Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009.

Amazon conducted a poll just before the start of the year 2009 asking people on what are their New Year Resolutions. The top two resolutions were (1) Lose Weight and (2) Get Your Finances in Order.

What is strange is that you and I would think these are solved problems, right? But yet these are the top resolutions for the new year!

We all know how to lose weight – eat less and exercise more. But it requires discipline. We all know how to get our finances in order – spend less and earn more. But it requires discipline.

Our vision for the “Track Every Coin” system that we are building is to exactly help you do this – to help you spend less, save more, and in the process help you get your personal finances in order.

So what is the problem again?

We tried out many personal finance websites and software existing in the market, and we faced the same issue again and again – they are either cumbersome or are afterthoughts.

Most of the software that we tried out did not make it easy to make entries such as expenses and made it a boring chore. And yet, this is the starting point to use all their features.

The ones that work automatically with your bank account are afterthoughts – they are good for overviews and for viewing graphs at the end of the month, but do not help in actively managing your money at all.

So we started adding in our own ideas on what we would want to use.

So what is the product?

It consists of two parts:

• The active agent where you make your entries – which is either a hardware device or a mobile phone application, based on your preference.
  • The hardware device is for those who like to have a cool-looking gadget to carry around, and want to make entries within 10 seconds.
  • The mobile phone application is for those who have GPRS connections on their mobile phones.
• The data analyzer – which is a website where you get to slice and dice your data.

I like to think of it as analogous to the “iPod-iTunes” combination – the iPod was designed to do one thing well: play music, and it left the complicated parts of managing music to the iTunes software. We intend to achieve the same effect for personal finance. This is our unique twist.

Features

At its core, the system is an expense tracking system, simply because that is the first step that every personal finance writer recommends. If you don’t know where the money is going, you won’t know how to manage it.

The logic is simple : We need data to improve, whether it is the school score cards for your kids or the mileage for your car or statistics for your favorite cricketers. We bring over the same facility to you for your money!

Now, how is this different from a spreadsheet? Well, the data collection mechanism, obviously, and lots of features, but most of all – this is a specific system that helps you with so many aspects:

1. Expenses
   • Know what you are spending on – categorize, tag and add notes to your expenditure
2. Reimbursements
   • Know how much money you have to get back from your company – save time wasted in filing expense reports
3. Income
   • Plan your money – How much money from your income is budgeted for expenditure and how much money goes to savings and goals
   • Never forget to pay your bills on time again – Reminders will be automatically be saved as expenses
4. Goals
   • Buy that thing you really want – Save money every month towards your goal, whether it is downpayment for a car or that big trip you’ve been dreaming of
5. Budgets
   • Never overspend again – Set limits on how much you want to spend and you will be reminded every time you are about to spend
6. Sharing
   • Never worry again about splitting bills – Keep running counts of expenses shared with your roommate or when you go for dinner with friends, and settle easily
7. Events and Trips
   • Know how much an occasion will cost you – Stay within your trip budget, know how much a weekend trip will cost you, know how much transportation accounts towards your trips, and more.
8. Graphs
   • Analyze where your money is going – Know if you are spending more on fuel, if you are spending too less on your hobbies, or how much money you need on an average day.

To know more, visit our website www.TrackEveryCoin.com

We aim to launch the product in July 2009. Sign up now at the website to get special offers when we launch!

We’ll be writing more about how we have designed and built TrackEveryCoin on our company blog. We look forward to your feedback either here on this blog or via email.

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009.

Today is the second birthday of our ION USB Charger and we are happy to announce that it is now available in a new and improved packaging!

We needed some improvements to our packaging because:

1. Our previous packaging did not have the product visible.
2. The packaging needs to have a hook so it can be hung – that is how all accessories are placed in a retail store these days.
3. We had room for improvement on the look of the box.

The new packages arrived in a box:

And we soon formed an assembly line. I removed the ions from the previous packaging:

Vikram filtered out the new packages, including rejecting any damaged ones:

Varun folded the boxes and put the new ions in them:

It doesn’t sound glamorous, isn’t prestigious to talk about, but it sure was a lot fun and exciting. That’s what startups are about!

