Yulop

Pronounced You Loop!

Yulop is a bangalore based company with an aim to provide location based services. So if you are in bangalore and want to search a hangout place, yulop is the place to check. Yulop covers the events happening in the cities and even provides an extensive search based on an individual’s needs. Covering basically Bangalore, the spectrum seems to be too small and considering that almost everyone seems to know atleast 3-4 pals in Bangalore, a need of similar services exists in other cities more than in Bangalore. Rental’s and PGs are important considering so many people travel to Bangalore from other parts of India, and hence that is one thing that seems to catch attention.

Keeping all in mind, the scope of services seems small though they have been able to cover Bangalore extremely well. To know more hit http://www.yulop.com/.

2.5 on a scale of 5.

AdvocateKhoj

I am sure most of us would have gone through tough times to get the forms attested, get a notary signature or get in touch with advocates when we were caught riding bikes without licence. That was some days back…Today, we again find ourselves searching for legal advises whether it is for opening & registering a company or something else.

AdvocateKhoj seems to have been able to read the pulse of millions of Indians and have created a communication platform to connect millions of people to qualified legal help at which ever location they are. AdvocateKhoj works on web and hence the hassles are far reduced. So the only thing you need to do is to login and send across your query & the legal assistance is all yours. Based on the responses of “n” advocates you can choose one and go ahead with him/her during your session with court.

Considering the confidentiality of details, AdvocateKhoj has used Internal Messaging System (IMS) for security purposes. And if you have any questions/queries that you would want to do research on, AdvocateKhoj comes with a Law Library and hence you have all the details on your screen at the click of mouse.

A nice package, wonderfully executed. Hit http://www.advocatekhoj.com/index.php to know more.

Tolmolbol

Web Guide!

That seems to be the buzz word these days and all of a sudden you will find lots of web guides on internet. Some of them very basic and some trying to keep pace with changing environment. Tolmolbol is “another” web guide, but with a difference. Atleast i felt that way.

The Website is in beta stage and has already been able to get a huge database on various categories and various cities compiled. So whether it is Delhi or Faridabad or it is Health & Medical, Tolmolbol has been able to get most of them in place. The web interface is smartly designed and unlike most web guides it comes with attractive and easy to use interface. And it doesnt stop only on helping you find locations but also has place to get “social” and meet new friends ask tips etc. Now thats something which is already present in every second website on the web world.

Tolmolbol has been able to nicely display things and brings freshness to the “web guide” culture but besides that its the same website you will find at many places on the web. So the challenge would not just be branding but also keeping the database updated as thats the only differentiator it would have & with a team of 5 people from BITS Pilani involved in setting this up, i do hope that will be possible.

To read more on Tolmolbol hit http://www.tolmolbol.com/index/

Interview with Founder BrewHaHA

1. Please provide a brief on your venture “BrewHaHa” & also how you happened to choose the name?

BrewHaHa is a venture in the retail space that looks to deliver “fun for groups”. We do this by providing a unique dining/cafe experience centered on board games, events and hobbies of different kinds.

The name is a pun on the word brouhaha (which means “hubub/excitement/commotion/uproar”). We chose it because it communicates the concept of food/beverages (brews) and fun (HAHA!), and “smart fun” at that, which appeals to our core demographic of young, hip/smart users!

2. Who all are involved in “BrewHaHa” & a very small introduction of them.

The concept was founded by Sreeram (myself) and Mansur. Surga joined the team later. You can read more about us at http://brewhaha.in/about.html

3. What were the issues you faced while coming up with this platform?

Real estate costs, domain experience, funding and manpower/staffing were the main challenge areas

4. How has the response been to “BrewHaHa” and how do you foresee it in future?

The user response has been tremendously encouraging. We get lots of franchise enquiries as well as folks blogging about their time here, evangelizing the concept through chain mails as well as high level of repeat walk ins. So its super cool to see customers being passionate about the concept.

If you have any queries, please feel free to mail me at istartups@gmail.com and i will forward the same to Sreeram - Founder, BrewHaHa

Loconomy

Loconomy is a year old startup, currently operating only in Bangalore. It aims to combine the concepts of web/application hosting, local search and user reviews into a single unified platform.

For consumer-oriented local businesses, Loconomy is first publishing platform. It provides tools and backend support for businesses to publish and manage all type of business information including catalogues, photos, videos, deals, events and more.

