The Indian Startup

It is okay for an upcoming venture to not have clients, funding, employees or even revenues! But it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to book an entrepreneur under criminal offense for not leveraging social media!

Today one can afford to not spend even a dime on marketing and promotional activities and yet build up a significant clientele by ensuring significant presence on the internet. But online marketing is a double edged sword as one could always get carried away and create spam which would certainly put the target audience off! However, it is imperative to create a checklist of social media websites on which to be present. The reason being that, in haste, one might end up ignoring certain communities on which presence is viewed as a given.

Here is a checklist for all you budding entrepreneurs out there:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals. Apart from adding impressive connections, one can make one’s presence felt by posing intelligent questions in the Answers section. This can be accessed by stalling the pointer on the More button, present on the toolbar at the top of the website, which displays a drop down list comprising of various sections like Companies, Answers, Learning Center, Reading List by Amazon, Events and SlideShare Presentations. One can also answer the various Questions posed by other members and receive the badge of being a subject expert. You should also recommend your colleagues even if they haven’t recommended you as this increases your visibility among corporates. You can also upload some of your best presentations using SlideShare as could surely go a long way in impressing potential funding partners.  Also keep updating your status, sharing reading lists and wish connections on their birthdays. LinkedIn also suggests that you must insist your colleagues to recommend you. The reason is that recommended individuals are three times more likely to be featured in search results.

Twitter

Tweet about your latest activities and posts. Another good idea is to release pro duct and service information using Twitter. You can also retweet articles written by other bloggers to promote them. But remember to credit the original poster while retweeting. Suppose you want to retweet this article, you can do so by using this simple syntax – RT: @Sham Social Media Checklist. Only retweet those articles which genuinely interest you and add value to your followers. And quite importantly, retweeting will also help you to build relationships with the original poster.

Social book marking sites (SBS)

Search engine bots of Google, Yahoo and MSN visit those web resources which are submitted on social book marking sites such as Stumbleupon, Digg, Sphinn and Reddit much quicker than resources which have been promoted using other means. Tagging your sites using keywords will ensure that a lot of traffic from SBS will be directed to your website.

Multimedia

Upload an interesting video about your business on Youtube or Viddler. One can also share presentations on Slideshare and Scribd. If you have come up with a peppy jingle about your product/service, it can be uploaded on websites like Sharethemusic and The Hype Machine.

Facebook

Create a Facebook Page about your start-up and update it regularly. You can read more about this here.

Blogs

One can easily create a blog using Wordpress or Blogger. Maintaining an attractive blog goes a long way in creating a strong brand on the internet. You can also monetize your blog using Google Adsense or Adbrite.  Another way to make money is to upload banners provided by mGinger on your blog.

The aforementioned points should help wet your feet in the sea of social media marketing. Once you are able to carve your niche, the sea becomes an ocean and offers limitless opportunities for propagating your idea to the world. And the best part is, it will cost you peanuts!

Woody Allen once said “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. Almost every startup today has considerable web presence. But nothing can beat the tried and tested method of meeting people personally and showing them what you can offer. But unlike showing up on the internet, to be physically present is an expensive proposition, especially if it involves intercity travel.

However, these days, there are start-up events in almost every major city. Some are colossal in scale while others are nothing more than meeting a few people over a cup of coffee. Nevertheless, one can never predict where the next big investor, customer, star employee or all of them can turn up from. So we decided to list down a list of such events held all over the country.

Silicon India Startup City

SiliconIndia.com is a Bengaluru based media company operating for more than a decade. Its flagship event Startup City which has been successfully held since the last three years and considered to be one of India’s biggest start-up events is scheduled to take place on March 20, 2010 in Chennai. Their agenda includes connection sessions, presentations by start-up companies and a close door CEO conclave.  The numbers are expected to be very attractive going by last year’s figures of 50 exhibitors, 40 investors, 500 entrepreneur, accomplished speakers and more than 4000 attendees!

