Business

Nostalgia in a startup vs. Anu Aunty book

In a long bus ride, I read How I braved Anu Aunty and made a million-dollar company and I loved the book. The stories in the book are especially familiar to those who have faced the ire of family and sometimes friends at wanting to do a startup. In the

Book Review : Start-up Nation (story of Israel)

I read the "Start-up Nation" book last week. This book was so engrossing that I read it within 2 days, keeping aside everything else. After reading this book, I started seeing the patterns about Israel being high tech hotspot, for example consider just two pieces of news in the last

Leaving Infibeam

Today is my last day at Infibeam. I’m going to miss working in this environment because I learned a lot about ecommerce and online buying in India. For example, I was surprised to know how much sales go up during Diwali (in hindsight, not so surprising, of course) and

Statistics to wow non-techies about digital future

A common question I get from non-techies is “Is ecommerce for real? Do people really buy online?” My line of argument is that the future is digital, and hence buying online is a natural consequence of that. However, just saying that was not convincing enough. So I gathered some statistics

Why is no one talking about the difficulty of hiring for startups in India?

We’ve all heard about how startups are key to the future economy of India and we’ve heard about how hiring should be a top priority for any company – then why is it that hiring is NOT a majorly discussed issue in startup events in India? I ask this

The Total Kannada Store

I had the privilege of visiting the Total Kannada Store in Jayanagar today. What is amazing is that it is an entire store dedicated to only Kannada entertainment – whether it is movie CDs, CDs of plays, CDs of comedy series, magazines, books, classic literature and even T-shirts! The truth is

How to get funding from Government of India

I will be speaking in a panel at the HeadStart Conference, Hyderabad today regarding what is the funding that was granted by the Govt. of India to my ex-startup, and how you can apply. I converted the content I had prepared into for-web-only slides for your perusal:

A founder has to do only two things right

I’ve been pondering over the myriad of startups and ideas that have been in the fore recently (in my twitter stream). I have a new theory that has been developing in my mind for quite a while: A founder has to do only two things right: invention and marketing.

Taste and Ambition

A question to all wannabes, startuppers and entrepreneurs: Does taste drive ambition or ambition drive taste for you? In other words, Do you have a passion for Ferrari and hence want to become rich, or do you want to become rich and then perhaps buy something like a Ferrari? [1]

Joining InfiBeam

Update: As of 22 June, 2011, I’m no longer with Infibeam. Thanking the community First and foremost, thanks to all who encouraged me, and offered support and help when I wrote about leaving my own company. Many people, without any personal benefit in mind, connected me to very interesting

Fun can change behavior

Once in a while I come across something really inspiring, and this time it was The fun theory – a “thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.” Getting people to use the staircase than the escalator Getting people to

The 5-year limit to being a coder in India?

Let me start with a story I had heard about long ago when I was at Adobe. There was this guy who had come in for interviews for a technical role. He passed all the tech interviews with flying colors, the team liked his personality and felt he would fit

Leaving IonLab

Yesterday was my last day at IonLab, the company that I built with a few friends. It has been a wild ride but I could continue no longer. I am leaving due to internal differences on the progress and transparency in the company. We have been well-supported in our experience,

What I learned at NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009

1. There are not enough good problems that tech startups are working on and there seems to be no shortage of funds, platforms and ecosystem partners willing to help startups. The ecosystem is hungry for successes. 2. Product Management skills are the need of the hour, NOT talks about talks

To get somewhere, you already have to be there

The irony in this world is that “To get somewhere, you already have to be there.” From an individual perspective: * If you want to make money, you need to already have money. * To get a job, you need to be one-year experienced and not a fresher. * If you’re experienced

Mobile App market in India

Thinking from an entrepreneurial angle, it seems to me that there is almost no mobile app market in India today i.e., it is not a startuppable market. All the successful apps that are making money are transaction-based. For example, ngpay takes a cut from every movie ticket you buy

Thought for the Day

The world is no place for a logical/rational person. — Swaroop C H Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe. — Albert Einstein A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress;

Core Needs

“People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for

10 things I wish I was serious about before starting a startup

1. Everything gets magnified. Whether it is minor differences or personal shortcomings or the multitasking required. What you think of as a small weakness, will become your biggest weakness. What you think of as a small strength, will be a very big strength. 2. It is an emotional rollercoaster ride.

My Benchmark for Entrepreneurship

Here is a guy who sells dosas and rice items in his push cart every evening. I didn’t realize that he was my entrepreneurial benchmark until my friend explained it to me: * He has at least 100 customers everyday because he is there for 4-5 hours every evening, and

Has your company chosen its vector of innovation?

I have a guest post up at StartupDunia. Please do read and chip in your thoughts and comments.

How to build an online community?

Every now and then, I try to build a group of people to talk about specific topics but it quickly dies because of inactivity. Although I really saw the value in having such a community, I just didn’t know how to build one. Even if one person keeps pumping

Coming soon… TrackEveryCoin, a personal finance system

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

Ideas are Cheap : IMDB of Music, Books?

What is it that I like about IMDB? * Shows me what are the movies that are popular in theatres right now * Shows what new movies are releasing this week * The first item on every movie page is the average user rating * It links to every individual artiste involved (actor, director,

The new ION packaging

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

Idli, Orchid and Will Power

I just finished reading “Idli, Orchid and Will Power”, the autobiography of Vithal Venkatesh Kamat. Just a few days back, a friend was telling me that the famous Utility building Kamat restaurant in Bangalore no longer has quality food and hence no longer a popular place. I read this book

What's in a name, indeed?

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. Vikram has written an interesting post on whether the name of a brand matters which got me thinking. I don’t think it’s that simple. I believe that Company name doesn’t matter. Product name matters. This

Where to find startup jobs in India?

