This is NOT my list and has been copied from an excellent post made by Bhaskar but as many comments of quora are not fully visible to Indian anonymous users, I am putting it here. This is also for my own reference too. Please do note that this list is outdated as it has data/names of june 2010 only.
List of Startups in India with traction
- multi-lingual : Tachyon technologies / quilpad (amazing lisp, open-source, web hackers, got invested from rediff and supposedly rejected Google M&A)
Lipikaar (revenue making via tech, recently launched dubzer at DEMO)
- user generated content : Muziboo (youtube for audio, winner of 2009 facebook connect india challenge)
- real estate : commonfloor, 99acres (supposedly reaching >40% of indian market in april/may ‘10) ,makaan
- e-commerce : Flipkart, Infibeam, letsbuy, Martjack (amazing traction/DIY framework for building stores)
- voice : tringme / voicephp (Indian twilio) , callgraph (skype plugins) , voicetap (talk to an expert on phone) , kirusa
- maps : routeguru , sadakmap, mapunity
- facebook : ugenie (weread) , scrabulous guys
- gaming: hashcube (largest sudoku app at one point, incubated at iaccelerator), games2win (casualgames, comscore top 20 gaming reach , well funded ) , lordsofodds ( prediction/gaming via various channels, nice tv tieups, profitable ), Zapak ( Reliance group ) , indiagames ( acquired by UTV, non-casual games )
- offline focus: nextbit cpu ( licensing deals in millions) , notion ink ( adam tablet ), ideacts ( cybercafe software, 30000+ terminals, funded by seqoia )
- deals : snapdeals , mydala, taggle
- food related: tastykhana, hungrybangalore, lunchwalla
- online printing : myntra, pringoo, printo & many others
- photo: picsquare ( acuired by infibeam ), zoomin ( co-founded by founder of half/ebay )
- local / classifieds : burrp ( acuired by network18 ) , quickr ( supposedly fastest growing ) , asklaila ( amazing rate of product launches, partnerships ) , buzzintown
- search engines / aggregators :
antya ( small team, nice tech + seo juice), avashya
blogadda, indiblogs (ala technorati / 9rules )
guruji ( seqoia funded search engine, pivoted to music search, lawsuits, but still decent traction, future uncertain )
- students / jobs: sutraHR , bixee search ( owned by ibibo group ), bharatstudent, freshersworld, hellointern, pagalguy, minglebox
- ad networks : vdopia, jivox ( both video) , komli, tyroo, networkplay, tyroo ( all well funded )
- movies / ticketing / delivery : bookmyshow, kyazoonga, 70mm, Bigflix ( netflix’ish clone, great retail rollout, Reliance group )
- location yulop
- project management / collaboration: deskaway, remindo, uhuroo, tenmiles (makers of helpdeskpilot,tezaa,etc)
- payment : paymate, billdesk, mcheck, ccavenues
- auto: carwale, carazoo
- travel: redbus, cleartrip ( well funded, largest pool of lisp developers at one point )
- finance/risk : crederity ( background checks ) , dhanax ( ala kiva ), paisa ( stock portfolio )
- sports : cricinfo ( bought by espn )
- health: lifemojo, healthcaremagic
- analytics : wingify / visualsiteoptimizer
- blogging platforms: instablogs (citizen journalism), ibibo, bigadda
- cloud based : e2e networks, orangescape
PS – I have removed some names suggested by bhaskar as I don’t think justdial or makemytrip is a startup.
1. So Ronery – No shoulder to cry, talking to yourself way too much!
2. You can not validate ideas and implementations. No one is there to tell you that you are wrong.
3. Have to do all the work which reduces the pace of growth of the startup and increases tension, pressure and worries (many of them are unnecessary)
4. You have to pay all the expenses from your own pocket.
5. You will lose lot of Hair!
/written from my own personal experience
I was discussing with someone about this that why it is so important that founders needs to know the core of the business meaning if you are starting a product/technology company, the founder(or at least one) has to understand every aspect of the product, development and technology, you just can’t hire some “rockstar” and imagine him doing all the work because the moment that rockstar leaves your company (and it can happen any time), your company will be gone!
The same applies to any other aspect of the business as well, if you are starting a marketing company, services company or even a brick and mortar business, it is alright if you are looking to have 20 people with different skill set, as founder, you need to know all aspect of the business.
Yep, I was so looking forward to meet them, mailed them twice that I will be there at exact at 4 pm. This was an important meet even though I knew we are not going to get funded as such meetings helps a lot to understand investors mind and expectations. Anyway so I reached there 50 minutes late, ran for 2 KMs and when I was asked to talk about the company, I ran out of breadth so had to run to rest room!
It is a long story and I can’t drop names, but here are some TIPS to myself and to anyone of you who is going to meet VCs (in India) for the first time
Make sure you exactly know their office. Like me, don’t rely on google maps, it is not completely accurate for cities like bangalore where there are lot of one ways and auto walas are total “kaminas” (Jerks). I landed up 2 KM from where the office of the VC was.