E Week

India’s largest entrepreneurship activity takes place every year during the second week of February in the form of E-Week. It is organized by the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), an initiative of the Wadhwani Foundation. The theme of the its fourth edition, which took place from February 7^th to 14^th, was “India: Opportunities Within”.  The pan India nature of E Week makes this a unique affair as it features almost 4, 00,000 participants taking part in 400 events across 30 cities. Another interesting element is the E Week pledge. Participants, students, their friends and families across the country take this pledge to offer higher commitment to the entrepreneurship cause. The events comprise of interactive sessions with entrepreneurs, games, b plan competitions, educational movie screenings and awareness campaigns etc. This year’s winners included Bengal College of Engineering and Technology, Heritage Institute of Technology, IPS Academy and Institute of Engineering & Management among others.

Innovations

Innovations is the flagship event of the IIT-Bombay Alumni Association, Pune Chapter held in the month of January. This event provides individuals the opportunity to exhibit path breaking science and technology innovations irrespective of whether they belong to start-ups or organizations or anywhere else. The innovations shown need not by just new products, but also processes and applications from various fields ranging from medicine to IT. The variety offered by the presence of creations from different sectors is like a whiff of fresh air. The registration fee is affordable at Rs 500 and students receive a 50% concession to sign up at Rs 250/-. Networking opportunities are plenty and of premium quality as many attendees have impeccable credentials. The first edition took place in the year 2007 and since then there has been no looking back. Innovations 2010 was held on January 9^th 2010 in Pune and included a keynote speech by Mr Sanjay Nayak, the CEO of Tejas Network followed by a Q & A session. There were 12 presentations held after this and the floor was thrown open to the audience to engage the presenters with incisive questions.

E-Summit

E-Summit is the bellwether annual event organized by the E-Cell of IIT Bombay. It brings together students, academicians, eminent corporates, fantastic speakers, aspiring and existing entrepreneurs. Every VC firm worth its salt has representatives turning up.  E-Summit 2010 was held on 7^th Feb 2010. Panel discussions, mentoring sessions, an elevator pitch event called Vulture’s Nest, showcasing of start-ups and the finals of Eureka’09 – the largest business plan competition in Asia were a part of this grand set up. Also the Global Conference of E-cells was held on 6^th February in association with NEN which also signified the launch of the latter’s E-week.

Unpluggd

This is a start-up event organized by PluGGd.in to be held in Bengaluru on the sixth day of March, 2010. By focusing on companies that have built their businesses rather than just hyped products, this event promises to be quite different.

Startup Saturday

Startup Saturday is an initiative by HeadStart Network held on every second Saturday of a month across Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata. It acts as a forum for entrepreneurs to present their ideas, discuss issues and learn from their peers, prospective partners & clients and investors. Needless to say, networking also occurs at an impressive level. The most recent event was held at ISB in Hyderabad on 20^th February 2010.

NASSCOM Product Conclave

The third edition of this industry supported event was held on 27th and 28th October 2009. Its speaker list boasted of legends such as Guy Kawasaki, Kiran Karnik, Naeem Zafar, Orna Berry and many more colossal figures. The central theme was “Positioning to win” and was the underlying factor through the innumerable sessions, panel discussions, workshops, power elevator pitch deliberations, business expo, matchmaking sessions and keynotes. The presence of almost the entire IT ecosystem in India makes this program a must attend for anyone associated with technology start-ups in any manner.

Proto.in

With the 7th edition culminating successfully, Proto.in is truly the big daddy of organizing start-up events in the country. Sequoia Capital underlined this fact by associating itself as a platinum sponsor for the 2010 proto events. Beginning in Chennai, it has covered cities like Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune which are the usual suspects for startups to set base in. The 7th edition took place in Mumbai on 30th January at IIT Bombay. The ample media attention this event is getting was highlighted when Starting Up on ET Now reported it.

So get cracking, make a note of all these events in your calendar and start showing up!

Internet users all over the world can be divided into two types: those who use Facebook and those who don’t! Similarly organizations with web presence can also be divided into two: those having a Facebook page and those which don’t.

Wait a minute! Are you thinking that a Facebook page is similar to one of those ubiquitous communities or groups which people just join or become fans? And therefore is creating a Facebook page a waste of precious time and bandwidth space?