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

Ideas are Cheap : Kannada Word Lists

Continuing the “Ideas are Cheap” series, here’s another simple idea that I would personally find very useful but would be difficult to execute in terms of content. These days I’m finding it hard to read Kannada newspapers because my vocabulary is clearly lacking, and consequently I would probably

Product for the future

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

Why use Creative Commons license?

Many people have asked me on why I released my Vim book under a Creative Commons license instead of getting it published. (1) First of all, I did try to talk to publishers, hoping that I would convince them to release the book simultaneously under a free license as well

It is not obvious how to make money online

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

What product creation should be about

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,

Thought for the Day

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

Ideas are Cheap: Touch screen device with a browser

Use case Mom asked me to find out the name of the God in the temple at Gokarna. I just had to visit Wikipedia and find out. She could have done this herself but she’s too intimidated by the PC. The same goes for checking movie listings. And so

Internet usage in India

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

What we do at IONLAB

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

Ideas are Cheap : Better email

I was just browsing through this paper on “Generating summary keywords for emails using topics” and was fascinated by its usefulness, especially because it “selects words that describe each message in the context of existing topics rather than simply selecting keywords based on a single message in isolation.” Imagine if

IONLAB – The Next Experiment

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

Ideas are Cheap : Real Coding Training

This is a continuation of the Ideas are Cheap series. We all know how much disparity there is between computer science courses in engineering colleges in India and real-world coding skills. So how about a training institute that fills this gap? I’m sure the first question is that how

proto.in Edition 4 at Delhi

I attended the proto.in 4 conference last week (held at the beautiful IIT Delhi campus) and had a very productive and thought-provoking time. Day 1 was the fastrack “startup school” sessions. The keynote session was Kiran Karnik, ex-President of NASSCOM, who pointed out that this “recession” is not a

Ideas are Cheap – Build your mobile

It’s that time of the year when proto.in fever spreads. And the ideaworm has got to me. Inspired by Vijay Anand’s “Ideas To Toss” series, I thought why not start my own occasional series as well? I’m calling it the “Ideas are Cheap” series. The name

Launch of ion2

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. Last week, we quietly relaunched ion, our USB charger. The very next day, we shipped ions to customers in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai. And an hour ago, I shipped one to Bhubaneswar. It’s good to be

Smart Techie Startup City

Yesterday, I attended The Smart Techie Startup City event. It was intended as a showcase of startups as well as for learning/sharing/mentoring. I had taken some notes during the day. As I was expanding it into a blog post, I realized I was just adding filler words which

Happy Birthday to ion

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. One year ago, on this day, we launched ion, the ipod charger. The launch was just one blog post. That’s it. Within two hours, Atul Chitnis bought the first ion in our online store. We celebrated. But

A Business Mind

From Tina Seelig’s talk on “What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20”: … I also have the honour of participating in the new Stanford D-School, the design institute. Last quarter, I was invited to teach one week on entrepreneurship. So I figured out how do I distill this

What is NDTV’s online strategy?

I wonder if all of these are actually part of some game plan: * ndtv.com * ndtvtravels.com * ndtvgadgets.com * ndtvshopping.com * ndtvlumiere.com * ndtvmovies.com * ndtvmusic.com * ndtvgoodtimes.com * ndtvcooks.com * ndtvprofit.com * ndtvimagine.com * doctorndtv.com * cricketndtv.com * etc. It looks to me like they’re trying to mimic

Useful Websites for India

Like a broken record, I keep coming back to What are the killer web applications for India? So, I decided to make a list. A list of websites that are useful for most people in India. But what kind of websites am I looking at? The website should be something

Innovation in Indian universities?

A while ago, I was asking myself Where are the killer applications on the web for India? Today, when I read ReadWriteWeb’s article on The State of Innovation in India, a thought struck me about the relationship between innovation and universities. Everyone knows the story of about how many

Vegetable 2.0

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. The other day, mom was telling me why she has completely switched from the traditional neighbourhood HOPCOMS (Horticultural Produce Cooperative Marketing Societies) outlet to the fresh@ store to buy the vegetables. I got curious and asked to explain.

ion on a roll

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. First, there was the Mint financial newspaper’s article on “casualpreneurs” in the July 8th, 2007 edition which featured ion.  FYI, Mint is a joint collaboration between the Hindustan Times and the Wall Street Journal. Then, there was

OpenCoffeeClub 2

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. Yesterday morning, I dropped in on the OpenCoffeeClub Bangalore, 2nd edition. It’s supposed to be a place where people interested in entrepreneurship show up, have coffee together and discuss. The theme of the meet was marketing. There

ion logo designs

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. One of the many parts in the creation of ion was the designing of the look and feel of the product. We do very limited direct selling (we sell mostly online) and from what I’ve seen, people

Big Bazaar, India Central, Future Dreams

I recently read the “It Happened in India” book. It is the story of Kishore Biyani, the man who created Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Bangalore/Hyderabad Central, EZone, and much much more – effectively, the one person who made retailing a roaring success in India and who had envisioned it much before

ionized

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. The past couple of weeks has been a rollercoaster ride for us and for ion. Sales has been very good so far, but our observation is that people in India are still hesitant to buy online from reasons

The ion : ipod charger, mobile charger and more

For the past couple of months, I’ve had very busy weekends because I’ve been helping out a couple of friends launch a product. Why talk about it today? Because today is launch day! I’m talking about “the ion” – a charger for your iPod. Get the ion, plug

proto.in

I was fortunate to attend proto.in in Chennai on Sunday. What was it all about? It’s about startups in India. It was the opportunity for an Indian entrepreneur to showcase his/her ideas and business plans, to look for funding, people to work with, partners or simply grab