Loconomy Loco sites platform allows businesses to create custom designed dynamic websites, managed and hosted by Loconomy. In addition to this, Loconomy also provides a growing set of applications that businesses can choose to subscribe to e.g. online table booking, appointment booking and ordering.

For end users, Loconomy is the one stop destination to search and interact with local businesses via web or mobile. Because all the loco sites hosted by Loconomy are part of the same platform, Loconomy is able to provide a deeper search experience than any other site.

Team overview:

Loconomy was started by Sanjay, Gaurav, Pallavi and Naveen. They bring vast technology, retail and marketing expertise to Loconomy. Loconomy has been under development since March, 2007. You may find details about founders at: http://www.loconomy.com/home/about

Competitive Advantage

For the end users, a common example that shows the difference is - search for “neer dosa” in koramangala [http://bangalore.loconomy.com/search/searchall?q=neer+dosa&l=koramangala] on Loconomy and on any other site. If you like neer dosa, you will become an instant fan of loconomy.com.

Please feel free to send your comments to sanjay@loconomy.com

Pringoo

New Home of creativity! - Print your imagination

Thats what you will find if you click http://www.pringoo.com/. Pringoo is a ecommerce platform that allows you to build & create your own designs, styles thereby providing a vent to creativity of millions across globe. You can create, sell & buy products with unique designs on apparels, ceramic products, gift items & home and office accessories.

Like many other similar websites where you can create (design) your own creations, Pringoo offers all the services & wonderful tools to build unique and creative form of arts. But unlike most forums where you cant engage in ecommerce on “similar” products, Pringoo offers facilities to buy & sell and hence create a forum for many to earn their living. With products like T shirts, mugs, teddy bears, posters, bags, greeting cards and lot more Pringoo’s offerings range across wide spectrum.

Arpana Priyadarshini, Founder & CEO, is the brain responsible for setting up strategies and execution. She is an MBA from Virginia, USA. She is supported for all technological matters by Jai Kumar as Founder & CTO, and is a BE (REC Jamshedpur) & MS (University of Virginia USA).

All in all a concept which is “not” a novel concept but is surely executed with value adds which makes it a part of “Innovative Startups”.

SutraHR

About Sutra HR

As a people consulting firm, Sutra HR’s founding team has more than cumulative six years of market experience in fulfilling people related services ranging from hiring to realigning, assessing, training and assessment for startups, small and growing companies, and entrepreneur-driven companies, mostly in the IT, Internet, digital and mobile domain.

SutraHR with its small driven set of entrepreneurial talent without the baggage of conventional metrics of a ‘good’ candidate acts as a remote People Development Center and offers price, timing and effort advantage to startups and emerging companies to stop worrying about their most important resources that walk down the elevator every evening.

At SutraHR, we understand your unique blend of challenges and constantly strive to become partners of choice for startups.

Vision Statement

To be a partner for start up and entrepreneurial driven companies, and help them fuel their growth by ensuring a steady, dependable stream of talented people.

Mission Statement

To reform the mindset of people about working for a start up, and make a difference to the start up and entrepreneurial culture in India.

USP/Differentiator
SutraHR’s speciality is talent integration. It brings together diverse professionals in cross functional teams, made up of multi-skilled individuals such as entrepreneurs, techies, business development stalwarts, along with fresh out of college graduates who have no prior work experience, but have a lot of attitude and the will to learn as they go along. Each of these forms a constituent of the fabric of any start up, as ‘multi-hatting’ is a prevalent norm in start ups, as opposed to straight-jacket dead pan jobs offered by some of the big brand employers.
Sutra HR’s business mantra is rather simple. The small firm partners with other start up and entrepreneurial-driven companies, and provides them with a steady stream of talent to fuel their growth.
Strategy
Being small and nimble ourselves, Sutra HR wears the shoes of startups and entrepreneurial companies every morning, and sets out to find not just employees, skill sets, and profile for out clients, but also people who are dependable, a good fit, and have the same drive and values that support and grow a small company such as yours. We are the partners you were looking for, to take on your worries about people; training, assessment, increasing operational efficiencies with dashboard as you grow, and to stand by you in the long haul to fame and glory.
Future Plans
Presently, SutraHR has a focus on the online and digital space, given that most new startups in India come from this field. Going forward, SutraHr plans to target a lot of mobile companies and companies providing value-added services to the booming Indian telecommunications sector, which are involved in implementing some cutting edge work in the mobile value-added services (VAS) and advertising space. SutraHR also plans to partner with startups in financial service and microfinance space sometime in the near future, as part of its objective to be associated with companies that have a social cause attached to their business models and impact the lives of millions of people.