Here are the newly-packaged ions stacked back in the box:

Just to put things in perspective, here is our packaging and its size compared to the competition:

And here is our previous and new packaging:

Here is the sleek “product photography” version:

You can grab an ION with the new improved packaging at www.ion.co.in

Note: Cross-posted from our company blog

If you want to find out what jobs are available in startups in India, then there are myriad resources to check:

• VentureWoods
• Pluggd.in ‘coffee’ forum
• Pluggd.in ecosystem section
• Hello Intern
• Sutra Jobs
• Indian Jobs board at ‘Joel On Software’
• Barcamp Mumbai Startup Jobs section
• NEN Startup Jobs section
• Startup Lunches, part of proto.in
• Startup Dunia     [added to this list on Mar 17, 2009]
• Talentty     [added to this list on Mar 28, 2009]
• Work For A Startup     [added to this list on May 15, 2009]
• My Special Job     [added to this list on May 15, 2009]
• Workasaur     [added to this list on Nov 18, 2009]
• The Morpheus portfolio companies’ open positions     [added to this list on May 12, 2011]
• Yourstory.in     [added to this list on Dec 17, 2011]

Are there other resources that should be on this list? Please let me know in the comments.

There are other questions I’m wondering as well:

• Which are the popular places followed by the startuppers who are looking to hire interns, freshers and experienced people?
• For passionate students/freshers who want to work in startups, where do they start? Should they just apply via these sites or should they first do in-person networking at OpenCoffeeClub, Startup Saturday and similar meeting grounds first?

Update: Another tip is finding which startups got funding recently.

My favorite session at proto.in 5th edition was by Atul Chitnis who reinforced the basics of business. He made one remark which seems obvious but something that we don’t put in practice:

“Today is history. Build for the future so that your product can be ready just in time.”

As opposed to only thinking of right now, taking a year to build it and realize it is no longer needed, or more likely, it is no longer the way things are done.

This statement immediately came to my mind when I was reading the announcement of ‘Triple Play’ by Airtel:

Rs. 999 per month which gives 135 channels including 256 kbps broadband speed with unlimited download and a landline connection.

First, you can imagine internet access completely on the television in homes, say in a year or so.

Second, if you combine this with their Online Desktop feature(¹), and you can imagine how people will be accessing computing on their TV just a year down the lane without ever buying a traditional desktop computer. And best of all, users can easily install/uninstall applications (on rental basis) without hassles/worries/dangers of “ruining your computer” since Airtel will be hosting the computing facility.

The question is: If you are a company (whether big or small) in the tech space, do your products and services take this into account?

Similarly, we all know that netbooks are the rage now. Atul predicted that these are stop-gap measures until people realize that they can do the same things with slightly higher-end phones.

Again, ask the same question above.

Technology indeed changes so fast and changes our lifestyle along with it.

Other useful points from the talk:

• It is not the tools you use. It’s how you use them.
• Those who forget history (i.e. learn from others’ mistakes) are doomed to repeat it.
• If product is good, price is right, people will buy it.
• A product is more than just code. A customer wants a solution and a long term relationship with the service provider.
• Today is history. Build for the future so that your product can be ready in time.
• Markets can be created.
• Hint: Assume connectivity. Local storage no longer matters.
• Biggest products are mobile products now. Simple products, not big things.
• Advertising doesn’t pay. Unless you’re Yahoo or Google.
• VC funding is not a viable business model. Unless you’re a VC.

⁽¹⁾ Has this service actually taken off? Who uses it, I wonder.

Execution is one aspect of making an idea successful, I would say the other is having a business model.

And the latter is very hard as well. Why? Because it is not obvious how to make money online, especially in India.

The obvious way would be to have freemium models such as Flickr and 37 Signals. IMHO, I believe that this is the only sustainable way.

BUT:

1. How can you make this successful in a country like India where people are NOT used to paying for things online especially on a subscription basis? For example, how many people do you know are buying things online that does not have a physical aspect to it? i.e. most people buy movie tickets or pay phone bills online, compared to how many non-techie people do you know who are paying for Flickr or for online storage or similar services?
2. How do you prevent free websites from eating you up? For example, Wufoo did a great job of both execution, including winning awards and having a clear business model. But I am not inclined to using it because Google Forms is free, has no limitations and is a good-enough surveying option. Google doesn’t make money off of this option but they surely have taken away Wufoo’s lunch.
3. Ideas such as scribd.com, and StockTwits are useful and interesting, but even they don’t know how to make money off of it. Heck, even Google is having a tough time in making money off YouTube.
4. Ad-based businesses don’t work in Asia, or so is the impression that I get. Is there a single web application site, NOT a content site, for India that is purely making a business out of displaying ads?
5. I have a feeling that almost all websites that are popular today and that will be popular in the next 2-3 years will have to have a physical component/aspect to it, whether it is payment collection at your doorstep for BharatMatrimony or Zapak running corporate gaming tournaments. This is something that may not be viable for small companies. Perhaps after 2-3 years, things will change.

