TiE Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge 2008 was concluded on Saturday, 5th July.
The winners of the Challenge are:
Equitas – A microfinance company, which started 6 months back with great management team. They have been able to innovate around processes to scale very fast in this business.
Druvaa Systems – It’s a backup company focusing at laptops and handhelds.
Iken – A company with core IP in analytics and is applying that to storefronts (web and mobile) to present the “right catalog” to each customer.
Overall, it was an exciting series and pretty enjoyable interacting with all the companies. I think feedback from participants, if they are reading this entry would be valuable.
The inside working of series would be aired by CNBC later this month. Due to lack of any other communication platform, I’ll inform here on the dates.
Interesting report from Universal McCann on social media. With respect to India, while overall Internet penetration remains abyssmal, some of the social media metrics fare better (on base of 17M active users in target group):
- 85% read blogs, with fairly high frequency of usage
- 66% have created a profile on a social network, and frequently update it
- 65% upload photos; 53% upload videos, 85% watch them
The numbers do look high to me, but remember its on young active part of the internet users. If true, this data throws up an interesting observation - while the internet penetration itself is growing slowly, there seems to be a 10M+ sophisticated consumer base that has evolved, whose usage is in line with the most internet-advanced countries. This base of customers can potentially be an interesting market. Perhaps not for advertising oriented business, but more so for transaction based business which can derive more value per subscriber. It would be interesting to understand the disposable income level of this group - just in case the majority of these are poor students…
Proto.in, over the past two years has been slowly building a community of startup entrepreneurs, and has been successful in its mission. The fourth edition of the event, is to be right here in Delhi, in the campus of IIT Delhi, on the dates of 18th and 19th. There is a fair bit of elite audience expected, and a fair bit of buzz and activity is going on on the site if you do take a look at it. IAMAI, NASSCOM, TiE, NEN, and several organizations which are working towards the common cause of strengthening entrepreneurship are coming together, yet again.
This is an invite to the venturewoods community, should they find it to be appropriate for attending the event. For anything further on this regard, you can get in touch with Vijay at proto dot in.
Note: The Registration fee is Rs. 500 and folks can either register online, or there are locations in seven cities across the country where one can go and collect passes paying the amount in cash.
The following are very generic comments for companies focused on rural market.
- Focus: The company/organization must focus on a single service unlike Drishtee or n-logue or Akshaya. However after achieving success with a product/service you may broaden your portfolio.
- Training: Training is essential for all the stakeholders in the company - employees, customers, vendors, etc. Why? Because in rural India, you have an abundance of raw talent that must be aligned to your requirements. In fact, sometimes you may have to start from creating the whole ecosystem before actually scaling up your operations.
- Adjusting to local needs: Rural India represents varied cultures, traditions, languages etc. So your model should be sufficiently flexible to adapt to local needs.
- Technology for masses: Use technology wherever is possible.
- Processes: Standardize operations in order to create scalable business processes. Actually, this paves the way for more technology adoption.
- Word of mouth advertising: In rural India, people love to be your brand ambassadors and talk about all good things about your product/service if they like it.
- End-to-end service delivery: You need to make sure that the consumer gets service-as-a-whole delivered. For example, if you just collect a resume and charge the customer rupees twenty for feeding into computer- this may not be scalable. However, if you collect a villagers’ resume, provide him a job earning him rupees 5000 a month and collect rupees 20000 for your efforts - this would definitely work with rural people.
- Emotional Attachment: Rural people place their trust in your product or service - so you must live up to it. It is not just a commercial transaction that you engage in with them but more an emotional agreement between you, the marketeer and your consumer.
- Communities: Rural people live as communities or extended families. You need to align with local communities following the trick, “trust is transferable”.
- Efficient distribution: Rural India is sparsely populated and so it is obvious that the distribution costs are high. Hence, you need to innovate to bring down these costs.
Here’s a list of some bright and upcoming security companies which, in my opinion, have a promising potential:
Endeavor Security (www.endeavorsecurity.com, Rating 4/5) - My bets are on this startup. Endeavor is an early-stage company working on a truly disruptive security framework which could be the next big thing in Internet-wide threat analysis and actionable intelligence. The problem with existing intelligence players is that their offerings are not truly actionable, i.e. they don’t cover the complete cycle (detection-reporting-remediation). Secondly, none of them has the capability to provide vendor-agnostic remedial input. Third, none of them has been able to keep pace with the changing threat landscape. Fourth, most of the industry analysts wrongly believe that the need for such a service is failing. Security intelligence is still scattered and raw. There is a big response gap which separates intelligence from the effectiveness of deployed products and services. If someone is able to bridge this gap in a product/service/vendor-agnostic way, then there is a great opportunity for setting up a truly early-warning and preemptive service offering. Backed by Department of Homeland Security, this company has taken its first steps to test the waters. It has launched solutions like FirstLight Signatures (signature service for various IPS, UTM and firewall vendors) and FirstLight Active Malware Protection (gathering latest malware data from deployed sensors and relaying it across to the AV vendors before the outbreak occurs while protecting their customer’s perimeter on-the-fly). I had a brief interaction with one of the founders and they say that a SaaS offering is in the works. All this makes it a company to watch out for. Their only challenge would be to get some gung-hos in the management team and build a very strong research back-end.