Certainly not! This is because a Facebook page is different from a group. A Facebook page is an essential tool to ensure successful marketing and promotion of one’s products and/or services over the internet.

So, what is a Facebook page?

A FB (Facebook) page is like a blog or, to a certain extent, a one page website. One can create a FB page on any topic ranging from a well known personality to a ‘save the tigers’ club. There are two types of FB page accounts – Personal and Business. A personal account is what one gets after signing up as a user and makes a profile. One can convert a personal account into a business account (this is how a business account is created).

Why should one have a FB page?

1)      Features: It is like a single place to meet up with information, various links, a message forum box, RSS etc

2)      Appearance: Look like one page websites and more attractive then groups

3)      Analytics: The Facebook Pages Insights tool helps measure fans’ engagement and interaction. It also helps one track how many users start and stop viewing one’s posts in News Feed.

4)      Applications: Thousands of applications built by third party vendors are available and many are on their way!

5)      Visibility on search engines: Non users can view Facebook pages and not FB groups.

6)      Anonymity: The creator of an FB page can retain her anonymity whereas the same facility isn’t available for a FB group’s creator

Allright, I am impressed!

Now, how do I create a Facebook page?

Creating a FB page is easy. Just click on the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages

You will come across tabs to access the following:

• Advertising
• Pages
• Connect
• Facebook Share

The Pages tab will consist of 4 sections:

• Overview
• Prepare
• Step by step
• Find new fans

It will also contain a green button labelled ‘Create a Page’ on the top right. Click on that button

You will be led to the Create a Facebook Page. In this page you will find three categories of drop down menus. Choose your category carefully because once you select a category you change it! You will also see a check box which is labelled ‘Do not make page publicly visible at this time (You will be able to edit and publish later)’. In case you want to publish your pager later, you can select the check box.

Name your page after a lot of thought as it is permanent and can be viewed within the actual URL of your Facebook page.

You can customize your Facebook page by adding content.

You can also change your Facebook page’s picture.

Describe your FB page in the Note Box (seen below your FB page’s display image). You can click on the little blue pencil on the top right corner of this box to edit it. It is a place where a URL starting with ‘http://’ will convert into a backlink that points to your website.

Start Posting! Add content to your page. Display videos or start a discussion!

Now all you need to do is to decide whether to release your newly created FB page. Earlier if you clicked on the very first checkbox (which says “Do not make page publicly viewable all this time”), now you just need to publish the page. Click on “Edit page” link, and then click “View Page”. You will see a message at the top of the page which says: “This page has not been published. To make this Page public, publish the Page. If you don’t see this message, then it means your FB page is already published and live! And therefore you need to start adding content ASAP!

Happy marketing!

Individuals either have ideas or are in search of them. In both these cases, one will have to study the consumer markets. Researching these markets will enable the promoter to understand the profile of prospective customers and buying habits of consumers. In some cases this might help unearth latent demand.

MNCs and domestic behemoths have various resources at their disposal to constantly feel the pulse of the market. However, it is difficult for start-ups to afford expensive databases and avail costly services of market research firms. Hence we have compiled a list of resources which are available on the internet for free or at reasonable prices and might prove useful:

Valuenotes

ValueNotes.com is a unique product /service from ValueNotes Database Pvt. Ltd. – a company specializing in the business of information and intelligence. provide a platform for any person – investor, analyst, brokerage house, merchant banker, economist… whoever – to publish their research or views on the ValueNotes site. This enables investors to gain access to multiple views (which might differ) and then take an “informed” decision

IBEF

India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) is a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, and the Confederation of Indian Industry. www.ibef.org is a resource centre for global investors, international policy-makers and world media seeking updated, accurate and comprehensive information on the Indian economy, states and sectors. IBEF regularly tracks government announcements in policy, foreign investment, macroeconomic indicators and business trends

McKinsey Global Institute

McKinsey and Company’s economics research arm. They conduct research on consumer demand and have recently come out with a publication on India’s consumer market.

