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Posts Tagged ‘startup ideas’

Proto companies reviewed

January 28th, 2009
10 comments

I have been to Proto this time around. Great people, good startups and over all a good event. Here is my thought on companies that were short listed for Proto this year.

IndiaKhelo -

  A nice concept overall. Not so bad execution either. But problem is they are trying to do too much too soon. That could be a major problem. Also I am not sure how many people will get interested in this. Difficult to create market around such concept. Lets hope they do succeed in creating that. 

Taroby -

  I dont get why I need another email tool. Thunderbird rocks and instead of creating an entire client, why these guys did not create just a plugin on top of thunderbird is beyond me. Not at all impressed by concept or the execution.

Lords automotive -

  Good technology and has definite first mover advantage. Trying to move into green solutions space is a good business proposal at this point. Though I am not sure about the segment they are targeting. If they keep focus on scooter segment, they might lose out to electric vehicles sooner or later. But overall a good effort.

LifeMojo -

  Interesting concept. Good execution and one of the startups that presented it very well. They seem to have figured out game plan and revenue models failr well. There is definite problem they are solving. Though I am not sure about the scale they can reach, but with more internet penetration their graphs should keep going upwards. This is sort of startup which founders will have to work on for years (7-10) to rip the benefits and rewards, which is very challenging. Hopefully they have that kind of perseverance to see through all bad times.

iFlap -

  No offence to founders or the team behind this startup, but I just dont see value of the technology they have developed. True, they might have developed a great solution, but to a non-existent problem in my humble opinion.

New Algi -

  It is good concept and great solution. I have no idea about their business field and hence wont comment much.

Noddler -

  By the presentation I thought company is using neural networks and speech synthesis/recognition but does not seem so from the demo. All it is doing is some level of customization of the tapes played at IVRs using variable replacements which is not at all impressive. Also from business side, I dont see how they will get people to sign up on their platform unless some incentive is offered. Overall a startup which I wont be watching closely in days to come.

Fachak -

   Again similar to iFlap, I just could not see the problem they are trying to solve! This statement is getting truer and truer for most of the “dot com” startups these days. Mashups is old story boys, bring on something new.

Yoplr -

   Interesting concept, okayish execution. Problem with such a service, which lets you plan your travel is, unless you attack the market ie travelers in inside out and outside in method, your chances of getting success is limited. Service clearly targets planned vacations like honeymoon, family outings etc. Could be more useful for their business model and revenue generation if they can get in forgein travelers coming to India and Indian travelers going abroad. Indian travelers, travelling with in India, I am not sure about the market size. But has clear exit opportunities with definite strategic partnership with large OTAs in the space. Chances of survival and success seems pretty good, but could be much better.

ReminDo -

  Again I am not at all sure about problem. Execution could have been much much better. As I have already said, Web 2.0 is already old. Pull up your socks and deliver great app in first go. No more chances for early mistakes, business is hard in this space folks. 

Ooha -

  Nice concept, though a little to forward looking. But its always good to solve a problem before your customers face it. In the long run this one can go big and I mean really big. But again entry barriers are not there and market penetration will take lot of time, so wait and watch it is.

Ink Fruit -

  Awesomeness! Concept is not something we never heard of. There are companies which do similar things in west and even in India. But execution is far far better than any other startups at proto. Definite value, simple and clear revenue model, top notch execution. If they can maintain a great speed to acquire market, they can go big in no time. Only question remains is why is the name Ink Fruit? All the best guys.

 

Do let me know your thoughts on these companies.

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Evangelism : How to, mobile platforms as case study

October 7th, 2008
3 comments

Now after reading my last post, you know you need to evangelize your platform. How to do it? Well that’s a million dollar question isn’t it? Here is some free advice to mobile SMS platforms. If you are looking solutions for your own platform send me a gift that I would REALLY like and will post about it.

Government and organized institutions like Nationalize banks:

My father worked in Maharashtra irrigation department for 35 years. From 2006 he told me that District Collector communicates using SMSes! Reach to them. Go and talk to these people and make them see how they can use SMSGupshup like platform (SMSGupshup sucks, as its branded wrongly, so first build me too product with much better branding).

These large monolithic organizations require sending of memos (often one-liners) and receipt of memos. See if you can make them use it for the communication.

Emergency Services

First time in 20 years 5000+ Nasik people were left homeless due to floods.  Fire-fighters often need to  communicate with large audience. Emergency services, police, blood banks all need mechanism to communicate with community to get there support. Evangelize your platform for them, customize it and they will buy it.

Latency of content 

Internet is slow content delivery mechanism. When I say that, I mean a person has to be logged into Internet and be looking for stuff. Whats latency of your delivery platform? If its SMS, user is always online, content delivered in say 2-5 mins depending on bandwidth etc etc. So if you are using SMS for content delivery, think about who need fast information irrespective of where they are, traveling or in toilet! Few examples of such target audience for something like SMS content channel is Brokerage firms and there custoemrs, helath-care corporates and its staff, event managers. One quick example of all places you can use it is think out of the box. I attended Barcamp Mumbai 4 recently. It was a good experience. Problem was unconference nature of the event means sessions are rescheduled, venue for a session changed many times. I missed 3-4 sessions which I was really looking forward to. SMS to the rescue! Thats the power of thinking out of the box. 

Trade fairs and organized events

As I mentioned in the previous blog post about how you can create user base from farmers, traders easiest way is to use trade fairs for educating people. Don’t send your sales team to these events though, they are generally afraid of that. Send your product evangelizing team. What you don’t have product evangelizing team??? <very dirty look and thinking if you are from B-school> .

There are many more ways to do it, for the list of the rest develop good wordpress theme for this blog and help me maintain it :-) .

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Startup Ideas - II

October 3rd, 2008
7 comments

As promised here is another startup idea I would like to see.

Net is far reaching medium, no doubt. In India still it has not reached the masses though, but that’s another story which will be focus on some another blog entry. One of new things that are propelling growth of the Internet further are collaborative technologies like wiki, blog, media sharing etc etc etc. Lets focus on blogs, one of the key resource for information sharing even breaking news these days. Lot of people are now blogging and lot more are reading them, commenting on them. New feature that I would like on blog-readers or feed readers is voice. I travel a lot to Pune/Mumbai/Banglore and other places for networking. Instead of listening to cool music I would definitely like to listen to blogs as reading in an Indian Volvo variant is not so much recommended for eyes. So something like a radio channel with visual UI. So my smartphone downloads all the blogs I am subscribed to and then reads them for me in “good” Indian accent english. If there is new post on a blog I am subscribe to then it tells me there is new post. I should be able to have all the controls over the reading like in a typical radio. Browing through them, pause, play, stop etc. Its not really feature for blogs but it is feature for blog-readers/feed readers. Some support from blogs is essentially though. For example if a blog has some pictures and refering them in the blog post then there should be some voice link king of thing which says when you start reading this line then show this pic on the device. If there is a slide-show which is being discussed then it should have voice links accordingly. I think this feature can be really cool and handy for people who want to read blogs but just dont get time in there busy life (I am not one of them yet :-) ). People who are constantly travelling and are looking to read blogs during travelling.

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