social sharing with saved contacts – which is practically an extension of one’s phonebook”. [Kumar Apoorv, CEO, ValueFirst Group]

The acquisition acquisition brings in additional 37 million registered profiled internet users to ValueFirst.

• 68% of users have made an online purchase using their smartphone [eBay India Report]
• Smartphone Report: Women spend 4X the amount of time men spend on Instant Messaging applications.
• Indian Smartphone users are more active than the American counterparts [Google Survey Report]

Do you believe in these numbers?

Actually, you should not.

The Truth

These are survey reports (and not data driven reports). And surveys are mostly done with an agenda in mind. That is, eBay India wants to push its ‘mobile site’ agenda and is trying to build an authority there. Similarly, Google’s smartphone survey (I took the survey when it went live) is an attempt to build authority in mobile-Internet space (which translates to advertisers/publishers etc).

That is, each and every such survey will carry the agenda of a particular company and you shouldn’t really trust the survey report as-is.

Qn: Then why does Pluggd.in shares these numbers?

Answer: Because they represent a trend. Because they act as a source of data (and not the only data source). Unless you are a B-school student who has a presentation deadline, you should not take the data as-is. But you should still read the survey reports.

Why?

Because survey reports are a good source to have hypothesis. They may not validate your hypothesis (and you shouldn’t trust survey reports to validate), but they act as a good data point (must read: Data Driven Decisions Vs. Intuition..Is It Really A “Vs”?).

Let me explain here:

Let’s take a look at the Nielsen’s latest report, i.e. Smartphone Report: Women spend 4X the amount of time men spend on Instant Messaging applications. Let’s take 2 data points:

Report #1. Women spend 4 times the amount of time men spend on Instant Messaging (Chat) applications.

Report #2. Men however, don’t mind asking for directions on their smartphones, accessing the Google Maps app more than women (45% vs 32%).

What inferences can you draw from these?

Report #1. Women are spending 4X the amount of time men spend on IM apps (i.e. WhatsApp ++).

Possible inferences?

Report #1. Smartphone has in a way, added to more chatter – i.e. women are communicating more than just using voice (the report also mentions that women spend 3 hours more on calls every month as compared to men).

Assuming T2010 = time spent in 2010, when IM apps weren’t around. That is, T2010 = Voice_2010 + SMS_2010.

And as per the report, time spend in (communication service) 2012, T2012 = Voice_2012 + IM chat+ SMS_2012

Is T2012 > T 2010? Is Voice_2012 < Voice_2010. Is SMS_2012 << SMS_2010? Is IMChat > SMS_2010 + SMS_2012?

Are women talking more (in 2012) or are spending less on voice and compensating voice with IM chats (or maybe, SMS too).

If that’s the case – is there a need for women-oriented-ergonomic keyboards? OR time to focus on women-centric apps?

That is, you (i.e. you as an entrepreneur) already had some intuition about this business- survey probably provided you more (qualified) data points to explore.

Report #2. Men however, don’t mind asking for directions on their smartphones, accessing the Google Maps app more than women (45% vs 32%).

Of course, this is true and am no different. I mean, I just don’t ask for directions and am okay going round and round. But yeah, I do use Google maps a lot!

Inference#1: I *do ask for directions* from a (smart) machine, but not comfortable asking the same to other *human beings*.

Interesting?

What behavioral inference can we draw from this?

1. Maybe, smartphones have given a comfort level for people to talk to faceless things.

2. Why not think of other things men (+ women) are uncomfortable asking to others?

Are ‘faceless entities’ a good way to provide that comfort (for example, buying lingerie from a retail shop vs. buying online?).

Think!

–

Long story short, surveys are a good tool to start working on a hypothesis – they provide you a lot of data points. What you do is totally your prerogative – but the worst you can do with such reports is to take them on their face-value or even worst, reject them on their face-value.

Remember, they are a harbinger to an upcoming trend, so use them appropriately (aside, look at Pluggd.in’s trends section).

What’s your opinion?

All of the selected students fall in the 13-14 age group and some of the projects include:

- Can Bixa seeds substitute  artificial inks

- Characterization of Free and Entrapped drug in Liposomal Drug Delivery Systems

- Vertical Muti-Level Farming refers to growing crops on multiple levels or floors.

