Whether it is competitive exams or exams that affect important decisions of their careers, parents are always very concerned about the way children are adapting to various structural changes in the education system and of course, the culture that has drastically changed from the time they themselves went to school. 

In today's day and age, the pace of learning has become much faster and a lot of kids these days are very savvy with computers and online activities. That also makes it easy for them to better adapt and interact with online learning, compared even with conventional forms of learning. This opportunity was realized by Indian portal, Meritnation.com, which is operated by Applect Learning Systems.

Set up in 2009, the portal offers online learning and assessment services catered to the learning needs of students in the K12 segment across CBSE, ICSE, and other state boards (Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu). The learning resources by Meritnation.com range from high-quality multimedia study material, tests, detailed reports, curriculum-aligned activities to specific online test packs for entrance exam requirements. 

To understand more about Meritnation, how its startup journey came about, and what their future goals are, I reached out to Pavan Chauhan, the company's CEO and co-founder, in an e-mail interview:

Q: What was the idea behind building Meritnation?
Chauhan: We wanted to make a difference to the K12 segment as this presented great opportunity. Our basic idea was to leverage technology to identify and understand each student's specific requirements and provide them with customized content based on that.

However, both of us had limited experience in the K12 space. It is in this situation an opportunity to set up a KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) came our way from a Canadian company that was producing content for schools in the U.S. and Canada, and then there was no looking back.

The KPO experience was a great opportunity to learn how international companies approached content development, how they set up exacting standards, systems, and processes which control quality, delivery, and so on.

The concept took a concrete shape when I, along with Ritesh Hemrajani--who is co-founder and director--of Applect Learning Systems launched the learning services portal, Meritnation.com, in 2009. With over 10 years of experience in the education industry and expertise in the areas of educational content development and curriculum design, our foray into the online education space coincided with a time when the education landscape in India was changing rapidly. Through our KPO experience, we learned to create world-class content and now technology has evolved to help us deliver these learnings in a customized way.

What is your revenue model, and how many paid users do you have on your site?
Currently we have over 40 lakh (4 million) registered users. The education setup has a subscription-based revenue model, while the features offered include study material, videos and animations, adaptive assessments and interactive modules, among others. Students can opt for an annual subscription for the entire course or may pick from basic or advanced online courses as per their requirements.

Subscription charges vary as well, from 1,000 rupees (US$18.03) to 16,000 rupees (US$288.55), depending on the type of course. In addition to standard online and offline payment modes, students also get the cash pick-up facility. We are registering a year-on-year growth of around 300 percent.

What's the demographic of your users? 
Our product caters to students in the K12 sector (kindergarten to class 12), in the age group of 3 to 17 years but the decision to sign up is taken by parents who are typically in the age group of 35 to 45. For smaller classes, evaluation as well as purchase is done by parents.

From class 8 onward, a child starts playing an influencer's role in varying degrees. Our challenge is that while a large number of students are aware of our brand, parents need to be introduced to it. Parents are largely unaware of the advantages of online education so our marketing strategies are geared toward making parents aware of the potential benefits of online K12 education, and attracting students to sample our product and experience the difference first-hand.

Do you have insights in terms of verticals they choose, or where your users come from?
India has the largest population globally--and growing--in the K12 age group. Furthermore, there is an increasing preference for the private sector which is stemming from growing awareness of the importance of quality education, coupled with an increasing ability and willingness to pay for it. The online K12 education industry is worth US$1.5 billion to US$2 billion at this point of time and with competition toughening among students, custom learning solutions deployed online see quite a few takers.

Although Internet penetration and broadband continue to remain major challenges, the sheer number of schoolgoing kids who have access to the Iinternet is growing rapidly. According to the IAMAI Report 2012, India witnessed a phenomenal growth of over 150 million Internet users, 41 percent of which had been contributed by smaller towns and cities. The rest remained largely untapped. 

The education landscape, however, is changing rapidly and children, who form a whopping 21 percent of total Internet users, are more receptive to adopting new ways of studying through videos and taking online tests.  

What makes you stand out as a product?
The biggest differentiating factor for Meritnation.com is the depth and width of the content that is offered. Among online players, we cater to classes 1-12, while most of the other players cater to fewer classes. Our repository of videos and interactive exercises is way bigger than other players, and the biggest advantage we have is the assessment-based learning which provides a unique learning experience to each child. Our student base--of over 40 lakh (4 million) students, and growing--is much larger than that of any other online player as of now.

What are the different and new courses you offer?  
Meritnation.com has online courses for Maths, Science, and other subjects for classes 1-12 across CBSE, ICSE, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu boards. These resources include concept strengthening video tutorials, revision notes, practice intensive chapter tests and sample papers, and textbook solutions.

Our online preparatory courses for IIT-JEE and NEET are also becoming quite popular among aspirants preparing for theses exams. The year 1 and 2 IIT-JEE/NEET preparatory course have been prepared with the latest changes in the syllabus. Multimedia tutorials, revision notes, practice questions, and live test series where students can assess and compare their performance with other students taking the tests across India, are some of the highlights of these courses.

In addition to these, we also offer preparation material for other entrance exams such as BBA, NDA and CPT.

What makes you better for competitive exams space like JEE, IIT, and NEET compared to conventional competitors such as coaching classes?
With the possibility of IIT-JEE going completely online from next year, Meritnation's online IIT-JEE course is aimed at equipping students with skills for acing the online mode of the entrance exam. Specifically, online courses have distinct advantages over traditional classroom coaching in preparing students for competitive exams.

Students gain confidence in taking exams online because they have studied and taken repeated practice tests on the Web. All study material are prepared by the best brains, readily available at one place and also constantly updated. Students no longer need to be at the mercy of the quality of teachers at the institute. Everything is already organized and structured systematically. Students can access them at their convenience any time and any place. It is just a click away.

Multimedia tutorials make it easier and more fun to learn difficult concepts. Students can rewind and replay the videos any time whenever they get stuck.

Individualized attention is also possible. Each student has a unique learning style. Digital learning guarantees methodologies that can provide customized courses for students, based on their own style of learning. There is no need to worry whether a student will get the "best" faculty for the fee.

After understanding the concept, students can further strengthen their base by studying from revsion notes and summaries that can help them save valuable time. Students can use this time to study and reflect closely on their understanding of the subject as a whole.
 
It is very important for an IIT- JEE aspirant to know how to tackle all kinds of questions that come under a topic and repeated practice through chapter tests, followed by an immediate assessment of strong and weak areas which can help accelerate the learning curve dramatically.  

You raised funds two months ago. How is this helping?
In the four years of our journey so far, we have had a dramatic year-on-year growth. We hope to break even next year and start becoming profitable the subsequent year. This space offers exciting opportunities to scale up in the coming years. We will continue to invest to further strengthen our leadership position.

The funds will be largely used to build our brand and expand geographically. We have already started work on developing content for newer state boards. We recently launched content for Maharashtra board and others are in the pipeline. We also will be looking at creating new products for our existing customers. 

The education sector is complex. The choices, influences, and decisions interplay in various combinations. This sector is also constantly evolving, mirroring the socio-economic changes in the consumer. For example, in the K12 online learning space in which we operate, the "consumer" is the student, while the "customer" in the lower grades is the parent, and in the higher grades it could be the parent or the student. Taking along all the stakeholders--students, parents, and teachers--and creating value for all appears to be by far the biggest challenge.

Taking learning to the Web

Certainly this startup has flourished quite a bit from the time it was incepted and is rapidly growing in terms of further achieving their goals. This is highlighted especially with its recent funding from Infoedge, of an additional 200 million rupees ($3.6 million), through a mix of equity and convertible preference shares in Applect Learning Systems--which operates Meritnation.com. Infoedge had earlier invested 115 million rupees (US$2.07 million) in the e-learning portal.

We'll keep a watch and see how this startup changes the way kids learn and what milestones do they further achieve in the education space in India. 

Right from the moment a business plan is thought of to the time you receive funding, every inch of a startup's journey is full of risks and the sole idea of an entrepreneur is to minimize these risks. In fact, many investors talk about reducing their risks all the time. And this will continue until the company starts generating revenues, and beyond.

So what are some of the things a successful startup would do when it comes to reducing risks. I take a look at some of these aspects which could help minimize risks for your startup and make the business more successful. 

Team management

One of the most important factors of reducing risks for your startup is to invest in the right team and ensuring that they stick with you for a long time. I mean, it's one thing to acquire good talent, but it's another to retain them. Staff attrition hurts startups more than you think. Just being a great leader isn't enough, having greater leaders to manage your team is even more crucial. 

Analyze competitive risk

Another important aspect is to realize how much competition you have and what are your chances in emerging against such competition.

Try to analyze in detail how the competition is going about realizing the same opportunity you are pursuing. Does it have an untapped potential that is not explored? How can you be better than your competition? That's something you may want to focus on and promote accordingly. This way, you'll have a better chance at tapping the same customer base but providing them something more relevant and well, just that little something more. 

Analyze market risk

Analyze the market you are playing in and what would serve it best. There is always little risk when the problem is a well defined one and, if there are enough people with the same kind of a problem. After all, the more people wanting the problem solved, the better the chances of your product being used.

Even if it's a niche market, you'll certainly have people who will buy or download your product or service if the problem's well defined. Take for instance the mIndicator application. Very few offerings were available to Mumbai's commuters to get information of schedules for train and bus arrivals, movies, etc. This application was very well suited for the problems affecting a specific audience, as it provided the information people were asking for and thus minimized its risk of failing. 

Furthermore, if you're looking to get outside funding, there are certain verticals that investors would shun given their high risk and failure rates. So do your homework when it comes to assessing the risk factors associated with the market your product is targeting. Of course, one might say food service, retail, social networking, e-commerce, etc, may have high failure rates or not. You will have to evaluate the risks according to your plan and market research.

Get your pricing right

Nothing works best than traction. Getting traction also means getting the pricing of your products right. Of course, when you start off, the freemium model works best. Giving away product trials for free is certainly a good idea to get more traction in terms of growing one's user base.

However, you would eventually need to create a revenue model that involves pricing to help you build revenue streams. Ensuring the service your product provides helps solve a problem and is genuinely helpful is not enough. People will be picky, especially in markets such as India. So you need to do a little analysis, take a few surveys if need be, and try to get the right pricing. 

Realistic goals and business plan

One of the things you need to analyze as an entrepreneur is how your business is going to materialize. It's important you realize its sustainability will depend on ensuring the business goals are realistic and the way one goes about investing resources to achieve those goals.

When sketching up a business plan, ensure you go one step at a time and try to be as realistic as possible. While it's a good idea to draw a three-year business plan, you should know the market conditions in today's economy are always dynamic and uncertain. Take a cue from Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who says he doesn't have long term goals. Try to keep it one step at a time and develop short-term business plans with realistic goals. This should help you focus better. 

Being cash conscious is always a good thing

Cash flow management is always the most spoken about risk when it comes to small businesses and startups. This is something that always goes awry for failed startups. A lot of times, higher risk comes from poor cash flow management issues and the pressure is even more intense where there is venture capital funding involved.

Juggling cash and resources thus becomes a very crucial aspect of managing a startup, especially during the early stages. Avoid those problems by creating a backup plan and keeping aside at least six months of operating costs in reserve. Try to figure out where and which expenses you can cut: what are the most important things and what can be categorized as secondary needs.

Also, ensure you don't just depend on one key customer when it comes to generating revenues.

