Android

While there was no new hardware announced, there were a lot of exciting new APIs and features that Google announced. Things like the beta-testing and incremental rollouts feature from the Play Store are a big deal. Android Apps quality has always been a question mark when competing with Apple’s store, and Google wants to give all the tools and techniques possible to the App developers to help them build better Apps. By beta-testing the Apps in the real world, and rolling out their App incrementally, App developers can essentially catch bugs and issues earlier, and prevent the nasty 1-star ratings that users seem so happy to give.

Google has clearly paid of a lot of attention to what developers want with announcements like the new Maps APIs and Android Studio. At a meta level, it is very exciting to see that Google is putting the interests of developers and their needs right at the top. Developers are essential to any platform eco system (And Google has a stake in several – Android, Chrome/Web Apps, Google +, Glass), and catering to all the needs of developers is absolutely essential. Even giving away free stuff like $1300+ Pixels is sometimes criticized, but you have to see the value that Google gets out of this – By putting beautiful, high-end devices like the Pixel early into the hands of developers, Google is encouraging them to write Apps for Chrome and the Web, and make sure the Apps look and work beautifully. Handing out developer devices like the Pixel may actually be the cheapest way to recruit developers on to your platform, something that Intel and Microsoft could do well to emulate.

Google +

On the consumer side, Google + announced a host of new features and products aimed at making lives of consumers easier. The new suite of tools for photos is quite brilliant. Google can now automatically sift through the tons of pictures that you click on your vacation and automatically pick the best ones, enhance them and make you look like a professional photographer, without spending inordinate amounts of time.

This is actually a great strategy from Google +. By automating mundane processes that people go through to get brilliant and beautiful results, it makes it consumers lives easier, but also (and more importantly), it reduces the threshold for consumers to give more and more of their data to Google. If you’re going to get gorgeous looking pictures from your vacation automatically that you can show off to your friends, you’d be more than happy to share your pictures with Google, right.

And Google bread and butter, really, is to get more information and data from its users so it can show them targeted ads. Data is king in the online world, and Google, which already has a significant lead, is building on it, convincing users to part with their data voluntarily.

Search

Which brings us lastly, but most importantly to search. Google has never been one to rest on its laurels, and this year as well, they showed off some pretty cool advancements in the Knowledge graph and the related areas. Google’s voice search has grown by leaps and bounds, and has now started to understand language syntax, automatically figuring out context-words like “here”, “it” etc…, based on what you searched previously.

The most significant step, actually, might Google’s focus on providing information to you without even you asking for it. Google Now has added several new cards, and can “just answer” questions that you might have just thought about. Google clearly believes this is the future of search, where information you need is automatically available to you, without even you needing to explicitly ask for it.

Overall, this was another successful Google IO. Lots of interesting tech announced, and it more-or-less achieved its goal of getting developers excited about Google’s platforms.

Kochi was the first stop of the six-city round in this year’s TechSparks event. We are conducting regional round tables in six cities before we crown the final 30 at the Grand Finale in Bangalore, later this year. As a part of these regional round tables, we identify local entrepreneurs and give them a platform to pitch their startup’s offerings in front of an esteemed panel. And based on various parameters on which these startups are evaluated, they may very well go on to present at the TechSparks Grand Finale.

The three bright City Sparks from Kochi who will get a shot at glory are:

From left to right – Founders of iTraveller, DecideQuick and Mashinga

iTraveller - iTraveller is an ERP platform for travel agents who are managing destinations. Here you can configure your company in simple 15 minutes and start taking bookings. iTraveller’s automated platform helps you manage bookings, payments, hotel reservations, client management, inventory management and so on. There are no entry barriers, setup fees or lock-in periods – pay only if you use it and stop any time when you don’t have bookings.

DecideQuick – DecideQuick is a Trivandrum based startup which claims to help you make buying decisions based on experiences and opinions that have already been shared by your friends, influencers, experts, people like you and others anywhere on the web; all in under 60 seconds.

Mashinga - Mashinga leverages the technology of Multi-touch and the art of Human Computer Interaction to bring computing to new mediums. They offer products and tailored solutions including multi-touch tables, interactive kiosks, inclined or vertical displays. If it involves big screens and touch interfaces, they are the guys to talk to.

Do you think your company has what it takes to be a CitySpark? Register today! 

Their first play was The Skeleton Woman which was an original script written and performed by Prashant Prakash and Kalki Koechlin. It was directed by Nayantara Kotian and produced by Anurag Kashyap. The play won the Hindu Metroplus Playwright award 2009 for the best original, unpublished script in English. Kalki associates very well with the multiple hats that an entrepreneur dons.

Yesterday, we happened to be on the sets ‘Conversations with Namu Kini’ – a talk show which will be online soon where we had a chance to meet Kalki.

Quaff was in every sense like a startup, “I was doing so many things at one time!” she says. Acting, writing and theatre. Running a theatre group has a lot of parallels with a startup- consider a tech one- replace the product with the play, the developers with the performers, the technical architecture with the creative clashes. It’s the same process, the setting is different.

Kalki has now moved on from the theatre group but that was her stepping stone into the industry.

Talking about what she would say to the gutsy people in India starting up something of their own, she says, “It is good for you. If people tell you that you are crazy, it is a good sign!” And we agree. As great Gandhi put it, First they ignore you. then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. This belief should be the cornerstone of every daring idea.

On a personal front, Kalki exposed an interesting aspect when she told us about being almost famous, “It is annoying,” she says. You either want to be famous or not, dangling midway is not very comfortable. Throwing light on her work, Kalki is on the lookout for only one thing- good work. “I would like to go anywhere in the world for good work. The great thing about being an actor is that you are open to many places and different cultures,” she said.

Stay tuned for updates on conversations with Namu Kini.

- Kirti Punia with inputs from Jubin Mehta

Brandniti was formed under Regenti Media Pvt Ltd as a full fledged Design and Communication agency. Brandniti primarily focuses on adding value to the real estate space in India. It was started in February 2012, with a vision to emerge as one stop solution for all marketing and business needs of real estate developers. It addresses varied needs of Real Estate Developers like developing renders & walkthroughs to traditional advertising mediums like print, hoarding & digital.

Both Smita and Haresh have been actively involved with the development of Brandniti since inception. Having been in the real estate industry, they have also observed the changing trends in the same. Haresh says “We observed that trends were changing. Clients in the industry were asking for more innovative, creative solutions and weren’t clinged to only the traditional mediums.”

Building on the existing gap in the Real Estate, they were able to carve out the essential values for Brandniti. Its focus on quality service delivery and innovative communication approach in traditional mediums like brochures, websites, walkthrough, print, outdoors and choice of innovative mediums like tablet applications have helped them retain existing clients and also get references for future contracts. Some of the clients include India Bulls, Suntech and Equinox Reality.

Haresh shares “My experience of 14 years in marketing & sales with real estate developers has come in handy in marketing & sales expertise with involvement in activities such as marketing plan, media plan, sales plan to launch real estate projects across the board etc.” In addition to the above, his experience in graphics & animation adds value to his creative instincts and ability to think through innovative concepts and brainstorm along with other team members. On the other hand Smita being a qualified Architect with honours brings her enormous strength as a business leader and networked individual. She has been at the forefront when starting up and has been leading the team effectively.

Brandniti works with developers during varied phases of their business cycle. Haresh also shares that majority of their revenue is generated through repeated business and hence client satisfaction emerges a priority for the whole team. The effective last financial year turn over for the startup was INR 14 Million. The founders are hopeful of attaining a 100% growth this financial year. The success rate of the startup adds fuel to the burning spirits of team Brandniti. Haresh mentions that they are looking forward at other industries such as Pharma, Retail, FMCG, and Jewelers etc. They are also planning to setup regional offices in Pune and Bangalore. “We have been approached by various developers in these markets who value and appreciate our expertise in the domain. We are also continuously looking to step-up on improving client experiences through use of technology and adding up strength to our creative & client servicing team” 

He also shares “Our prime challenge as a startup was putting together the right team, we believe in this space quality of resource is foremost, and getting them together is daunting.” However, over a period of time they have been able to put together skilled & passionate team that is aligned to their long term vision. Brandniti is a 12 member strong team and are aiming high to grow into 22-24 members by the end of this year.

