Get Angel Investment for your startup (Mumbai Angels,India

The toughest part in a startup is building the prototype of your idea to prove that it works. You will need angel investment to keep the startup going at this phase. If you have a great idea, and you will like to get some early stage funding, then you should try your luck with mumbai angels

By their own admission, they are focused on seed stage and early stage companies with strong teams, defensible technologies or services and well defined product to market plans.

Mumbai angels has many members with prior Silicon Valley experience. So you can expect some really useful advice and handholding as well. More importantly they invest in indivdual capacity and not as a fund.

Topics: Entrepreneurship, Resources, VC

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Mumbai based startup (mKhoj) gets 7.1 million funding

mKhoj, a mumbai based startup, specializing in mobile advertising has secured $7.1 million funding from Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures

mKhoj allows publishers to monetize their mobile traffic. Considering the rapid growth of mobiles in india, this company seems to be moving in the right direction.

Topics: Entrepreneurship

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When cool is fool !!

I keep breaking my record in being an idiot. Everytime I think that I can not be a bigger idiot than this, I just go on to prove myself wrong. The most frustrating thing is that invariably the foolish ideas are the ones that I think are some smart idea of mine.

The latest in my idiot series was this post about IPL Schedule. I got hold of a pdf file with the complete schedule. I had found out how to embed pdf on the webpage. So I was pretty impressed with my idea to embed the pdf on the webpage.

2 days later, I just realized that this was a dumb idea:

The embedded pdf is slowing down the entire blog.
No one can read the pdf on my blog, it is just too large
Searchengines can not read the pdf either.
I could have avoided all these problems simply by giving the link to the pdf file.

Next time I get a cool idea, I will be more cautious. You will do good to do the same as well.

Topics: Uncategorized

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Download IPL Schedule

Click on the “Save” button to save the embedded IPL Schedule file.

Topics: ipl

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BUY IPL Tickets online

The IPL Tickets are now available for sale. You can book the tickets at ticketpro.

Topics: ipl

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Indian Premier League (IPL) timetable

IPL Timetable

Keeping tab of all the matches of the upcoming IPL can be really difficult. To help you with the task, I am trying to create a google calendar with the schedule of IPL matches. Click on the link of any IPL match timetable to get more details like venue. Request you to let me know how to make it more intuitive.

Topics: Uncategorized

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Google reaches all-time high in search market share

Hitwise has released the latest numbers for the search engine market. Google reaches an all time high with 67.25% market share. Microsoft and yahoo continue their downward movement. Ask.com was the only other major search engine to gain market share.

Domain Mar.-08 Feb.-08 Mar.-07
www.google.com 67.25% 66.44% 64.13%
search.yahoo.com 20.29% 20.59% 21.26%
search.msn.com 6.65% 6.95% 9.01%
www.ask.com 4.09% 4.16% 3.48%

The traffic data for video sites showed that youtube dominates the video makrte completely with 73% market share. If you add 4% market share enjoyed by google video then google has a 77% market share in video.

Topics: Internet, News

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A Dream

A Dream is not something you see in your dreams, but Dream is something which will not let you sleep

Topics: Quotes

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IPL Prize Money Details

Indian Premier League Prize money details

1. Winning team – Rs 4.8 crore.

2. Runners-up – Rs 1.2 crore.

3. Losing semi-finalists – Rs 1.2 crore.

4. Fifth placed team – Rs 80 lakh.

5. Sixth placed team – Rs 70 lakh.

6. Seventh placed team – Rs 50 lakh.

7. Last placed team – Rs 40 lakh.

Topics: Uncategorized

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IPL Team Details

Player lists of different teams participating in IPL

IPL Chennai Team Details
MS Dhoni
Stephen Fleming
Matthew Hayden
Michael Hussey
Joginder Sharma
Albie Morkel
Muttiah Muralitharan
Makhaya Ntini
Jacob Oram
Parthiv Patel (wk)
Suresh Raina