- Digital Sound Intensity Counter with Alarm

- more here

“We are now excited to bring this pilot program to India, starting with Hyderabad and rolling out to several other cities. The photographs are shot by Google appointed photographers who work directly with the business owner to arrange a time to do the photo shoot. The images will show prospective customers the interiors, decor, merchandise — and all of this will be done at no cost to the business owner. The panoramic photos will appear alongside other still photos on a business’ Place Page and can help potential customers get a better sense of what an establishment has to offer and if they’d like to visit it in person. Right now we’re focusing on businesses like restaurants, cafes, spas, salons, gyms, showrooms, and retail stores, but all are welcome to apply.” [official blog post]

In addition to the photos that business owners can upload directly through Google Places, these photos help potential customers get a better view of the decor, merchandise, food, and more on each business’ Place Page and on Google.com.

Google’s focus on Indian SMBs

Google has been focusing on Indian SMBs with the launch of ‘India Get Your Business Online’ programme though of consistent branding is creating more confusion (Google Places, Google Maps, Google Business Photos, Google local search) as opposed to Facebook, which recently partnered with FICCI to get Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to use Facebook’s global Small and Medium Business (SMB) Boost programme.

Quikr boasts of 17 million unique individuals and small businesses using it across 83 cities every month. These individuals and businesses access Quikr to sell, buy, rent or find products and services in a variety of categories such as electronics, cars, bikes, real estate, services, jobs, education and entertainment. Existing investors include Nokia Growth Partners and Omidyar Network, apart from those mentioned above.

“In the initial rounds of fund raising, we have already attracted some of the best investors across the globe. We are delighted to have a strategic partner like Warburg Pincus as we continue our journey forward. The current round, which is our largest to date, will enable us to diversify our offerings across both online and mobile platforms, intensify our product development efforts and further strengthen our marketing capabilities.” [Pranay Chulet, Co-Founder and CEO,  Quikr]

An interesting read: Watch out Craigslist, OLX, 99acres, Burrp – here comes Facebook (Groups)!

We request you to fill up this survey (doesn’t take more than 5 minutes) and help us understand your cloud services usage better. We will be sharing the survey results very soon.
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In a network business, there is typically no value in the network without users, and users do not show up on an empty network.  This becomes especially important in two-sided networks. E.g. AirBnB really serves no value for a consumer if there are no producers (accommodation hosts) on it.

When starting such a business, the key question that entrepreneurs face is: “How do I get initial users to start using my network when there is no activity on it?”

One of the ways of solving this problem is to ensure that the product has a ‘standalone mode’. Essentially, a user should be able to derive value out of the product even when other users aren’t on it.

A product that has standalone value irrespective of the network is more likely to get traction among at least one set of users. In most cases, the end consumer is sold purely on the value of the standalone product and not on the promise of the added benefit when the network kicks in. The network can then be turned on once enough users are acquired through this hook.

Square is a classic example of this strategy. Payments is a space which is especially difficult to get into, partly because it is very difficult to have a critical mass of buyers and sellers start using your payment mechanism simultaneously. In the case of Square, the standalone credit card swiping value proposition was enough for merchants to start adopting the product. The consumer side of the equation, which is still kicking in, has the potential to disrupt retail payments altogether but that was not the dream that was sold to the merchants originally.

Service booking systems like OpenTable (restaurant reservation) work in a similar manner. To seed usage among one side of the network (restaurants), the company distributes booking management systems which the restaurant can use as standalone software. Once OpenTable had enough restaurants on board, and hence access to their seating inventory as well, they opened out the consumer side to allow them to start making booking and collecting a lead generation fee from the restaurants. Cab booking companies that have been mushrooming across India work in a similar manner.

In general, this strategy works better for two-sided networks where one side (typically merchants) needs to be brought on board before the other side can see value in the network.

In the case of a one-sided consumer network, Delicious gained initial traction in a similar way. Early adopters used Delicious to store browser bookmarks in the cloud and it delivered standalone value. Once the user base hit critical mass, the social bookmarking features started getting used and the value of the network grew with more users.