I had left at 3:20 and as per google maps, was sure to reach the office at 3:45 but because I left the auto at wrong location (thanks to the locals for telling the wrong route which was one way), I had to run all the way back. Not only this, when I asked the lady is this “the building”, she said yes, so I said, great finally, I took the overcrowded lift and reached 8th floor only to realized that this is not that part of the building (what was that lady smoking ? since she spoke fluent hindi and there was no communication problem). So I started waiting for the lift on 8th floor but even after waiting for 15 mins, there were no remains of the lift. So instead of waiting any more, I took the staircase and start running down, feeling something like Lola 
. Mind you, for someone who do no physical exercise and spend unhealthy time in front of his laptop, this was not easy as I have poor lung capacity.
Anyway this doesn’t stop here, so the VC building was 500 meters from this building and I had to run all the way again, had to ask multiple ppl where is the main entrance for the building and where is the lift (there were multiple lifts for various parts of the building)
Oh and one more thing, my Rs 35k mobile also stopped working in the middle (this is another long story) and I had to use phone from a pedestrian (thanks stranger) to call to the VC office that I will be late by 30 minutes.
I easily Ran over 3 KMs and was panting heavily, but I feels I did alright considering most of the things were not in my hand. The reason why it made me so upset was I hate to be late, 4 PM should always means 4 PM and I should had relied on more real world knowledge about the place rather then relying on google maps.
So here are some tips/suggestions from my experience if you are ever gong to meet any angel investor/VC
1. always call the VC office about the location of their office and nearest landmark. Also confirm if the meeting is ON or not and give them your number in case of any changes in plan.
2. Never go late, infact I feels it is better of going 15 minutes earlier, sit in office, may be drink a cup of coffee (for free!)
3. Do take your ppt or any doc in a flash drive (which doesn’t have a virus). I also keep all the business material on my mobile too as well always keep multiple printouts of your presentation.
4. Speak slowly and Clearly (something which I don’t do). By speaking slowly,you also give yourself time to “direct” the conversation.
i have deep and longstanding self esteem issues from childhood that cause me to be insecure, jealous, anxious, neurotic, depressed, lie about things, feel guilty about everything, and go out of my way to do things for other people because i feel like they deserve a lot more than i do. all. the. time.
working on it.
/Reddit
May 3rd, 2011 in
Life |
1 Comment
Here is an excellent exhaustive PPT (not those lame ass typical 10 slide once) which covers all the details about online Sales and Marketing. It has some real gems in it
April 26th, 2011 in
Case Study |
No Comments
I am probably going to regret making this post but life taught me to live life in “moments” so here it is, I had made this graph last year, drawing my life parameters, Happiness, Health, Money and “People in life”. I drew this with total honesty
apparently my happiness is inversely proportional to my bank account balance, my health is doing alright and the LIMIT of people around me is approaching towards 0.
I had made this graph at around 1 am in the night and I often look back it to think, where I was, where I am and where I will be in next few years ? The answer came, I was doing alright (though could had done better), I am doing alright (though can do better) and will surely be doing well in future too.
The good thing with money is, You just have to get rich once. Being a somewhat “smart” guy, I live frugal life and not many materialistic things excite me. I am really lucky that I was able to understand this that It is easier to save money then make money. Anyway back to post topic, why the image looks so bad for someone who try to improve himself on daily basis ?
The answer is – if we all draw out life graphs, it will never look good. We will always be disappointed with our life graph even though we are doing really good as compared to millions who were not fortunate enough but then it is alright to not satisfied with your achievements as long as you trying to make things better for yourself and for others.
Feel free to clean the image in MS paint and redraw it for yourself and save it to look back every 6 month.
Edit – if you see, that 19-20 year was the point when everything changed dramatically, because that was the time when I found INTERNET.
April 17th, 2011 in
Life |
No Comments
It can’t get more accurate then this
* Starting is more important than the idea
* Write a blog, not a business plan
* Stealth mode is for fighter jets, not startups
* A sub-optimal price today beats a perfect price tomorrow
* Sales velocity, acquisition cost, lifetime value – improving one often degrades another (the only thing that improves all three is the customer experience)
* Transparency trump secrecy
* The path of truth and justice is often paved with profit
If you are not following Dharmesh on twitter, do it right now
Indian classifieds have so much potential but alas, spammers are killing them, Quikr, unarguably the best classified site in India is full of spam even though they have really good monitoring system (probably too good as my genuine ads too keeps on getting deleted!)
I think its a good time for Quikr to get Only Paid, they will lose lot of search traffic but even making the ads Rs 1 will get rid of all the spam as people are running pyramid scheme on ad postings.
so I was wondering what’s the appeal of Quora, a social Q/A site or StackOverflow, I am a member of both the sites and have contributed (contribution = asking couple of questions, that’s it!) to the sites. Both sites have raised lot of money and the most amazing and obvious thing about the sites is, the concept for both the sites are as old as Internet, so why these 2 worked and not the other thousands ?
The answer is simple, the market was ready for them now + they got momentum. If StackOverflow had started in 2001, it probably would had just become a geek hangout place with 10% of the activity which it has now. The only reason why Quora and Stackoverflow have got so much traction and coverage even with no uniqueness is because the market is ready now (or the VCs at least as money do wonders for such concepts, with VC money, you can still start ten cheezburger like network as the market will never get saturated)
so the point of the post is – Recycle Ideas, use Ideas which didn’t took off in 2000 or 2005 because the market may be ready now or you are in a better position to execute the old idea.
PS – BTW, Quora is co-founded by Adam D’Angelo, Facebook’s ex CTO, so raising money must be a cakewalk, which to me turns out to be the differentiator in such concepts.