His venture Magickart.in, is targeting women who like experimenting with contemporary kitchen ware designs and range. “We offer our customers access to over 5000 products across 50 trusted brands at the best price. The portal showcases exclusive and varied collection of national and international kitchenware brands that include Butterfly, Prestige, Wonderchef, Philips, and Hawkins among others” says Rohit. The key categories sold on the site are kitchenware, cookware, bar accessories, baking vessels, food storage containers, kitchen tools, knifes and the dining range.

Rohit Jain

Though the portal faces stiff competition from other websites like Zansaar.com, Fabfurnish.com, Goodlife.com, Homeshop18.com, what makes Magickart different is the wide range of products, niche segmentation, personalized attention to customer requests, easy assistance and a 360° customer satisfaction approach backed by warranty/guarantee from the suppliers. “The pricing of our products has always been customer friendly, and we never change the MRP of the products. Continuous efforts are made to keep the customer updated about new promotions with luring discounts,” explains Rohit.

“Quality is a very subjective concept with different criteria of benchmarking,” says Rohit. At Magickart, only those products are included where brands offer customer service setup or service is out sourced to some third party. All products are inspected and checked for damages, expiry and if they are according to customer specifications before they are packed and shipped. In case a customer has received a wrong specification or a customer wishes to exchange a particular product, a 100% exchange guarantee is offered.

Google ad-words, retargeting along with SEO, online marketing, Facebook advertising and promotional mails are the usual ones used to market the product. Recently the portal conducted an online recipe contest for its Facebook fans where participants had to submit a recipe which can be made in 10-12 min. 85 responses were received and the winners were felicitated by a local chef at a small function. The team at Magickart continuously innovates on methods to engage customers by way of opinion polls, live chats and helpline services through which they give them tips to improve their home and kitchen.

A self-funded venture, Magickart is looking for funds to expand their operations. “We plan to increase our products listings to 15,000 products by the year end. Our aim is to bring for the Indian market, brands which are big internationally,” says Rohit. Entering more markets and diversification is also on cards.

Join us at Gokulam Park Hotel & Convention Center, Kochi for the first round of TechSparks 2013 and stayed tuned to our site for all live updates from the event.

It will be interesting to know how many people use their phones for audio recording. In the field of journalism, where a large part of your day involves interviewing people, a sound recorder has always been a journalist’s best friend. However, sound recorder apps on smartphones have the potential to replace these devices, and have done so to a large extent as well.

Today’s App Friday is one that I have used extensively ever since its closed beta stage. Sky Recorder is a simple app with which you can make high quality audio recordings, which can be later shared through various channels. Having used the app for several months, here’s the review of Sky Recorder -

What is it about? 

The recording screen

Sky Recorder is recorder app. But unlike most recorder apps which sport a bot red record button and a list of recordings, it has been designed in a way which makes this recording app feel like a lot more. This is a two page app. The first page is the record screen. While not recording, the app gives you information about the number of recordings made and the number of recordings available based on the space used and the space available. When recording, the same page shows a waveform animation and a clock which shows the duration of the recording.

The second page shows a list of recordings, in the top half of the screen. The bottom portion of the screen has the play/pause, forward/rewind and the back/next functions. The elements on the list can be renamed, deleted and shared using various applications on long press. If you have a long list, there’s a search feature which you can use to find older recordings.

The playback screen

Sky Recorder provides the user with a lot of options. There are a couple of themes that you can choose from, alter the font size, change the recording quality and format. You can even choose how you want the ads on the app to show up!

Sky Recorder can sync with DropBox, which uploads all the recordings over a WiFi network to a DropBox folder of your choice.

What is simple? 

The first thing that strikes you about Sky Recorder is that it is really simple. The focus of the app is on recording and playback. But once you get through the good looks of the app, it is no more than a recording app. I will keep coming back to this app because I am a journalist, but for other users to keep coming back to the app, Sky Recorder will definitely need more features.

Themes on Sky Recorder

For example, photo/social tagging recordings is something that will make sorting and finding recordings in sound cloud really easy. If the app could also transcribe recordings to text, then it would be a first of its kind on a smartphone.

Because it is a well designed app, the ideas to build upon Sky Recorder are endless. But it might come at the cost of the app’s simplicity. The maker of the app made it with the intention of keeping it simple and easy to use. Given that the app has recently launched, it will be interesting to see how it adds features to it, without affecting the app’s simplicity.

Pros and cons

Sky Recorder is a very good utility app. You can record, playback and sync with it, and it does it very well. It is simple and easy to use, which keeps you coming back to the app. Furthermore, its good design makes Sky Recorder pleasing to the eye.

Sky Recorder Sync

The app is still in a public beta, and understandably, there are some bugs in the app. For example, while recording in high bit rates, the audio skips a fraction of a second at regular intervals. Also, I feel that the app should prompt you to name your recording. Renaming the default date and time stamp is the only off thing in this very easy to use app.

Our take 

With great design and simplicity, Sky Recorder stands out from the regular recorder apps in the market. However, in its current form, it has a very niche population which will contribute to the apps active user population. It definitely needs a lot more features that will cater to a wider audience.

There are two version of SkyRecorder – Free and Paid. The free version is ad-supported and the paid one gets rid of the ads. There are no additional features in the paid app. Give both a spin and tell us what you think.

Techsparks 2013, the largest technology product startup recognition platform of India KickStarts on May 18. Join us for this 7 city startup extravaganza!

Next Big Idea is a prestigious national level business plan competition that provide students with a platform to blossom into entrepreneurs. NSRCEL (NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning) at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) hosts the competition and the 2013 edition of Next Big Idea (NBI), is scheduled between May 20^th and May 22^nd , 2013 at IIMB.

National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) sponsors NBI under the aegis of Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and Intel India.

The competition will be conducted in 2 rounds. 32 teams that have been selected to participate in the pre-final will be shortlisted to 10 teams to present at the finals. The top three teams will be identified at the end of the finals.

The two teams will participate alongside participants from close to 30 countries across the world.  The cost of participating in the global challenge is borne by Intel and Department of Science & Technology, Government of India.  Participants at the global challenge get a great opportunity to present their ideas to highly successful entrepreneurs and investors in USA.

The first prize winner of NBI 2012, Greenway Grameen Infra (mentored by NSRCEL), also won the Intel Global Challenge in 2012. (read full story)

Website: NBI

He’ll be joining us for TechSparks and many more people like him. Make sure you’ve booked your tickets for this startup extravaganza.

Nitin Raghunath & Pramida Posanipalli

Nitin Raghunath & Pramida Posanipalli are expats who have been living in the States for over eight years. Nitin has worked with AT&T and few startups in the Bay Area in the past, while Pramida still works for Cisco. Nitin loves making movies and has made a couple of short films in the past that were showcased at San Francisco film festival and a recent one which was screened at the 2011 Cannes film festival. Despite these short films, Nitin always had the desire to do something bigger. He decided to do give it his all in early 2012, when he quit his job and started working fulltime on the script and research of Mere Haule Dost – his second full length feature film. Nitin had made one with his friends right after college. Mere Haule Dost is a fun and quirky ride set against the backdrop of lives of five laid-back friends in the city of Hyderabad. A film for young adults, it is a journey of friendship, girls, parties, bikes, madness and their thrill for the Himalayan bike rally. ‘Haule’ is a popular Hyderabadi word that loosely translates to ‘silly’, ‘crazy’, ‘mad’ etc. depending on the context.

Making of the movie

The hiring research for the film started in April 2011. Seeing her husband rough it out alone, Pramida decided to help him in the journey and took a long leave from Cisco. “There are many things that goes into making of a film, and I decided to help Nitin so that he can concentrate of the actual movie making,” says Pramida. They put together the cast and crew of the movie with the help of couple of websites that list the services of freelance technical experts.

