StartupDunia

The incubators at Trivandrum TechnoPark and the ICICI Knowledge Park have been awarded the “Best Technology Business Incubator” for 2007. The national award has been instituted by the Dept of Science and Technology, Govt. of India.

In the TechnoPark incubator, 71 startups have been incubated, of which 35 have graduated and moved to bigger premises, while 31 are still continuing operations in the incubator.

In the Knowledge Park incubator,  29 companies have been incubated, of which 10 have graduated and moved out, while 19 still continue to operated out of the incubator.

As as aside, one of the big benefits of operating out of an incubator is that you need not pay service tax on the services provided. See this (PS: word file) for additional details.

A distant friend asked me this question during a conversation yesterday:

What Indian city is best conducive to entrepreneurship ?

Based out of a tier - III city, his town lacks reliable broadband access, human capital is not appropriately skilled and there’s a lack of exchange of intellectual ideas amongst his peers. He’s contemplating moving to a bigger city, where he can get easy access to ideas, capital and skilled people.

The question really got me thinking. Which Indian city would be most suitable for me to setup shop, if I were an Internet entrepreneur in India ?

Mumbai would be prohibitively expensive for majority of the startups, unless you have a home there and you dont really need to rent office space etc. That leaves Pune, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad in the picture (surprising, but you dont really hear a lot about Hyderabad in the context of startups etc.- other than ISB). The list can be further trimmed if there’s a possibility that you’ll need VC funding, since majority of the VC’s require that you relocate to the same city that they are based in.

Personally, I’d opt for either Bangalore or Pune (Chennai weather is not for me). I’d love to hear where you’d base your startup, if you were/are an entrepreneur.

As an entrepreneur, have you faced a scenario where you would have had better access to resources if you were located elsewhere ? Do you think life would have been easy in terms of hiring, networking etc. if you were located in a startup hub ?

Say you bootstrap your Internet startup and are on the verge of either making a public announcement or pitch media-bloggers about the impending launch of your startup.

My question is - how do you anticipate the traffic load and how do you plan accordingly for any contingency? Assuming that the pitch was successful and you get a moderate to sizeable amount of traffic, if you are on a shared hosting plan, chances are that the site may cripple under the load.That would be a nightmare for any Internet entrepreneur - getting all the coveted user traffic, but hardware resources fail to keep up.

On the flip side,  you might be faced with the scenario that you opted for a dedicated hosting plan and the traffic just never came. And now the 100-300$ + monthly costs for the dedicated server are a strain on your pocket - at least till the traffic to the site builds up.

Probably, this isnt as big an issue –and more so, I’m just curious to find out what others think about the same. If you’ve already been through such a scenario, what decision did you finally opt for ? Did it work out to be the better decision ?

TiE-ISB Connect is back with its highly successful business plan presentation opportunity. Entrepreneurs are invited to submit a maximum of 5 page abstract of their business idea to TiE-ISB Connect Committee to get the opportunity to meet and interact with leading Capitalist’s of the world on November 5-7 as they seek to fund bright ideas and cool start ups. Participants for the 2008 Business Plan Presentations can register at http://www.tie-isbconnect.com. The last date for submission of Business Plans closes on 15th June 2008.
Over the last 3 years the event attracted over 1000 business plans and over 50 Venture Capitalists.

The second edition of the TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge is planned for this year. The contest invites applications from entrepreneurs (startups and early stage companies). Interested participants need to download and submit their applications from the contest website. The deadline for submission of applications is May 12, 2008. Eight teams will be shortlisted and invited to present in front of a jury.

Benefits to the participants include mentoring sessions, access to investors, profiling in media and invitation to an exclusive ISB program.

Since the startup-entrepreneurship ecosystem in India hasnt fully developed, folks are bound to have questions - genuine questions related to VC funding, entrepreneurship, technical questions, operational questions etc.

However, I’ve noticed a somewhat disturbing trend amongst the younger, college going demographic, who are aspiring to become entrepreneurs. They’re looking for way too much hand holding and probably misinterpreting what entrepreneurship really means.  Let me elaborate. I frequently get emails (generalized below) of the type

• “Have a Web 2.0 idea. How do I go about implenting it ?”
• “Want to start a social networking company. How to do it ?”
• “Interested in starting gaming company. How to proceed ?”

I thought these were one-off occurrences and ignored them. However, I started noticing more of such questions pop up else where. For instance, check the “Ask the expert” section on the NEN website. There are a lot of open-ended questions and it seems as if several of them are looking for like the procedural guide to starting a business.

Read More

Startups and the startup ecosystem in India are making impressive strides. Just going by the number and quality of startups that launched in 2007 as compared to 2006, I can vouch for the fact that both are getting progressively much better.

But there’s one thing that I’m trying hard to find an answer to - how these startups intend to sustain / are sustaining themselves. Most of the the Indian startups follow either a transactional model for revenue generation or rely on the advertising model (pimped by the Web 2.0 world) or have no business model at the time of launching. While revenue generation isnt an issue in the former, its the latter two that baffle me somewhat.

Startups need a means to sustain themselves till they find an exit strategy. A successful exit strategy would normally translate into either an IPO or getting acquired by a bigger player. But till that happens, the startup needs money - to keep the servers running, pay bills etc. Most of the current breed of Indian startups seem to be bootstrapped. A few lucky ones might have secured angel - VC funding.  But for the others, how long would the bootstrapping work ? Would an advertising supported business model work for them ?