However, seeding one-sided consumer networks has gradually become easier with the emergence of social sharing. Instagram, for example, while a great product in standalone mode itself, didn’t have to grapple long with figuring out how to create a network as users could instantly share their creations over Facebook, Twitter etc.

This obviously isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. In fact, most network businesses may not find it all that easy to create a product with standalone value. E.g. A dating or matrimonial site is unlikely to have an offering that provides standalone value. But there are many niches in India where a network could be seeded with this strategy.

• Real Estate: Provide a client management and building inventory management solution to the broker and expand to a broker-consumer network from there.
• Loyalty Network: Provide a sales management and CRM software to retailers and open out a loyalty network (Buy and redeem across multiple retailers) once there are enough retailers on board.
• Any booking/reservation system: Similar to OpenTable and the cab booking example above.

About the Author:  Sangeet leads New Ventures at Intuit Asia, actively feeds on Quora and loves the intersection of geekery and business. He writes often on Platforms and Two-sided networks on Quora (http://www.quora.com/platform-disruption)

JustRechargeIt claims to be India’s first multi-lingual (supports 10 Indian languages) recharge site and services more than a million plus registered mobile customers.

The investment was led by Ladderup Finance Limited, a mid-market focused and independently owned boutique investment bank, along with a consortium of Investors who have acquired 25% stake in the company.

Another player in recharge space, Freecharge has raised INR 20 Crores from Sequoia Capital.

Also see: PayTM deal on TimesDeal grabs 70,000 mobile recharge orders in a day

Calculations factoring in the ARPU variance suggest that India’s 2G spectrum in the 1,800 MHz band is 44 times costlier than the price discovered in Singapore last year. [source]

Computer makers to raise prices by month-end

Weakening rupee against dollar is leading major personal computer manufacturers in India to increase prices of their products. Companies such as Acer India, Hewlett Packard (HP) India and Dell India are facing the reality of rupee depreciation, which they think would continue at this level of Rs 54-56 against the dollar for at least next few months. [source]

Augere Wireless set to sell its 4G spectrum, quit India

Augere Wireless, a company backed by France Telecom and private equity funds, is set to sell its 4G spectrum in two states and quit India, as regulatory uncertainty has forced its investors to hang up on the country. The company has blamed the regulatory uncertainties surrounding India’s telecoms sector and said it had resulted in the company ‘being unable to raise funds from both national and international investors’. [source]

No escape for Vodafone as government puts its name in report on black money

Vodafone tax case found a mention in the “White paper on black money” tabled by the government in Parliament on Monday, suggesting that finance ministry intends to go after the company once the retrospective amendment to the income tax act is approved by the President. [source]

Nimbuzz to relocate global headquarters to India

Nimbuzz is relocating its global headquarters to India, which accounts for a fifth of its 90 million customers. The company has also announced a restructuring of its top deck, appointing Indians in key positions earlier held by Dutch nationals. These include the appointment of Vikas Saxena, a former top executive at Aircel, as the CEO of its India operations.

That is, all orders on LetsBuy will now go thru’ Flipkart’s selection & checkout process.

What about LetsBuy employees?

Like any other M&A deal, some of the employees will be let go of (corporate speak: outplacement support will be provided) and the entire process is expected to complete by middle of this week.

-

This arrangement works for Flipkart because of several negative sentiments around LetsBuy brand (i.e. order delivery etc) and like we said earlier, Flipkart had a very limited time to control the entire LetsBuy experience, as consumers started blaming Flipkart for LetsBuy’s goofups.

Given the timing (Amazon launching in India, Jabong going strong), this is probably the best Flipkart could do. Importantly, this was probably the best way out for folks at Letsbuy too (rather than sink with a sinking ship).

That is,  the end of LetsBuy – as a brand and as a company.

Though, an important question still remains unanswered: Why did Flipkart acquire LetsBuy? For the traffic? What about category management? warehouse? logistics?

LetsBuy Vs. Others

If you have an answer, do let us know!

For more context, do read the article: Letsbuy – Bought! Now What?.