Manage IT effectively

This is something a lot of tech startups, especially those providing IT solutions, will not have to struggle with. Most of such startup founders are attuned to the risks technology can bring and are also aware of how these risks can be minimized by adopting tools which don't cost much and yet get the job done.

Of course, we have all heard of utilizing open source, cloud computing and various such cost-effective and efficient technologies. So while you can, try and utilize these options to your advantage. 

These were just some points that I think could help entrepreneurs minimize the risks to their startups and help build the business successfully. It is certainly not an exhaustive list, and I'm sure there are plenty other aspects which could lead to a company's failure but can be avoided with thoughtful management.

I wuld love to hear from you and find out what other aspects you think can be added to the points above. Let me know what you think. 

With this increasing fast, it becomes a challenge for businesses to manage these signups on their own especially if the startup or enterprise has a global offering or service. Keeping track of recurring bills manually is certainly not an option. Businesses should focus on providing their product or service to customers and can save money and time if they're able to resolve the hassle that comes with managing these online subscriptions. That's where Chargebee comes in. 

The Chennai-based startup is your off-the-shelf plug-and-play billing tool that's delivered on the cloud. You can connect with ChargeBee via API (application programming interface) if you are technically inclined or use PCI-compliant hosted payment pages to collect payments, and go live in a matter of minutes.

ChargeBee says it provides a robust and flexible billing system to enable your sales and marketing team to run special promotions, as well as the right tools for your support team to bill accurately and respond faster for billing queries. And it helps collect payments online from payment gateway of your choice.

I had a word with Krish Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Chargebee, over an e-mail interview where he gave an idea of what his product does and how it helps various startups and enterprises. 

Q: How did the idea for Chargebee come about?
Krish: Zoho was one of the early companies that saw the opportunity in cloud and transformed itself from a Network Management Service provider (then called Adventnet) to a cloud-based services provider. That is a well documented story.  

KP Saravanan was one of the early employees of Adventnet, and Rajaraman Santhanam and T. Thiyagarajan had been with Zoho for over 10 years. So the opportunity was very clear to us. Rajaraman and I were classmates during engineering days and we have always wanted a startup of on our own. So that is how we all came together and decided to start ChargeBee.

We could see rapid SaaS (software-as-a-service) adoption as an area which requires subscription, besides the fact that the world is moving toward a subscription economy.

 Sample of the subscription economy:

• Online TV, digital magazine, retail subscriptions, health center, school fees--all of them have an element of recurring payments about them.
• Today you no longer need to buy a BMW or Audi to use it. You can lease it. The pay-as-you-go model is not new to car rental, real estate rental, media or insurance industries.
• Adobe, one of the big players in traditional installable software is soon moving away from the one-time licensing model and taking the leap toward subscriptions.
• With large-scale adoption of SaaS and supporting services coming up online, we see this as a huge opportunity to build a platform that serves the SMB segment in providing billing services. The application of online subscription billing as a model is tremendous across multiple verticals, as the business model by itself is quite nascent. It has a long way to mature.

What business problems were you looking to solve through Chargebee?
If you are building an online product or service, there is a core value proposition that your customers try out before they decide to buy. The quality of the product and, more importantly, the service itself is what sets you apart from your competitors. You need to continuously iterate and improve on the product while customers continue to use it on a daily basis. This is like changing the engine of your car while it's running.

To help you deliver that service phenomenally well, you also need some great supporting applications to enable you do it well. For example, you'll need CRM, analytics, helpdesk, and accounting systems to automate your operational pieces and gain insights. We believe ChargeBee is a service in this category that will continue to enable cloud applications to serve their customers way better by being a subscription-based infrastructure provider.

Since three of the founding team members are from Zoho, we understand which components get built over and over again, and subscription management is a component that needs to be built for every service that is launched--just like login management. We believe we are emerging as a billing infrastructure player for online businesses to provide customer lifecycle management and recurring billing.

When you started out, were there startups in the market offering similar services?
Zuora is the biggest player in the subscription billing space serving enterprise customers. Other players addressing the SMB segment are Chargify and Recurly, specializing in recurring payments.

Interestingly we joined hands with our competitor Spreedly, which is pivoting to a slightly different model, to provide support for additional payment gateways and the external vault for storing the credit card data. Times of India's BoxTV.com is one of our first customers under this partnership. 

What kind of pricing do you offer customers. Is this customized?
Our pricing model is based on the number of invoices generated and not as a percentage of the transaction amount, unlike what our competitors offer. This ensures we make money only when our customer makes money. We offer three price-points: Silver plan at US$49 per month for 200 invoices; Gold at $149 per month for 750 invoices; and Platinum $249 per month for 2,000 invoices. Rates for additional invoices vary as per plan.

The service is free until our clients hit 10 invoices per month. And of course we offer custom pricing for customers with higher volume.

This is an interesting point that most subscription businesses need to think about--it is essential to experiment with pricing until you figure out your ideal price-points. However, you also need to ensure clients you are on firm ground. By this, I mean you should always "grandfather-in" the pricing for existing customers even while introducing new pricing for new customers. This is absolutely non-negotiable or you may break the trust with your customer base.

So, at ChargeBee, we assure minimum guarantee of two years grandfather clause in our prices. We also make pricing experimentation a breeze for our own customers. Grandfather-in of prices is the default behavior for even those businesses that use ChargeBee for their payments.

How many transactions does your company now support? Can you provide some stats?
We are doing over 5,000 transactions a month with over 100 customers which have integrated with us. We're growing at 25 percent month-on-month in terms of the number of transactions. There are close to 50 customers that have live transactions delivered via our system right now.

What are the biggest online billing problems your customers face which you want to address?
In SaaS, the pricing model is either based on number of transactions, licenses, or number of users--similar to how it's done for CRM and helpdesk systems. And you expect the customer's business to grow and pay higher amounts while using the service. This brings interesting opportunities and challenges.

Your product not only needs to do its core functions well, you also need a set of tools integrated with the application to manage them well. It requires a customer lifecycle management system and recurring billing tool that helps track, retain, manage, and nurture users that are signing up to become paid customers.

Because you need to collect repeat monthly payments, you need the ability to do frictionless payments and collect these automatically. This is non-negotiable as any amount of friction will lead to customer churn. Typically payment gateways with recurring capability are not built for these use cases.

And you need to allow thousands of customers to "try" the service before a small percentage of them become paid users. A low-touch sales model is required to hand-hold customer, convince them to use product, and explore it themselves while staying engaged through the trial period. Businesses that figure ways to build engagement are super successful.

This is definitely one area where Chargebee helps online businesses.

Who are your primary customers? Can you share some insights on the demographics?
Chargebee caters primarily to SMB customers in the United States, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific--primiarly Singapore and the Australia and New Zealand regions.

We provide verticalized products for SaaS, subscription commerce, and digital media services which are mostly premium newsletter services. We make invoice generation, payments receivables run like clockwork besides providing value-added services like conversion analytics, transactional e-mail system, and integrations with CRM and accounting softwares.

What's the future of subscription billing like for India? 
ChargeBee's primary customer base is outside India. We work with over 30 payment gateways like Braintree, Stripe, and Authorize.net. That said, we support 2Checkout as the payment gateway for Indian businesses that have a global customer base. 

As you may be aware, recurring billing is still a challenge for Indian businesses due to the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) regulation, particularly if you are selling within India. We support 2checkout.com which is a PayPal alternative for Indian businesses that sell globally.

What major challenges do you face as a startup?
Although we do not have much to complain about I feel that, as a ecosystem, we have much work to do to enable startups to thrive within proper regulations. Subscription as a business model is a raging phenomenon in SaaS community globally and validated in various verticals, but it is unfortunate that it is stifled in India due to regulation challenges. 

Many startups are spending precious time solving a regulation problem with technology, when we should be focusing on solving business problems. In the context of India, I hope regulation challenges can be overcome sooner. We have more than 400 startups in India registered with us asking for a tool, but we have fewer than 10 customers using our product from India. The reason being it is hard to solve the problem completely. 

Imagine the possibilities if e-commerce companies can experiment with newer business models like the Zaarlys and BirchBoxes of the world here in India. Or even for the pharma industry to deliver medicines for chronic illnesses. The possibilities are endless, only if startups can focus on solving real-world issues than having to overcome regulation challenges.

What's one key feature in your product that's popular with your customers?
That would be the frictionless upgrade and downgrade of plans. We also provide our customers the ability to easily configure add-ons and promotional offers such as coupons, discounts and so on within seconds. 

Are you hiring? 
We are a 13-member team. We also have five interns--three engineering interns from Anna University and VIT, and two management interns from IIM-K. We are always on the lookout for some great talent to join us on the engineering and marketing side, in entry-level positions with product experience.

It certainly helps a lot of folks find the right phones from the right sellers within their cities. Solving real-world problems like this was one that founder Annkur P. Agarwal was faced with when his friends kept asking him similar questions as he was the resident expert on mobile phones and gadgets. That's when PriceBaba was conceptualized. 

It now has gone one step above to achieve its goal of solving real-world problems of customers across various cities in India. Earlier this week, the company announced it has raised an investment from 500 Startups and will be joining the next batch of the U.S.-based accelerator in Mountain View, California.

As a shopping intelligence engine. PriceBaba.com currently lists over 400 retail stores across Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, and Pune, focusing on the mobile phone market. The platform provides research data for purchasing a mobile phone and helps shoppers connect with local retailers to complete their purchase.

Earlier this year, the company announced it was backed by a group of angel investors, Karamveer Singh (from Ayush Software), Dinesh Tejwani (Fast Fact Computer Systems), Aditya Mishra (Switchme.in), Ashutosh Rathi (Basil Partners), and Ranjeet Walunj (TheService Solutions). PriceBaba is on track to provide its offering across 10 Indian cities by end-2013.

Annkur was in California this week, but took some time out to chat with me over e-mail and gave me some more insights on what PriceBaba hopes to achieve with the newly added investments. "The fresh injection of funds doesn't change our trajectory much. We are still solving the same and a very tough problem. However, the awesome mentors affiliated with 500 Startups have already added so much to our thought process, the product would evolve rapidly in coming months," he said. 

When asked about expanding to various other categories besides mobile phones, Annkus said India's mobile market is huge, with over 240 million mobile phones sold every month. If the company see an opportunity to value-add with other categories, it would do so, he said. "However, we would want to do one thing at a time and do it well," he noted, adding that the startup's goal for now is to reach 10 Indian cities by 2013.

Certainly it looks like this investment from 500 Startups will help PriceBaba.com achieve its primary goal of moving faster toward expanding their product across India. But it would also provide a lot of mentoring from the 500 Startups team to flesh out the product to be better and able to do its job fast enough to help users in the 10 Indian cities PriceBaba.com is targeting to be in by year-end.

Essentially, investment aside, now that it is part of 500 Startups' fall Batch 6, this would mean a lot of value in terms of mentoring and more inputs from the U.S. seed accelerator. Of course the investment would mean expansion of the PriceBaba team and putting in the funds to reach out to retailers in various Indian cities, investing time and money, and investing in a robust system to ensure all this happens within 2013.

Pankaj Jain, a mentor of 500 Startups, was also gungho about the way Pricebaba has shaped up and had this to say about the Indian startup: "PriceBaba is an awesome team and they're solving a real need in India. Most people search online and do their purchases offline. PriceBaba is making this easier for Indian customers, and is also giving local merchants the much needed exposure they are looking for."

