As popularity of Dhingana soars, I thought this would be a good opportunity to interview the Dhingana founders on their entrepreneurial experience thus far. As per Compete, US traffic to the site is down ~5% from January 2008, but is up by about 700% over the last year.

Interview follows:

1) How old is Dhingana today ?
More then 1.5 years old.

2) Can you share any interesting insights into your audience - like which are the top 5 countries you are seeing the traffic from ?
Sure. Our user base is spread over the world in more then 185 countries. Top countries are India, US, UK, Canada, UAE, Australia, Pakistan, Singapore, Germany & Japan

3) Any interesting info related to how many monthly hits / pageviews ?
4) How many  MB/GB’s are you currently streaming a month ?
This is a very exciting time for us. We are experiencing phenomenal growth rate and we have grown by more then 880% in terms page views over the last year.

5) What revenue model are you following ? How do you cover hosting and streaming costs ?
Though we have a few interesting revenue models planned for the future, as of now, it is Internet Advertising. We offer CPM based advertising inventory as well as  ‘Exclusive Sponsors’ ads for advertisers. We drive a very niche audience all over the world, as most of the users who come to Dhingana are interested in entertainment.

6) What kind of response are you seeing from the community and users in general ?
Users are really enjoying the experience on Dhingana. 100s of users join Dhingana everyday and we receive a plethora of compliments via email feedback every day.

7) What kind of licensing issues do you guys need to deal with for streaming music, if any ?
We work with the licensing authorities in India and we have secured licenses for streaming Indian music over the net.

8 ) A lot of folks are curious - who is the team behind Dhingana ?
Can’t say much at this time :). All we can say is our core team brings a creative and diverse set of experience from Yahoo! and Microsoft. By the way, you are the first one to know this.

9) What features can we expect to see in the future from Dhingana ?
We started off as a music streaming site. We then went a step further and added a lot of interesting social features like Public SmartLists, Public mGreetings & Musical Profile Pages. We saw fabulous response from our users and got some nice feedback from them. We are now extending Dhingana even further & converting it into a social platform around entertainment. The main facets of our entertainment platform would be Music, Movies, News, Videos, Photos and Games. There are a lot of cool features planned and we will definitely keep you updated on this moving forward.

10) What are some of the challenges you’ve faced while developing and scaling a memory and bandwidth intensive site ?
Streaming media has its own challenges and requires a very solid infrastructure to stream reliably - especially if you are streaming high quality songs. It was not easy and we have learnt a lot as we have grown over the last year and a half. 6 months back we re-wrote Dhingana from scratch and what we have now is an extremely flexible & highly extensible platform. We expect to learn even more moving forward and scale & load-balance our platform as we keep growing to best suit our traffic loads.

11) Any word of advice for other wannabe web entrepreneurs ?
Follow your passions. Always try to make meaning and money will follow. Simplicity and reliability are the founding pillars for building a beautiful product. Lastly practice the 5C mantra http://www.dhingana.com/info/aboutUs

Thanks guys for your time && good luck with Dhingana !!