Indicus Analytics

Indicus Analytics an economics research firm. Their research is regularly featured in mint, a financial news paper, which is a partnership between HT media and Wall Street Journal.

KPMG

The renowned consulting firm KPMG also comes out with reports on consumer markets. Its archives is also a rich source of information.

PWC

PriceWaterhouseCoopers also churns out insightful publications.

NCAER

National Council for Applied Economic Research performs pioneering research work in areas of applied economics.

Association of Chambers of Commerce & Industry in India

Assocham’s research bureau has uploaded various studies on its website for free viewing and also offers publications at  reasonable prices.

juxtconsult.com

It is the only fully integrated online market research company in India which offers 360 degrees market research solutions in syndicated and customized format.

FICCI

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry also publishes surveys and studies.

This is being posted on behalf of Noemi Szoke.

Shelfster is an online application that lets you quickly save favorite pieces of information from the environments that you interact with: Internet, offline documents and real-world information.

This information is saved in the form of items (text or image) to which, to be easily found, you add tags, or annotations.

The application has an advanced system of filters which ensure that you will easily find what you want. Being stored in an online account, you won’t have any problems accessing your information from anywhere you find an Internet connection.

Shelfster offers you a desktop tool with which you can easily create text items (clipping) and image items (cropping).

Besides helping you organize all your favorite information, Shelfster gives you the possibility to share it instantly with friends, Shelfster’s community members or members of other social networks.

And there’s more! Because there is so much quality information, we thought of a way to intuitively discover and learn new things from community members. And you can do that by following certain users (follow), or only certain topics of interest or specific topics from your favorite members.

Here you can find 10 invitations for the private beta version:

http://shelfster.com/sign-up/invite/?i=0d1eed23e31f71d46ccd0792777c2e6e

Are you planning to start a business and need a couple of talented folks to assist you? Or have you already operationalized your plan with the help of your pals & relatives and are looking beyond them?  No wait! aren’t you are the startup who has been growing exponentially and have decided to scale up?

Oh well, however you may describe your startup’s current stage, we at theindianstartup.com know that it is easier to find a celebrity nonchalantly sipping coffee at the table next to you than it is to find the right people to work with

Therefore, we decided to look around our country on the eve of its Republic Day and discovered a few HR firms who can don shining armour and be the knight to your rescue! We even interviews them for some basic information to help you choose your saviour! So lets us play the role of matchmaker and proudly introduce to you to the following prospective suitors:

SutraHR

SutraHR operates three services: SutraHR, Sutra Lite and Sutra Jobs.

• Offerings
  • HiringAssessment & Fitment
  • Training & Development
  • Turnkey solutions (boot)
  • Consulting
  • Low cost recruitment service by SutraLite
  • Free hiring service by SutraJobs

• Rates
  • SutraHR charges 8.33 – 16.66% of the selected candidate’s CTC. It secures payment after individual completes 3 months at work
  • For SutraLite, basic rates begin from Rs 3999/-

• Clients
  • Zapak Digital Entertainment Pvt Ltd
  • Pinstorm
  • Directi

• What makes it special?
  • Has captured top mind share among many start-ups in the country
  • Different offerings for start-ups at different stages
  • Highly respected and recognized in the Indian startup space

Antfort People Technologies Pvt Ltd

• Offerings
  • Outsourced HR
  • Consulting
  • Recruitment
  • Training
  • Outplacement

• Rates
  • 5-18% of selected candidate’s CTC

• Clients
  • Alootechie
  • Beanstalk
  • Ticketwala.com

• What makes it special?
  • Offer one of the best rates in the market
  • Hire for the future
  • Use different ways of hiring
    • New tools such as social networking sites
    • New technologies

Tvarita Consulting

• Offerings
  • Outsourced model
  • Incubation model
  • HR consulting
  • Soft skills training

• Rates
  • Undisclosed

• Clients
  • IP Value Management
  • VSoft Technology

• What makes it special?
  • Possess expertise across industries
  • Have significant experience of building HR policies for companies from the ground level