So far PriceBaba's drive has been pretty successful with a good amount of traction in the cities it's in--Mumbai, Pune, and Gurgaon. If you're keen to join the team, Annkur tells me the company is always hiring so check out the company's careers page.

This is the place where everybody's focus is on as soon as they have started to reach out to their market. One of the important questions founders ask themselves is how do they go about their advertising as part of their product marketing strategy.

Many product startups in India nowadays, be it bootstrapped, angel or VC funded, have advertising on their mind right from the get go. So, one of the questions that they ask themselves is how could they get a good ROI on the advertising they do and what mediums should they choose to ensure that there is awareness created about their product and the launch of their product is successful.

So here's something that could come handy especially if you are starting out in terms of advertising for your startup.

Of course, being a tech startup or not, one of the biggest advantage in today's day and age is the fact that Internet has made your life easier. So whether you are a tech or a non-tech startup, you should and could always take advantage of various internet advertising options at your disposal.

But how does one begin to strategize on the advertising front?

Be noticed

First and foremost, figure out a way to be noticed. Yes SEO is the key element of how you put your Web site out there, but most importantly, your branding and overall buzz that you create from the perspective of what your target audience is and needs is very important.

Try and figure out on how you will create a brand recall in the minds of your users, customers and consumers that they'll come back to you or remember your product, your app as soon as someone talks about the "real problem" they are facing. For example: Someone says, I need a second hand bicycle, any idea where I can buy it? The immediate thought that comes to my mind is, check out Quikr or olx.in.

I totally buy the point that there's a huge spend that's gone behind mainstream advertising, however other than that, I still would have thought of this name as these brands are synonymous to the problem faced. Even before Flipkart came out with their television ads, if someone asked me which is the best laptop to buy, I'd suggest them to use the "compare feature" on Flipkart and see for themselves. Why? Because that is the prodcut feature that was stuck in my head.

So create a tagline, index it with your SEO, create an advertising campaign that really creates a brand value and brand recall for your product startup. If today, someone asks me where I should check out the best mobile prices I'd immediately recommend PriceBaba to them. Such is the power of creating a brand recall.

Permission marketing

An easy way to ensure that you get permission to contact your customer again, is to offer something in exchange for their email address. It could be a free trial, book, goodies or even a free report on something the consumer and users find useful. Here you aren't asking for their email address to get their data, but to send something that they might find useful and wouldn't mind sharing their email address for. You will most obviously increase your conversion, but more importantly this also means great traction for you anyways.

Niche advertising platforms

One of the key things is to ensure that you reach out your key audience with a niche platform or a forum where your conversion is bound to be higher. Don't use the funnel or the mass marketing approach, especially if your product startup has to cater to a specific geography, demographics or for that matter problems that need solving. Find out those specific forums and Web sites where you can go about advertising your product startup. For example: Somebody like a Myntra, Jabong or for that matter Yebhi would be better off if they did advertising on various blogs / portals or for that matter forums that talk about e-commerce and online shopping. Their conversion ratio gets higher by going for niche advertising. Depending on the niche you are reaching out to, it would certainly be easy to find a forum, blog, magazine or website. The tighter the niche the better. Niche sites are always cheaper to advertise on and you have a better chance of driving targeted traffic, which means more conversion rate.

Facebook advertising

Obviously, this is a given. With Facebook coming into the picture, there are plenty of startups using this as an option and trying to target very specific audiences and reaching out to many consumers, customers and users. In fact there are a lot of startups, especially ones in retail, that can benefit from actually targeting these customers via Facebook advertising or at the same time using a campaign management tool or an app like ViralMint, which I've talked about in the past. But one of the key things one can do via Facebook advertising is to ensure that the target audience that is reached out, really brings in some value to the product and are genuine assets for the product.

Of course Facebook is certainly the most viable option and the value of it is to showcase the ad to appropriate target audience based on user's profile. Easy segmentation based on age, gender, location and etc is available. The best way to get a high CTR is to ensure there is a powerful image, an engaging headline and the targeting is appropriate along with crisp copy of 90 words. It's important that you have a very tight targeting on your demographics and that you only reach out to them appropriately.

Google advertising

Of course, Google ads is something that startups used, way before Facebook even came into the picture. Over a period of time, certainly the usage of Google ads has peaked and people have figured a way out to reach out to their target audience appropriately over a period of time, via Google ads. We all know the significance that it has but in these changing times, how well are we using Google ads?

A lot of times with Google carpet-bombing AdWords coupons to every business in the the number of advertisers, and certainly the competition, is increasing. Cheap clicks are certainly a thing of the yesteryear. Generally a lot of people think Google AdWords as the ads that appear to the right of search results. But a lot of folks don't focus on so many other ads that appear to the right of search results, in your emails. A lot of these ads placed through Google AdWords is very cheap to advertise on, than the search results.

A very good approach in the long term is to use Conversion optimizer. Also try out the keyword tool to ensure that your reach is better. If you dwell into Google AdWords and try to figure out the niche you want to target, then most certainly you won't be disappointed.

And the others

Other than these options, there's always, Inbound Marketing (set up your own content based blog and keep updating it with relevant tags and keywords on a regular basis), try to use social bookmarking, focus on spreading your messages and links via Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon and other sites as such.

Do you have any other ideas that you'd like to share on how you advertise your startup without spending too much money and yet getting a decent ROI?

That's where this product Instamojo comes into picture. 

Instamojo is essentially a Web app that simpliflies the process of buying and selling digital files. The easiest way to sell stuff would be by just sharing or pasting a link.

They also have an innovative hassle-free payment checkout system. One where you don't have to worry about hosting, bandwidth, payment processing, security or anything of that sort. Essentially it allows you to focus on creating art rather than worry about selling it. 

Instamojo pays the seller 90 percent of every successful transaction.

Co-founder Sampad Swain shares the story behind Instamojo and where it is headed now. 

What was the inspiration behind Instamojo? 

What differentiates your product from the rest?

Any specific markets you want to target? Who are your current users?

How do you integrate feedback from users into your product?

How is Instamojo doing in terms of tracion and overall insights on the kind of goods sold on the app.

Tell us a bit about your team. 

Exotel is is a phone management technology that offers a company one single phone number on which it can make and receive calls and SMSes--and it's all on the cloud.

A lot of businesses and offices today use the traditional electronic private automatic branch exchange (EPABX) systems, yes, the ones with numerous blinking red buttons who your receptionist handles. Otherwise, you go to a local provider who gives you various phones with one line and multiple number of extensions.  A lot of times,  when your sales team, and people who are always on the move, end up using their mobile phones anyways. So that's something interesting in Exotel.

Exotel takes care of that infrastructure, maintenance and the expenses in setting up this kind of telephony or the way they work in call centres. It is a virtual business phone system, using cloud telephony.

So Vijay Sharma answered some of the questions I had via e-mail and this is what he had to say.  

How did Exotel come about?

What were the key problems that you faced when you thought of developing this app?

Whom do you think your app benefits more? What's your core target group?

Some insights on how many customers you have and how they are using your product?

Who are some of your major clients. Any insight on how they are using your product differently?

Tell us about your team.

I noticed your team does a lot of follow up and offers proactive customer service/support. Is that part of your philosophy?  

How is your revenue model placed? Where do you stand in terms of revenues?

What features do you consider the most useful and more relevant to your customers?

How have you been using the funds you raised a year ago? What is the way forward for Exotel?

Most certainly this is an event that shouldn't be missed, especially if you are a developer working for a startup or aspiring to work for one. Or for that matter if you are a founder looking for raw talent or just to network.

What is GIDS?

So far GIDS, Great Indian Developer Summit has had over 17,000 attendees and it is essentially the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem in order to gain exposure and to evaluate new projects, tools, services, platforms and languages as well as software and standards. It is something that a lot of developers not just in Bangalore, but also across the country converge upon, an event where a lot of geeks look to share, learn and exchange a lot of knowledge and information across various diverse areas of learning. 

GIDS this year will feature a convergence of six broad tracks. "GIDS.EDGE" and "GIDS.Tutorials" which will have keynotes and in-depth workshops, "GIDS.NET" featuring the best and latest from the world of Microsoft computing, "GIDS.WEB" and "GIDS.MOBILE" features technologies, platforms and business models to essentially create successful mobile and Web apps. "GIDS.JAVA" will have rock solid content from Enterprise Java, Agile and Dynamic Languages. Something a lot of developers would enjoy being a part of. 

With over 100 focus sessions, keynotes and workshops, GIDS hopefully will tell us what technologies will make the biggest impact this year, not only for the career of developers but also for businesses.

What to look forward to?

The first day in itself is a real blast, with a variety of really interesting and disruptive keynotes lined up within the summit. Along with that of course is a set of tutorials that will help a lot of the developers gain insights on the state of development within the latest industry standards. With the likes of Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer; Neal Ford, director of software architect; and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, this day certainly looks like it packs a punch. With talks that will focus on Spearheading the future of programming by Venkat, Future of Java by Marty Hall, president of coreservlets.com, a U.S.-based consulting and training company focused on Ajax and Java EE this day certainly should not be missed.

Another interesting keynote to keep an eye out for on day one should be the one by Narendra Bhandari, the ever eloquent and quite succinct, director for Asia-Pacific of Intel's software and services group. His talk will focus on "The Next Big Game Changer", where he will talk about changes happening in the software ecosystem, share insights on developer dimensions, and  how the momentum is shifting beyond touch towards sensor application development, perceptual computing, compute continuum, cloud services and etc. Certainly something that developers should keep a watch on.

As far as the tutorials go, there are certainly loads of interesting tracks lined up for all the developers with topics ranging from enterprise mobile applications at work to Design patterns in modern JVM languages. Certainly there seems no dearth in a diverse selection even in the tutorials with focus on HTML5 as well as The Modern Developers toolkit, it certainly looks like a lot of Web developers are going to enjoy the series of tutorials and sessions. 

Day 2

The second day is something interesting as the world of Windows computing has been reimagined to be smooth and intuitive, yet retaining all of the attributes that have made it ever so popular. The sessions span from a wide variety of topics such as Crossing the chasm from Web to Windows 8, emergent designs, Building .NET Web applications on top of cobol and going back to building service for any client using Web API. There certainly are a lot of topics that would interest a majority of developers. Something that will not only add value in terms of learning, but also in terms of meeting and networking with peers alike.

Day 3 and 4

The third and the fourth day would mainly interest those who are into mobile development and java specifically. With tracks like Javascript for recovering programmers, HTML5 Animations, server side programming with javascript,  responsive Web design, multithread programming for android applications and stuff like Lambda expressions in Java 8. 

Whether you are new to development or have been coding for a while, within your startup or coding for your own startup as a founder and are looking for other coders whom you haven't maybe met at a BarCamp, Hackday or any other Hackathons, then this is the place to be. 

If you have attended GIDS before, let me know what your experience is like and if you do intend to attend this year, do let me know how your experience is. 

That's exactly what Lucideus Tech is doing in India. It is a one-year old Delhi-based startup that helps in providing customized training and security solutions to businesses across the country.

A select group of cyberanalysts and security experts who deliver easy to use security products, training and services customized to keep your Web and networking space protected via  workshops and seminars as well as complete solutions to analyze your cybersecurity. 

But what makes this startup different is their 22-year-old CEO and co-founder, Saket Modi and his passion towards cybersecurity, besides the interesting story about how this startup came into existence. 