Comments

• May 9, 2008, Harsh commented: wow.. these guys are ripping off games from Indyarocks... look at the xclusive games list (above their logo)... They picked up games straight from Indyarocks featured games.. They even have that stupid Holi Tamasha game from FXlabs (recently FXLabs and Indyarocks partnered) so much for the 5Cs :-)
• May 9, 2008, Harsh commented: Hey just digged deeper. They even copied the same game categories in the same sequence and the same thumbs up ad thumbs down icons (changed color) and quite a few design similarities. Good luck guys.
• May 9, 2008, step2blog commented: whats the big deal guys even orkut is cloning face book app ,its not copying, the term is meeting market demands its common on net :-)
• May 10, 2008, Sachin commented: Hey I am also starting to use some cricket games on my blog..is this legal?
• May 10, 2008, Jitin commented: Harsh, no point criticizing dhingana when u dont know the complete picture...the design scheme they used for games section is same they have been using everywhere else on their site...its their unique and clean design...i have been using this site for an year now and i know these guys are doing an amazing job...they dont need to copy anyone...also games are user uploaded...there are quite a few game sites out there...and u can find common games on all these sites...more over most of the games are developed by 2-3 big game companies that every one else just hosts...even indyarocks are doing the same...no bigee there...i love dhingana more of its social network around music and the unique way they are handling things...just my 2 cents...also why are u showing compete graph and not alexa graph? compete is not that accurate as far as i know...
• May 10, 2008, Jitin commented: I dont see a drop here :) http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/dhingana.com
• May 12, 2008, pranav commented: @harsh, thnx for sharing your observations..It looks like games on dhingana are user uploaded. And like Jitin points out - there are only a handful of game producers -- others merely use games from the catalog of these game producers. and thats one of the reasons you end up seeing the same game at a lot of places. @jitin - where did you learn that compete is less accurate than alexa ?
• May 12, 2008, jitin commented: pranav, alexa has a lot more data points compared to compete..thats why compete results only show a small subset of the actual site traffic...on another note alexa results show a subset of traffic as compared to comscore...but when it comes to getting the site traffic for free, alexa is the standard...else comscore is the way to go...
• June 1, 2008, Radha commented: I looked at the site and they have a wonderfull collection of music. I hope they offer mp3 downloads soon either for free or maybe for a price as they have this one song that I would really like to have and I can't find the song anywhere else. Please consider the thought...than you! Great Job You Guys!

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I have got a chance to interact with the founders of a new web startup company ‘FlipKart‘. FlipKart is an online book store primarily serving Indian consumers.

I am one of the very first consumers and I have ordered over a dozen books in the last two months from FlipKart. I am really impressed with the way they ship the books so fast and at no cost.

Following is the interview I have done over email with Binny Bansal who is one of the two co-founders.

When was flipkart.com founded?

Flipkart.com was founded on 5th Sept 2007. The website was launched on 15th Oct 2007.

Could you tell me about founders and their background?

Sachin Bansal (26) and myself, Binny Bansal (25), started flipkart.com. Both of us are computer science graduates from IIT-Delhi from the 2005 batch. Sachin worked at Techspan for 6 months and then at Amazon India for a year and a half. I worked at Sarnoff India for a year and a half and then at Amazon India for 8 months. We quit our jobs in September 2007 to begin our startup journey. And to clarify any doubts in advance, we are not related to each other.

How many days it took to launch the service?
It took us about a month and a half to start a basic working website with 50,000 titles. We’ve now grown our catalog to over 1 Lakh available titles.

Whats the total team size?

Primarily, there is only Sachin and myself. We also manage a small team which takes care of our back-end operations.

What made you to start something on your own?

We started flipkart.com because we ourselves felt the need for a good online book store. E-commerce sector is one of the toughest to get into in India. We believe that we can make a difference here. We wanted to create something which has a long lasting value and which we can be proud of. Also at this point in our life we can devote our entire time and energy to flipkart which is very important for any startup.

What are the biggest challenges you have faced while launching the service?

One major challenge was to get tie-ups with the major book vendors as we didn’t have an off-line book store. We have somehow managed to persuade them and now most of the vendors are supporting us.

The second major challenge was to get the approval for the credit card payment gateway. We didn’t want to use CCAvenue as their interface is really confusing. So we had to convince Axis Bank for the payment gateway and that wasn’t easy given the fact that we are a self-funded startup and we don’t have an offline presence.

What are your current challenges to scale flipkart to the next level?

The biggest challenge currently is reaching out to a larger set of people with minimum budget. Scaling the back-end operations will be a challenge too. We do plan to get angel/seed funding in the next three months to scale our operations.

What are your future plans for flipkart? Do you want to go beyond books and offer other products as well?

Currently we are completely focussed on books. We want to be number one in books first, get a big customer base and then look at the possibilities of offering other products.

Could you give me an idea about the market size for online book stores in India?

Market size for online book shopping in India is expected to be between Rs. 20-25 crore for 2007-2008. Market size of whole of book industry in India is estimated at 4000 crores and is growing at a very quick pace.

How are you marketing the service?