Recommended Analysis: The Great Indian e-Commerce Bazaar [Total Recap]

• Letsbuy has killed the buyback option (http://buyback.letsbuy.com/)
• There have been no Letsbuy ads in recent times.
• There have been no mailers as well.
• Their Twitter account (@LetsBuy) was last updated on April 24th. There are way too many complaints/order status requests regarding Letsbuy and none of them are being addressed.

And now some rumors

• All warehouses of Letsbuy except at Delhi have been closed down. Whether its “shut down” or “under renovation (for Flipkart)” is unknown.
• It seems an announcement was made last week at Letsbuy, Gurgaon office that by May-end all 250 odd employees would be laid off (with no visibility into severance package). The story at BusinessWorld also corroborates this.

While the details haven’t been confirmed by either of the two companies (we have sent an email to Flipkart for the official version), we have heard the layoff details from LetsBuy employees as well.

So what really happened?

When Flipkart acquired Letsbuy, the official release mentioned 3Cs (Computers, Communication and Consumer electronics) category expansion as the main reason for Letsbuy acquisition:

“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”. [source]

Which translates to acquiring the warehouses, integrating the backend/supply chain etc. But none of that has happened so far and now Letsbuy has shutdown all warehouses, except for the one in Kirti Nagar, Delhi.

Flipkart vs. LetsBuy: Exploring Synergy

Let’s chalk down the strength of the two companies:

Sentimental Analysis : Flipkart vs. Letsbuy (May 19)

So why did Flipkart acquire LetsBuy ?

Was it to address new markets, and get a new user base? Or to get better access to deals in consumer electronics space (no doubt that Letsbuy was much cheaper than Flipkart pricing, when it comes to electronics space). And all of this probably made sense in the short run, but not something Flipkart could not have figured out on its own steam.

The need to add more warehouses could have been an immediate pain point that (also) got solved with this deal – but on its own its too expensive a proposition.

Was it – as believed by many – driven by a financial restructuring of its portfolio at the VC’s end? Given other such signs at Accel’s end, this cannot be totally ruled out. Of course, this is pure speculation.

What Next?

That must have been a tough one. Not just for us, but for those involved.

LetsBuy is a bit of an expensive hot potato. Let’s remember they were probably bleeding when Flipkart bought them.

So first up – a smart thing to do would be to reduce costs! The ads, emailers disappearing from the online world point to that. Integrating Flipkart with Letbuy would be a medium term process – and doing it at the service/logisitics level would be pointless, painful and risk dilution of Flipkart’s famed service levels. So it would make sense for just the inventory, vendor relationships and the like.

The above doesn’t need too many Letsbuy people, of course. The grapevine is abuzz about many Letsbuy-ers interviewing at other places – so the murmurs of a “restructuring” in there are not unbelievable.

Is the Letsbuy brand hurting Flipkart?

Will the Let’sBuy brand stay alive? It does have a certain amount of recall. However, using it as sub brand for product categories doesn’t make sense especially given the strength of Flipkart’s own brand. But as a new property/direction – say a deals site closely affiliated with Flipkart, or an outfit managing and forging affiliate/channel alliances – perhaps yes. Flipkart must be looking at moving deeper into the hinterland and addressing markets on the fringes to expand.

“Letsbuy employees are, however, certain that the brand will be wiped out. “From the looks of it, Flipkart is going to kill Letsbuy,” says a senior officer at Letsbuy on condition of anonymity. “Our orders have come down drastically and we only get new inventory after orders are placed,” he adds. Incidentally, Letsbuy is still receiving about 1,500 shipments a day against Flipkart’s 30,000 a day” [reports BW]

LetsBuy's blame is on Flipkart

The one thing that’s clear is to either do a 100% brand integration and ensure that LetsBuy experience is as good as Flipkart, or simply kill the brand and own the logistics. The more Flipkart delays this, the worse will be the impact on its own brand perception.
And this is just one of the several tweets that expresses frustration over LetsBuy’s bad support (and a new trend we have observed is that people are now putting the blame on Flipkart for Letsbuy shipping mistakes/delays).

