startup - Swaroop CH (Page 2)

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

India

A few statistics about India

From President’s speech in 2007: * “Today, the average age of India’s population is below 25 years. Approximately, 77 crore of our people, or about 70 percent of the population, fall below the age of 35.” From Tracking The Growth of India’s Middle Class: * “Over the next 20

Tech

One device or many?

Question: Will the future consist of people carrying a single device or multiple gadgets? Arguments for one device Students use it for everything. After reading this New York Times article on how mobile phones are used in South Korea, I’m astounded about the possibilities. Students are using their mobile

Business

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.

Business

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

Business

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

Books

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,

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Books

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,

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Business

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

Tech

How to make a website

When making a website, there are simply so many aspects to consider. I’ve been gathering some useful links and information on the same, right from How to Evaluate a new Product Idea to choosing color schemes. I’ve put all of these links together into a Website Making Howto

Business

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

India

Indian Innovations for the Energy Challenge

After reading Atanu Dey on India’s Energy Challenge and Vijay Anand on Why the N-Deal is important, I was wondering if there were some interesting things being done in India regarding energy. And sure enough, I came across these: * Water * Balakrishna has created a turbine to generate power from

Business

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

Business

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