IPL Bangalore Team Details

Mark Boucher (wk)
Nathan Bracken
Shivnarine Chanderpaul
Rahul Dravid
Wasim Jaffer
Jacques Kallis
Zaheer Khan
Anil Kumble
Dale Steyn
Cameron White

IPL Delhi Team Details

AB de Villiers
Tillakaratne Dilshan
Gautam Gambhir
Dinesh Karthik
Glenn McGrath
Farveez Maharoof
Mohammad Asif
Virender Sehwag
Shoaib Malik
Manoj Tiwary
Daniel Vettori
Greg Shipperd

IPL Hyderabad Team Details

Herschelle Gibbs
Adam Gilchrist (wk)
VVS Laxman
Shahid Afridi
Rohit Sharma
Chamara Silva
Rudra Pratap Singh
Scott Styris
Andrew Symonds
Chaminda Vaas
Nuwan Zoysa

IPL Jaipur Team Details

Mohammad Kaif
Kamran Akmal
Justin Langer
Munaf Patel
Yusuf Pathan
Graeme Smith
Shane Warne
Younis Khan

IPL Kolkata Team Details

Ajit Agarkar
Sourav Ganguly
Chris Gayle
David Hussey
Murali Kartik
Brendon McCullum (wk)
Ricky Ponting
Ishant Sharma
Shoaib Akhtar
Umar Gul
John Buchanan

IPL Mohali Team Details

Mahela Jayawardene
Simon Katich
Brett Lee
Irfan Pathan
Piyush Chawla
Ramesh Powar
Kumar Sangakkara
Ramnaresh Sarwan
Sreesanth
Yuvraj Singh
Tom Moody

IPL Mumbai Team Details

Loots Bosman
Dilhara Fernando
Harbhajan Singh
Sanath Jayasuriya
Lasith Malinga
Shaun Pollock
Sachin Tendulkar
Robin Uthappa

Topics: Uncategorized

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Link out to get Traffic !!

All of us know that incoming link can bring a lot of traffic. However has it ever occured to you that outgoing links can bring substantial traffic?

I had written a post about release of wordpress 2.5. I started getting an unusually high number of visitors on that post. (Unusual by the standard of this blog :)) Most of the traffic was coming from the trackback link on the wordpress blog.

To test the theory I wrote another article about yahoo microsoft story with several links to techcrunch articles. The post has got more than 100 visiors from trackback alone.

So always make sure to link to the sources from which you are picking facts and ideas for your post. It is the right thing to do and additionally it will help you get some additional traffic as well.

Topics: Entrepreneurship, Internet, Make Money, SEO

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Get paid for Incoming Calls (Virgin Mobile, India)

The mobile companies keep surprising me by the extent of drop in prices of mobile usage. Now virgin mobile takes it a step further by paying users for incoming calls. This is an absolutely smart move by virgin to enter into an already crowded market. Perhaps this is one of the smartest moves and should find a place in the B-school case studies. Vigin has simply converted the disadvantage of low existing userbase into an advantage. And it will be evry difficult for the existing players to match the offer.Because they have a large existing userbase, hence the drop in revenue will not justify the increase in userbase.

The catch is the amount can be used for outgoing calls alone => There is no cash outflow. Read more details here.

Topics: Uncategorized

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Preparing for the on-campus interviews

It is that time of the year when thousands of students across Indian colleges are preparing for on-campus placement interviews for the IT companies … Here are some tips from my friends’ and my own past experience…
First and foremost, prepare a good resume. A good resume should have all your achievements listed (in a reverse chronographical order). List all your marks right from class X clearly and truly. Your resume should not exceed more than 3 pages. Use standard fonts and sizes. Do not copy (PLEASE) anything from your friends…It’s very easy for interviewers to catch you. Do not give details about your family or your personal details (It’s not a marriage bio-data :)). You should know the meaning of whatever words you use in the resume. You should have enough justification for whatever you write (eg. if you say you are a good team-worker you should have something to prove it).