Mere Haule Dost crew members

The result was — Ankur Raina, a young cinematographer born in Srinagar, Kashmir, who studied his craft at Whistling Woods International in Mumbai. Their creative director, Asheesh Saini is a road trip expert and besides his role of creative director in the movie, he also lend support in idea generation for the movie. Divyang Arora, the music director for the movie has been drumming since he was eight years old and has assisted mainstream Bollywood directors in the past. Dev Verma and Munish Chopra are the associate directors for the movie and have both graduated from NIFT Delhi.

To identify the cast they advertised through fliers in newspapers and conducted proper auditions to get their actors.

Releasing the movie

Completing the movie was an easier task, compared to releasing the film. “You can say ours is a micro budget film and we didn’t have big money to release the movie. If you go to production houses with your movie, some of them will buy it and release it – then they can invest big money to market and advertise the film. But we didn’t want to sell our movie,” explains Pramida. So they met a lot of people who could help them release their movie, and even approached production houses to help them with the release.

Mera Haule Dost movie poster

While the couple didn’t have as much trouble as Dadasaheb Phalke faced with his first full-length movie, they had their own share of struggles. They found their savior in PVR Cinemas, which has a vertical, called PVR Director’s Rare — that distributes independent movies. “With PVR, we are now getting a proper release,” says Pramida. The movie is being taken to 7 cities in India, including Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. “PVR is a big help, because if we were to try and do our own release we would have to pay a big sum to the theatre owners and we may still end up with some early morning slots which may not be the best time to showcase the movie,” explains Pramida.

Marketing the movie

Since the advent of multiplexs and the decline of single screen theatres, movie marketing has become equally, if not more important than the making of the movie. And this creative duo is doing it in whatever cost effective ways as possible. “We did approach a few TV and radio channels, but the cost of association was quite high,” says Pramida. They are now tying up with retail brands, telecom brands to give away vouchers to the movie wherever possible. The movie was also showcased at the London Asian film festival, where the movie was screened. They are also conducting contests with partners to publicize the movie.

Once the movie is released in the theatres, they will also start discussing the satellite rights, DVD rights and foreign rights for the film. However all eyes and hearts are now set on the release date of the movie, which is scheduled for June 7.

The experience of a lifetime

Looking back at the entire experience, Pramida is quite happy they made the film. “We have been watching and writing about films since a long time and then when the thought to make a feature film came by, we thought it was probably a good idea to do it now, lest we regret later on in life about not doing what we wanted or following our hearts,” says Pramida. Once done with Mere Haule Dost, Pramida will go back to her job at Cisco, while Nitin will take a break before he decides his next move. “We invested all our savings in the movie are completely broke now. We will have to wait for sometime before we can get back to making movies again,” laughs Pramida.

So if you have been wanting to do something that you strongly feel about, then follow your entrepreneurial heart and write to us – preethi@yourstory.in – to tell us your story.

And don’t forget to be at Gokulam Park Hotel & Convention Center, Kochi for the first round of TechSparks 2013 and stayed tuned to our site for all live updates from the event.

Naidu Darapaneni, founder of MeraEvents and the lead of the team behind MoozUp Lite, says, “We see a heavy usage of paper in the event industry because the event agendas, speaker profiles, exhibitors’ profiles are printed in large numbers. More often than not, there are changes happening last minute and the prints are taken more than a single time. We want to reduce this wastage of paper by shifting the information sharing online.” Most of the people carry a smart phone to the events making this solution feasible.

Looking from organizers’ perspective, it can eliminate the cost of printing, avoid the hassle caused due to last minute changes and allow them to give accurate information to the attendees. The delegates can personalize the agenda according to their interests from parallel sessions that generally go on in large events. They also get to know about all the speakers, exhibitors, attendees well in advance. And of course, the reduction in use of paper will be a huge benefit to the environment.

You can check out a sample event agenda here.

MoozUp Lite is a minimalist version of MoozUp, which is an event networking solution with more features than MoozUp Lite but available at a higher price. You can expect to see the following features in MoozUp Lite:

·         Event agenda creation

·         Event directory with information about speakers, exhibitors, sponsors and attendees.

·         Integration of event agenda to the event website: changes to be made only at one location and they get reflected in all platforms including the website.

·         It can be used on mobile/tablet for personalization of agendas.

·         E-mail and SMS notifications can be sent to attendees.

If adopted well by the event industry, MoozUp Lite can do its bit for the environment apart from reducing headaches for organizers.

]]> http://yourstory.in/2013/05/meraevents-launches-moozup-lite-eco-friendly-and-smart-event-guide/feed/ 0 http://yourstory.in/2013/05/3otherthings-a-social-discovery-platform-bridging-the-online-offline-gap-in-retail/ http://yourstory.in/2013/05/3otherthings-a-social-discovery-platform-bridging-the-online-offline-gap-in-retail/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 05:40:09 +0000 Archana Sudhendranath http://yourstory.in/?p=72894 Read More]]> While e-commerce has, on one hand made our shopping experience easy, it is far from taking over the offline markets. This has resulted in the whole shopping experience becoming fragmented and the gap between product availability and customer service in online and offline retail is, in a way, adding to the chaos. Mumbai based startup, 3OtherThings is a social platform which is trying to organize this chaos by bridging the gap between online and offline retail (they presented at TC Disrupt).

Manoj Shinde

3OtherThings is the brainwave of Manoj Shinde, Darshana Gajare and Abhijit Nair. While Manoj brings in his experience of working with brands like Adidas and QuikSilver in the US and Reliance brands closer home, Darshana, who has studied fashion entrepreneurship from London College of Fashion brings on table her experience with retail brands such as Burberry, London and DIESEL, India.  Abhijit, a computer engineer, is their programming and technical architecture partner, having previously worked with Pyxis Architects and co-founded NestWell Technologies.

We caught up with Manoj, to know where it all began and where they see it going.

The starting point

3OtherThings is a social platform, for curating and organizing online and offline retail products. If this sounds like Pinterest, co-founder Manoj points out the basic difference, “our platform is utility based, where we are trying to organize and offer services which are so far missing from retail experience, especially offline retail”. The newly launched social platform offers services such as:

• curating a wish list from online and offline stores,

• access to consumers for inventory and availability of products at offline stores,

• an online communication line between consumers and offline retailers, with the ‘reserve a product’ feature, and

• access to retailers of the consumers’ wish list, to help them gauge consumer needs/wants.

Neat.

Darshana Gajare

When asked about the genesis of the venture, Manoj says, the idea came to him few years back while he was working for another brand trying to bridge the physical and online store experience to solve problems such as product search, color, size and location. “I wanted to save time and hassle of all those generic problems one faces while shopping offline,” says Manoj, of their ‘concept written on a paper napkin at a cafe – turned into a business’.

Why offline stores when everyone is so focussed on e-commerce?

Manoj says his work experience with retail taught him a few things: a large part of retail still happens offline since the online model is largely targeted at discounted sales, consumer insights is conspicuous by its absence in that segment and consumer access to information is another problem area.

“A platform like ours, not only creates a communication channel between offline retailers and consumers, it also bridges a gap between offline and online retail as well as helps reduce consumer acquisition cost for offline stores”, says Manoj, of the inclusion of offline stores in the business idea which germinated as ‘an interactive platform’ to curate online retail.

Abhijit Nair

The website gives access to registered offline stores to showcase their product pictures and details in the online world and also ‘know their consumers’ better through the wish lists.

Speaking of the business model now, Manoj elaborates, “rapidly growing organized offline retail, 130 million internet users and burgeoning e-commerce story is reshaping multiple sectors in India. With these developments, there are multiple challenges that both consumers and retailers are facing. Our vision is to become a demand generating, business intelligence and in-store experience, all in one place”.

Just the beginning

The company, which is currently bootstrapped, is driving its revenue through the monthly subscriptions for retailers, while the platform remains free for use to the consumers. But they are working on a few models including making the engagements on the platform, a source of revenue, going forward.

While the team hasn’t started active marketing yet, Manoj says the visibility they got through the TechCrunch platform has opened up discussions with partners and investors, which will help them get a foothold in the market and with the global expansion plans. The team is now focused on getting subscriptions from retailers and is targeting to have at least 10 brands on board in the next six months, a prerequisite for a user database. The website will launch officially in the next couple of weeks.