Given that Amazon is probably feverishly working on its India strategy and Jabong is on an aggressive growth plan (read: Rocket Internet in India: What’s the Big Deal?), we wonder if this isn’t just a huge, expensive distraction to Flipkart? There are sporadic reports of older players like Indiaplaza and HomeShop18 working on improving their logistics and delivery. Everyone must have Flipkart on their radars, and surely, the ecommerce battles are just about warming up.

What’s your opinion?

Update: LetsBuy customers will now be redirected to Flipkart checkout process

[The article is co-authored by Sameer Shisodia and Ashish Sinha.]

• Over 94% of Indian smart phone users access the internet on their mobile: The eBay India Mobile Commerce Survey results indicated that a large majority of Indian smart phone users are accessing the mobile internet and as many as 64% of them have upgraded to 3G services. As many as 80% of the respondents claimed to be always on the internet.  
• The Home is the favourite access point for the mobile internet: Over 84% of the survey respondents expressed that they accessed the mobile internet at home followed by 66% who accessed it at work & 55% who accessed it while waiting for their friends. The malls, restaurants, theatres, airports & the commute were the other times of access.
• Shopping is the third most popular category of search after emails & social networking: 70%of smart phone users access online shopping websites
• Over 87% of Indian smart phone users compare Product Prices online: This is more popular than travel tickets, movie timings or contact details.
• Check your phone before you reach for your wallet: 57% of smart shoppers check prices online before they shop in a mall or a store. Over 30% of users have stated that they always find better deals online & 49% have stated that they ‘Mostly’ find better deals online.
• 68% of users have made an online purchase using their smart phone: Digital Commerce is gaining traction with Indian smart phone users.
• Gadgets are the most popular online purchases:  68% of mobile internet users have bought gadgets on their smart phone followed by 40% who have bought clothes & footwear & 34% who have bought books.
• Mobile Commerce Users are savvy shoppers & use their smart phones to check product prices (84%). Other popular activities are to locate a store (65%), research product features (57%),find deals (55%), check product availability (48%).
• Samsung & Nokia (40% each) are the smart phone of choice for the Mobile Indian . The iPhone (17%) is the third most popular smart phone brand.

From what it seems, the survey reports are highly skewed towards the active smartphone users and should be taken in the right perspective.

* : The survey was conducted in the month of May, 2012 and over 4,500 users filled up the survey form.

Related Reports:

• Smartphone Report: Women spend 4X the amount of time men spend on Instant Messaging applications.
• Indian Smartphone users are more active than the American counterparts [Google Survey Report]

Before the Funding Episode:

This part of my story starts taking shape in the month of December in 2011. I was juggling around my day job with my startup. You can’t hide things for long in social media and before my employer could give me a pink slip, I made the move. However, this was also the time when I had started meeting a lot of people and shared about my blog, armed with just a notepad and no proper networking etiquette and business cards on me. One such visit was to a funding meetup.–

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Read: Why I left my job (for my own startup)

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I had gone there to share my idea and get insights on it since I was dead sure that nobody is going to fund a blog with no revenue model. Anyways, the casual meetup turned out to be exciting, as we were few of the lucky startups that where chosen to be funded. Suddenly I was on top of the moon, mainly for two reasons: 1) the money would help survive me and my family plus our savings would be spared! 2) I had found like-minded people who shared my belief. Things were rosy but then they say money surfaces hidden agendas for which this blogger was not at all prepared.

Refusing the Funding:

This part of the story revolves around when we as a team started interacting with our team of angel investors. Love is tested when you start living together. With each passing day, we started getting a feeling that our identity was fading away. At times our blog name was not cool, sometimes we were asked if we could write about tech and then the big question – can’t we double the number of posts per day? Our vision was being modified or in VC terms – being pivoted!

Besides this, in India you are expected to give all things on time but the same should not be expected from the other party. With time, it was also clear that most of our content-related problems went unanswered.

And then came in reality – we were asked to select from a certain range of equity percentage that we were ready to share. I believe that just by reading Paul Graham’s blog, you don’t understand what and why you should give a certain amount of equity. I was also not aware of my startup valuation, forget about deciding what equity percentage to give. But thanks to my brother, a finance guy, who explained to me about our valuation.