About the Founder:
Waqar Azmi completed his engineering in 2006, and though he was presented with numerous attractive career opportunities, he preferred to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations, motivated by the success of his father as an entrepreneur. The idea for his online venture took root when Waqar was involved with some start ups, either directly or indirectly. One thing that he noticed was that funds, ideas and infrastructure was not a problem for them, but finding the right people for there organisation was a huge challenge. Seeing a huge gap in the market, SutraHR started up as a startup to help other startups in finding a solution to the biggest problem faced by them. To Read more hit http://www.sutrahr.com/

DilSeBol

About DilSeBol:
DilSeBol Customized Apparel Pvt Ltd was established in 2006 and our portal, www.DilSeBol.com was launched officially on 14th April 2007. DilSeBol specializes in production of customized printed products, the designs for which can be easily and quickly created by users at www.dilsebol.com using our proprietary design tool called “The Artist”. The current products available include t-shirts, mugs, coasters, ceramic tiles, mouse pads, shirts, caps and polo t-shirts. In the near future, paper print products like posters, photo books etc will also be introduced. As the focus is on creating customized products as per the customer’s requirement, each design is printed on the product only on order and the entire order processing set-up is geared towards handling single, unique items. This approach is different from that of mass manufacturer’s who make large lots and keep it as inventory.

Founding and Management Team:
The founding team consists of Suresh Subbian, Ravi Kumar and Kapil Vishwanathan.
Suresh has an Engineering background and has been associated with a few ventures in Tirupur related to garment dyeing and manufacturing. Suresh is also the co-founder of CK Technologies, a Chennai-based software company specializing in Indian language computing.
Ravi Kumar is a management graduate from IIMA and has worked across different areas in Sales and Marketing in the world’s largest beverage company and in Supply chain & Project Management in one of the leading consulting companies in the world. This is Ravi’s first experience in creating a new venture.
Kapil Vishwanathan is a Harvard and Stanford alumni and is also the co-founder of PreMedia Global, a cross-border publishing services company with operations in the US and India.
Suresh and Ravi manage the day to day operations of DilSeBol.com. Suresh mainly takes care of manufacturing and procurement while Ravi looks at customer service, marketing and website development.
Focus Areas:
We plan to focus on a few things to differentiate ourselves
1. Great focus on apparels which implies offering a lot of options in terms of styles and colors.
2. High quality commitment with a no questions asked replacement guarantee. We have our own apparel label made as per our specifications, under strict quality control standards. We also have a great combination of different printing methods that we use to get the best output for each design based on its unique requirements. This gives us great confidence in our quality which makes offering a free replacement not a big challenge for us, because there are so few complaints! We don’t believe in empty boasts like “best customized products” etc, but we have a great number of repeat customers and great positive feedback coming our way, which makes us believe that we are delivering what we promise consistently!
3. Our proprietary design application which is probably the easiest design application available online today will continue to evolve and offer more features to users while remaining highly user-friendly
Differentiators for DilSeBol.com:
DilSeBol provides the tools required for people to create their own designs, review it online to see how it will turn out on a product and then ultimately, order it with us if they like what they see. Our easy to use, proprietary design tool, “The Artist” is ideal for everyone, even people not familiar with design software like Photoshop etc. This is probably the most attractive feature. Also, we don’t place restrictions on the picture resolution that is to be uploaded, so we work on even low resolution pictures and enhance it to bring out good quality output.
Finally, we offer a slew of color options on apparel which is hard to find anywhere else.
Challenges:
By far our biggest challenge is to ensure that we are able to maintain our promised delivery time of 4 days or under for customized orders. We need to ensure that our manufacturing process gets completed in time. We find that courier service is still not 100% reliable and therefore, we try and turn around orders on the same day to give one more day to the courier service provider.

Lootstreet.com

Why buy at a Fixed Price or fight with other buyer in an Auction, when you can directly Haggle and Bargain with the seller as in real life!

About LootStreet.com

Lootstreet.com (www.lootstreet.com) is a next-generation online marketplace which is specially adapted to the Indian/Asian scenario. Lootstreet portal hosts both new and used goods – it follows a unique model of price determination of a sale with a simple underlying ideology - “Every Price is Negotiable”. Most importantly, this will finally give every Indian the right to buy a product at the price he/she thinks is fair. E-commerce, as we have known it in the past, will shortly be re-defined.