Qwest HR Services Pvt Ltd

• Offerings
  • Recruitment & Search
  • Learning & Development
  • HR strategy & Advisory
  • Outsourcing & Interim staffing

• Rates
  • Charge 1 month’s gross salary of the selected candidate
  • HR functional support -> 50% of cost of maintaining a full fledged HR department
  • Training cost -> 50% of in-house training

• Clients
  • Aspen Communications
  • PACE India
  • Total IT solutions
  • Soma Network

• What makes it special
  • Deliver recruitment and hr services based on customer’s model
  • Endeavour to be single window HR services provider to companies and enable the latter to cut costs by half

Apart from informing us about their services, the promoters of these firms also offered useful advice to prospective and present startups on how to tackle their HR requirements.

We hope this post is the map you were looking out for to solve your enterprise’s people issues! Looking forward to the brickbats!..and some compliments too!

A fantastic idea might just remain that if not executed properly. And all you entrepreneurs out there know how important it is to get the ‘right’ people on board. We spoke with a few experts who have recruited extensively for startups and this is what they had to say:

Mr Indranil Gupta

(Mr Indranil Gupta is a Director with Qwest HR Services Pvt Ltd, New Delhi. He can be reached at indranil@qwesthr.com)

Mr Gupta advices all startup-firms irrespective of their size to first put in place their HR strategies and Manpower plans which would give them a road map to follow for at least the next one year. He believes that it is a pre-requisite before engaging with any HR consultant or service provider as the initial phase of understanding is achieved that way and the journey later becomes a smooth one on part of both the parties.

He also feels it is imperative that these strategies and plans are supported by the business model and the line management of the Company, so that all are in sync right from the initial stages. It is quite often that the consultant and the service provider have to meet those people also inside the Company, therefore a basic level of synergy is a must to ensure whatever is done is effective.  All in all, when both the Start-up Clients and the HR Service Providers act very professionally in their approach right from the sign-up stages, the most difficult of work can actually turn into a lot of fun and enjoyment!

Mr Waqar Azmi

(Mr Waqar Azmi is the Founder and CEO of Sutra Services Pvt Ltd.)

According to Mr Azmi, the first few people hired by a startup must be of top notch quality. He calls them ‘A-Level’ people. In case finding such people is difficult, one can compromise a level below, i.e. ‘B-Level’. Going lower than this is something which he neither believes nor recommends.

He also feels strongly about rewarding such people with higher pay (than market standards) or offer incentives or equity as it is imperative to keep them motivated in the organization.

The best advice which he can offer is unless the candidate is on board, the person is not your employee. So be prepared for negative responses always have backups for any position.

Ms Padma Kiran Rao

(Ms Padma Kiran Rao is the Principal Consultant of Tvarita Consulting.)

Ms Rao specifies that the entrepreneur must have a clear idea about what he wants to do. She stresses on the fact that the team formed initially must be adaptable and agile.

We hope this article has offered valuable insights on the important aspects to be considered before building the ’starting-up’ team for any venture!

Entrepreneurship is in the air! Everyone is talking about the next Google or Apple from India. But how do you keep abreast of the happenings in the world of start-ups? Well, you can by watching the following shows on television and reading articles in the various news papers and magazines mentioned below:

Television

CNBC Tv 18 (Schedule)

• Young Turks: This show profiles young leaders who might be the next business tycoons. It is aired on Thursdays at 19.00 o clock.
• Enterprise Inc, Classroom and Tech Toyz are the other shows which would benefit budding businessmen and are shown. Although these shows aren’t listed in the program schedule, one must try to catch them on this channel as they are quite informative.

ET Now

• Starting up: By broadcasting the genesis of enterprises in academic institutions as well as in the world outside it, this show manages to differentiate itself. It is featured on Sundays at 13.30.  (Tip: If you are interested in getting these guys to create a video pitch for you, see this page.)

NDTV Profit (Schedule)

• Gadgetguru is another must watch for tech savy entrepreneurs.

Newspapers:

• Livemint: This is an HT owned publication which has a strategic collaboration with The Wall Street Journal. It comprises of a section called mintEnterprise which offers incisive news and views on VCs, start-ups and the like.
• Economic Times: Starship Enterprise appears every Friday featuring the story of an entrepreneur’s enterprise.