Techsparks 2013, the largest technology product startup recognition platform of India KickStarts on May 18. Join us for this 7 city startup extravaganza!

Making of an entrepreneur

Shiladitya excelled at what he did and he quickly started taking freelance projects for external colleges and companies as well. “It was additional pocket money at that time,” says Shiladitya. One thing led to another, and he started dabbling into different technologies and taking up rudimentary projects, things like building applications on ASP.NET.

Then came the break. In 2005, Texas instruments was looking for someone to take up a RFID (radio frequency identification) project for which they didn’t have competency and Shiladitya happened to be at the right place at the right time. This was his entry into RFID and successfully delivering the project, he realized the opportunity that existed in the space.

The Fateful Night of the July 27, 2005

The 2005 Mumbai floods are remembered for the destruction it caused but also for the resilience of Mumbaikars. The city was caught in a shock by nature’s fury but the city as a whole got together and worked things back into place. And this resilient spirit is deep ingrained in Shiladitya as well. He was at a friend’s place when the incessant rains began. This friend happens to be Sahil Anand, Shiladitya’s batchmate and now co-founder of Rasilant technologies.

Shiladitya couldn’t go back home that night and the havoc that was being created outside, got the duo in an introspective mode. They conversed about the strong urge to not fall for the ‘corporate trap’. Everyone has these talks at one point in time but the duo acted upon it. Things were hazy till then but that night put things into perspective. A company took birth.

Sahil is a very resourceful guy and liked what Shiladitya had thought about RFID. Raising some money from their families, the duo started up Rasilant technologies- a Global Automation Solutions and System Integration Services company.

The Growth Story

Rasilant is a B2B company that has undertaken more than 35 major projects till date including Bajaj Auto, Reliance (multiple companies) and IL&FS. “We basically help companies automate their internal processes,” says Shiladitya. The market was almost non-existent when they started up in 2005 but has picked up since then and now Rasilant is a formidable name in the industry. A 36 member team, Rasilant clocked INR 24 crores in revenues last year with profit margins of around 10% most of which again goes into the business.

Spiraling out into products

Shiladitya loved what he did at Rasilant but had a desire to dabble into consumer products as well. “I was seeing a lot of gaps around me and I wanted to take a shot at building some kick-ass products,” says Shiladitya. Time had moved to 2011 by now and the app craze had set in.

Shiladitya happened to meet Aneesh Bhasin by chance on Twitter. And Aneesh turned out to be his neighbour in Andheri. Aneesh was a photographer and had never been in a corporate job. A connoisseur of wine, Aneesh had this idea of building an app around it.

And as fate would have it, Shiladitya wanted to understand the process of making a high quality app. And this is how the Indian Wine List came into existence, a mobile app that has been making waves in wine circles. With IWL, initially it was mainly about high quality content but the duo have realized that there’s much more potential and they’ll be shaping it up as a holistic platform for wine lovers.

And Pointshelf-

Along with another co-founder Priyo Patra, who also has a similar story in running his own family business, they started a company called Infisync Labs in 2011 and since then have built Pointshelf. It is a platform for small-to-medium sized businesses to launch a mobile-only loyalty program, which in its current form gives customers a web dashboard and consumers use the Android or (coming this month) iPhone app to collect loyalty points at all partner outlets.

“I’m a big fan of technology like Square and of course NFC coming from my Rasilant roots and what I hope we can do with Pointshelf is evolve it into the mobile payments app that everyone is vying to become,” says Shiladitya. It’s a tough market to crack but they have set themselves some milestones and will be firing on all cylinders to make it happen.

Does he manufacture time?

All these ventures makes one think if Shiladitya manufactures time but well, entrepreneurs just do what they do, so all 24 hours are theirs. “I work on the products on weekends and after office hours at Rasilant,” says Shiladitya. And yes, he’s married to just work. He isn’t promiscuous.

Shiladitya takes huge inspiration from the marvelous Elon Musk and just chases his dreams, not worrying much about consequences.

Shiladitya has hardly touched 30 and is definitely one of the entrepreneurs to keep an eye open for.

He’ll be joining us for TechSparks and many more people like him. Make sure you’ve booked your tickets for this startup extravaganza.

Before we get to the “T+2″ of this story, lets analyze what is an online marketplace and who is an online retailer since given that most of the e-commerce companies are funded by foreign funds, either they will have to comply with FDI norms of multi-brand retail or the PSS Act or both if a combination of retail and marketplace is being tried which off course is a dangerous combo for a firm to adopt.

A “pure” online marketplace is the one which does not take “title” of the goods and is purely an “intermediary”, a “facilitator” and/or a ”platform” to connect sellers and buyers. Taking “title” of goods means that “risk/liability/reward” of the goods have been passed to you and you are now entitled to sell that as a retailer and invoice the customer for those goods. As an online marketplace therefore you would never invoice the customer since you are “not selling” to customer but the seller is. You are just connecting the seller to buyer and therefore would invoice the seller for those services. From taxation point of view therefore, you would fall into central government “service taxation” regime rather than state VAT or central CST taxation regime. Easiest way to differentiate is that you are like an Ebay.com and not like Amazon.com although Amazon.com also provides seller services but not in India yet.

For online marketplaces, to ensure faster settlement of payment from customers to the sellers and to reduce the risk of default by the intermediary (which is the online marketplace), RBI has mandated that the intermediary should settle/pay to the seller, the money received from customers within T+2 days. The “T” here is defined as the day on which the intimation is given to the seller that the goods has been delivered. This means that if you receive the money today, the seller dispatches and goods get delivered on the day T, you would have to pay the seller within T+2 days. You would need to open a nodal bank account with any of the banks and your nodal bank has to ensure payment is released to seller within T+2. There would be concurrent audits of your account and you would need to furnish details of your transactions to RBI.

While T+2 is possible for electronic payments received from payment gateways, Cash on Delivery can pose a major challenge for online marketplaces, although it is not explicitly mentioned in the Act. And as the Act is only talking about electronic/online payments from customers, COD payments would be assumed to fall under the Act since the same payment risks remain for sellers for the COD shipments. In COD, there happens to be two intermediaries, one which is courier company which collects cash from the customer and the other being the online marketplace company which pays the seller the money received. Usually COD payments are settled by courier companies in 30 days and by some in 15 days. While the goods are delivered to the customer usually within 3-7 days, the settlement to the seller can practically happen to seller only after 2-4 weeks of the “T” which can create default of payments risks for the sellers by the intermediary. Given this complexity, “T+2″ settlement is not possible in COD. If RBI brings COD under this Act, it can create major issues for online marketplaces since these marketplaces rely heavily on COD orders. RBI clarification on COD can be very beneficial to online marketplaces.

So while you are busy running your online marketplace, try spending some time on “T+2″ cycles of your payments to sellers so that in longer run you can avoid regulatory pit falls and build a company which you can sustain for longer duration.

About the author:

Manoj Gupta is Founder/CEO of Craftsvilla.com and was previously Principal at Nexus Venture Partners. He was also previously board member of multiple companies including Yebhi.com and Sohanlal Commodities.

Four people travel the same way to work every day. Each drives his own car. Why should they not travel in one car instead? They can switch between cars every day, so that each one drives one day and get three days as a passenger. They save money on fuel, feel less fatigued on the passenger day, and generally feel much happier in life. And yes, they do their bit for the environment by saving on fuel emissions.

So, what’s stopping them from doing it?

A raft of startups think that it is a problem waiting for a solution. Build the right means for them to interact, and people will carpool. There’s no logical reason for them not to, after all.

Many young companies have built carpooling apps and services. These apps hook you up with people traveling your way and calculate how much money each has to pay the other. Some even have blessings of traffic police as a means to reduce congestion on roads.

You may see an initial enthusiastic bunch of people who swear by their service. You may also see companies promoting them enthusiastically for a while. Then interest will fade.

Sorry guys. Carpooling will never go mainstream. You can build the best technological solutions but the concept will still not work.

The reason has nothing to do with technology. It’s just consumer behavior.