Marketing on a small budget is very difficult. A large part of our marketing is built into our low prices. We believe that if we keep prices low and keep the customer happy we can generate a lot of positive word of mouth which has much better ROI than spending that
money on regular marketing techniques.

But, we do have to reach out to people somehow and hence we are experimenting with pay per click online advertising. We are also going to start a marketing campaign in Bangalore targeted at people working in IT companies. The current goal is to reach as many enthusiastic online book shoppers as possible.

How are you building trust? How can a first time visitor trust your service?

We have clearly defined and listed our shipping and return policies on the website. Also, we think free shipping adds a lot to the trust factor. We also have a page on which we address the issue of secure online payments.

All this coupled with an interface that quick, clean and user friendly, and the positive reviews on the web from our early adopters builds trust for our service.

Do you have any off-line presence?

We don’t have an off-line presence and we don’t plan to have one in the future either.

What is flipkart’s USP compared to other online book stores in India?

Flipkart.com’s USP is simplicity, convenience and customer service. We’ve made searching and browsing for books as simple as possible. And there are a lot of features lined up for the future which would help you in selecting books based on your interests.

And one of our major goals is to maintain very high standards for customer support. The lack of customer service is one of the major reasons for the slow E-commerce growth in India. We want to change this perception and get people to embrace E-commerce due to the many benefits it provides.

If possible can you share some statistics till date?(books sold and number of visitors, etc)

We can’t share exact statistics at this point but we are growing at the speed that we had expected when we first started out and we also met the goal that we had set for the first 3-4 months.

Finally, what are your suggestions for wanna be entrepreneurs in India?

Take the plunge. The timing couldn’t be better. And very importantly don’t go at it alone. Have at least one co-founder.

It was a real pleasure interacting with FlipKart founders and I wish them all the luck. Being part of a founding team in a start-up is one of the very exciting and challenging jobs I can think of. Every transaction a customer makes will lift up your spirits to a greater level, every good testimonial you receive keeps you excited about the future and every day is a new day with new challenges and opportunities which will unleash the creativity and talent you have got.

Comments

• January 18, 2008, Vasanth commented: A great site which i visited recently. The UI is very good and comparable with seventymm.com. No doubt, a true customer centric site. Good logo design. Banner design and color combination can be improved. You IItians rock the show. -Vasanth
• February 19, 2008, sudhir commented: It was a real pleasure interacting with FlipKart founders and I wish them all the luck. Being part of a founding team in a start-up is one of the very exciting and challenging jobs I can think of. Every transaction a customer makes will lift up your spirits to a greater level, every good testimonial you receive keeps you excited about the future and every day is a new day with new challenges and opportunities which will unleash the creativity and talent you have got.
• June 9, 2008, sid commented: these little iit people - they are just such a big bunch of fools. They get into everything which is blowign right, and they call a website an innovation!
• July 3, 2008, Vasudev commented: This is useless website, copying everything from other website. They do not deliver goods at the promised time. I think one must try nbcindia.com. No big claims only business

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“Today, we are India’s largest news broadcast group… We want to be a very large media and entertainment group with a significant presence across the television broadcast business, Internet and films, and filmed content space,” he says.

You seem quite aggressive in the Internet space. How do you see the business panning out?

We wish to be a big player in the consumer Internet space. It may be a small business as of now, but it will take off sooner than later. We
believe that media companies in the West have, in a way, missed this opportunity. They couldn’t foresee the growth of the Internet in the
manner it has happened. We are also very clear that we don’t want to be just a content player because that’s a given. We want to have a
significant play in the Internet consumer services business. Last year, our Internet operations contributed around Rs25 crore to the top-line and we see it doubling again this year. After the Viacom deal, print and radio are the only two gaps in your media and entertainment business. So are some more announcements in the offing? We do want to have a presence in the print space, the business news space, to be precise, but there are no plans to get into radio. Radio is a local medium whereas we are a national player and we neither have the management bandwidth to run a local business nor the need to do so.

Read the entire interview at LiveMint

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Speaking of Indian software companies, he says that there will at least be one Indian IT company amongst the global top 10 by 2010. India companies have built great brand equity and are about five years ahead of their competitors. He also mentions that Indian domestic market is also poised for tremendous growth with India currently making up only 1% of the worlds IT spend.