Engulfed in a big chakravyu, I had no understanding what to do. At one side, the angels pushed us to sign the deal and on the other, I was finding a way to get out of it all. But at the same time, it was difficult to say no to money and a hopeful future. I started asking people whom I considered as my well-wishers and who had appreciated the work on our blog. This was the best thing to happen. I was asked by most of them- why are you looking for funding? This basic question solved my entire dilemma.

We sat down (my partner and I) to do a simple brainstorming exercise and we realized our mistakes from the very beginning. We had not found out answers for these burning questions:

1. Why do we need money/funding for our survival or startup?

2. What benefit will the money do in terms of resource add-on to our startup?

3. Do the angel investors understand our vision and line of business?

4. What will they bring to the table other than money?

We needed money for our survival and a basic math done earlier indicated that our savings coupled with some consulting work, will suffice. Apart from that, I was soon to be full-time in my startup, so I was excited to test my potential. The decision was made; we refused the funding citing two reasons:

1. We wanted to stretch ourselves and see if we can survive on our own and fuel our dreams.

2. We felt we were getting into a relationship which wouldn’t benefit us in any way apart from the money.

This brainstorming also helped us refuse funding in a second instance too.

After the Refusal:

This part of the story is of present day and I am in the 5^th month of my entrepreneurship but trust me I am yet to regret my decision. At times the thought does creep in whether I opted for the right choice but then as they say – You are known for the choices you make in life. Hence, perhaps the dream of running my startup in my way is the right choice for me!

I am not against startups looking for funding or with the investor community. Scenarios are different for everyone and it is an individual’s call. Tomorrow if my startup calls for funds then I would surely hunt for like-minded people who would not only bring money but also share their learning’s and provide us with mentorship. And I learnt a few lessons along the way:

1. Don’t be hesitant to talk to all kinds of people in the industry.

2. You will have to make the first move, as it is your startup.

3. Talk about funding only when your startup needs it.

4. And stand by the decisions that you make in life.

Do share the choices you made in your life as an Entrepreneur. I would love to hear them.

[Guest article contributed by Prasant Naidu, cofounder of LightHouse Insights blog.]

In addition, 52 % say they spend less time worrying about the threat of cyber-attacks. Indian SMBs using the cloud also spend 72 % less time each week managing security than companies not using the cloud. They are also 22 times more likely to have reduced what they spend on managing security as a percentage of overall IT budget.

The survey shows that, in India:

• 61% of SMBs that use the cloud said they were able to employ more staff in roles that directly benefit sales or business growth, 63 percent invest in more product development or innovation, and 62 percent experienced improved agility in being to increase and decrease IT capacity when needed.
• Over half of those surveyed (64 percent) said that using the cloud enabled them to add new products and services that benefit their business more quickly and securely.
• 52 % said the cloud made it easier for them to scale their business to explore new markets.

The study, commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by research company comScore, polled companies with between 100 and 250 computers PCs in the U.S., India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. For the purpose of this research, cloud users were defined as companies that used a cloud service via a subscription model.

What’s your take on the report? For sure, cloud adoption brings down the TCO (maintenance among the biggest challenge), are SMBs adopting

Take a look at the infographics

Cloud and SMB Infographics

Started by IIM Ahmedabad graduates Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna in June 2011, TaxiForSure is an aggregator of car rentals and taxis in India (offers point to point, local packages, outstation and airport transfer taxis, across various car types). The company started operations in June 2011 and is currently active only in Bangalore (plans to expand to other cities, post funding).

Question: Too many 1-city players hoping to expand to multiple cities too soon? And too much VC money in it already (without much of validation)? Or are these future categories being funded for acquisitions by big players like MMT/redBus etc?

What’s your opinion?

Other funding in taxi booking space :

• Olacabs secures Series A round from Tiger Global
• Car Rental Service, Savaari secures Series A funding from Inventus Capital

Service-as-a-Product, or SaaP, shortly, is different from the SaaS model in that you get a dedicated infrastructure, database, and dedicated software, with complete control over code and data, in a standard, quick, easy, and scalable implementation with flexibility of payment.

SaaP

Not only does Ambab design, develop, and design your online store, but also helps in marketing, promotions, product management, and analytics. They have some standard processes specific to one of the four packages they have for different kinds of startups.