Inspiration behind startup

As glamorous as it may sound, the seed to the idea was based on Saket's interest in "reverse engineering" and the excitement it drove for him as a student of computer engineering.

As a college student he tried hacking into his college systems to get to question papers, later on confessing it and telling them how he could use his skill and talent to actually help his college than do harm.

That drove his curiosity over how secure the systems in his college were and how much training students were getting on learning the art of reverse engineering to actually prevent these threats. That's when Lucideus Tech began its journey. 

They started off with a few colleges in Jaipur and moved from there to provide solutions to various colleges across the country, IT companies and bigger businesses and enterprises. 

What's innovative about Lucideus?

Looking at a bigger picture, training on cybersecurity may seem like a "packaged solution", something that a few other players in the market may also provide.

So I was curious to know if they really were someone who gave more than just theoretical training and reports full of jargon and offer expensive solutions which you may not realize if you need them or not. Turns out, they have a different approach in both places. 

Modi tells me that they invested in a solid advisory board, professors from IIT, and few deans and even professionals from Turkey and Finland, who help them out with the latest happenings in the cybersecurity space.

Another thing they stress on is the fact that, their trainings are 80 percent hands on. Unlike the stuff folks learn in engineering colleges, which follow the bookish culture, Modi wants to make his trainings more hands on. They also have secure and dedicated training labs in Delhi where the students learn all about cybersecurity hands on.

He also gave the"'kung-fu" analogy that actually remineds me of the scene from The Matrix. "A person can be a black belt, and say 'I know kung-fu,' however he won't really 'know kung-fu' unless he really tries it."

They have various training modules such as Web security, software security, Wi-Fi hacking where students are encouraged to open the debugger, tweak assembly line codes and actually try out the skills on demo Web sites, systems and mobiles.

On the cybersecurity solutions front, and providing solutions to monitor as well as enhance security solutions within to various companies. They have something called a "WISE" team. The WISE Team (Web Intelligence and Security Experts) are a niche team who have the expertise and deep rooted knowledge of Web intelligence and cybersecurity.

That is what separates them from other players. They hire a team of consultants, who may not be your regular "software engineers" but folks from communities across various cybersecurity and reverse engineering platforms on the Web.

They also comprise of folks who've earned Bachelors in Computer Applications (BCA) from IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University) and have a strong liking toward reverse engineering. But most importantly they are selected based on their hands on knowledge, experience and the passion for cybersecurity--street smart folks who can actually adapt to current scenario and be updated with what's happening in the community. 

Generally cybersecurity awareness within India is low as compared to other countries, says Modi. So it's important that his team comprises of the folks who have been there and done that, rather than someone who just has a degree and some know how about concepts and theories.

When asked about the importance of cybersecurity in India, he reiterates that globally there is a huge amount of spending on enhancing cybersecurity and creating awareness overall. There are spendings that amount to over US$21 billion for normal end user on malware solutions and around US$114 billion on enterprise security. 

Cybersecurity is the need of the future and with the advent of the Internet becoming more social, this need has become even more important.

What about funding for this startup?

This is a story of how three friends from a smaller city like Mangalore, who've been together for years and later became entrepreneurs together. They had an idea which wasn't really what they had in mind when they began their journey but finally led to, Eventifier.co.

I had a chat over the phone with Jazeel Ferry, co-founder of Eventifier.co, and the story he had was enchanting, and underscored the hard work and determination they brought to the Indian startup ecosystem.

Their efforts achieved a first taste of success when they raised their first round of funding from Kae Capital and The Startup Centre a few weeks ago. It has certainly come a long way from the time they conceptualized the idea and made a prototype of it at In50hrs in Chennai last year.

Chennai-based Eventifier has since archived over 1,000 events with more than 17,000 unique visitors per month. More than 10 percent of its visitors have become customers and they come from across the globe, with a considerable amount of visitors from Germany and Southeast Asia.

The site collates all event-related contents from various social media streams such as Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, and Slideshare. It tracks, for instance, the official hashtag for the event which then gathers all event-related content from across the social stream. 

Original idea of Eventifier

The story began when three friends from Mangalore--Jazeel Ferry, Nazim Zeeshan, and Mohammed Saud--pitched In50hrs an idea which was originally centered around building a stock alert via sms. However, it wasn't something the jurors found interesting and they posted their feedback. So the three regrouped, brainstormed, and came up with a totally different idea.

The inspiration behind this was the real problems they faced as attendees of various startup and networking events. They always were interested in checking out what happened in previous editions of various conferences they attended. Other than organizers sharing their information from the events, they felt that the rest of the content would be scattered across the Web. Nothing really collated.

So the founders decided to build a prototype and show it to the jury, and everyone loved it. They collated content from Instagram and Twitter with a normal UI from the prototype, and people realized they could build a product from it. 

When In50hrs concluded, Vijay Anand, founder of The Startup Centre, invited them to be part of the six-month resident program and took it upon himself to mentor the founders and help them build the product.

Prior to this, they had been working on building Web sites as freelance designers and developers in Mangalore (not to be mistaken with Bangalore). They realized it wouldn't be effective being based in a smaller city like Mangalore which was lacking in ecosystem and resources for a startup. Hence, they decided to move to Chennai and work with Anand and The Startup Centre as part of the accelerator and incubator for their product startup.

They spent time doing market research, trying to understand their customers, conducting surveys, and figuring out what fits best for their product. They spent a good amount of time marketing their product and trying to be global via various social channels. They wanted to know if their product was something people would pay for.

They also tried to figure out additional features such as embedding slideshares, projecting it during the event, and getting real-time content aggregated during the event and further aggregating it. After spending a good amount of time in The Startup Centre, they finally got it right.

During the time they spent at The Startup Centre, they learnt a lot of lifeskills and entrepreneurship. Jazeel said: "Building a company is a lot different from building a Web site." Earlier they used to refer to various Web sites to learn about entrepreneurship. Here, they learnt a lot of it hands-on.

What makes Eventifier different?

One of the things that differentiates Eventifier from other players in the same category such as Storify and Lanyrd is its automatic curation and multiple social channel aggregation.

Jazeel said other tools are specifically driven toward event discovery and more or less focus on Twitter being a backbone. He mentioned another tool, called Epilogger, but he said Eventifier has the edge over others in its UI and simplicity in terms of browsing.

He added that the company is focused on building enterprise features into the product, so customized and white-label offerings are also something many customers would want to explore, even if they would have to pay a little higher for something like that.

One of the things that adds value to the product is the fact that users get real-time content and real-time conversation. Of course, visitors come to the Web site to get content, memories about the event, and revisit what occured at the event. On the other hand customers use it for to store content and memories about the event so they can market the event the next time they organize it again. With nostalgia, the value of content increases for the customer.

Learning from market experts

One of the things Jazeel mentioned during our phone interview is how spending time with The Startup centre was a valuable learning experience for the three friends. They also got a lot of insights on how to make the product global and to try and reach out to potential clients worldwide.

"If you have a vision and focus on the product, anything's possible," he said. He also added that they are still learning and building on enterprise functions, and the key thing is to be bold and try out things that have never been done before. This was something they learnt from their resident program at The Startup Centre.

Eventifier's pricing model

Eventifier.co has about 900,000 contributors and supports over 1,000 events across the globe. He says their pricing model is two-tier. 

The enterprise model has a basic plan of US$19 for events, say, a Barcamp or a page that is needed to be active for only three months. The page won't be deleted after three months. If the client wants to access the page later, they can renew it for a higher price.

For US$299, Eventifier also offers customized products including the option to have white-label event branding and branded design and product offerings according to what the customer wants. 

The Eventifier.co team

The Eventifier team comprises Jazeel Ferry, Nazim Zeeshan, and Mohammed Saud. They may not be your Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer, but they did go to school and college together and have stuck it out since then.

They certainly didn't want to be cogs in the machine and work for MNCs. They tried to make a living by designing Web sites and building local stuff. While doing so, they attended hackathons and conferences while moving from Mangalore to Bangalore, Chennai, and various other places. They were inspired by Pycon and hackathons to go out there and build something worth noticing and that actually solved probelms.

Nazim is their in-house Python and Django developer, while Mohammed handles the design. Jazeel said he's responsible for business development, sales and marketing. 

I'll explain why and how creating a strong ecosystem to drive great employee culture is equally important as product building, sales, marketing or any other function within any startup.

Geography matters

If you are a startup anywhere in India you are certainly different from a similar one in say Mountain View. That's a given. So why stick to some things that work a certain way in the United States when they are clearly different in terms of fundamental values in India. The overall aspects of our thought process, and the way we function out here in India is what makes that difference.

I have stated this before and I do it even now. Yes, as the startup ecosystem in India keeps flourishing, one of the major advantages we have is the learning and mentoring we get from various other cultures across the world. Not just from the Valley or any other locations in the United States, but generally there is a lot of learning that most entrepreneurs go through while coming up with a startup in India. Simply mirroring those learnings however is not so easy, neither is it really the core aspect while one is building a startup in India. There are so many learnings in the Indian business community, that will actually drive greater profits than the way you would learning from the valley entrepreneurs. 

I'm sure many would also agree to the fact that, there are a lot of other factors that entrepreneurs have to take into consideration while dealing with employees in India. While recruiting and hiring would certainly be a very important aspect while forming your initial team it is equally important to realize that setting up a culture that has its own individuality to itself and not just going with the standard practices that exist worldwide is an important lesson. One that many Founders and entrepreneurs would rely on, especially having established startups in India. 

Understand values, understand people

While a lot of things that drive Indian startups would be similar in terms of the functionality aspects, a lot of Indian startups have a flavour and an essence that gives it the Indian touch and founders don't dread to adopt that in the bargain of not worrying about globalizing or making the reach of their product larger.

That's a very good aspect while you are considering a niche market or for that matter focusing on domestic markets. So it makes equal sense to adopt the same to what works for your people. Don't enforce and impose upon your employees, structures, standards, processes that don't really fit the scheme of things within our culture in India.

Understand within your organization what fits best and then go with the flow. Of course if they are fundamentals, one doesn't need to really worry  about it, but if they are some aspects that don't resonate with what the culture is out here, then don't force fit it. Yes, a lot of startups in India comprise of the youth, so it helps anyways. But whatever it is just go with the flow. 

Art of Jugaad (Frugal Innovation)

As entrepreneurs, we all love this concept and it is very popular within India. A lot of times this is enforced by many cultures, but more so in India. Jugaad generally refers to a creative or innovative idea providing a quick, alternative fix while solving a problem. It  actually means an improvised arrangement or a workaround a lot of times only because of lack of resources. For an Indian entrepreneur, this is a lifeline.

And a lot of them prefer to even hire a lot of employees who are driven by this philosophy and can get the job done, no matter what it takes. So it's always good if you have a set of employees who are of that thought process. But one of the things I've seen in the past is that there are a lot of frictions when there is a lack of balance in this aspect.

Essentially too much of jugaad is not really good. One does need to ensure that there is a balance maintained between focusing on really creating some art and investing the right approach rather than just being "frugal".

Flexibility vs Processes

Yes being in a startup gives you that advantage of driving performance with flexibility and leeway in terms of work processes.