Finally, he mentions how CTO’s and CIO’s should warm up and embrace Web 2.0 concepts and technologies such as wikis, UGC videos etc.

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Read the second installment of this interview here.

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“All remaining barriers are mostly in our mind. The reason most Indian companies concentrate on services is because of a certain aversion to risk, to trying out new things – an attitude of excessive caution.”

That caution is understandable in anyone who grew up in pre-liberalisation India, he adds. “The good news is that a new generation is coming,” without any such assumptions.

Remaining interview here.

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• May 2, 2007, Aravind commented: Thanks for taking note of the interview, Pranav! I see that you believe in Web 2.0 succeeding in India. Great :-) There can be services like Zoho who cater to the whole world and not just India.
• May 7, 2007, Sridhar Vembu, AdventNet (Zoho) CEO, interview - Part 2 « Startup Dunia - Indian startups and Entrepreneurship commented: [...] Earlier last week, Hindu had the first part of an interview with Sridhar Vembu, AdventNet CEO - the company behind the Zoho suite of services. [...]

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Knowledge@Wharton has an audio interview with Subroto about these principles that define a high performance entrepreneur.

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Read the full interview here. I would strongly suggest you read the interview - she gives some honest insight into how the Private Equity world works.

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I have been following her podcasts for quite some time and became more and more intrigued by the wide variety of people she interviews as part of her podcasts. She’s interviewed some prominent personalities such as Shyam Benegal, Vikram Chandra, RK Laxman, Ameen Sayani, Dr. Salman Akhtar, Rakyesh OmPrakash Mehra to name a few. I wanted to know more about how she chooses the subjects, how she got into podcasting and how her podcasting experience has been.

So, without further ado, here’s the interview.

1) How did the ‘Kamla Bhatt show’ start ? What was the motivation and the vision you had when you started out ?

Kamla: Much of what I have done all these years almost seems like preparation for what I am doing now. I have always wanted to do a radio show ever since I was a child. I never saw it as a choice - it is what I always wanted to do. I dreamt of doing my own show from way back when. Besides, radio on the web is a great means to get across to the world on what is happening in India and the Indian community.
A few years ago when my husband was running a streaming media company he suggested I launch my radio show, but I found the cost of hosting a streaming show to be expensive. More recently I discovered all these user friendly tools and started experimenting with it and before I knew it I was neck-deep in producing my own show. The current Kamla Bhatt Show preceded two other shows: Talk News India and News About India.

2) Why did you choose podcasting as the medium of expression ?

Kamla: Podcasting is a distribution channel for my radio show. I understand that in India only the government controlled radio stations can produce news-related shows and that is why most of the private radio stations are so entertainment heavy.
I also think that the radio experience is just as relevant whether it is delivered through ‘plain old airwaves’ (POA), the satellite or the Internet. What makes a radio show on the Internet different is that content is available anytime, anywhere to the user, and this allows me to focus on compelling and cutting-edge content that regular radio shows may miss out or may incorrectly perceive as not being viable.

My goal is to appeal to the inquisitive and thinking Indian or Indophile who wants to listen and enjoy a good conversation. It does not matter whether they live in India, UK, Tanzania, Malaysia, Singapore or the USA. The difference between a good and great interview is the same in each of these medium. In my view a great interview is more like a conversation among friends in familiar surroundings and that is what the show is all about. I get lot of emails from listeners who say that they enjoy listening to the conversation on their mp3 player when they go for their morning walks, or are traveling by bus or plane. I think that is great validation from real listeners and the market place. That validation cannot be bought or influenced.

3) Were you familiar with the nitty-gritties of podcasting ? Was there a learning curve ? If so, how did you work your way around it ?

Kamla: I was not familiar with the nitty gritty of using any audio related software. However once I discovered the software I started playing around with it and learnt the basics of using the product. Yes, initially I had quite a few harrowing days learning the software and how to convert the files into mp3 etc.