Rohati Systems (www.rohati.com, Rating 3.5/5) - Well, nothing groundbreaking really but a credible enhancement over existing offerings. They are working on a layer 4-to-7, policy-based firewall controlling access to various applications and resources, with awareness about their business context and compliance regulations. Alan Shimel has termed it as “a logical extension of identity based access control” and I agree wholeheartedly with him. They are not alone in the game, with Palo Alto Networks giving them some heat. However, they are garnering most of the media attention due some highly-accomplished Indian techies from Cisco in their management line-up.
Mocana Corp. (www.mocana.com, Rating 3.5/5) - This relatively-older company is gradually coming into the limelight. They are building security infrastructure for all kinds of networked devices, from mobile phones to coffee makers. They have acquired a small Indian company to setup their offshore R&D base in Pune.
Hi everyone. This is my first post. A quick introduction about myself. I am Vivek and currently located in Chennai. Aspiring to be an entrepreneur in the days/months/Years to come 
This article is an attempt to understand the process of hiring at a startup. Your comments would help me understand what went on.
To understand the situation, you need to know that I have been trying to work for a startup because I thought it would give me the flexibility to learn how to run one down the line. Having said this, I always knew the kind of challenges and sacrifices that I would have to make if at all I joined a startup. But I am also of the opinion that the passion to work in a startup varies with your association with the group. For instance, if you are the founder, you would be practically working 24×7 and also in your sleep you would probably be working out strategies. The level of commitment would slightly reduce say for a co-founder who came on board a little later and keep going down with a new hire. This is true even more for a company which is performing regular hires (post funding).
Now, having said this (and I am sure many of you would agree/disagree), I was called by one of the founders of a company to work with them. We had various rounds of interviews, tests and lengthy discussions. Coming from a product management/marketing background, I was offered a marketing role in the organization. The company itself was funded by an entity and were in a position to offer stable income to the new recruits.
At the end of these interviews, I was selected and offered the job. However the pay was significantly lower than what I was drawing at my current job. The reasons stated included that I come from a different background and the nature of the job would be entirely different from what I have been doing all these years, that a disparity might be created if they even matched my current pay; let alone exceed it.
My expectations were not high at all. To begin with since I knew the pulse of startups, I was ready to accept an offer which would be below my current CTC and also fore-go other benefits which are offered in a corporate world. I was also prepared to work long hours (startups don’t have any working hours, isn’t it?) including weekends if the situation demanded. But the company simply couldn’t meet my threshold of acceptance and the offer was cancelled as a result.
My questions to fellow entrepreneurs here are:
- How do you balance the pay packet for a potential employee? Please give two scenarios - (a) You are self funded. (b) You are financially backed by an angel or a VC.
- Would you consider the prior experience of a candidate from a different domain, or would you simply consider him/her to be a fresher from your company’s perspective?
- What kind of commitment would you expect from the new hire? What kind of notice periods/bonds would you look at?
- What are the legal aspects which you would look into before hiring someone? Would you do extensive background check on the candidate or rely on references or just hire him/her for what value they can bring in?
- Would you have an age criteria to hire? In other words would you believe that a 21 year old could be as valuable as a 40 year old?
Your comments would help me ascertain where I should have my expectations as a potential hire/employer.
Offering services to Rural India is expensive. That is because, peasants live in sparse locations and so, distribution costs are very high. That is why, one needs to innovate here. One of such innovation is to offer the service, mobile.
I used to wonder about the business model on providing Internet service on cycle rickshaw to Rural population in India. Ultimately it failed in terms of scalability. And nowadays I hear about many such services offered on move. In all of those services, Direct-to-consumer is the mantra. These are:
- Court: Indian government launched its first mobile court - an air-conditioned bus that travels to far-flung villages in order to bring justice to villagers doors. A judge follows the bus in an air-conditioned sport-utility vehicle.
- Hospital: “Smile on Wheels” is the mobile hospital project of ‘Smile Foundation’. Under this program, five vans equipped with X-ray machine, ECG machine, basic pathological services for blood and urine test, ante-natal and post-natal services and an out-patient department for common ailments travel on the roads of states (UT, CG, MH, OR, UP) covering 750000 population.