Let the hours that they work depend on their work. Encourage the "Fish" philosophy among your employees. For those who don't know what the FISH! Philosophy is, it's a set of work life practices created by ChartHouse Learning, commonly used to improve what is referred to as the "culture" of an organization. The concepts were inspired by the work culture at Seattle's Pike Place Fish Market where all the employees of the fish market follow the four practices (Be There, Play, Make Their Day and Choose Your Attitude) in a very interesting manner.

The rules and policies are good in the appointment letter. But the default culture will be set by how founders and key employees dress and work.

Also about dress code, I don't think it really drives how they work. So it's always a good idea to leave it alone, at least till the time you are in the growing stage. At a later stage, processes will help you automate a lot and certainly make life better, but in the early stages, drive flexibility as it'll help create a better environment.

Employee Benefits

If you look at this aspect in comparison with a startup environment anywhere else in the world, let's say the U.S. even, you'd find a stark difference in the way people percieve employee benefits. One of the good things for founders is that a lot of the startup crowd is young and know how to manage their own security in terms of health, insurance and other benefits.

Also, in India, healthcare being cheaper it's generally factored out. To begin with, it isn't that much of an ordeal and it's always a good idea to provide whatever money they get in hand. Incentivising, appraisals and bonuses would add to the company.

Yes there may be key players who will demand and get stock options. But that's something founders would already consider anyway in the beginning before getting funding. A good thing about it is that culturewise, many folks do believe in cash rather than stocks. The flipside to it, is to getting out the most of them to actually increase your company's valuation by adding great team members and them helping build your product. 

Employees define culture

Last but not least, and very importantly, let employees be a part of your culture definition process. As cliche as it may sound, this is something that really helps drive your organization's culture, environment and how the company will shape up overall.

Of course the really good idea would be to create polls, surveys, 360 feedback processes, and etc. But looking at the simpler aspect of it have a small culture or events team who will handle these things in the organization. Have a talk with your employees once in a while, maybe a skip level as well at times. Brainstorm rather than just depending on data from surveys etc.

Let employees tell you how they want certain aspects of office culture to shape up. They'd feel good if you as a founder listened and interacted with them once in a while. Have a suggestion box that can help, keep it anyonymus as that certainly gives the best suggestions or results. 

Some of these things are certainly something you might come across as a founder, CEO or more importantly an employee in an Indian startup. Would love to hear from you if you have any additional thoughts on driving the culture aspects in an Indian startup.

One very interesting phenomenon I noticed lately and wrote about in a different blog post was the progress of Facebook's Open Graph and how products were using and spreading the feature within their timelines, thus, reaching out to different users on what activities they were carrying out. 

Is this something that is required? I'm going to have to say yes, but whether it is something that should be an integral part of a startup's product, I'll have to say no. 

A lot of users these days are fascinated with applications that are intuitive and at the same time can allow them to quickly connect to Facebook. So one of the first things that a lot of users might prefer, as much as it would be a bad idea for them to do, is to sign up for services using Facebook Connect. So your products should support this and should have a verification aspect to it as well.

Essentially whatever you do on your product, it would be a good thing to encourage people to share their real-life experience. This is becoming popular culture especially since a lot of us are using various applications that already include Open Graph as part of their ecosystem and are integrated tightly with Facebook.

Take a look at my activities. Something I addressed in this blog is how the integration of Facebook Open Graph with products is making our life very "bot-like" and very few updates involve actual human interactions. For example, my updates would look something like this:

• I biked 10 kms via Runkeeper
• I read Steve Jobs on GoodRead
• I checked in at McDonalds, Mumbai
• I am watching The House of Cards on GetGlue
• I pinned Paris to "Places I want to Travel to"
• I viewed "How to Sell Better" on Slideshare

However, at the same time, I would say it's a really interesting for startups to offer products that actually capitalize on an opportunity that's gaining great momentum and feed into timelines of other users, as well as create buzz and brand awareness about the startup brands. 

One such product is LurnQ, which I featured here a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure there are many other startups in India that are already doing this.

What I'd particularly like to know is, from a user perspective, do you think it's a good idea or would you prefer to have a certain amount of control over what kind of content is shared--albeit, the products will typically give you the option, tucked away in a corner of some settings, or on Facebook to disable it. By default, usually the option is set to be shared automatically. 

What's your take as a product builder or as a user on Facebook Open Graph?

Among other things I had a chance to find out more about the In50hrs initiative. With the event coming back to Chennai this weekend, here are some interesting questions that Anand has answered telling us what In50hrs is all about.

What are some interesting prototypes from previous event that went on to become great products?

We've had a few good ones: eventifier.co was one of the products built during In50hrs. There is Tourmyapp, Kobster.com (an ecommerce venture in the corporate stationary space), Unclassroom.com, Huntshire.com, Komparify (a mobile app that allows you to check your usage patterns and then optimize the plans), and etc. We have had close to 280 prototypes built, about 100 products and 25 startups emerge so far.

What are some interesting trends or insights from In50hrs?

We do notice certain key traits between a prototype that ships versus dies in the laptop. One is literally the chasm of getting to the other side by launching the product on the Web. But the differentiation between a good prototype and one that isn't, is the market research that goes into understanding the problem really well. We also think prototyping and hacking (in Hackathons) are two very different things.

What's your role in nurturing these ideas beyond just being prototypes? Do you mentor/incubate some of them?

We have a six-month pre-accelerator programme where we help the prototypes to become products--which means, going through customer development, getting the price points right, sizing and delivering on the value proposition and even getting a couple of revenue generating customers onboard.

Do you do anything beyond mentoring/providing a platform?

In50hrs has become a great place and a neutral environment to find team mates, good mentors, and also tap into an ecosystem of support. Post-In50hrs, we still keep in touch, such as through a Facebook group, where people share where they are and get support from the community. That way, it's like a virtual incubator of sorts.

Is there a followup after the event to find out how that idea has actually helped solve real problems?

We do invite some of the teams that went in the previous edition (3 months before) and ask them to come and share what worked and didn't work for them, in each edition in each of the cities. There are some good learnings on what they assumed didn't work, or didn't expect but is working for them so that the learning loop continues. 

Does this platform help them build a real product or it just enables them to create ideas and then take a different route actually go ahead and build something worthwhile?

We believe there are three stages to building a tech startup:

Stage 0: Identify a problem--in case you aren't finding one, you can get some help here
Stage 1: Build a prototype (In50hrs)
Stage 2: Build product (Pre-Accelerator Programme)
Stage 3: Build the startup (Accelerator Programme)

We have this in a visual form at http://www.thestartupcentre.com/model

How many ideas in the past 3 years since the start of the event have gone ahead to become startups?

So far the numbers are that we have seen 400+ participants, about 180 Prototypes built, and 28 Startups emerge.

Vijay Anand can be reached on twitter @vijayanands

Generally when it's a product startup, unless you have started shipping, your revenues would really take some time to come. Scalabiltity is certainly something that is dependent on how much and how quickly a product ships. However, things differ if you are a service-based startup. Depending on what service you are offering, it may change the perspective on funding and raising capital for your business.

Today, I take a look at one such service startup from Hyderabad, called iGenero. It started its work way back in 2009 and has been bootstrapped up until now. It's certainly making some great designs for a lot of small businesses in India, and yet giving a lot of major technology & design companies a run for their money if you look at the company's art.

In a startup that deals with providing important business functions, a lot of resources are all about talent and creating art for clients day in day out. So even though the infrastructure cost and talent hiring may not be the most difficult thing, it is a challenge to start your business without any funding and keep it that way for four long years. This is especially so if you are in the technology space where seeking external funding is so tempting, especially when there's overzealous flurry of growth within the Indian startup circuit.

Yet there are some companies which have held their high ground and kept doing work at a pace where their focus is on creating great value for clients and solving their real business problems. Here, the innovation is in pure design and of course usability. Which matters a lot to most brands in today's day and age.

iGenero was founded in 2009 by Aditya Gupta and Karan S. Kumar, surpirisingly without really much planning and any meticulous approach of setting up a business and relying on funds either from a VC, angel or even family support or any sort of loans.

The founders started shipping right from the get-go. In fact, as mentioned in this Postnoon article their company was registered as a partnership firm in May 2009 with the advance they got from their first client.  And their perseverance and harwork have paid off. As mentioned in the article and my own conversation with co-founder Aditya, iGenero achieved INR 10 lakh (US$18,414) revenue in the first year of its operations, and it is growing at around 100 to 150 percent year-on-year in terms of revenues and clients. 

So yes, bootstrapped and still going strong for four years is really interesting but iGenero isn't just about creating Web sites for businesses. What caught my eye was how it went from just a Web design startup, and scaled and expanded to provide consulting on brand positioning, brand concept building, and creating corporate identities along with creating digital branding for brand providing resources on digital brand positioning, user engagement strategy, content creation, and social platforms and applications.

With a multitude of services, iGenero has gone beyond just providing Web site design to really creating end-to-end services and providing real value that helps brands not only create an identity on the Internet, but to also engage its audience and generally ensuring various businesses get their money's worth from investing time and money in Web engagement and engaging users on social Web.

It has a multitude of clients including small and big businesses the likes of TimesJobs.com, Seagram's, Intellecap, and The George Washington University. Despite being bootsrapped, iGenero deviced a way to ensure it keeps shipping and reinnovating.

I had a chance to speak to Aditya Gupta when he was in Mumbai for a meetup. Here are some questions I posed in an e-mail and his replies:

Q: How did iGenero come to existence?
Aditya: iGenero came into existence because of multiple reasons. I was working at a tech startup for about six months or so, and so was my partner Karan. I decided to move on wanting to do something on my own. Karan burnt his hands at his first job and was scouting for opportunities. We came together with the belief we could make a difference to the industry and do better work than the guys who were already present in the industry. We started up in January 2009. 

What are your core services, do you plan to go into building products?
As of now, we are into Web and mobile app development, branding and design, communication and strategy, as well as digital marketing. We have also been working on a product idea over the past six months and if all goes according to plan, should be live by the end of the year.

Why did you decide to stay bootstrapped and not go for funding?
For a plain simple reason, we didn't believe we needed funding in the initial stages of the company as we are in the service industry.

Have you never tried to seek investment? Have there been any negotiations? 
We haven't actively pursued any investment opportunities yet. We did have a couple of acquisition and investment opportunities in the past which didn't materialize as we were looking to associate with the right kind of people, with a similar vision as ours, and not just do it for the money.

What key things would you say are required to succeed in a startup, especially one that's bootstrapped for this long.
There a few things that we have learnt along the way. These are not hard and fast rules but definitely help along the way. 

• Keep your overheads low.

• Try and create a cyclical of cash flow. For instance, work in such a way that you would look at getting all your pending payments in by the last week if you plan to spend more in the first week. Bootstrapping is pretty much about maintaining a positive cash flow when needed.

• Account for your taxes. Having money in the bank is not the same as having money in hand. Always keep in mind there is a certain percentage that needs to be filed for tax.
• Trust your team. Being a small team in a startup, there is always a casual and friendly atmosphere. Be transparent and honest with them in good times and bad. Trust them and they will stick with you through tough times.  

What kind of clients do you serve? I noticed most seem to be small businesses. Does that work better for you?
It's not a conscious decision to serve small businesses, but yes it seems to have worked out that way. The number of small businesses in India as a whole is on an exponential rise, and they are organizations as well as people that are ready to adapt to the latest in technology and marketing to make things work for them. I guess this phenomenon reflects in our clientele as well.