Bottom line: Without getting funding, and without a clear path to charge for things, how is it possible to make a sustainable web application?

Is this just me or is this the path that every online startup faces?

I just finished reading “Subject To Change: creating great products and services for an uncertain world”. This book is written by Adaptive Path, the same guys who invented the words “blog” and “ajax”, as well as creators of the Aurora browser concept.

It has been a revelatory book for me, a developer who considers himself to be the last person to know about “design.” The book mainly focuses on the lessons learned from their experiences in working with clients to design and create products and services.

Design

They define design as an activity, as opposed to a look and feel that is added later on. The activity incorporates:

• Empathy – Design must serve a human purpose, and so design requires an understanding of how people will interact with whatever you’re designing.
• Problem Solving – Design really shines when it’s used to address complex problems where the outcome is clear, many stakeholders are involved, and the boundaries are fuzzy.
• Ideation and prototyping – Design produces things, whether they’re abstract (schematics, blueprints, wireframes, conceptual models) or concrete (prototypes, physical models). Design is a creative activity and thus requires actually creating something.
• Finding alternatives – Design is less about the analysis of existing options than the creation of new options. Sometimes that means looking at existing options in new ways, and at other times that means creating from scratch. An effective design process typically offers many solutions to a problem.

They repeatedly explain that the experience is what matters to the end-user and that’s the real product rather than how it is delivered.

Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.

– Steve Jobs on the design lesson of the iPod in Newsweek, 2006-10-14

Every startup needs to do some market research while working on their next big idea. And part of this market research is looking at demographic and economic data to find out the size of your target audience.

For most of those who are reading this, the audience probably is people who use computers. Now, how do we find out such numbers? That’s where the Internet and Mobile Association of India steps in with their “Internet in India 2007″ report (PDF).

Some of the high-level overviews from that report:

• The numbers are based on a survey across 30 cities and 65000 individuals.
• The breakdown of the urban population is explained nicely in this funnel graphic:

• 70% of people who know how to use computers have accessed the Internet at least once.
• 70% of these at-least-once users become regular users.
• Claimed internet users have risen from 32.2 million in 2006 to 46 million in 2007.
• 38% are from the Top 8 urban cities, 12% from 5-10 lakh population cities, and 29% from 2-5 lakh population cities!
• Young Men and College Students are the major chunk of the growing Internet user base.
• There has been a decrease in usage by older men and non-working women.
• PC ownership increased by 48% last year! Thanks to slashed PC prices.
• With Government of India declaring 2007 as the Broadband Year, Internet ownership has increased by 32% last year!
• The difference in increase of PC ownership (48%) vs. increase in Internet ownership (32%) is probably because of broadband penetration and availability
• 36% use a cyber-café, 30% from home, 25% from office, 7% from school/college and 2% others.
  • The cyber-café is still the most prominent point of Internet access.
  • This is a valuable data point to consider regarding security when designing applications – people are NOT necessariliy using their own desktops all the time.
  • Usage from home and cyber-café has decreased vs. Usage from office and schools/colleges has increased. Note that these are percentages, the absolute numbers might paint a different picture, but I couldn’t find them in this report.
• Usage can be classified into three broad categories:
  1. Communication – Email, chat
  2. Infotainer – Gaming, news, blogs, encyclopedia
  3. Sticky applications – Online banking, online ticketing, online shopping
• 61% state communication as the main reason they access the Internet. 25% for information and e-commerce. And 13% for entertainment.
  • What’s interesting is that percentage of people with information as the main reason has decreased from 32% in 2006 to 20% in 2007.
  • I’m guessing that percentage of entertainment will increase with better broadband access.
• 2/3rd of users access Internet 2-3 times a week.
  • 25% access daily, 19% 4-6 times a week, 23% 2-3 times a week, 18% once a week, and rest 15% about a few times a month
  • (It should be strange for us always-on people to see 75% of people not use it on a daily basis!)