The trend for ad supported business models has originated from Silicon Valley, but the dynamics in the Valley have been quite different. Buoyed by the number of successful M&A/IPO exits, VC’s have been pumping money into Internet startups. Others have found success through the advertising model and can independently sustain themselves.

Read More

“Whats in a name ?” So thought Shakespeare in his play “Romeo and Juliet”.

If only he were alive today to see how woefully wrong he is.

Finding a suitable, appropriate and catchy name for your Internet startup can be an immensely challenging task. Unlike brick & mortar stores, a startup name means everything in the Internet world - the Internet address, the brand, the email - everything. Screw it up and it may be very difficult to change it later.

Getting the right idea is a big challenge - no doubts about it. However, once the idea has been conceived, you’re faced with the next hurdle - naming your startup. You can spend as much time or as little time as you want on this task.

Here are a few guidelines that you’ll need to consider while searching and deciding a name for your startup:

• Is this name simple and unambiguous ? Is there a good chance that the name can be spelled differently ?

I say this from my own experience. A lot of folks mistakingly spell my blog as “Startup Duniya” and search for the same in Google. When I bought my domain, I hadnt put a lot of thought to this possible ambiguity. In hindsight, I might have probably opted for an alternative. To an Internet startup, this can very well mean difference between survival and death.

• Is the domain name available ?

This is by far one of the biggest factors that impacts the naming process and makes it so challenging and often times, frustrating. As soon as you think of a name, odds are 50 to 1 that the domain name has already been taken.

Read More

Over the weekend, I was reviewing the wave of Internet startups emerging in the Indian market. There seemed to be a common thread across a lot of these startups, which I couldnt exactly pinpoint in the first glance. On a second follow through, I was kind of able to put a handle on it.

It seems that a lot of the new Indian Internet startups have a foreign connection. Either one or all the founders have been based in a foreign country at some point of time. Pursuing either higher education or a professional career. And then returned to India to pursue their entrepreneurial dream.

Consider the following list I was able to compile in a few minutes:

MarketHero, BookEazy, FirstPhera, SadakMap, Nunook, Criticat, Kyazoonga, IndyaRocks, Komli, Burrp, Picsquare, Ixigo, Cleartrip etc.

In context of the Indian Internet entrepreneurial scene, the list above is one which you cant ignore. They do constitute a moderate size of the overall Indian Internet startup space. Of course, by no means should this be interpreted in the wrong sense - that the Indian entrepreneurship scene is fueled solely by these breed of foreign returned entrepreneurs.

But as this trend became apparent, I was more curious to explore it further - why is it that so many foreign returned Indians are taking to entrepreneurship ? Was it something during their stay abroad that triggered the entrepreneurial bug ? Has their experience abroad broadened their outlook and appetite for risks ? Would they have had the same outlook if they’d stayed in India all along ?

I’d love to hear what you have to say - so take a moment and let me know your perspective.

Jason Calacanis started a great debate over the weekend by offering 17 free tips to startups.

The gist of the 17 tips can be summarized in two words - “Be Frugal“.

Some quotes and posts that I liked from other blogs:

From Mark Cuban’s blog:

• Don’t start a company unless its an obsession and something you love. (my $0.02 - even if you are passionate about your idea - startup, if there isnt a market need for it, chances are you might fail)

• If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.

• Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap

From Fred Wilson’s blog:

• I encourage our portfolio companies to hire a person inside the company to be an “evangelist”. That job includes blogging actively, reading and commenting and linking to other blogs, reaching out to the media and industry analysts and gurus, going to conferences and events, and generally getting the word out. (Google communicates primarily and frequently via blogs. Scoble did some great evangelism at M’soft)
  

Finally, I loved this from Tony Wright’s blog:

Human beings love formulas. Human beings who succeed naturally think that they’ve stumbled onto a magical step-by-step guide on how other people can succeed, too. They blog about it, speak about it, and generally spread their wisdom far and wide.

The funny thing is that when you read/hear enough of this stuff, you start hearing brilliant and successful people presenting advice that directly conflicts with the advice from other brilliant and successful people.

All of the advice that you read and hear is incredibly valuable– but it’s very situational. Add it to your “startup utility belt” and whip it out when you hit a bump in the road that looks familiar.

As an aside, I’m in serious awe of Jason’s marketing savvy and his ability to generate these blogosphere firestorms.

We keep discussing about issues like broadband penetration in India, attracting good talent, early stage funding problems etc..

However, at this time, I’d like to take a moment and solicit input from Indian startups and entrepreneurs.

• What are some of the pain points you are witnessing (have witnessed) related to the Indian startup scene ?

• What are the top 3 things you wish were different / can be improved in the Indian ecosystem ?

• What sort of response are you seeing from the online Indian audience ?

• Do you have any advice - tips for other aspiring Indian tech entrepreneurs ?

I hope these questions generate some healthy discussions, which will be useful to the entire community. Feel free to address any other topic, which you think might be relevant and useful.

I request all of you Indian entrepreneurs to provide your input - I know you’re busy, but your perspective is really important.