That said, we have also worked with quite a few national and international brands and organizations. There is no single thing that works better, but probably a combination of the two seems to be direction we have taken.

What are your major costs? How do you balance these?
Our major cost centers on a monthly basis usually are manpower and office infrastructure. There is no question of balance as these are costs that are mandatory and essential to our survival. We just need to make it happen.

How big is your team? Hiring people while being bootstrapped, is this a financial constraint?
We are a team of about 10 now. It's not about being bootstrapped but I guess we face the same problem that startups everywhere face when it comes to attracting, recruiting, and retaining high-level talent. Potential candidates' apprehensions range from pay scale, to not wanting to work in a small team, to having Saturdays off. It depends from person to person. The only probable constraint that comes out of bootstrapping could be the fact that we cannot afford to recruit in hordes and then sieve out the bad ones. It's too much pressure on our finances.

Any plans on going in for funding or expanding further?
Expansion definitely is the way forward for us, but how we do it is something we are working out ourselves. Yes, funding is definitely a valid option but it's not something we want to jump into right away. I think we first need to take baby steps in the funding arena and figure out the best match for us. There are many other options to consider in terms of expansions as well.

Disclosure: I was previously associated with Social Samosa, a social media publishing Web site and startup, which was designed by iGenero.

With the era of open Internet and availability of a great amount of content that is being consumed everyday there is a lot of content that is churned out and shared. With the advent of Google, we thought the ballgame had changed. And then we had Wikipedia.

But wait, that wasn't the game changer at all. With blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, YouTube, Reddit, and so many social networking sites allowing for user generated content, a lot of assimilation of data started across the board. Social as such itself is changing the game in knowledge curation across various domains within the intertubes. 

So amongst such great social content curation culture is something we are aware of is MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). And in that direction, this Mumbai-based product startup has been doing some great work with its app called LurnQ. 

In today's day and age, learning online is something that depends on how intuitive the learning process is, however it is also important for people to really have a focused approach towards learning. And with so much noise and so many platforms at their disposal, content consumption is sporadic and if learning is required to be focused it's hard to keep an eye on subjects of your interest as such. 

That is where this application comes into picture.

LurnQ aspires to make online learning easy, personal & collaborative. With social features and customized content LurnQ hopes to become a digital repository of sorts for various learning/knowledge forms of various topics. 

What it does is aggregate from various websites different learning resources on a particular topic within its platform. Similar to Quora. however it's not specific to a question that is asked or answered by users, but through various lessons or content that is created by users or updated across the web. Users can sign up and select topics of interest and LurnQ keeps updating those topics with newer content generated on the web. 

Essentially LurnQ gives you an option to log on to the site with various social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Once that's done  it asks us to select at least three interests from a group of topics such as Travel & Leisure, Books, Entrepreneurship, Social Media, Digital Marketing, and etc.

Once you have made your choice of topics, you get a list of people to follow, who are already connected to you from the network you used to login. 

Further which, you can choose to browse from various sections as below:

1. Learn: The Learn option allows you to explore lessons or opinions based on what various people have contributed in the Teach section where they create a lesson or an opinion. Generally a lesson is a crash course on a topic or something people want to share as a learning. Opinions are essentially views or let's say blogs which give personal perspectives to the reader. The section Learn is again divided into categories such as For You, Trending and Recent. 'For You' aggregates content that aligns to your interests which you shared while creating the profile. 
   
   
2. Teach: This is essentially a user's submission within the platform. Teach is then sub-divided into two major sections: a. Create Lesson, b. Write Opinion. Create Lesson is a simple procedure where you share your knowledge on the platform. And with the main lesson you also need to add relevant sections to it so that you can add resources to the content from the platform or by giving a link to your resource if need be. And as mentioned above writing opinion is similar to where you need to provide details about your opinion, category and the resources that need to be added with the opinion.
   
   
3. Library: Basically the store house of all the activities performed by you on the platform that could be related to lessons, opinions, resources, added URLs and topics. 

Overall the product is certainly innovative. Especially since I'm a big fan of curation of knowledge across various channels in social media this product is certainly something that will help in terms of curating and learning various topics of interest. I'd certainly be hooked on to this app as much as I'd spend time on Quora. 

Once I explored the app a bit and tried it out, I had some questions that I had to ask and I reached out to Tarun Mitra, CEO and co-founder at LurnQ. Here's what he had to say: 

ZDNet: What is LurnQ's core mission, considering such a vast growth in the digital space in the last few years?

Tarun: To start with, Google and Wikipedia have transformed education to an on demand service--we learn when we need it. Than came the open courseware initiatives from the likes of MIT and Harvard. Khan Academy ushered in an era of MTV model of education. And now we are witnessing another revolution taking place, popularly known as MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). All these developments have transformative potential for education. All this is great for the learners; however there is a challenge in terms of these never ending options that he is exposed to.

We developed LurnQ to address this issue. LurnQ connects learners with relevant learning content, expert teachers and a social community in a unified manner.

The biggest advantage of LurnQ comes from the emerging open learning ecosystem. A user can consume a variety of content from diverse sources on a single platform with more relevance and personalization. Our vision is to develop LurnQ as the core learning utility that learners use ubiquitously to learn as individuals and in groups.

How many members does LurnQ have as of now? 

In the month of March 2013 we recorded over 30,000 unique users--32 percent from the U.S., 28 percent from India and 40 percent from the rest of the world. Since our launch in October 2012 we are registering 100 percent growth month on month.

What features do you think are the most important/crucial as far as LurnQ is concerned?

LurnQ offers a platform for learning and teaching that is free for everyone at present. The Web site offers a teaching app which helps anyone create lessons on a variety of topics; a learning app which helps you explore different lessons and use them on your personal learning, based on the topics of your interest and a library which can be used for future use and reference. It contains a bookmarklet option for easy retrieval of resources, both internal and external.

What are the most popular topics of learning on LurnQ? 

The following are the top 10 popular topics on LurnQ based on the number of followers:

1. Entrepreneurship
2. Technology
3. Education 2.0
4. Creative writing
5. Business
6. Advertising
7. Programming
8. Books
9. Soft skills
10. Social media

Knowledge Consumption and Learning has drastically changed in the recent times. How do you think this will affect your product? 

LurnQ was born out of the need to have easy access to relevant information from a plethora of learning resources that the web offers. With this objective we have made tight integration with popular content distribution platforms such as YouTube and Slideshare.

Going forward we will integrate with tools like Google Hangout. We also use feed/notification-based collaboration and sharing technology to deliver a familiar experience. The vision is to integrate what the entire modern web technologies have to offer on a single platform, customized for learning and teaching.

With learning and education space being hot in India, do you think you've got your monetization model right or is it still in the works and may be tweaked later on?

We are not yet focused on monetization. The immediate challenge is to deliver a compelling user experience and build a product that users love. Once ready, we will adopt already proven monetization strategy that has worked well in consumer web applications in other sectors.

Do you have elements of gamification within the product? Does that serve better especially since it's a learning-based app?

Yes, gamification is important. Currently we have very basic gamification with our upvote feature. Going forward we plan to address this in a far more detailed manner.

Lastly, Why is LurnQ called LurnQ?

Well, this question I didn't ask him as I found the answer already on Quora and its an interesting perspective as simple as it may sound, yet a bit profound in itself. Here's what he said on Quora:

We believe, people learn by being interested and curious. The name "LurnQ" is a twisted derivation of Learning+Curiosity. 
 
At LurnQ we are passionate about the potential of the web for learning and teaching.  21st century learning means that learners master content while producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources. In this environment, learner demonstrates the 3Cs: Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration. 

We're building what I think is a 21st-century learning platform. It’s interactive, it’s community-driven, and it’s fun. We are not quite there yet, however our new design upgrade is a step in that direction.

You can reach out to Tarun here @mtarun.

Also this interesting Infographic from LurnQ gives an interesting perspective on how we learn and what LurnQ is all about:

Whether you are working in a startup or an environment in a bigger marketing firm which is very process-oriented and specific in terms of the targets, results and metrics that you want to focus on, being productive is always something that keeps you driving on. 

Recently I came across Brightpod. It is a cloud collaboration software that helps digital agencies and marketing teams to organize, manage, automate & track marketing projects, commonly referred to as Pods in their app which actually answers some of these questions of mine:

1. How much time do I actually "invest" in creating tasks/delegating and essentially doing the activity of using that tool?
2. And, would it really help if I had something as simple as a notepad but a little advanced to help manage and track better?

So much so, that off late, I've been managing tasks using EverNote. That's when I'm working alone though. So collaboration could be a little simpler, if it'd be cleaner and less cluttered. That's something that I've always wondered. 

And I had a chance to give Brightpod a try and also talk to Sahil Parikh, co-founder of BrightPod, in an e-mail interview.

Now, specifically, this product is very useful for digital marketers especially with their modules that include specific workflows that come in handy especially for digital marketers. Such as scheduling tweets via Buffer, Managing LinkedIn and Wordpress, creating email marketing templates etc. That's something I find relevant from a digital marketer perspective, having worked in that industry. 

While it is simple as of now. There are only some features and templates as part of the workflow as of now. As a digital marketer some additional workflows and platforms could be helpful and that would be the part of the product hopefully soon, considering it's in private beta. How would that happen without losing the simplistic element is something I'd like to see.  

It actually helps users to create projects, known as Pods. They can various templates of tasks and milestones for separate kinds of workflows. Whether you have an e-mail marketing initiative, a recruiting ad campaign on LinkedIn, a WordPress blog to set up or a Twitter schedule to manage, Brightpod is certainly useful in this aspect.

Another interesting perspective this tool brings with itself is its clean and simple UI and design philosophy which makes my task of adding and managing tasks easier, so that I end up spending lesser time on actually setting/managing and working around the scheduled tasks.  

I tried out an e-mail workflow and Twitter workflow. Setting up the workflows might be a little tricky and might take some time, but once it's set up using the tool was easier.   

Using Brightpod is very easy and doesn’t need much time to get around it. It's a good tool to cut down on all the confusion and clutter caused by long email chains while working with teams and clients on the same project. Plus, its neat and clean UI is a joy to use.

One of the things I like is the simple drag-and-drop of tasks from and out of Focus. The whole experience is simply intuitive. 

Overall, the features are very minimalistic and simpler to use, of the other collaboration tools I have come across. After experiencing Brightpod and some other collaborative tools before, I had a few questions that I think may be useful for all you readers as well. 

Oh, and yes, Sahil was kind enough to give readers of ZDNet a trial code since they are in private beta.

You can sign up using the code "zdnet" on Brightpod.com.

Moving on, here's what Sahil had to say about his idea behind making this product and how it'll help digital marketers do their jobs more efficiently.

Why did you start with BrightPod? What was the inspiration behind it?

About a year ago our team saw an opportunity in designing an app for marketing and creative teams. Most of them currently use a general purpose collaboration tool. We wanted to help them grow their business by making it easy to plan, organize and track all their digital marketing projects in one place.

In addition, clients are spending more and more money on digital marketing. Marketing firms have more work that they can handle. This is where Brightpod comes in.

We have also been witnessing a surge in signups from marketing teams with feature requests aimed at marketing/campaign related projects--stuff that they require. They felt it was chaotic to plan and track progress of various marketing projects/campaigns (SEO, Twitter, LinkedIn, and etc.) when working with multiple people and clients.

Plus, the thrill to put back what I learnt with my previous product DeskAway into a new one written from scratch using the latest technologies. My latest blog sums my learnings being the SaaS space for six years pretty well.