I believe that is an interesting approach taken by Ambab. Most ecommerce stores have common features: product catalogues, shopping carts, checkouts, social sign-ons, etc. What differs is the layout, the design, the UX. Having a common ready-made solution for the backend, with little tweaks, and a new UX should be easy to work with, and provide a fast enough solution to their customers.

Ambab was started by Bhavik Jhaveri, in 2007. CraftsVilla.com, dealsandyou.com, Fetise, OyHoy.com are a few popular names in the ecommerce industry that have employed Ambab’s offerings to set up their applications.

Here is a detailed conversation with Jhaveri, on Ambab’s offerings, and the journey so far:

PI: Ambab is about designing and developing webpages, webapps, and mobile apps for ecommerce companies. How is this different from an outsourcing company?
BJ: Ambab is different in its philosophy of working. We don’t source projects, We partner with teams. We help startups/ wannabes/ offline retailers use our knowledge, expertise and services in an affordable and measurable way. Affordable is because we have low setup fees with easy monthly installment options. Measurable because we educate startups about lean methodologies and provide structured startup life-cycle driven service delivery model.

PI: What does SaaP really mean? How is it different from SaaS?
BJ: All SaaS offerings come with an inherited domain expertise and major standard business processes integrated. The best part of SaaS is you don’t need to buy it, you can just subscribe and use it. Hence you save on your CAPEX and pay as you go as OPEX.

SaaS is not an answer to what startups need. Every startup is unique and needs to build their story uniquely, and is yet to validate and prove their business. They don’t just need a standard package, but what they need is complete control to build unique things, to pivot business based on learning, control of data, infrastructure and only when they can control it they can build it.

And hence we came up with a unique offering SaaP (Service-as-a-Product) wherein we tried to cover best of both worlds. It has a standard, quick, easy monthly implementation / payment mode, and at the same time the startup has complete control and ownership of data/ software.

PI: How did it all start? How long have you been in business?
BJ: Ambab was established by me in 2007 with a vision to be technology back-office for all size companies. We started our business by building solutions of enterprise level to ecommerce store to a basic 5 pages website. We have worked with small SMEs to large Multinationals like Pidilite, Zee, Nokia etc. There was nothing unique about Ambab apart from our core team of engineers and our belief in each other and our Vision.

PI: Five years is a long time. How has the journey been so far?
BJ: It was an evening of December 2009, just as a normal course of business day a duo team referred by some distant friend walked into our office with a vision to build something really big in eCommerce. They had just left their jobs and were high on energy to build a good technology platform. We took 3 months to make their dream project Wanamo.com (now dealsandyou.com) to go live. Though we hardly earned out of it but for some reason complete team including me were feeling very nice about it and felt more satisfaction than any other large size projects that we ever did.

In our journey from 2010 till today 2012 our team including me got into a great learning curve. We got acquainted to some of the best technologies, practices and teams in industry  We strategically got partnered with multiple Large size startups including Smile Group’s COE which enabled (DealsandYou, FashionandYou, Bestylish), than Fetise and recently Craftsvilla.

PI: What technologies do you use for development? Do you get suggestions from clients on the technology stack or do you have a preset technology stack that you use?
BJ: We are unleashing the power of Open Source (Php, Mysql, Linux, Apache, Nginx, Solr, Sphinx etc.), enterprise technologies and cloud to offer best of all worlds and deliver highly scalable, custom solutions in predefined packages. We are open to suggestions and would love to learn and build solutions basis client’s available technology stack.

PI: Do you also incorporate business logic in the solutions you provide?
BJ: That’s our USP and that’s SaaP for you. It’s 100% customizable. It predominantly comes with all major integrations of business processes, taxation, logistics, analytic etc. But any further implementations or customization are completely possible.

PI: How much control does the client have on the codebase/deployment instances/databases once you’ve set them up for them?
BJ: If they go for installment model, they get the complete control of system as soon as they finish their 18 installments. Till than they have to use our cost effective and highly experiences retainer resource to make any customization. They can own it any time by paying complete installments at any time during the 18 months tenure.