Most Indian cars have a deity on the dashboard or dangling from the mirror to ward off evil

Think of what most Indians do when they first buy a car. Many of us first drive down to a temple and get a pooja done. We put a teeka on the vehicle and install a small deity on the dashboard or dangling from the mirror.

Most of us never remove the plastic sheets wrapping car seats so that it looks fresh, notwithstanding that it makes the car extremely uncomfortable to sit in in the climates we drive in.

Despite the chaos on the roads, we get ballistic when someone on the road lightly bumps or scratches the car.

Why such emotional investment in a vehicle?

The answer lies in what owning a car represents.

A vast majority of Indians can afford a car only in the realm of dreams. For those who can, the car is usually the second most expensive possession they own (after a house). Ghar and gaadi have always been associated with having made it in life.

Owning a car means that we no longer have to rely on unreliable public transport and are master of our own fates. It makes us feel as if we own the road, and everyone else is just a hindrance to honk away (maybe that’s why we Indians are terrible when it comes to following rules on the road).

When driving, we kowtow to no other vehicle, be it a bicycle or a truck. We use our car horns as weapons to disperse obstacles in front. The only authorities we bow down to when we drive is the traffic policeman who has the power to take the car away from us.

As we rise in stature, driving seems a chore. We can employ a driver who’s at our beck and call. The social status is established even in the car. The driver sits in front and drives, we lord over the rear seat.

Giving lifts to others has the same connotation. We take the trouble to oblige them; even when it costs us nothing. Sadly, even that practice is eroding. Who knows what the stranger might do to you if you let him into the car?

Back to carpooling.

Earlier, car pooling meant your dad and Verma uncle, who worked in the same office from 9 to 5, traveled together so that they could save petrol. They were reasonably good friends anyway, though your mom probably grumbled about how Mr. Verma smartly made your dad drive two days extra last month faking an excuse of illness.

Image source: http://bit.ly/18Kvhvf

Today, let’s be truthful. We hardly even know our neighbors. And more importantly, we don’t work 9 to 5 anymore. Each morning is a hustle to beat rush hour traffic. Evenings are worse. Unexpected meetings pop up just when we were planning to head back home. The boss asks us to help with a last-minute presentation. And we head back late at night, just in time for dinner.

In this context, its tempting to think that carpooling will help ease the strain of driving to work and back.

But….if I’m driving, I don’t want to feel like a driver who has to wait for someone else to leave home or finish work. I want to leave when I’m ready, not when my fellow car-pooler is. Whoever drives on the day is the dominant player. If he’s finished work on time and someone who’s traveled with him is late, the other guy has to find a way back. If he’s late and the other guy’s finished early, the car leaves when he’s done. Even if I know people I travel with, it starts feeling like a drag in a little while, so we decide to part ways.

It’s worse when it comes to strangers.

Carpooling firms may have done all the background verification about people I need to pick up along the way, but all I need is one bad experience to put me off. It could be as trivial as a guy with a weird sense of humor, a back-seat driver who’s telling me what to do on the road (me?! doesn’t he know I’ve been driving forever? I never make mistakes on the road) or even someone who’s constantly talking on the phone when he’s in my car. My car is MY space, and he’s violating it. I’m not the driver; I’m the owner of the car and I should have control over my space.

Image source: http://bit.ly/18Kvhvf

If I’m the one who’s the passenger, I want the car waiting for me exactly at the time I’m ready. If the car’s late for some reason, I’m tempted to take my car, a bus or even an auto rather than waiting on the road. If the driver’s skills aren’t great, or if the car is dirty, I start repenting I left the car behind. If the driver’s always on the phone when he’s driving, or keeps throwing trash on the road, I start wondering how to react. Say he’s not taken the plastic cover off his seat and has not turned on the AC – what do I do? He’s not a friend that I would excuse such a behavior, nor my car driver who I could chastise. What if there’s an accident and I need to intervene?

Let’s admit it. We meet new people and make friends when the context is social. Another friend introduces us, we meet someone at work or share a smoke together. We wouldn’t make friends while driving a car, would we?

Lastly, many countries abroad have special lanes that let car-poolers pass the rush. Some even have dedicated parking spaces. These might make the ride worth it. There’s no such provision on Indian roads.

Many of these problems are not ones that even the best technology can solve. We undermine how important these are. But these are the very problems that will sound the death-knell for carpooling.

The author can be reached at @shrinathv or at shrinath@yourstory.in. Views are his own.

Based out of Hyderabad, Get Cloud Ready provides Get Cloud Ready™ framework with comprehensive roadmap development and risk analysis consulting which helps customers de-risk Cloud Adoption and Operations across Platforms.

The acquisition would add AWS and cloud operations management capabilities to Aditi’s growing cloud consulting business. Financials of the deal haven’t been revealed but all Get Cloud Ready employees will join Aditi post acquisition.

Website: Aditi

Disclaimer: Janakiram MSV is also the chief editor of YourStory.in’s sister concern, CloudStory.in.

We covered AstralPad first, back in November 2012, and co-founder Rahul Singh described the product as a combination of “Office, Skype and WebEx”. (Watch this). As a part of the launch, Rahul said, “The iPad is often the preferred platform at home, on the road, and even in the office, but professionals need better ways to get work done on the device. Given that millions of people around the world use Google Apps to work and collaborate, Google Drive support helps AstralPad fit even more seamlessly into the digital professional’s lifestyle.”

Like Rahul said last November, the app has launched in most English speaking countries like, UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. The aim of building this app was to reduce the need of a computer for a business professional and this reflects in its features. Apart from collaborative document editing features, the app includes live iPad screen sharing, built-in voice and video chat, and the ability to share edited documents over email.

AstralPad supports Google Apps documents, spreadsheets, and presentations,
in addition to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Users can open
multiple documents at the same time from Dropbox, Google Drive or their iPad, and copy and paste rich text content, such as a chart or image from a
spreadsheet to a presentation.

Download AstralPad for iPad and tell us what you think.

Date: 15th June, 2013

Venue: Indian School of Business (ISB)

Time:  9am onwards

How to Participate?  You can book your tickets for the first VC Bootcamp in Hyderabad via our ticketing partners MeraEvent  or Ayojak . Early birds till 31st May`2013.

YourStory has partnered with NASSCOM’s 10,000 Startups initiative for the Hyderabad edition of the VC Bootcamp.

Format of the VC Bootcamp

Bootcamp Speaker – Soumitra Sharma, IDG Ventures India

Soumitra is part of the Advisory Team at IDG Ventures India Advisors. IDG Ventures is a technology focused Venture Capital fund that manages over USD 6 Billion globally and has a portfolio of more than 200 technology companies.

Soumitra actively covers Software Products and Cloud (SaaS), Internet, Healthcare and Medical Devices. He currently serves as a Board Observer at Forus Health, eShakti.com and Aujas Networks. Prior to IDG Ventures, Soumitra has M&A and Corporate Finance Advisory experience involving transactions worth more than USD 15 billion combined at Citigroup Investment Banking and Deloitte Corporate Finance. Soumitra is a regular blogger on YourStory.in and has written for TIME, Wall Street Journal, Economic Times, Inc. India, Emerging Markets Private Equity Review, DARE, IndiaNow (WEF Davos) and SiliconIndia. He is a frequently invited speaker, and has been a Guest Lecturer on Venture Capital at ISB Hyderabad, IIM Ahmadabad and IIM Bangalore, in addition to being an invited speaker on prestigious platforms such as UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) tech conference, MedTech 2012, CellStrat’s Mobile Apps Conclave and various entrepreneurship events at IITs and IIMs.

Soumitra works closely with key enablers in the Indian entrepreneurship eco-system such as YourStory.in, iAccelerator (CIIE, IIM-A), RTBI (IIT Chennai), Economic Times – ‘Power of Ideas’ Initiative and 9dot9 Media (publishers of Inc. India and IndiaNow).

Soumitra holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-BHU), Varanasi and an MBA (Analytical Finance) from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. This included spending a spring term on MBA exchange at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

So, book your seats fast for the first VC Bootcamp in Hyderabad by YourStory scheduled to be held on Saturday, 15th June 2013!

