LifeMojo launches their health and wellness portal
LifeMojo, a Morpheus Venture Partners (MVP) portfolio startup, has launched their cosumer facing health and wellness portal. They hope to help people achieve a healthy lifestyle by enabling them to eat right, stay fit, track their progress and remain motivated. They already had a B2B platform that is used by professional nutritionists.Its the consumer facing web app that went live recently.
Using their website, any user can enter information about their body, calorie intake, exercise etc. You can set your own weight goals (example - “I want to lose 5 kgs in the next 2 months”), setup and manage your diet and exercise plans and the site will do all the tracking, analysis, reports etc. to help you attain those goals and keep you motivated. The site also has some good health and wellness related content as well.
Some additional features that are in the works:
- Mobile - The mobile app will provide easy access to users to track, record and use the service
- Social network - They plan to launch ‘buddy features’ where users can share their stories, inspiring others to get fit.
- Nutrition Consultation - Users will get a one time consult with a professional nutritionist - dietitian, who can help them create a personalized meal and exercise plan
AdBhai - Social classifieds on Orkut
AdBhai is a new app for Orkut that hopes to provide social classifieds. The app basically provides a classifieds marketplace by leveraging your existing social graph on Orkut.
Here’s how it works. Say you want to buy a book and it so happens that one of the friends in your network has just finished reading his copy and is looking to sell it. The app will automatically notify your network contacts that you’re looking to buy the book. Your friend sees the notification and gets in touch with you about selling the book.
On first glance, the app seems to be a pretty great idea. However, there’re several shortcomings of this approach.
Cleantech dominates IITB Eureka competiton
IIT Bombay’s business plan competition Eureka 2008 received about 2000 submissions. The forty finalists have been shortlisted with more than a third (15) coming from the cleantech sector. Besides the regular top 3 winners, two best teams from cleantech will get a chance to present at CMU’s Sustainable Living Biz competition as well.
Check out the list of finalists here.
NetaNaap - crowdsource perception of Indian politicians
Ok, NetaNaap is by no means a startup. But its a good time sink site, where you can submit and review public perceptions of Indian politicians.
It’s shamelessly inspired from Noah Brier’s BrandTags site, but deserved a small mention for the effort.
Considering the current ire against politicians, I wont be surprised if majority of them get a swear word or two against their profile.
Are repeat entrepreneurs more likely to succeed than first time entrepreneurs ?
Apparently, yes. A new paper from HBS indicates that all things equal, a VC backed entrepreneur who starts a company that goes public, has a 30% chance of suceeding in their next venture. First time entrepreneurs, on the other hand, have only a 18% chance of succeeding. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs who failed in their previous venture, have a 20% chance of succeeding.
The paper provides evidence that performance persistance in entrepreneurship works. Read much more such additional insights in the entire paper here (PDF file).
Indian startup jobs
While the Indian job market may be headed for a slowdown, Indian startups are still hiring.
Check out some of the jobs on the job board:
- UI Designer for Delhi startup
- PHP & MySQL engineer for LillyChilli
- Senior .NET developer
- Engineer - IT operations at Chaupaati bazaar
So many others too. Check them out.
MayField Fund forms $110 Million India Fund
MayField Fund has announced a $110 million fund to invest in India. This is their first India focused fund and will invest in mid market companies in technology, consumer and infrastructure sectors.
They have already invested in 6 Indian companies: Tejas Networks, Paymate, Consim Info, Genesis Colors, Geodesic and Servomax.
IIT campus placements drops, startups continue hiring
Campus placements in IIT’s has been impacted by the economy slowdown. The response from companies has been lukewarm and companies are either cancelling or postponing their campus visits. IIT Roorkee had only 2 companies visiting the campus and only 8 job offers have been made so far. IIT Bombay, which had 93 offers made on first day last year, has seen only 33 offers on first day this year.
At the same time, startups hiring from IIT campuses seems to be on the upswing.
Proto startups - Where are they now ?
As Proto opened nominations for the January 2009 edition, I thought it might be a good idea to review some of the Internet startups that were shortlisted in earlier Proto events and see how they’re doing so far.
Jan 2007 event:
SaffronConnect: Service is shut down. I observed that way back in February early this year.
Ixigo: Going strong - Started offering hotel search, international searches and entered into business partnerships with TravelGuru, NDTV.
SERaja: Service shut down. My review here.
Spoteazy: Site and service is still active although no idea on how well they’re doing.
Picsquare: Acquired by InfiBeam recently
Taazza: Service is currently offline. Blog was last updated in March 2007 while the last Twitter update on Nov 13th says that they’re working on a new version. My review here.
iDiva goes offline
I was contacted by a couple of folks associated with iDiva about the security flaw I blogged about earlier. Now, it seems that the site has gone offline - I’m assuming to correct the flaw.