PI: Do you provide support post-installation, for the life of the product? If yes, do you have an yearly subscription?
BJ: Yes, we are here to support businesses and we do give them offsite free support for bug tracking etc for complete product life. Not only that once they take the handover of product, we also support the businesses by giving enough training to their new team.

PI: How do you make it possible to go live in 10 working days, as you say on your site?
BJ: Power of open source and our expertise of skill levels allows us to have delivery time been cut short to as low as 10 working days for our standard packages. But it again purely depends on UI approvals, business readiness and data planning etc where most of the time it is the customer themselves who might need some extra time to plan. We have a process of “Go Live Checklist” to businesses as soon as they signup with us, which helps them understand what would be needed at which stage of project and helps them be info ready as and when needed. If our consumers follow our checklist process we assure to deliver in 10 working days.

PI: You have a vast range of offerings from applications to servers and cloud-based storage and big data analysis.
BJ: Yes. We have a complete team in-house and right partners to offer this complete bouquet of services. Not only do we provide this Enterprise Services but also offer Business Support Services like Content Writing, Data Uploading, Marketing Agency, Social Jockey, Warehousing, innovative Packaging and last mile delivery(through multiple partners) all on Retainer basis. We also help startup in roping in right partners for other services that we don’t offer at specially discounted prices.

PI: How big is the team now?
BJ: We are 10 mavericks right now with diverse skills. Some of the members of our team like Srinivas Putta (UI/ UX lead) and Mounish Ambaliya (Engineering – Lead) have been working with me from past 7 year that is even before we started Ambab.

PI: Any more info/details you would like to share.
BJ: We are hiring and we are looking at like minded partners across the country. Partners who can help us take our Mission to every single City, Town and Village of our country. We want to enable as many startups as we can and we believe No Idea should be shelved just because they do not have enough resources.

We also have a Technology Incubation where we would be sponsoring every month one underprivileged startup or exceptional Idea with technology and resources. For any further information about partnering and starting up with us readers can get in touch with me directly at bhj [at] ambab [dot ] com.

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Sevice-as-a-Product is a new trend that is picking up. It can really come in handy for startups with not enough technical expertise, or not enough manpower, to setup and host a working application at low costs and smaller timeframes. Also, many startups in the ecommerce domain, require relatively more technical work in the beginning, and once set up, not enough to maintain it forward. An offering like Ambab’s could turn out to be better than hiring a couple of freelancers to do the initial job.

What is your opinion? Would you like to outsource your development/deployment part to someone or completely do it yourself? If you are a startup and did it yourself already, do you feel this could have helped? Let us know in the comments.

“The current growth rate of the Indian passenger car segment is phenomenal. As has happened in developed markets such as the USA, Europe, Japan, Indian car owners’ conscious of service quality, value pricing and convenience will actively seek and prefer independent, multi-brand, quality car service centers like CarZ for car repair and maintenance services during and post warranty. By virtue of its service offering, quality of service and culture, CarZ has already established strong customer acceptance and brand identity in the markets it currently operates apart from generating huge nation-wide interest in its business model. The CarZ model has evolved systems and processes to effectively deliver quality, transparent, affordable, hassle-free and friendly car service to car owners at convenient neighbourhood locations.” [Kumar Shiralagi, Managing Director of IUVP]

Madeinhealth.com is among India’s largest health nutrition e-store and began by selling authentic health and sports nutrition online, delivering to all parts of India. The market was extremely fragmented and unorganized and the online store gained traction very quickly.

“Healthkart, founded by IIT alumni Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari, will now gain access to an online community of over one lakh fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilders through this acquisition.It is a good strategic fit, said Sameer Maheshwari, co-founder of Healthkart.com. In January,the company had raised $7.5 million from Omidyar Network and existing investors Sequoia Capital and Kae Capital. As the e-commerce sector sees huge growth with nearly 100 million Indians online now, increased consolidation is expected. Healthkart’s co-founder Prashant Tandon estimates this newest acquisition will help the company tap into the $1 billion sports-nutrition market in India.” [PR]

The founding team of Madeinhealth  has joined Yebhi, post this acquisition (though other assets were acquired by Healthkart).