The Pain Point being addressed

The lack of a ‘real marketplace’ in the virtual world - that which is specifically suited to the shopping mentality and the purchasing pattern of the ‘involved buyer’ (more specifically Indian/Asian buyer)

Our vision

Our vision of the virtual world and its features is one that gives every user the democratic right to act - in this case ‘shop’ while having a say in the price of the purchased product. A first of its kind – LootStreet.com has successfully customized the online shopping process to suit the preferences and mentality of the Indian buyer by combining the price-flexibilities of real-life shopping and convenience of online shopping.

Founders

The company is headed by two 2008 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who gave up lucrative job offers at some of the world’s best investment banks to build a team of 8 in a short span of time, spearheading them to conduct a full-fledged research on the buying patterns of Indians and launching the promised product within 60 days of their Post graduate convocation ceremony. In February 2008, Kaushik Mukherjee and Arun Balakrishnan, two PGP students of the 2008 batch of IIM Ahmedabad founded AKVENTURE Info Pvt. Ltd. (link:http://www.lootstreet.com/whoarewe/whoarewe.php). LootStreet.com is their first homegrown project.

Uniqueness of Offering and Target Segment

The current online shopping portals either follow the Fixed Priced System or the Auction System, which is more of a Western model (which evolved from the real-life auction houses such as Sotheby’s) that has been force-fitted for the Indian online shopper. In reality, the Indian shopper is a more involved buyer and the average Indian has never even witnessed an auction process in his life. What is unique about LootStreet.com is that is customizes online shopping to presenting every buyer with the exact options that real life shopping has to offer.

How do we accomplish this?

(1) Through innovative yet simple-to-understand process of bargaining
(2) By offering the facility of collective bargaining, where bulk discounts are worked out based on the number of people who are interested in buying a particular item. With a target market of every internet enabled Indians and non-Indians alike, LootStreet is the closest one would get to a real life market!

Growth Story

LootStreet.com received media attention during the March 2008 (IIMA’s placement press conference), owing to the curiosity that surrounds every entrepreneurs decision to take the plunge. With mounting expectations (repeated articles and interviews about an underdevelopment product), competition from other online marketplaces (www.lootmaar.com was launched within 2 weeks of the publicity period), the team managed to build a database of 2000+ visitors to our homepage before launch and partner with 6 of India’s biggest online sellers to offer a comprehensive catalogue of 4000+ products at the time of launch.

webVastra

webVastra is an early stage e-commerce venture in the online retailing of customized fashion apparels. The firm is currently selling customized T-shirts over the internet through the portal http://www.webvastra.in/. The firm’s USP is to provide premium quality customized T-shirts at reasonable price to its target customers. The firm is registered at the Science & Technology Entrepreneurs Park at IIT Kharagpur.

Vision

Provide end to end solutions for premium quality customized apparels to our valued customers at value price by providing a highly immersive shopping environment

Promoters

WebVastra was established on April 2007, from IIT Kharagpur. The site was formally launched on 19th June 2007. The Co founders of the firm are:

· Dharamveer Arora (B.Tech, IT BHU Varanasi, three years of experience in Steel & IT industry)
· Nishank Agrawal (B.Tech, IIT Kanpur, two years experience in Construction industry)
· Santhosh S Subramanium (B. E., Bharti Sadan University three years experience in IT industry)
· Ashutosh Chouksey (B.Tech, MANIT Bhopal)
· Amit V Joshi (B Tech, VNIT Nagpur, four years experience in Defence Research & Automobile Design)

Management Structure

The organization structure is flat with each partner handling the following responsibilities

· Dharamveer Arora – Sales & Marketing and external communication
· Nishank Agrawal – Operations & Finance
· Santhosh S Subramanium – Design and Marketing
· Ashutosh Chouksey – Finance & Logistics
· Amit V Joshi – Design & Marketing

Concept Description

The firm is engaged in providing customized T-shirts to the customers through web portal www.webvastra.in. This user-friendly portal lets the user customize his/her T-shirt in 3 simple steps:

1. Select T-shirt style: Round-neck, V-neck and ring-neck style for men & women.
2. Select the Color: From the color pallet.
3. Select the Design: Around 75 designs in different categories.