Next the preparation. For apti, logical reasoning, etc. pick up any one book meant for CAT or GRE preparation. My preferred choice is Barron’s GRE (Infact sometimes TCS directly picks up questions from Barron’s GRE old (I guess 4th) edition). Practise the questions…I know it will be very sad but you have to

For technical, revise your basic concepts. They are really important. You can get a GATE book and revise from it. That should be really helpful.

In case you are weak in English, don’t worry. Start watching English movies and start speaking in English. Believe me just in a week you will be quite good at it. Yes, there may be some who’ll laugh on your broken English in the beginning but ignore them because if they laugh at you they are not your friends. (Do one thing, find some of their weak point and humiliate them once …they will never again laugh on you ).

On the day of the exam and the interview, try not to be nervous. Be cool and confident. Don’t lose heart if you do not get through in the first chance. You have got something better for you in store…Trust me

All the best…

Topics: Uncategorized

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A sample business plan for mywalkin

I had blogged about a step-by-step by guide for writing business plan. To help you understand it better, I am posting a demo business plan for mywalkin.

Business/Problem description: To get all the IT walkin interviews at one place. Walkin interviews get published on thursday or friday and users have only 2 days to identify them. The existing websites like naukri and monster place them along with jobs, making the discovery process much more difficult.
Competitive analysis: There are 2 types of competitors. Existing job sites like naukri and monster. and specialized walkin sites. We shall differentiate ourselves by concentrating on walkins alone. We shall differentiate ourselves from other walkin sites by sourcing interview information from HRs directly. This will help us solve the problem of erroneous walkins. We shall always keep the advertisements absolutely separate from content.

Market strategies: Here is our strategy to get the initial userbase. We shall make use of google adword to get targetted traffic. We shall retain a higher % of users by keeping the advertisements distinct from content. We shall make use of RSS subscriptions to retain traffic. We shall monetize the website through advertisements.

Development and Operations plans We shall make use of open source software to develop the site. We shall use wordpress as the content management system to reduce the requirement of development time.

Financial Factors I am yet to develop the financial plan for the website.

Topics: Entrepreneurship

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A step by step guide to writing a Business plan

Do you need to write a Business Plan? Many entrepreneurs tend to think that writing a business plan is a waste of time. The final outcome shall never be what you plan for. You will do well to read the following quote by Dwight Eisenhower, one of the most successful generals of world war-II.

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Advantages of writing a business plan When you sit down to write a business plan it makes you think critically about various aspects of your business. If you are multiple partners working together then it helps bring out any difference of vision to the front quickly. Last but not the least you need a well written business plan to get funded. (most of the time)

Put on your investor hat: Think like an investor, who is going to put money into the belief of couple of 20 odd years old kids. What will you like to know. Following is the list that I have identified for mywalkin.

1. Business/Problem description: What business are you in? Is there a real problem you are trying to solve?
2. Competitive analysis: Are there other players out there trying to solve the problem. Who are they? What will you do different?
3. Market strategies: How will you get your initial users? How will you grow from there? How do you intend to monetize? Will you charge your users? Who are the target advertisers?
4. Development and Operations plans Talk about how you will tackle the development issues. in my opinion, timelines are more important than the technical nitty gritties. However if you are developing a highly technical product then you may want to talk about the technology details as well. Show that you understand the challenges of developing the product/website
5. The Team This part is really important for funding. Talk about the team members, their background and how they add value to the entire idea. It is a good idea to show that they are complementary to each other.
6. Financial Factors This is the section of the business plan that many technical entrepreneurs dread. The idea is not to find the exact profit per year. It is more about checking all your assumptions about how you want to earn profit from your venture. Done properly this will help you to identify the important factors that will determine revenue growth. One such exercise helped us identify the importance of retaining users for traffic growth.

Do not obsess too much with data at the initial stage. Just go ahead and write a businessplan. As you get more clarity about various parts, go back to the plan and modify the plan and add more data and backings.

Topics: Uncategorized

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