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My startup has been nominated to TATA NEN hottest startups
As the TATA NEN hottest startups event forges ahead, lately, I’ve seen a lot of startups flashing the badge that they’ve nominated for the event. Some have even issued grand press releases announcing the 
nomination.
My response is “Ok, you’ve been nominated. So what’s the big deal ?”.
So have 399 other startups. Nomination, by itself, carries little value, especially considering the fact that startups can nominate themselves into the contest. If you’re one of the 30 finalists and flaunt that badge, it would still mean something.
I was talking to a startup founder recently, and he raised concerns about the contest and seemed skeptical on how his startup would be even noticed amongst the crowd of 400 entries. And his thoughts resonated well with me.
As noble as TATA NEN’s intentions may have been (to help and promote startups), I think it suffers from a few issues:
1) Welcoming self nominations is perfectly fine. But then, filter out the serious startups from the part time, hobby projects before listing them on your site.
For instance, consider the following entry: PrePgMedicos. Even though the site may have a strong community and fan following, by no means will I label it as a startup. Or Downloadlinks.com. Why the heck is something like downloadlinks even listed there ?
By allowing such listings, NEN is not only diluting their brand value, but also sending the wrong message to aspiring entrepreneurs that such efforts are acceptable, and can be called ’startups’. This also adds to the cacophony and breeds skepticism amongst the serious startups.
IMO, the correct approach would have been for NEN to solicit nominations, weed out the frivolous ones and compile a list of the best of the breed. This would have also narrowed down the application pool from 400 to a more manageable size of 100 or so.
2) Limit the categories for nomination:
Currently, the nominated companies vary from Internet focused to manufacturing to retail to sports. Nothing wrong with having so many categories, but it just makes the process pretty chaotic. Besides, evaluating / comparing an Internet startup with a manufacturing related startup just wouldnt be fair.
3) Rating from Experts:
I reviewed the rating guidelines for experts (expert ratings accounts for 50% of the votes) and I think this is one aspect where the process seems flawed to me. From what I understood on how the expert rating works is that each startup is reviewed by 2-3 experts from the expert panel. So, different experts end up reviewing different startups. And this, in my opinion, makes the process very subjective. If the same set of experts would rate all the startups, the process would have been somewhat objective, but by rotating the experts, a subjective bias gets introduced.
4) Limit the contribution of the user voting process.
Currently, 50% of the rating comes from user votes. I think this should be further limited to something like 10%, to reduce chances of spamming and gaming the votes.
I’d love to hear what you think about this.
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Comments
9 Responses to “My startup has been nominated to TATA NEN hottest startups”
Pranav, excellent post.
Instead of competing in this contest, many of these startups are better off spending time in building their product and/ or thinking off generating some cash.
Pranav, if they accept your recommendations… i would nominate my startup. without those filters… its a mess
I agree absolutely.. moreover it kinda luks like a club of the biggiess..
I agree with Anindya. Instead of wasting the time in gathering votes and trying to come in top 30, one should try to focus more on building the product and create compelling values.
Startups (Web Startups) scenario in India is different from US,Europe or even Israel …in India web startups are desperate to market their products anyhow…especially when only few could survive in span of hardly one year..some of them shuts down, some of them change their website model, theme - eyemany.com, IndiaMarks.com, SneakCast are some exmples in them.
Moreover, platforms or sources for appreciating a good startups are much less than US counterparts for eg. RedHerring or say Web20 Expo just held in New York..you wouldn’t find any such event of this much big platforms in India.
The above reasons justify your wandering question why startups nominated TATA NEN are so excited about the same.
To initaite & build a web startup in India is easier than to propagate and spread its awareness to end users among Indian online users. People tends to forget what they see unless some big name is associated with it.
Vardaan,
You dont need RedHerring or Web 2.0 expo’s to evangelize your product. First, if your startup/product is good enough, it will sell itself. Secondly, if you’re smart, you can market the service without having a “TATA NEN” stamp of approval.
The best of the breed will thrive no matter what.
-p
True i wrote a similar post stating why tata nen is a hog wash, Incidently my own startup is nominated by a friend but i did not bother emailing my business associates to vote for me.
As someone pointed out here its better to focus on building a great product, though i have to confess i did login to their site once in a while to check my rankings
Its was decent for exposure though
@A I’ve heard of a few other entrepreneurs also doing the same…I agree - staying focused on building a better product should be higher priority
I agree on having less weightage for public voting. I’m not sure if it’s out in the public but Tata NEN have themselves admitted to participating startups that there’s been widespread spamming of the system. I stopped trying to get people to vote for my startup after that.