MeraMaal – classifieds site for Indian cities

MeraMaal is a new site, attempting to gun for the Craigslist of India. It has the usual fare that you’d expect from a classifieds site with various sections categorized by different Indian cities.

While launching a classifieds site isnt too difficult, the main challenge they will have in execution – how to attract users to post classifieds. Currently, they have very few listings on the site and till they solve the classic ‘chicken and egg’ problem, they’d fast fade into oblivion (as is the case with any classifieds site).

EduCell is a startup by IITians for aspiring IITians

EduCell is a startup founded by IIT currently enrolled IIT students with the goal of mentoring students who hope to ‘crack the IIT- JEE’ exam. Around 200 IIT students provide mentoring sessions to IIT aspirants and guide them through their preparations. The USP being that having ‘been there, done that’ in the recent past, they’re in a much better position to guide and mentor other students.  All registered students get personalized guidance from current IIT students and also are provided with sample tests, study material and motivational CD’s.  You also get notes used by JEE toppers, with the hope that the notes help you to score well at the JEE.

Other features on the site include tips-tricks via mobile, video sessions by IITians, live chat with IIt students and discussion forums.

I think this is an amazing idea – with their unique USP, they definitely have the ability to stand out in a crowded market. The market size for IIT-JEE preps is huge – and even if they make a tiny dent in it, they stand to make some solid gains of it.

I guess some from the IIM’s needs to get inspired and needs to port over this brilliant idea to the CAT exams as well — I’d say that’d be an even bigger success story (I believe CAT exam market / test preps is more larger and lucrative – but dont quote me on it).

iTweet2Win lets you run contests via Twitter

iTweet2Win is a new startup from the founders of Pringoo, and enables users to run contests via Twitter. Once you sign up, you can create your contest, the questions and decide the prizes. You get a url to the contest on the iTweet2Win site and you tweet that url to your followers. Contest participants can indicate their participation by tweeting your custom message in their twitter stream.

They offer a free basic version as well as a premium version for $9.99. For the paid version, you can customize your content look / theme and brand it as per your requirements. You also get advanced analytics about how your contest is being received by other Twitter users.

Once the contest end date is reached, you can select the winner by going to the contest page on their site.

You can take a look at a sample contest here.

I think if they can get the word out there, they’re onto something here. Leveraging Twitter’s massive user base and its inbuilt virality might just work great for iTweet2win.

The Rediff redesign – a step backward ?

Rediff has gone live with a redesign of the Rediff India Abroad page (targetted towards NRIs) for the past few months now. The reason they cited for the redesign is that majority of the usage for their site happens from mobile devices. And the new design makes things more accessible from a mobile usage perspective.

Now I dont know what the Rediff guys were really smoking, but I think that the redesign is a big step in the wrong direction. In order to accomplish their goal of making the site more ‘mobile friendly’, they have managed to horribly destroy the online user’s experience.

For a content heavy site like Rediff, the focus of the site needs to be on content – promote and easily allow the user to discover good content and thereby increasing the user’s engagement with the site. The new design not only makes it incredibly difficult to discover new content, but the landing page fails to excite the user with any eye candy as well.

I’m no usability expert, but based on the strategy / redesign, it seems that the Rediff guys who were in charge of the task arent either. What I dont understand is — why not provide a different url for mobile devices ? Or, why not determine the client at runtime and if found to be a mobile device, why not redirect to the mobile section ?

In an effort to make things uncluttered, Rediff has lost its mojo — I wont be surprised if this impacts the visitors / pageviews metric for the site.

What do you think ?

Centilian launches Bollywood streaming app for the iPhone

Centilian, a Silicon Valley based startup, has launched a new application – Bollyhood – for the iPhone, which brings streaming Bollywood content to the iPhone.

Bollyhood enables users to stream free movie trailers, behind the scenes footage, interviews, news, gossip, music videos etc straight to their iPhone. Users can also rate the content, share it with friends on Facebook etc. They have tied up with Eros, to power a lot of the current content for the app and are working with other studios to bring full length movies and TV shows to the iPhone as well.

Their goal is to start with the iPhone and gradually become the one stop source for Bollywood video content on all mobile devices.