For more information please mail your queries to samridhi@yourstory.in / workshops@yourstory.in

Malaika Arora Khan (image credit: pinkvilla.com)

Celebrities entering entrepreneurship seems to be in vogue. In the west, we have the likes of Ashton Kutcher starting to invest aggressively while closer home, we have a flurry of celebrities associating themselves with eCommerce.(we always had cricketers into restaurants)

Katrina Kaif unveiled Gitanjali group’s eCommerce initiative and a bit later on, we caught hold of Dino Morea who is about to startup an eCommerce portal. They’re all into apparel which is pretty obvious and in a new report from Mumbai Boss, Malaika Arora Khan has entered the fray.

Label Corp has launched a fashion portal “The Closet Label” and it is styled by Malaika Arora Khan. How deeply Malaika is involved with the venture is not very clear but it surely does the brand a world of good. This also makes the Label Corp one of the first few retail brands to go online with a bang.

The number of products on the site seem to be quite limited at the moment but getting the word out about the site wouldn’t be a problem. In a budding eCommerce space in India, it’ll be prudent of The Closet Label to stick to high standards of customer service so that the initial users are not repelled away.

Website: The Closet Label

However, that isn’t the focus of the story today. ApnaCircle has recently launched a smartphone app for the BlackBerry, iOS and Android platform. After having played around with it for a bit, here’s what we think about the ApnaCircle Smartphone app -

A well built app, but…

Remember how the old Facebook app used to look? ApnaCircle’s landing page’s layout is eerily

Tile layout, similar to the old facebook app

reminiscent of it. A user is presented with six tiles. When clicked, these tiles lead to the corresponding lists, such as the contact lists, news feed, visits etc. Some pages, like the profile page are very similar to the current LinkedIn app. However, the news feed is nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. And I don’t mean that in a good way -

The news section is divided into two sections. The top quarter is a sideways scrolling list. Relevant news pieces are carried in small rectangular tiles, which carries a heading, an excerpt and a featured image. This arrangement is very cluttered. The other three fourth of the screen is news from your contacts.

Here’s why this isn’t great – Firstly, apps like LinkedIn and Facebook have integrated both these categories of news into one feed. And secondly, the cards are laid out as a horizontal list, which provides

Profile page, very similar to LinkedIn’s

more information that ApnaCircle’s arrangement and is less cluttered.

The performance of the app however, is rock solid. It feels like a completely native app and there weren’t any glitches that we faced in our time with the app so far. The articles open up within the app itself, rather than opening a browser, which more and more apps are following to keep the user’s experience within the app. This again is a good thing.

A good move, but…

ApnaCircle claims that its largest user base is in China, where it has reported to have 4 times the number of users of LinkedIn. If this is true, given that China is the the largest smartphone market in the world, a smartphone app will complement it’s popularity in China.

However, content is king for social networks, and ApnaCircle is left wanting in this area. LinkedIn’s

A different layout for news

recent acquisition of Pulse and the Influencers initiatives was to improve the quality of content and its delivery within the social network’s ecosystem. As a user, I love reading Arianna Huffington or Steven Sinofsky’s blog posts on LinkedIn, and it ensures that I come back to the social network everyday. This however, isn’t the case with ApnaCircle. I don’t find the content compelling enough for me to go back to it.

Overall, this is a well built app. It feels good to use with no sluggishness or lag whatsoever. However, there are some user experience issues caused by the weird layout of the app in places, and it definitely needs better content. Another problem that it faces is a lack of users. For a platform that claims to have over 50 million users, it was difficult to find people I know on the platform. Most in my inner ‘circle’ had the same problem.

It’s a good product, but all this will be so much more relevant if there was a way to validate their user base and growth data.

Download the app and tell us what you think

Ajay was an investment banker, who has worked with Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Daiwa Capital Markets. But subsequently got bored with the world of numbers and decided to switch fields and do something more creative. His interest in wines and being well-traveled added more fuel to his passion. “The foremost reason for turning to wine business is purely driven by passion. My interest first started during my days as a banker in Hong Kong where I developed a love for wines. Also, my stay in the United States gave me a good insight to global cuisine as well as great quality wines. So, I thought of turning my passion into a tangible asset, thus, Myra was conceptualized,” explains Ajay. Through Myra, Ajay aims to demystify what is otherwise considered a snobbish drink. “Wine is a drink we can all enjoy and I have set out on a mission to demystify wines and make the entire process uncomplicated. We want to enhance the wine drinking experience and make it taste better,” avers Ajay.

Team Myra

Ajay Shetty

Ajay brings the passion to the business. He is assisted by Nikhil Agarwal, who is a trained sommelier and has more than 12 years experience in the field of wine and spirits. Nikhil has worked with brands like Moet Hennessy, Diageo and Sula Vineyards and works as the chief advisor and wine consultant for Myra. Myra’s most important job is held by Rajesh Rasal, who is the winemaker for the brand. With over a decade’s experience in the sector, Rajesh looks closely at raw material selection, determining the quality of grapes for winemaking, takes active participation in winemaking itself, making different styles of wines, determining quality parameters of wine, fining, stabilization and blending of wines and the actual tasting of the wine. He has worked with many wineries and has a good understanding of soil and climate needed to grow the best quality grapes.

The Myra team also has a growing sales and marketing team who’s responsibility is to improve the brand presence for Myra.

Building the Myra brand

Today the Myra label has four offerings – two each in red and white categories – which are all sold under the mother brand Myra Vineyards itself. Currently the wines are sold in Maharashtra and Karnataka. In Maharashtra, the wines are priced between Rs 570 to 630, while in Karnataka it is priced between Rs 620 to 650. Besides these two markets, Ajay is also looking to develop in Goa, Delhi and Eastern parts of India by the end of this year.

Myra is currently in the process of distributing to retail outlets across these cities. The brand which entered the market a little over two months back is targeting as many retail outlets as possible. The sales team is also in discussion with modern trade and retail outlets that have shown keen interest in the wines. Auchan Hypermarket stores around Bangalore already stocks the brand and Ajay says the numbers are adding up by the day. Myra also plans to enter five-star and regular restaurants and are in discussions to take the plan forward.

Ajay’s vision to demystify the drink has seen them adopt some unconventional techniques to spread the word. From organising community dinners for the LGBT community, the brand also sponsored the first ever real estate CREDAI Awards Care in Bengaluru. They are also supporting social causes and are associated with the Atma Foundation.

On the conventional side, Myra is very active on social media and has 10,000 fans on its Facebook page, within two months of launch. They also conducted their first sponsored Golf Tournament in Coorg recently – a favourite avenue or advertising by most liquor brands.

The opportunity

Ajay is ambitious when he says he wants Indians to consume wines on a daily basis. “There is still a large untapped market in India that creates a good opportunity for Myra to grow along. We want to become a more accessible and fun brand. At present wine is being consumed as a social drink but we want to make it more mainstream,” says Ajay ambitiously. Ajay says he is looking at the young Indian population to become connoisseurs for brand Myra. “Young Indians are very experimentative and would be willing to try the drink in a more unconventional way, than just as a social drink,” explain Ajay.

Currently, the startup is producing wines through contract farming with vineyards in Nasik (Maharashtra) and Bijapur (Karnataka) where the soil makeup is close to what they are looking at their own vineyard. At present, they are producing as per the demand which is more than 1 lakh litres. Going forward, Ajay plans to set up his own vineyard and is in the process of procuring and preparing about 70 acres of land in the Chickbalapur district of Karnataka. “We do not believe in mass production. At our vineyards when we start our own production we will be looking at a production 1.5 lakh and scaling it up to 10 million as per the consumption. But as we grow we will be looking at increasing the capacity. We want to take the brand to a scalable level by growing along the way without compromising on the quality,” explains Ajay.