- Hospital on Train: Impact India foundation in support with Indian Railways has launched a train equipped with three operation tables, modern surgical equipment and accessories, kitchen, restrooms, sterilisation equipment, recovery room for the patients, audiometric/ophthalmic room and X-Ray room, including training facilities for up to 50 paramedics. Surgeries are conducted during its four-six week stay at a particular location. Each five-week stop costs around Rs.2 million (Rs 20 lakhs).
- Science Train: The Science Express - a mobile science exhibition on a train that showcases current and futuristic research in various areas, including information technology, biotechnology, health technology and systems, technology of materials and space and is aimed at inspiring young people to pursue scientific research. Reception of this service was amazing.
- Automobile Spare parts: Satyam has created a mobile auto showroom cum service center, which can be taken door-to-door in a Bus, called Edow. This bus will be equipped with everything an auto dealer needs, a display area, a workshop, a sales office and systems, hi-tech display systems and high speed connectivity. It expects demand of 40,000 for such buses in India.
- PCO (manned pay-phone service): Idea Cellular Ltd has launched an unique Shared Access (Voice & Data) PCO for Rural India. Rural entrepreneurs can sell airtime on their mobile phones to people in the community wishing to make a call or send a text message. This innovative approach allows entrepreneur to set up a payphone business for just the cost of a handset. Specially devised software with a printer will be developed to enable the owner of the mobile handset to provide a bill if required to the customer making the call. Call charges are also displayed on the handset to ensure transparency in the transaction. Additionally, Idea will offer shared Internet access in these rural communities to provide an even broader range of data services.
- Female on move to sell FMCG products: Shakthi is, a very innovative program of Uniliver, for distribution of FMCG goods to Rural population. Uniliver trains rural women in order to improve their selling skills and turns them as Uniliver’s saleswomen.
- Micro-business school: Mann Deshi Udyogini is, a Micro-business school on a mini bus, to solve the skill shortage among entrepreneurial rural women. Courses do not have any pre-qualification criteria and the curriculum is entirely driven by the needs of rural women. Courses range between one week and three months in duration and course fees start from as little as Rs. 25 (less than a dollar). Courses focus on technical skills, marketing skills, managing finances and confidence-building. Courses to develop technical skills, such as goat rearing, screen printing, selling cell phone recharge coupons, bag-making etc are being offered currently. Certificates and graduation diplomas are issued on completion of these courses which can be used to obtain micro credit.:
- Retail stores: 3A Bazaar is India’s first mobile retail company running on vans. These vans carry goods worth 2-2.5 lakhs of rupees everyday from a storehouse to about 700 villages. However, most of the villages are visited weekly or fortnightly or monthly. This fits with the irregularity of incomes of villagers and the mobility eliminates the drawbacks of a static rural retail shop. The daily average sales are in the range of 8-10 thousand rupees.
- Tools on a Truck: ‘Bosch Vaahan’ is a mini-bus which carries sophisticated Power Tools to rural areas. A wide range of woodworking, construction and metalworking tools catering to the needs of rural carpenters, metalworking artisans, plumbers etc are carried by the ‘vaahan’, which visits different villages. Product demonstrations and information sessions are conducted by the ‘vaahan’ officials in rural areas. Rural artisans can try out these tools for their work. The tools are available for purchase to rural artisans at subsidized prices. Bosch has tied up with several banks, including Canara Bank and Andhra Bank, to offer attractive loan schemes for the rural folk to buy these tools.
There could be many more such services.After listing all these services here, two points came to my mind.
- Which of the above projects are scalable & sustainable?
- Are there any other potential business opportunities to launch them as mobile. For example, I believe, cellphone spare parts on wheels can be a good candidate for the future.
Value Proposition
- 10 times faster PC backups with 90% reduction in bandwidth and storage utilization.
- Never lose a file. Ever - Timeline based, from the past Restores.
Where its useful ?
- Remote backups - low bandwidth scenarios like - remote-office/off-site backup, traveling user backups
- Local backup - Savings in time and storage space.
- Bare-Metal Restore - Solution is best suited for fast and efficient bare-metal (OS+data) restores.
How are we doing this ?
Enterprise PC data is increasing at a rate of 40% annually. And within organizations, more than 80% of this PC data (emails/documents) is common between users. This is also validated by Gartner Report (Mar 2008) and MS Report (SIS and its effects in Microsoft).
Druvaa inSync enterprise PC backup solution uses advanced data de-duplication technology called - “SendUnique” to identify duplicate data before the backup starts. It checks with the backup server if the data (file/email) being backed up has already been backed up by any other user and then backs up only unique data. This boosts backup speed by up to 10 times and reduces bandwidth and storage usage by 90%. The fingerprinting used is powerful enough to figure out even same paragraphs between two documents.