These are very interesting numbers. I wonder how they compare with the growth graphs of Internet-advanced countries such as USA or Japan.

The IAMAI have many more interesting reports on topics such as Online Banner Advertising Market in India, Consumer E-commerce Market in India, Online Gaming in India, Mobile Value Added Services in India, and so on.

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009.

When I meet people and have a conversation, they eventually ask the question “So, what do you guys do?”

I like to say “We make stuff” but that’s hardly understandable. The best example I like to give is the Swinxs (found via Springwise).

The Swinxs games console is designed for active games both inside and outdoors. The Swinxs console can talk, can recognize, encourages and explains games. It even acts as referee. The console is light, compact and due to its sustainable battery, is easy to take with you to the park, playground or the beach.

My favorite part is that the children get RFID-tagged colorful bracelets to wear. The tags serve multiple purposes from identifying each participant to keeping track of their scores. For example, if there’s a running race, the child can just bring their hand close to the game console at the finish line, and it’ll immediately recognize you and tell how much time you took.

And there are a lot more games to play:

The downloadable games are divided into age and category. The games possibilities are endless and vary from traditional hide and seek to educational quizzes and adventurous games. The games can be downloaded FREE from this website. Stories and music can also be downloaded on the Swinxs, as well as games.

The video demo showcases the product really well:

Kids these days are addicted to gadgets like Gameboys, mobile phones, etc. The Swinxs is in the same category but it actually encourages them to be more physically active as well as more social with other kids.

There are many other salient features that appeal to us:

• It is useful. Especially in terms of providing functionality that is not normally available through any other means.
• The device connects you with the real world. It’s not a world onto its own.
• It is fun.

This is the kind of stuff that we dream of, the kind of stuff that we like to work on.

What’s interesting is such products bridge the offline world and the computer/online worlds. After all, shouldn’t technology be helping you to live a better offline life, than making you spend more time with the technology itself?

Note: Cross-posted to our company blog.

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009.

It’s been nearly 5 months since I last quit my job. Five months. Wow. It’s weird because it doesn’t feel that long.

I spent most of the first few months whiling away, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did have some plans though. For one, I was hoping to go for an M.S. in the USuAl places but the American universities didn’t think well enough of me and asked me to stay back, heh.

I wasn’t disappointed though. I thought I’ll spend some time in gaining some skills and get back to another job in the computer science areas that I wanted to explore.

But as John Lennon would say “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Vikram and I were working on reviving our iPod Charger business and since I didn’t have anything in particular to do, I did some of the running around. However, we still didn’t have a big picture in mind, just that we wanted it to continue.

Suddenly one day, Vikram called from USA and said that he had a brainwave to improve one of our ideas. We had last discussed it nearly six months earlier and shelved it because we didn’t think it would work. It suddenly dawned on us that the improved idea passes all our viable business criteria, especially the parameter that it is actually useful to people, it is doable, and it belongs more in the must-have category as opposed to the nice-to-have category.

After that conversation, everything changed.

Vikram quit a nice cushy job in USA, ditched his H1 visa and is back in Bangalore. He was so sure about this that his colleague Varun also got convinced about the idea and moved back to India.

Here we are, three people who have quit their jobs and working to create a new product. I hate using the latest buzzwords, so I’ll just say, yes we have our own company now. We don’t have any salary and we have lot of work.

A domain name I had registered long ago suddenly came into use. It was going to be the name of our company – IONLAB:

The ion was our first product we created, manufactured and marketed during weekends. Excited by its success, we are now working full-time on making our own products. Hence the “ion” in our name.

We are focused on designs and ideas, and match them to our capabilities. Hence the “lab” in our name, which emphasizes that we are about taking ideas to execution.

We have been having a ball of a time working on our own ideas full-time and gaining experience in expanding our ion business.

Regarding our specific idea, there’s no point in talking about it this early but we’ve described it a bit on our products page.

FWIW, I have no idea how far we will go and what will happen in the future. You may never even hear about us or our product. But one thing’s for sure, we’re going to give this our best shot and we’ll work to make it happen.

As we wrote in our company weblog’s first entry:

We love putting in effort. After all, it’s our dreams and ideas. What can be more exciting than that? As Mark Cuban once said, “The one thing in our business lives is effort. Either you make the commitment to get results or your don’t.”

IONLAB is our dream, our destination.

The next experiment has begun!