BW interview with Yossi Vardi
Yossi Vardi is a prolific investor - to date, he’s invested in about 90 companies - 65 in the last five years. BW has an interview with him about entrepreneurship and what makes Israel such a hotbed for startups and innovation.
When asked the question if entrepreneurship is something that can be learned, he responds:
No. It can be honed but not learned. Either you have it or you don’t. You can learn to write a business plan or to develop software. It is like Spielberg at the movies or a great painter, you can’t learn to be a genius. Either you are or you aren’t. The question is: Can you teach someone to be talented? Being an entrepreneur and being talented, those are God’s gifts
Read the entire interview here.
Configuration flaw on Chintee.com exposes database connection details
If you visit www.chintee.com, the Reliance ADAG owned site, you’ll be able to save the php file serving the front page. And the php file includes the database connection details — with databasename, user id and the password.
This vulnerability is caused because of an apache web server config setting.
Wake up guys !! With 900K users on BigAdda and even more on Zapak, you cant afford to screw up like this.
Monster India launches job search via SMS
Monster India has launched a job search ability via SMS. Just type in the position you are looking for (e.g ‘J2EE software engineer’) and send it via SMS to 53030. You’ll receive the top 3 results back via SMS.
via ET
Granted that mobile is a more widely present platform in India. Granted that Indians are heavy SMS users. But job search using SMS ? I mean come on — who in the right minds will be doing a job search via SMS ? Forgive me if I fail to see the big picture here, but does this feature make sense ? I personally find this idea somewhat dumb.
What do you think ? If you were to hire someone, would you do a job search via SMS ?
Comparison of Web Analytics sites
In the first part “The voodoo of web metrics” of this series, I talked about the various methods for computing web metrics. In this post, I’ll cover some of the players in this industry and the methods they employ for metrics calculation.
Alexa is the grand-daddy of web analytics. Alexa has been around since Web 1.0 days and is often used by several bloggers as a quick reference to statistics related to popular websites.
Methodology: Alexa data is collected via the Alexa toolbar that is installed by willing participants. Their methodology for calculating the statistics is fairly well documented. Based on the classification in my earlier post, Alexa employs user focused, browser toolbar based method for collecting data.
The two main things working in Alexa’s favor are:
a) Alexa data and graphs are free to use. Hence, the service is used by a lot of bloggers to get an insight about traffic details for popular websites
b) Alexa is one of the few website analytics companies that provides international data. For instance, you can view the top websites in India over here.
The main drawback is that Alexa data is unreliable. There is unanimous agreement about this. Ever wondered why ? Well, it is because Alexa provides the ‘Alexa toolbar’ only for IE on Windows. While there are 3rd party extensions for Firefox, they arent the same as the official toolbar.
BigAdda and Rediff iShare statistics
Some numbers I crunched during the holidays last week -
has 12519 groups
has 964360 users
has 209942 photos
has 24042 videos
has 90686 videos
has 90726 photos
has 90645 audios
Give or take a few hundred (say 500) from the above — since these numbers are from last week.
Broadband - The Missing Ace
Bernard has a nice post titled ‘State of Innovation in India‘ over at ReadWriteWeb. While it makes an interesting reading, I feel he has left out one very important “Ace” - the state of broadband infrastructure in India.
I’d couple the broadband issue with the “reliable low cost telecommunications” and make the title more generic like “reliable, pervasive communication infrastructure”.
Broadband in India is still lacking on several fronts. For starters, based on my conversations with several folks, getting a broadband connection is a struggle in itself. It is unreliable and not “always-on” in the true sense. Frequent disruptions are a common thing. Only 20,000 new broadband connections were added in India in October 2007.
From what I hear, things are getting better. But as long as broadband is not pervasive and ‘always-on’, it still remains a big impediment to the innovation ecosystem - at least to the consumer Internet industry.
Pringoo - Design your customized products
Pringoo is a new startup entering the market for customized products - t-shirts, mugs, bags, mousepads etc.. Just upload your design or select one of the site provided cliparts and customize it to your needs. Use the design to create your own customized products or you can purchase one of the existing designs from their marketplace.
Pringoo offers some salient features which, make it a strong competitor in this market. Sellers can create their own ’store’ and sell their designs through the store. Sellers can make their designs editable for the buyer. So, if a buyer wants to extend / further customize the seller’s design, they can easily do so.
Oh and did I mention that Pringoo is visually stunning. They have a very well designed and user friendly interface. I was able to create a custom t-shirt in no time.
One of the most interesting features is that sellers are in charge of deciding how much percentage commission they’d like when one of their designs is sold on Pringoo. (Myntra, a competitor, passes on a flat 10% of the sale price to sellers when their design is sold). The percentage on Pringoo, though variable, is capped at 15%.
You’d wonder why a seller would settle for anything less than 15% - after all, his goal would be to maximize revenue. Well, the percentage is added to the base price of a custom product. So, if a product costs Rs 1000, and the seller has set a 15% commission, the actual cost of the product to the buyer would be Rs 1150/-. If the seller feels that charging a smaller percentage would bring in greater volume, they can opt to charge a smaller commission.
Pringoo is a neat product - give it a spin and let me know your thoughts.
Wish you a happy new year
Here’s wishing all of you a very happy new year.
2007 saw a lot of activity in the Indian startup, entrepreneurship, VC, mobile and broadband areas. Entrepreneurship is becoming sexy - thanks to events like Proto, Headstart and all the mainstream media coverage. Even though challenges remain, pieces of the ecosystem are slowly falling into place. Lets hope that we carry forward all the positive momentum from 2007 and hope for an even amazing 2008.
StartupDunia has seen its own share of ups and downs throughout 2007. While I’ve tried to post regularly, personal issues have required me to take a break from blogging a couple of times. Inspite of the bumpy ride, it has been an amazing year for the blog - readership and subscriber count are way up and I can hardly keep up with the inbox overload. More than all, I’ve made some amazing new contacts over the year. A big thanks to all of you for your support.
My goal for 2008 is threefold:
1) blog as regularly as possible 2) emphasize more on the quality of posts 3) keep providing the platform for startup and entrepreneurs
As always, your input and feedback is very valuable — so keep it coming.
Again - wish you a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2008. Stay safe and stay healthy !!
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