Besides changing wine consumption habits in Indians, Ajay also wants to give customers another reason to choose Myra – wine tourism. “The time is ripe to promote wine tourism akin to that of France and Australia, and we hope we are able to achieve that in time. What will work in our favour is the short distance, as our vineyards at Chickbalapur are just 70 kms from the main city. There is huge potential that needs to be leveraged in the right manner,” says Ajay.

preethi@yourstory.in

(L-R) Amit Khanna, Gaurav Khanna

The Product

Hammer, a social media platform that helps one make even the most of quotidian decisions. Whether it’s the reviews of latest movie or pros and cons of that new gadget you have in mind, ask Hammer and you receive profusion of opinions within a matter of seconds

Hammer assists in connecting people having similar interests, for exchanging ideas, opinions, and even for news. Users can also post views and opinions along with comments on others’ questions. For example, if you post a question like, “Is Maldives worth a visit during summer?” within a short span of time there will be a plethora of opinions on the question from all around the world. Hammer basically, in duo’s words, influences the purchase decision of the consumer. The opinions necessarily do not come from friends; they could be from folks spread all around the world. Hammer has filed for patent and copyrights on the idea and Elephant symbol, which it says signifies the magnanimity of Hammer. Hammer has over thousand users within three months of starting up.

Based out of Ahmedabad, Hammer has a team of 18 people. “We have a very rigorous process of hiring. We adjudge creativity, personality and technical knowhow of a person prior to making them a part of our team,” says Amit. Started with an investment of Rs 50 lakhs, Hammer is looking to raise its revenue from sponsorships, advertising and market research. Hammer is yet to break even and wants to partner the kind of strategic partners and angel investors who can help them in their vision to reach across the globe. “We wish Hammer to be an expedient to user’s decision making process, a tool for masses and used by it. Mobile Apps on iOS and Android are in the pipeline and will be out soon,” says Gaurav.

Website: http://www.hammerit.in

Certainly, you, as the founder of the company, can be paid by the company. There are different ways in which you can be paid.

If you decide to act as the employee of the company, then the manner in which you can be paid is a salary. Here you would, like any other employee, need to enter into an employment contract with the company, and receive remuneration. In addition to this remuneration, on the basis of this Employment Contract, and a specific clause for bonuses, you may be paid a bonus at either regular intervals or on the achievement of certain goals. For example, the bonus could be paid every quarter (3 months), Rs. 5000/-, or for every 10 happy customers a Rs. 1, 000/- bonus.

What may also be done is that you could be paid by way of consultancy fees. Consultancy fees are paid for your expertise in management and your time. So, if you are going to be managing the marketing efforts being made by your company for instance, you may derive your salary/remuneration in the form of this consultancy fee.

Shares are a good way of deriving remuneration in the form of dividends. This can happen by the Company giving you a certain amount of shares at regular intervals. For example, your Shareholders’ Agreement could state that you will get 0.2% of the shares of the Company every 2 months.

Dividends are the payments made to the shareholders of a company out of the profits made by the company. For example, if the total profit of your company in a particular year is Rs. 10, 00, 000/- and you want to distribute 10% of that as dividend, and you hold 49% of the shares of your company, then you would be entitled to get a Rs. 49,000/- as dividends

An uncommon way is through the payment of a commission. For example, the company sets a goal that on the completion of every 500 clients, Rs. 50, 000/- will be given to you as the founder. This could be a form of payment.

Thus, rejoice! There are many different ways in which you can be paid as the owner of the company.

This year’s TechSparks theme is “Connecting To Your Markets”. It is aimed at enabling startups and entrepreneurs to identify, access and scale your potential markets. As entrepreneurs, what are your primary pain points in connecting to your markets? What can be done to overcome it? For all this and more, join us today for a twitter chat between 4-5pm. Let’s discuss and share our collective insights, experience and perspective on how we can solve this pressing need faced by most startups and entrepreneurs.

When: Today, 16th May 2013 | 4PM – 5PM
Where: Online (twitter world) | Please follow our twitter handles and hashtags – @techsparks2013 #tsparks during the conversation.

Some of the points to ponder upon:

• Who are your target audiences and your end consumer?
• Are your end consumers the decision makers as well?
• How do you access your target market to showcase your product or solution?
• Who are all the stake holders and network partners involved, who help you reach out to your market?
• How do you scale your market?
• How can you leverage your current market (if any) to cross sell and increase your breadth across products?

Join us as we answer these crucial questions and much more in our twitter chat today.

To know more about TechSparks 2013 – India’s Biggest Tech Startup Discovery Platform, please visit – http://techsparks.in

Starting out from Pune, Faaso’s started out slowly but gained in momentum and went on to raise $5 million from Sequoia Capital. We have kept a keen eye on this fast food chain and here we get in touch with Jaydeep to check on the growth.

Let’s talk numbers

Growing from a single store in Aundh, Pune, Faaso’s had 18 outlets in 2011 when the funding came in. This was also the time when they introduced the entrepreneurship in residence program. Since then, the curve has been steep upwards and currently, the company has 53 outlets across Pune(18), Mumbai (32) and recently launched in Bangalore (3).

Faaso’s Store in Bangalore

“It takes a lot of time to identify a location. But once that is done, it takes 20-30 days to setup a store and gett it running,” says Jaydeep. Setting up stores at the rate of around 3 a month, the plan is to reach 80-90 outlets by the end of the financial year. 80% of the stores become profitable in 2-3 months.

Currently, Faaso’s employees around 750 employees across its stores including delivery boys, chefs and management staff.

Why franchising didn’t work and what they did instead

Faaso’s tried out the franchising route in Pune but it didn’t really work out. “We had 6 stores in Pune but there were a lot of clashes that came about. This is mainly because Faaso’s is still not that big a brand,” says Jaydeep. These 6 stores still operate but under a different name – Eatsome.

What really worked for Faaso’s is their Entrepreneurship in residence program. This model invited individuals to take up the responsibility for running a store completely. After the initial hand holding, the entrepreneur is responsible for the entire P&L of the store. “We got more than 2000 people who were interested for the roles and we’re seeing some really interesting people coming in,” says Jaydeep. Most of these people come from an engineering+MBA background.

The Masala

Faaso’s has invested heavily in technology and setting up the unit economics properly. “Each wrap we deliver is tracked from the kitchen to the point we hand it over to the customer,” says Jaydeep. Faaso’s is also in the data game. Looking at the user patterns and tracking user metrics, they’ve been able to modulate according to their users. For instance, Faaso’s keeps a track of what each customer is ordering, at what times, and at what frequency. If a person has not ordered for 15 days, they go back and check if there were problems with the past deliveries. “We try to increase our repeat rates as much as possible,” says Jaydeep.

Another curious trend is ‘booking online’. Online booking is picking up but still, in Pune, delivery is 50% while in Mumbai, delivery is 65%. “This is also because the stores are smaller in Mumbai,” says Jaydeep. The size of stores often decides how people order. Faaso’s also takes order on Twitter and for all such steps, a high reliance on technology backend is essential.

Key Learning

Jaydeep barman

Jaydeep has been in the space for a decade now and there are some key points any entrepreneurs planning to startup a QSR chain should keep in mind:

1)      How do you keep up the entrepreneur morale at individual level. It is of utmost importance to keep every store manager motivated and make him believe how the store completely relies on him (which is true).

2)      Communication. Jaydeep candidly says, “We really don’t know much about the space. I had no clue before we started out and hence we’ve done things differently.” Faaso’s maintains this humorous feel along with a core focus on customer satisfaction.

3)      Supply chain. This of course is the base for any QSR. Setting this right is what will decide the direction of the company.

Faaso’s is on booster power at the moment and is looking to expand into other cities after Bangalore as well. The debate is on between North India and going deeper within Karnataka.

If you’re in Mumbai, Pune or Bangalore, do try them out: Faaso’s.

Recommended read: So, you want to startup a restaurant business?

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M. S. Dhoni smugly showed off apps he downloaded from the Aircel store. “Aur bolo”, he kept saying, as he used Aircel Pocket Internet and apps from the Aircel App store to arrange hotel accommodation, see cricket info, transfer money, etc.

Now, App stores are associated with handset OSes like Apple iOS, Google Android, Nokia Store, Blackberry World and Windows Phone Marketplace.

In this light, one wonders – app stores and operators? Aur Bolo?