Magazines:

• Business Today – Has started featuring India’s 10 hottest start-ups every year since 2008.
• Entrepreneur – Infomedia 18the publishing arm of Network 18 has launched the Indian edition Entrepreneur magazine. It is a new business magazine for SMEs, but at Rs 75, is quite pricey. Its international website is Entrepreneur.com and is the largest small business website on the internet.
• Dare: Is a magazine by Cybermedia which is targeted at different types of entrepreneurs – right from the ones who are just starting off to those who want to take their company global. It also offers insights in the areas of banks, venture capitalism and angel funding.

Online publications:

• Science Tech Entrepreneur Magazine: Launched by National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board in 1995, it is one of India’s leading magazines on Entrepreneurship.
• Inc.com: As succinctly described by its website, it is a magazine focussed on business resources for the entrepreneur.
• Startup Interviews on Theindianstartup.com: Our own blog, where we get startup founders to tell us how they made it.

This is not an exhaustive list and we might have missed certain interesting shows or publications. In case you are aware of any, feel free to post them as a comment below and we’ll add them to the post.

Elbert Hubbard, the 19^th century American writer, quoted – Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is!

Start-ups are aware of this and therefore they put in a lot of thought behind shaping their firm’s culture. Google laid down its culture by stating ‘Don’t be evil’ and closer home we had Infosys emphasizing on work ethics at a time when Indian companies were just learning to spell ‘professionalism’.

Tekriti

Businesses just beginning their operations are realizing that it is imperative to foster sustainable practices to attract and retain talent. For instance Tekriti, based in Gurgaon, believes in being entrepreneurial for all its employees. Whenever they find a right idea along with the right partner and team, they form a new company out of it which will comprise of employees moving into that company along with current shareholders from Tekriti.

Nagarro

Nagarro with presence across USA, Europe and Asia Pacific was formed in 1996. It had been ranked as one of the top exciting emerging countries to work in India in 2007. It was recognized for its innovative HR initiatives which includes its Center for Technical Excellence, an employee led technical leadership board which not only provides recognition to the organization’s top technical experts but also mentors the various in house project teams.

Anantara Solutions

Sometimes, a start-up not only has to convince its stakeholders about a new idea, but also the responsibility of successfully propagating the viability of an entirely new industry. Anantara Solutions, a venture founded by a group of IT stalwarts, has picked up the gauntlet of such a challenging endeavour. As an emerging business consulting firm, it already has stimulating environment in place at Bandra Kurla Complex, India’s upcoming business center. Immediate access to founding partners, world class consulting assignments and the exciting preposition of evangelizing Second Generation Outsourcing to the world guarantee satisfaction to Anantara’s employees.

Pagalguy.com

Pagalguy.com is a household name for both MBA graduates and aspirants. Since its inception in 2002, it has enabled students all over India to celebrate each others’ successes and motivate those who have failed. This start-up keeps its employees in good spirits by maintaining a blog about their ‘pagalpan’ or work culture called ‘slog blog’ where they have described and portrayed what their people do. They have also uploaded The PG song which is dedicated to all individuals who have been associated with them. This blog also shows the massive response to their recruitment drives in engineering colleges across India. And in all probability it is the only start up in India which provides massages in office premises to their employees, their dependents and interviewees by expert masseurs!

I became a member of TheFunded.com, which is a site mainly for entrepreneurs to access info about VCs, etc. Though, they sent me an email that had some interesting resources.

Below you can find templates to some important legal documents that you may need at some point or the other. Most entrepreneurs bootstrap and we all know how expensive those lawyers can be.

– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233422 – Bylaws
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233427 – Certificate of Incorporation
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233434 – Initial Stockholder Consent
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233436 – Invention Assignment Agreement
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233437 – Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233430 – Indemnification Agreement
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233432 – Initial Board Consent
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/12233420 – Action by Incorporator
– http://www.docstoc.com/docs/10303638 – Plain Preferred Term Sheet

Varun.