What makes Brightpod different from say something like DeskAway, Asana or Bascamp?

They are all general-purpose project management tools that are designed for generic use-cases. Configuring them to match a specific requirement could be tough. Brightpod is specially being designed to power up marketing teams--startups, smaller creative firms or teams within larger agencies.

Brightpod has pre-built marketing workflows, Dropbox integration, custom workflows, Flow view (drag and drop), Focus page (zoom into your work) and an Attention page (stuff that requires your attention). With Brightpod, we have features that can give your team the bigger picture as well as allow them to zoom into their work

Why the name BrightPod?

I personally just love the name. It came at a premium but I had to get it. To me, a pod signifies a "team" or a "workplace". So, in essence, building a "smart team". Can you spot the brain in the logo?

What additions are you planning in terms of scaling from the digital marketing perspective?

Our product philosophy is LISTEN ME ACT.

LISTEN to what users have to say. Keep listening. Get a feel of what they want and the different ways they use Brightpod.

ME is what we want in the app. We use Brightpod daily so it is important to build stuff that we love and want.

Then ACT.

More than features, keeping the app clean, well designed, simple, clutter-free and fast is our top priority. We are looking at the following features:

1. Editorial Calendar
2. Reporting & Analytics
3. Integration with Social Networks
4. Integration with Google Drive
5. Recurring Tasks
6. Mobile Version etc.

What do you think are major challenges for "collaboration tools" within organizations?

Getting your team onboard a collaboration software is the biggest challenge.

Hence, we have made Brightpod to be ridiculously simple to use with a very clean experience. Our team is betting on simplicity. We don't care if we have fewer or many features. What matters to us is whether our software is easy to use, clean, clutter-free and smart. As we use more software to run our businesses we want to feel good at the end of the day.

One of the challenges I've faced with collaborative tools are email digests/email notifications. They sit in a pile of bulk and don't really help users get around their tasks. Does your product address this problem?

This would differ from person to person. I had a similar problem with LinkedIn notifications but I use filters to send these emails to a Label in Gmail. Similarly, as we talk to our users we feel that:

E-mail notification is important to them so that they can reply on the go.
Some of them have created filters and they look at them once a day.
A daily digest is helpful to sum up their team's work without logging into the app.

From the design front what's your philosophy especially for SaaS based products? How do you incorporate it in BrightPod?

Our design philosophy has always been one thing--SIMPLICITY. Keep thing simple. Keep the UI simple. Have less things on a page.

Again, we don't care if we have fewer or many features. What matters to us is whether our software is easy to use, clean, clutter-free and smart. It is important for people to feel good when they use Brightpod.

You can reach out to Sahil on Twitter @SahilParikh

The Indian startup community was abuzz with the arrival of prominent angel investor Dave McClure, founder of business incubator 500 Startups last month.

His flagship Geeks on a Plane event (#GOAP) last month was certainly quite a hit. While McClure is back in the Valley, the work still continues with entrepreneur Pankaj Jain who was appointed as the venture partner for 500 Startups in India last October.

Pankaj Jain has been around the Indian startup circuit for a while but that appointment certainly thrust him into the spotlight. He shares with me his perspectives on the local startup scene and his personal journey so far.

1. How did you get linked up with 500 Startups?

In June or July 2011, I reached out to Christen O'Brien, a partner at 500 Startups, about hosting Geeks on a Plane at Startup Weekend India and helping Christen to connect with the right people around India for the first Geeks on a Plane trip to India.

After hosting Dave, Christen and venture partner Paul Singh, and the other Geeks at Startup Weekend, I decided to invest in 500 Startups. This led to more interaction with 500 and as India become more and more important for 500, Dave and Paul made a quite a few trips in 2012.

In September 2012, I received an offer to join 500 Startups and run our investments in India.

2. Tell us a little about your journey prior to 500 Startups.

I've spent all of my life in New York City. The Big Apple is home for me. I went to school, college and worked in the hedge fund industry for 12 years before leaving finance. From 1996-2006 I worked at three startups: two in finance and one in tech.

By some accounts, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) was the largest funded startup in history with a billion dollars in 1993, not to mention having two Nobel laureates as partners. The second financial startup, GlobeOp Financial Services, was much more modestly funded. I exited the company in late 2004. In 2012, the company, GlobeOp was acquired for a billion dollars. 

In 2007, I moved to Delhi to do a startup. I soon realized that I needed help. A lot of it to understand how things work in India. I looked for mentors and co-founders, all to no avail. Out of necessity, I got to work on building a community in Delhi through a small group of founders that I had met and a more open gathering at Startup Saturday. 

I failed at my startup for numerous reasons and moved back to NYC in April 2010. In March 2011, I started organizing and facilitating Startup Weekend in Delhi/NCR and Bangalore while living in NYC. In June 2011 I moved to Delhi again. Yes, I've basically been bouncing between New York and New Delhi since 2007. I love NYC. It's my home. It's where my friends and family are. It's where I grew up and it's what is familiar. However, I love being in India. I love the energy. I love being able to make an impact.

To me, NYC is like a big company--structured, makes sense, things just work. India, specifically Delhi, is like a startup--lots of unknowns, lots of jugaad (frugal innovation) just to get by, lots of pains, many trials and tribulations. Take a guess, why I like doing what I'm doing in India!  

3. What kind of startups do you look for when you want to invest?

I look for well balanced teams of developers, designers, and dhandhawallas (businessmen). I generally prefer tech to be in-house and I like teams that are thinking about how to use online platforms to create massive distribution. Teams that are solving real problems in education, travel, jobs, e-commerce, real estate and attacking real problems across India are very interesting areas. I half-jokingly tell techies in Bangalore that half of them should move to Delhi and I tell the typical Delhi business guys that half of them should move to Bangalore. This way, we would have two really amazing tech startup centers. 

4. How will your personal journey in the startup circuit in India benefit 500 Startups?

I have been in India for six years as a founder, community builder and investor. I view myself as a founder first, investor second. Everyday, I learn more and more about doing business in India, about opportunities that are all around us and about investing in India's future. I believe I can add a unique perspective to 500--the 20+ years of experience at multiple startups plus being a failed entrepreneur, bringing the American way of thinking or doing, and the ability to understand the Indian context and fit the 500 way of doing things into India. I know I don't have all the answers and neither does 500. However, we are here because we believe in the future of India and specifically, of the Indian entrepreneur.

5. What's your take on the kind of pace the startup industry in India is moving at?

I am excited by the pace of evolution. A tremendous amount of change has taken place in just a few short years from every angle--local communities around the country--I would even say that a national community is emerging, mentors joining the community, more investors doing more deals and more young people deciding to roll the dice and make an impact.

There's still a long way to go. We need more experienced people coming out and giving back, not for equity or cash but to pay-it-forward. We need more successful founders to be investors and invest like they are founders. Too many successful founders invest like VCs, forgetting, how they raised money.

6. What are your personal goals this financial year as part of 500 Startups?

Find the best founders in India and support them by giving them money, providing them access to over 200 functional and operational experts that can help them with data, design and distribution and try to create deal terms that are more friendly to the founder.

7. What spaces do you think will gain momentum in the years to come in India?

Everything. I don't have a crystal ball but everything is growing in India and I think in ten years, things will change and grow dramatically.

E-commerce will eventually come out of its slump and grow tremendously. Payments is a really painful problem across India. We need someone to work with the RBI to come up with secure frictionless electronic payments. Whoever solves the electronic payment problem in India will create a company bigger than PayPal.

As Indians have more disposable income and as both spouses work, travel and tourism should continue to grow.

Education is a no-brainer. The whole education system in India is archaic and broken. Creativity is squashed right at the beginning of a child's education. Major opportunities exist and some great entrepreneurs are starting to attack the problems.

8. What's your partnership with Dave McClure like?

Dave and the whole team is awesome. For the first time since 1996 when I was at LTCM do I feel like I am working with some of the best and most disruptive people in an industry that is ripe for change. We did it at LTCM, then at GlobeOp and now I get to be a part of the best team in venture doing it all again.

For me, being challenged and learning are the two most important reasons to do something. Dave is always talking about us challenging ourselves and each other, pushing the boundaries, taking risks, making mistakes and learning from them. Everyone is empowered at all times to make decisions with the support of the whole team. Being in an environment like this is incredibly entrepreneurial and fulfilling.

9. Some of your favorite Indian startups? Why?

RedBus - Disrupted the whole bus travel industry in India and unit economics that are mind boggling

ZipDial - A business built on 400+ million missed calls

Zoho - WebEngage, Instamojo and Visual Website Optimizer - truly global businesses being built in India but really awesome, determined and smart people.

gazeMetrix - fantastic technology and founders who won't quit

Innoz - A huge opportunity bringing the Web to people who won't get access to a smartphone, tablet or computer. Add to that the horrible connectivity around the country, even I can use Innoz over SMS :-)

Snapdeal and Flipkart - In my very humble opinion, Flipkart and Snapdeal are the reasons we have ecommerce in India. They created the space by innovating everywhere and selling.

10. Some of your favorite Indian entrepreneurs? Why?

Phani (RedBus) - Super smart, down to earth and able to see things most people can't.

Valerie (ZipDial) - She's just an amazing person. She can sell. She can inspire.

Sree Vijayakumar (TradeBriefs) - Quiet, smart, one of the nicest people I've ever met. He's quietly building a great business that 20K C-level execs in India have opted into.

Sampad Swain (Instamojo), Avlesh Singh (WebEngage) and Paras Chopra (Visual Website Optimizer) - Some of the smartest people I've met in India that fought the odds to build global businesses in India.

Deepak Ravindran (Innoz) - He's not just brilliant, he's solving a real problem. He's making money while doing it but most importantly, he's helping a new generation of entrepreneurs through multiple initiatives.

Kunal Bahl (SnapDeal) - He's plain brilliant. When you talk to him, you can just see the wheels turning in his head.

Sachin Bansal (Flipkart) - More profound than building the leading e-commerce business in India, he has gotten some of the best people in supply chain and logistics to push these industries to new levels.

11. How do you manage to mentor the startups with investing in so many of them at a time?

Our mentor network of over 200 functional and operational experts are the real mentors. They have day jobs building their expertise in all kinds of domains but specifically in data, design, and distribution.

It's impossible for any investor to be an expert in everything. I feel that mentors can be investors but investors really shouldn't be mentors with the exception of the one or two things they have real operational experience in. If someone needs mentoring with financial market data, real-time pricing, trade capture or trade order management, security master, I can try to help since I built, managed, ran those businesses for a very long time.

12. What is your view of investments in India? How is 500 Startups different from any other VC fund?

We co-invest with individual angels, angel networks, and other funds. We also happen to run an accelerator in the heart of Silicon Valley. Add to that the 200+ experts in our mentor network. Next, include the 1,000+ founders around the world and I think you have a pretty amazing offering for startups across not just India, but globally, that almost no one else can offer.

You can reach Pankaj Jain at @pjain on Twitter. 

What does an idea mean for an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur? I guess a lot. Certainly because that is where everything begins.

But is having an idea enough? What does it take to make that Idea more than just an idea? Is it going to build itself? Obviously not. And especially if you are an aspiring entrepreneur or a student, it's all the more difficult for you to get answers to a lot of your questions. 