Operators and Value Added Services (VAS) – a brief history

VAS in India started with wallpaper and music downloads, caller ring back tones, SMS based subscription services (astrology, cricket scores, etc.) and short codes for various services.

Data access was primarily over WAP. Operator portals (or walled gardens) ruled the roost. If you were an Airtel customer, you would get to Airtel Live to discover content; likewise for other operators.

The app industry, barring games, was still nascent. Most phones supported some version of Java (BREW in case of CDMA phones). App developers had to customize their apps for almost every new handset.

Content and app discovery was a huge problem.

Most developers had three means to reach consumers:

1.  get featured on an operator’s WAP portal
2.  get preloaded on a handset or
3.  feature on a web portal that let users search for and download apps

The operator portal was the goto platform. Millions of consumers could see the link to download the app or content when they logged on to their operator WAP site. Since screen sizes were tiny, real estate for listing apps or content was limited. Operators decided who would feature on their page based on number of downloads, utility and revenue share agreements.

Alternately, many apps reached out to handset manufacturers to get preloaded so they could offer an out-of-the box experience for consumers. App discovery was much easier this way, and if the handset sold well, so was reach.

As each handset had limited space for preloading apps, developers got into preload contracts with handset manufacturers. There would be a revenue share agreement or a featured offer for end users. In case of games, for a flat fee that the device manufacturer would pay to preload a game on a series of devices.

However, cycle times were long as the apps had to wait till handsets shipped, which after signing the contract could take anywhere between a few months to a year. Apps also had to content with device market timelines. Once shipped, it was difficult predicting when the handsets would get into consumer hands. A handset would be in use for at least a couple of years. App developers had to plan to support this cycle. There was also limited control on the preloaded app when it shipped – developers could at max have an update option within the app, but not make major changes.

Adventurous handset customers also visited portals to download apps. But this was a relatively small segment.

In this world, operators held the upper hand. They were the only players who could give app developers the means to reach a vast audience easily and quickly.

The smartphone story: Launch of the device app stores

The operator model came under threat with the launch of device app stores.

Starting 2008, many of the leading mobile software players created their own market places for apps, including Apple, Nokia, Google and Microsoft. Click here for the complete list.

These platforms also offered frameworks and device APIs that let developers exploit various device capabilities and build their apps with less effort.

Developers could reach consumers directly on their device through the app stores. Most of the apps were free to consumers; supported by some form of advertising. Payments, when required, were routed through credit card accounts with the app store acting as the clearing house.

This has been the dominant model over the last 5 years.

Since discovery became much easier, consumers began excitedly exploring the app universe. With an environment that supported building and publishing apps, interest in building apps exploded.

There are an estimated 700K+ apps today on the two dominant platforms –  iOS and Android. Many large players are also in the game, trying to attract developers to build for their platforms. Read our analysis on how Indian developers see this.

In this scheme, the operator’s role was incidental. They provided the data channel to let apps connect to the internet. In certain cases, they provided for payment through operator billing integration, but this has been limited so far.

Feature phones and the operator fight back attempts in India

While app stores were a big hit for the smartphone platforms, India was (and still is) primarily a feature phone country. Most subscribers owned a basic phone that made calls, sent text messages, played music, and in some cases allowed for basic web browsing. These phones featured some support for Java apps.

Go back a few years, and you’d see that there were a host of operators in India. Each was trying hard to establish what made them different, beyond just the branding and pricing.

Around 2010, phones running Android and iOS cost a lot. They appealed to a small sliver of users in India. That’s when the idea of operator app stores took hold.

Operators could curate apps for user’s devices and create app stores, the thinking went. Customers already paid for music and wallpaper downloads using the operator payment channels, and this could serve as a platform app developers could also leverage. It would also be a great point of differentiation.

In short succession, almost all major operators announced their own stores: Airtel launched App Central with CellMania, Aircel had PocketApps based on Infosys Flypp platform; BSNL, Vodafone, Idea and Reliance each launched their own stores as well.

Why would developers be interested in these stores?

For starters, they touted ease of discovery as they provided a portal for non-smartphone users to explore. They also offered integrated payment options. Most importantly, operators could drive downloads with SMS blasts to consumers about interesting apps, a proposition not to be scorned at. Authentication was tied to the SIM card. Users would not have to sign up for an account before they could download apps.

This approach was not without its risks. Most of the phones sold in India were still basic devices with a 128×176 size screen, which meant no apps would run on them.  Operators and their partners had the overhead of testing apps for handsets in the market; a task made onerous with a slew of new phone launches.

Operators also wanted a larger slice of the revenue from apps.

While Apple and other software app stores retained 30% of the app price and let developers have 70%, the operators switched the ratio.

This made building apps for operator stores much less lucrative, as developers had to a lot more work around compatibility for a lesser share of the pie. Despite initial breathless announcements of number of apps on each operator store, operator app stores never really took off.

Operators and app stores – a bleak future?

Of late, operators like Vodafone have changed the revenue share model to give 70% of the revenues to the developer and retain just 30%. But the other problems still persist.

Android phones have slid down the pricing chain. Apps reach consumers through the Google Play store.

Handset manufacturers like Nokia woo developers with newer, easier platforms like HTML based browser app stores and standard Java stores for the lower end Asha phones. They offer a marketplace with Nokia Store as well. (Disclosure: I was leading product management for Nokia Asha’s LBS efforts in my last job.)

Operators realized that the sands were shifting. Some launched branded app stores on Android, but these never really took off. After all, what benefit did developers have in loading their apps (.apk files) again to an operator store when it was already available on Android store.

Vodafone announced the shutdown of its AppSelect store in Europe from Jan 2013 (given the huge number of feature phones in India, the store remains operational here).

With OS app stores gaining in prominence, and now offering alternate content like wallpapers, music, etc. in addition to apps, the operators VAS revenues are threatened. The big fear of operators just being dumb pipes seems prophetic.

What should operators do to allay this future?

Fresh thinking and new opportunities

Handset app stores still suffer from a limitation when it comes to paid apps. Not many have credit cards. In countries like India where credit card penetration is low, operator supported billing dramatically increases the scale of users who can pay for apps.

Though they do not control the experience, this still guarantees a revenue stream for operators for some time.

Operators like Airtel took initial steps towards m-commerce with Airtel Money. These could later be integrated with apps if built as a platform.

As of today, the m-commerce play in India is off to a slow start due to the Reserve Bank of India still figuring out the regulations. However, this holds promise for the future.

Vodafone in India has been recently announced developer APIs for billing and location APIs, and offers app developers a 70:30 revenue split. They plan to make the same APIs available globally, so that developers can write apps that can be deployed across Vodafone networks. We still need to see if developers make use of this.

Here are some other suggestions that the operators could try:

a) Offer curated stores of apps

With so many apps on the App stores, local apps have a huge problem with discovery. Often, even the top 100 lists of app store downloads feature very few Indian apps.

Operators could buffet the local ecosystem by curating apps relevant for the market, and offering payment options for paid apps through their billing networks. Instead of hosting apps, they could just deep link to the app on the Google Play store. That way, the developer has to deal with just the Google Play store for hosting, and can use the operator channel for marketing.

Why should operators do this and not any other app? Operators could promote apps through the regular SMS channel to encourage adoption or run a Weekly App roundup. That itself would make discovery much easier.

b) Rent an app offer

Consumers are already conversant with the idea of pre-paid cards. What if they could also rent a series of apps for a few days based on their pre-paid balance? Think of this as a wallet you could carry across apps. Today, you pay for apps (at least some of them) and then may not use them. What if, instead, you could just rent them when required?

The operators could offer a bouquet of apps for download, and customers could choose to buy daily or weekly activation packages for a selection of apps.

With IPL on at the moment, you could download and rent the IPL app for a few weeks for updates. Later, you could transfer the balance to another app and delete the IPL app.

This could also work with in-app purchases, where customers could buy a game level or content for specific days at a lower cost.

The operator could be the single point of authentication for balance and payments. This could be an entirely new model for apps. Friction threshold for downloading paid apps could be lower, as you could just rent it for days that you want the service.

What do you think that operators should try?

The author can be reached at @shrinathv or at shrinath@yourstory.in.