If I were an iPhone owner, I would definitely try out this app — considering that I dont subscribe the various Bollywood TV channels – hopefully this app could keep me in touch with the new movies/ songs etc.

Myntra launches ‘Team India’ cricket jerseys in partnership with Nike

In what I’d consider a major coup, Myntra has partnered with Nike to launch personalized ‘Team India’ cricket jerseys. Users can customize the jerseys with their name and number and show their support for the Indian cricket team. NRI’s can avail these jerseys too, courtesy of Myntra’s international shipping.

I’d say this is a major accomplishment for Myntra because a tie-up with a brand like Nike gives them some serious street cred and recognition.

CricFeeds – live cricket match play by play simulation

CricFeeds is a pretty interesting startup. They provide a play by play simulation of a live cricket match.While I didnt get a chance to view an actual live match play, I was impressed with what little I saw. The simulation includes ball-by-ball action and includes actual fielder names, actions and positions on the field as the match is in progress. The simulation includes live audio as well as text commentary and a small chat module as well, where viewers can instally discuss about ongoing play. The entire simulation is browser based and doesnt require any downloads or such.

The service is offered as a white label solution instead of a direct to consumer app — in other words, the service is for other portals that can integrate the app into their site. Portals can customize the look and feel, branding and several other things. Portals can also manage the ad inventory for the app and the analytics as well.

The app is already deployed by several affiliates including IndyaRocks, WebDunia and several other newspapers.

Probably, the app has existed for a long time now, but I just discovered it recently — and found it compelling enough to write about it.

TweetKnot enables you to form groups on Twitter

TweetKnot is Bangalore based startup that provides you with the ability to build private / public groups using Twitter. The idea is create a ‘knot’ (community) based on a mutual interest. A knot can be made private, where only approved members can join the knot or the knot can be made public, where anyone can join the knot.  The owner of the knot can specify the users whose messages should appear in the knot automatically. The owner can also follow any other Twitter users and the messages from that user will appear in the knot – for example, if I create a knot based on the theme of startups and I set the knot to follow TechCrunch, messages from TechCrunch will appear in knot automatically.

You can simply start using the service using your existing Twitter credentials. Messages can be posted from the TweetKnot site or from Twitter using the format ‘D TweetKnot <community-name>’. Messages can be read only on their site for now.

I think this is a pretty useful service to make Twitter usage more targetted — theme based groups keeps distractions and other noise from the Twitter stream at a minimum.

What do you think ?

Payin2 – payments via offline recharge points

One of the stumbling blocks for e-commerce in India is the lack of penetration of credit/debit cards and the fear of using them online to make purchases.

Payin2 is a new service that hopes to make it easier for SME’s and startups to charge for their products and provide them with a ready to use electronic distribution and cash collection service. The mode of operation is offline, which Payin2 does by its 30,000 ‘recharge points’ operated by its parent company Paytronic Network. Paytronic is one of the leading electronic distributors of prepaid mobile vouchers and extending this for of payment / recharging serves as a natural evolution of their ‘recharge points’ network.

Here’s how the service works:

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Find a mentor using Mentorpolis

Mentorpolis is a new startup by IIT graduates, that hopes to make it easier to search and find mentors.  A lot of times, we’re faced with significant dilemmas about what decision to make – be it in your professional life, related to education, job or entrepreneurship. What would help is if we get some guidance from a person who’s ‘been there, done that’. And that’s what Mentorpolis hopes to accomplish.

Briefly put, Mentorpolis is a marketplace for finding mentors. Here’s how it works:

• You search for and explore various mentor profiles on the site
• Select a mentor whose expertise closely matches your requirements.
• Schedule a mutually agreeable time to touch base with your mentor
• Mentors decide their own charges for mentoring sessions. You (the mentee) pay the amount before the scheduled call
• Get in touch with your mentor for personalized advice and recommendations

Some sample questions that you can seek out a mentor to guide you through:

‘I’m thinking on doing my masters in engineering from US. Can you help me find good schools that fit my profile and interests?‘

‘I am very good with web 2.0 technologies but lack the commercial sense of a web enterprise. How do I get started with my idea?’

You can also view a couple of sample mentoring session transcripts here.

Web seminars and online conversations on the site are free of cost. However, each telephonic or in-person session costs Rs 500/-.

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