So what does one really do? Well, one such event that brings people together to not just have an idea and discuss it, but to collaborate over a weekend and actually make a prototype out of your ideas. Something that could potentially solve real world problems.

This year I'm going to attend this event to actually find out what it's all about and to make sense of how this process really works and probably get to interact with a few folks to find out how useful this event really is. So before I do that, let me give you some idea about what this event is all about.

What is In50hrs?

In50hrs is the essentially an Idea-to-Prototype platform for various aspiring entrepreneurs, students, folks with great ideas, developers, product designers to come together and work on some ideas that will help solve real problems and to further build working protoypes over a weekend. The prototypes basically get demoed on the "Demo Evening" to peers and a panel of jury. 

The In50hrs Story

In50hrs started in March 2011, when Dorai Thodla, Suresh Sambandam and Vijay Anand came together along with other folks from the Chennai startup scene to put together a community effort towards encouraging more and more collaborated attempts to get folks together and build a prototype within a weekend over 50 hours.

"We believe it is a crucial piece in the startup ecosystem--in teaching people how to prototype, and in connecting entrepreneurs in the community to give back (as early as them seeing product-market fit) so that the next crop of entrepreneurs are learning from their peers. Most of all, it nudges people to act rather than sitting on their idea, and learn a skill or two along the way," the founders said on the site.

Where will it happen?

It happens in four cities: Pune, Chennai, Trivandrum and Bangalore. Pune on 5th-7th April, Chennai on 19th-21st April and Trivandrum on 3rd to 5th May 2013. These are the ones for which registrations have opened up. I'll be attending the event in Pune to get an idea of what it's all about and hopefuly to interact with the folks out there and know more about the event and how useful will that be for everyone. 

What to expect? 

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, student, a developer, product designer then you could choose to go to this event. Of course there is a registration fee, just so you know.

So far as the agenda goes on the Web site, the first day would be all about submitting the ideas, the pitch sessions and then the kickoff for the prototype build. On Saturday the teams will build on their prototypes and around lunch time, there will be a guest entrepreneur talk otherwise it's mostly hacking all day long. And the final day would be demo day where the teams will have to give functional prototype demos. 

So I'd certainly look forward to attending this event and getting an insight on what really goes into the making of such an event and what it yields for the participants. I'll also get a chance to talk to the people involved and the ones who'll be building these prototypes and would come back with another blog with my learnings and more importantly insights on how useful an event like this is for the ecosystem.

If you have any questions for the organizers or the people who are participating in this event, do let me know.

I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago about how to be a better community evangelist for your product startup. Well, one of the key things I wrote about in that blog was about how participation in various online and offline communities and how that will help you in terms of how that will help you in terms of building a better network as a community evangelist.

Here I'll take a look at some of the interesting online communities within the Indian startup ecosystem where you can actively participate to: 

1. Enhance learning of their own
2. Provide or add value to the startup ecosystem
3. Network with likeminded folks who are entrepreneurs as well as executioners

Overall it is important that, as a person in the startup ecosystem you should make your brand presence felt as an individual. Not only that, it should be a great opportunity for you to learn especially if you are new to the industry and want to know the who's who and interact as well as learn from them. Also note, that some of these online communities have offline presence and it always helps to mix both of it especially if you have one within your city.

Of course there are plenty of groups and communities that will help you identify, network or hire and at the same time talk about your product and get insights on various aspects within the Indian startup ecosystem, But you have to ensure that you maintain a proper balance and adhere to the guidelines that'll help you interact and participate better in these communities.

By adhering to guidelines I don't mean, just the policies and guidelines of the startup communities. What I want to say is how you make that difference in terms of connecting with people and be that change agent for your startup. Maybe as a product manager, marketer, community evangelist or as the founder of the startup yourself.

So here's a look at a few interesting groups ands communities within the Indian Startup ecosystem: 

A. Headstart Network

They have various groups on Facebook, Google Groups and LinkedIn. But being one of the earliest communities in the startup ecosystem you will find a lot of members from the startup community who have been part of it for a while and of course a lot of new members who have just joined the community too. From Inviting developers, designers to contact card providers.

From sharing office spaces to specific contacts from various verticals you'll find a lot of threads in various groups across platforms of Headstart network. Very recently, Headstart also started hosting Hackerspace Hackathons, as mentioned on their blog. These events are quite a treat especially in Mumbai where hackathons aren't that common as opposed to Bangalore. 

Headstart.in is also the group that hosts Startup Saturday in different cities of India. So of course, while you communicate with the community through its various social channels, it's also a good idea to attend Startup Saturdays. They happen on the second saturday of every month in various cities such as Bangalore, Pune, Kochi, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon, Kolkata and even Goa and Navi Mumbai.

Head there especially if you are new and want to network with them and it's always a good idea to know who the people are if you are a member of these communities online:

1. Headstart Network - Google Group -- 6,000+ members
2. Headstart Network – Facebook Group -- 4,500+ members
3. Headstart Network – LinkedIn Group -- 1,800+ members 

B. Startup Saturday Groups

Startup Saturday also have various groups on Facebook and members there are pretty active there too. Also of course, if you are part of the google groups of Headstart.in you should be able to connect and interact there as well.

C. Hackerstreet.in

Yes, for those who don't know yet, Hackerstreet is certainly similar to Hacker News. But it has a lot of Indian hackers and product builders as part of the community. Certainly it's nothing overly inspirational as a product, but over the years it has built itself as a good Q&A thread based forum or discussion group. At the same time a great way to interact, build, learn and network with innovators across the startup ecosystem in India. So if you have any queries within the Indian startup community, fire away. This is the place where you'll find a lot of folks active at the same time you'll be able to interact with them on a one-one level. 

D. NextBigCommunity (Formerly Pluggd.in Forum)

forum.nextbigwhat.com which was formerly the Pluggd.in forum, is also one of the quite older communities in the Indian startup community. It certainly has various threads and posts, including startup ideas, specific threads on design UI/UX, with various categories on specific resources on how-to's, technology, support functions, research, hacks and tricks etc. 

E. OpenCoffeeClub.in

Those who have been in the startup industry for a while know about Open Coffee Club for for Internet entrepreneurs in London opened by Saul Klein, one of the founders of Skype.

India also has its OpenCoffeeClub.in which essentially collaborates on various aspects of startups such as peer support for technical problems, startup infrastructures, networking for hiring and recruiting, post or seek funding opportunities and etc. However, it also further bifurcates within Google groups and other communities of OpenCoffeeClub.in which are city specific, e.g. Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai have different pages or google groups with their respective members.

But overall, this community isn't that active based on the threads within the groups and forums, still worth a try from the perspective of being updated. Would make sense for you to sign up for their list or join their google groups so that you don't miss out on any updates.

F. Quora

In my article last week I've already outlined a bunch of startup India topics on Quora which cover various groups and people who are part of a great community within Indian startups on Quora. I'd certainly like to say, that being part of those groups would give you great insights on the ecosystem and of course opportunity to learn and connect overall.

Some of the top topics are these:

1. Startups in Bangalore 
2. Startups in Pune 
3. Startups in Mumbai
4. Startups in New Delhi
5. Startups in Hyderabad
6. Startups in Chennai
7. Startups in Kolkatta
8. Venture Capital in India
9. Entrepreneurship in India
10. Indian Entrepreneurs

G. LinkedIn Groups

A bunch of groups on LinkedIn that would also make good especially if you want to read up what's happening within the startup community and probably interact at a more direct level. These are some of those groups that might be useful to you.

1. Startup Network India
2. SMEs & Startups India
3. Indian Startups
4. Indian Web Startups
5. Headstart Network

If you think there are some other vibrant communities that could be part of this list, I would love to hear from you.

A question that has no specific answer, don't you think? It's a subjective question and more often than not, the answer would vary depending on what stage the startup is at, what funding or the kind of investments made, and the kind of valuation a company has.

Depending on the lifecycle of the startup, a founder should plan and choose to pay himself a salary in accordance to his needs versus how much the startup can afford to spend. And considering it's his own business, he should look at what he can do away with in profits versus how much overheads he wants to incur. In a recent article I read by Bob Dorf, co-author of The Startup Owner's Manual, he says genuine entrepreneurs have a simple formula. They get whatever's left in the bank after everyone's been paid.

It got me thinking. Gosh, entrepreneurship isn't a joke. Certainly we've heard of founders who've gone without salary for more than a year, used up their savings, lived out of cars, used co-working spaces, started up from coffee shops and taken up another job while coding their way to build that next revolutionary product. But yes, once you are funded, we might think founders should pay themselves a good salary. Right?

Not really as easy as you think. Another question also is whether your product is going to be generating revenue right from the get-go, or if you already have clients onboard who are able to cover your costs for development, design, and other resources.

Vijay Singh, CEO and managing director of Aaramshop, told me in an e-mail interview: "At initial stages, the founders need to support the organization by way of minimal withdrawals for self. However, as the company matures and becomes sustainable, it is important that the founders [peg] their remuneration to the market."

Well, it's all a juggling act if you ask me. Of course, being a founder, you certainly have a chunk in the equity, but it doesn't pay your ongoing bills and especially if you are married or have obligations you have to fulfill. Of course, though, that's something founders already know they signed up for when they decided to be an entrepreneur.

So, is it essential for founders to have a decent salary or should they still adopt the frugal way until the startup makes some decent progress? Do founders have to, and I mean have to cut their personal salaries while they keep paying their linchpins the desired salary for a startup to be really successful?

In a 2008 report by TechCrunch, PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, once mentioned that one of the things he looks for before investing in a company is how much salary is the CEO taking. The lower the salary for CEOs, the better it is for a startup to succeed, he said.

Investors certainly would be amused looking at business plans with luxurious salaries for CEOs, but at the same time a question I'd like to ask is: "Is this a trivial question or something that makes fundamental sense and something that should be given utmost important when startups seek out funding?"

From an investors perspective, Mike Lebus, co-founder of Angel Investment Network, said to me in an e-mail: "Startup founders have enough to deal with without having to worry about their personal finances too, so their salary should be big enough to allow them to focus completely on building the company. If the founders are worried about whether they're going to be able to pay the rent, ultimately the startup will suffer. However, they also need to realize that their salary should be pretty modest until the company starts to become successful."

Factors that decide founder salaries

1. Whether the founder has personal obligations, say, debt, mortgage, kids, or if he's single or married.
2. The percentage of equity ownership is something that will keep changing and can make a difference to  salaries.
3. The amount of financing or seed funding and investment that happens at different stages. There are cases where founders would hike their salaries after their different rounds of funding. 
4. It's always a good idea to survive on minimum salaries for longer periods, but at the same time, a balance should be maintained so that there is no distraction from the founders' personal obligations and there is adequate motivation for the founders to work better for the company. 
5. Some suggest  if there is a financial crunch, try and get yourself another job to cover those expenses, especially if you haven't launched yet. While this is a good idea, it also acts as a distraction to your startup. I'd say if you have the resources, pay yourself a little more and maybe recover that cost from your own startup later. 
6. It's always important that you pay yourself what's needed. Nothing less or nothing more. You always have the equity and your performance to drive your team, and that would help you determine your salary at every stage of the startup. 
7. Another important aspect is how you incentivize yourself at different stages of a startup, especially to drive your motivation levels as an entrepreneur.

This topic is certainly a much talked-about issue in the startup community and many have different views about this. What's important at the end of the day is how the translation of those funds happens in terms of measurable success, at any given stage of the startup.