The customer can play around with the style, colour or design of the T-shirt .The payment is accepted by means of credit card/net banking/ cheque/ DD/ ITZ cash card once the final product is customized. The firm has hired the services of a payment gateway provider which is Verisign secured for online payments. The T-shirt is delivered at the doorsteps of the customer within eight working days by a reputed courier company.

Bulk orders

The Firm is also engaged in providing complete T-Shirt solutions (from designing, based on the theme, to delivery) to institutional customers like corporate, institutes, events. Customers can place their enquiry on the website in the bulk enquiry segment.

Quality

The quality of the T-shirts offered is comparable to any premium branded T-shirts. The T-shirts are made of 180 GSM super combed smooth cotton fabric. Currently, the firm has tie up with suppliers, based out of Tiruppur (Tamil Nadu), with excellent global client record

Way Ahead

The strategy envisaged by the firm in short term is

· Quality Personalization T-Shirts (where customer can upload his/her own images). Currently there is no good quality personalized T-Shirts available in the market
· Increasing the designs to 500, T-Shirt styles to 8, and T-Shirt colors to 10
· Premium Customized Sweat Shirts

Long-term strategy

· Premium Customized Apparel brand
· One stop Customized T-Shirt solution
· Global delivery model
· Expanding to Ethnic and Western Customized Fashion Apparel
· Offline model (kiosk) in retail outlets

Interview with Founder WIMB

1. Please brief about the team involved behind WhereIsMyBoss.com?

We would like to introduce our career gateway WhereIsMyBoss.com? (WIMB), a career gateway designed to make recruitment easy and effective by offering video interviewing. WIMB is one first of its kind to change the recruitment process for both job seekers and recruiters. WIMB is simple to use, the only requirement is a web cam, mic, ear phone and a broadband connection.

The team behind Whereismyboss.com is a group of young and dynamic professionals with varied experience. Mr.D.Prem a business management Graduate from the Regent Business School, London is the Chairman of PGC Industries including PGC Infotech(Whose offspring is www.Whereismyboss.com) , Mr.AAdith D Vikram a Finance and Management Science graduate from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland is the Managing Director and Vice chairman of PGC Industries which includes PGC Infotech. Mr.Yeragaselvan Kumaraswamy a post graduate in Mobile and Satellite Communications from Westminster, London is the Director of PGC Infotech, along with them is a team of young, talented and professional workforce. Whereismyboss.com is the first of their attempts apart from their mainstream business (Textiles) and we can expect many a more like this from them in the coming days.

2. How do you differentiate it from any other similar internet portals?

We are very different from other job Portals; WIMB is a new generation Portal. Whereismyboss.com is the first portal in India to introduce online video interviewing (Live Connect). In the recruitment industry, it is considered to be the next big thing, in streamlining the candidate screening process, while reducing time and cost for the employers, and its going to be a revolution in the head hunting scene and we will be first to introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Job portals, with the help of AI we will be capturing the data elements from the resumes and presenting the same in a uniform format as per industry requirements, and also ranking or scoring of the resumes for the convenience of the employer, where in the resumes will be matched with the company requirements and ranked or scored according the organization priorities.

3. How has the response been to your platform?

Response to our portal has been very good; the traffic to the site is also improving day by day, we started in January 2008, and till date, we have more than 1 lakh registered users, and that’s really very much encouraging. Because of the uniqueness of the concept many employers and job seekers are registering with us and posting their requirements in the portal.

4. What are the modes/methods that WIMB plans to use to fight against the fraud?

WIMB plans to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to fight against fraud. In this process when an resume is uploaded in the portal, the technology checks the entire resume for any duplications then only the registration is approved.

5. Lastly, how do you see it growing and where do you see the same a few years down the line?

The portal is getting very good response with the job seekers and employers registrations, and posting of jobs. An interesting thing we noticed is that the uniqueness of portal is taking it nearer to the masses, according to estimates, of the total recruitment industry revenues, less than a tenth is from job portals, today in India, this has a hu8ge potential to grow, considering the global trends, but for the growth to happen the database has to be current and the matching should happen as per the recruiters needs, with the increase in traffic and registrations we are pretty sure in the next three years we will be among the top five job portals in India, by means of increase in the database as well revenue generation

Mail me all your queries at istartups@gmail.com & i will get back to you with the response. To know more hit http://www.whereismyboss.com/