Example: HR sends same email to 1000 employees, If one guy backs up, 999 would skip it during backup.
User Experience
This is totally transparent to the user, all he can see is a reduced backup time, which is even more critical for traveling and off-site based employees. While restoring he can see a timeline view of all his backed up data. He can choose any date:time to restore entire data from the past !
Other Business Use cases
This is a truly unique concept and can be extended to PDA and server backup as well.
Yes, we filed two patents to protect this IP
More information
- Animated Demo
- De-duplication explained -
- Product Features
- Benchmarks
- Background of De-duplication (and attempts made by others).
Beta is available for downloads. The product is priced $35/Laptop/annum and free for SOHO/Startups.
I would be interested in knowing how you think about the idea and product.
A piece, via WSJ, provides some sobering stats:
There were 844 venture firms investing in U.S. companies last year, 40 fewer than in 2006, according to the latest data from VentureSource, a research unit of VentureWire publisher Dow Jones. That is down 30% from the bubble year of 2000, when there were nearly 1,200 active investors.
The total includes a substantial number of firms–224, or 27% of the total–who didn’t back any new companies last year, an indication that the ranks of active investors will continue to thin.
The post goes on to give some more data about the US-based National Venture Capital Association’s members:
Heesen said he foresees a 15% decline in the next two years in the total number of venture firms investing in the U.S., many of them too small to meet the NVCA’s membership threshold of $5 million under management. The NVCA has about 470 member firms representing 90% of the venture capital under management in the U.S.,
Many of the active investors in 2007 did only a few deals. Less than half–45%–completed four or more investments. And 29% made just one investment.
What does the community think? Is there a sense of slowdown here in India as well?
I believe that mobile is one of the most revolutionary thing happened in our lifetime. It would become the key enabler in the process of human development (socially/economically). The reason, for this, is the following services which would be available on a mobile sooner or later if unavailable now.
Note : All the following services would never be available on a single mobile phone. Any subset of these services would be sold in the market. So it means, one will keep multiple mobile devices.
- Voice/Video Calls (local/national/international)
- Documentation/Video Recording/Audio Recording - Blogging, Remotely updating office work, Softwares- Word/Excel/Powerpoint/etc, Creative Designs such as drawing,
- Messaging/Chat/File Transfer - one to one, group messaging, group discussions, automatic notification, RSS feeds,
- Music - Tune/songs identification through audio recording in order to download on iTunes kind of a platform,
- E-Commerce - ordering groceries, Insurance policy, Photo-prints,
- Ticketing or Booking - Air/ Train/ Bus/ Car/ Movie/ Hotel/ Events/ Any professionals’ appointments/ etc
- Video/Audio on Demand - Movies, Story telling for children, Live video/audio streams
- Access to content on web - Videos/ Images/ News Papers/ Magazines/Horoscope etc
- Friendship/Dating networks
- Matrimonial services
- Search for person/object/location details - where, who, what, how, when-, object identification through photos,
- TV - With time shift facility
- Stocks/Investment
- Navigation systems - Maps, Diksuchi, Driving directions
- Banking
- Location based payments (similar to credit/smart card) for uses such as parking lot fee, AVM, Pay any merchant such as autowala
- E-Books
- Teaching/Training - E-Pen, Live streaming lectures, Materials such as Lecture notes, Presentations, Audio/Video Lectures,
- Interactive Gaming
- Diagnosis - Temperature, BP, Pulse reading through Stylus
- Scanning - paper/photo,
- OCR -
- Barcode Reader
- Object Location Identification - RFID
- Dictionary/Encyclopedia
- Translation (Text/Voice)
- Voting
- Survey/Quiz/Feedback/Complaints/examination systems
- Application filing - Jobs, loans, admission, other government services,
- Remote access - Computers, Mobiles, TV, Fridge, Micro oven, Electric switches,
- Identification - Software Key, Digital signature, Finger print scan, password,
- Alarm/Watch/Timer -
- Mirror -
- Radio -
- Mouse -
However, there are certain limitations to mobile which are the reasons for having limitations on the number of services. These are:
- Display size - May have TV/Monitor output.
- Memory - Remote storage may be used
- Processor performance - May use the resource of another remote high performance computer
- Battery power
- Keypad - A foldable printed paper type wireless keypad may be used
- Interoperability
- Signal reach - signal boosters may be used
- Environment
- Water/Heat/Cold/Fire/chemicals issues
- Standing - Physical stand may be used with flexibility in height and width
I am documenting complete details on each of the above services. If anyone wishes to collaborate with me, please write to my gmail id, malapati. Thanks.
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