4) How was your first podcasting experience ? Any memories / nightmarish problems you ran into ?

Kamla: I think I took to podcasting like a duck takes to water and whatever initial problems I encountered were minimal in my perception. In the end my perception is my reality and I think that mindset helped me focus on creating good interviews and not dwell on the technical challenges. Some of my initial podcasting experience involved interviewing street performers in New York city and I thoroughly enjoyed doing those. One of my initial interviews was with this wonderful woman Flower Silliman, a Baghdadi Jewish person from Calcutta, who now lives in New York. Flower was such a delight to interview and in interviewing her I fulfilled a long-held dream of mine of interviewing Baghdadi Jewish families that had ties to China in the 19th century. My graduate thesis was on the Opium Trade between British Indian and China where I read some fascinating accounts of Baghdadi Jews and Parsees involved in the opium trade to China.

5) I have been following your show for quite some time and there a couple in particular which found very interesting - Ameen Sayani and Vikram Chandra. Ameen Sayani’s one especially brought back very fond memories from his radio show. That’s what got me intrigued about one very particular question - How do you choose the subject of your next podcast ?

Kamla: The number one source for suggestions come from my listeners who send me emails with their suggestions and people they are interested in listening to in the show. Besides that I have a dynamic wish list in my mind about the kinds of people I would like to talk to. I want to find out how they started and what motivated them to chose their field. I think that informs and colors my choice of people that I feature on the show. Mr. Sayani was right up there on my list.
On a broader note what anchors the show is the tagline: Life, People and Ideas…the message says it all… these are the strands that connect the Indian Diaspora across the world. There is nothing that brings me greater joy and satisfaction in watching their interplay. The radio show helps me convey the nuances and complexities of their interactions. And this is not just about the mechanics of radio. As I mentioned, in my view a great interview is more like a conversation among friends in familiar surroundings and also learning about the lessons of life.

Why reinvent the wheel? There are others before me who have struggled to find their groove and passion. I often look to see what I can learn from these people in fulfilling my dream of doing a great radio show.

6) Deciding upon the podcast subject is difficult. But equally difficult is actually getting hold / an appointment with the subject. Not only can it be a time consuming but also a frustrating process. How do you manage this part ?

Kamla: I guess it is hard work and luck? I don’t get to interview everybody on my wish list. If I don’t get somebody I move on. I guess my training in sales has helped me to move on and not to take these rejections personally or in a permanent way. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my sales day is that there are different kinds of sales techniques and one of the best that is out there is relationship selling and a genuine interest in the people you are talking to. When they are ready I am sure they will talk. There is no point in pursuing a subject needlessly.

7) For the uninitiated folks like myself - Can you describe the entire process from start to finish - narrowing the podcast subject to the actual editing and uploading of the podcast - what all is actually involved ?

Kamla: I always having a running list of people I want to interview embedded in my head. Once the subject agrees we do the interview and I prefer to do it in-person. I then edit the audio file multiple times and generally this process may take a few hours and sometimes might spill into a a couple of days. Once I am satisfied with the audio quality, I create the right tags, a brief text description and sometimes an associated blog. I then upload the content. Simple.

8 ) Are all the podcast interviews done in person or over the phone too ?

Kamla: A combination of both.

9) How many hours on an average do you spend for doing one podcast ?

Kamla: Oh it varies and can take anywhere from 12-18 hours and this includes researching on the subject, the actual interview, editing, writing etc. This is basically a one-person show and is driven purely by passion.

10) Is the Kamla Bhatt show a single person effort or is there a team behind the effort ?

Kamla: A single person effort with a lot of emotional support from my husband Deepak Srinivasan. I could not do the show without his support.

11) How many visitors / page views / subscribers is Kamla Bhatt show getting ?

Kamla: I cannot disclose that at the moment - but suffice it to say I have an engaged audience.

12) So far, I havent noticed ads or other means of revenue generation. Do you intend to generate revenue from the Kamla Bhatt show ? If so how ? If not, why not ?

Kamla: Yes, it is a conscious decision not to run advertisements. Well, there are some ideas in the pipeline.

13) Do you have a day time job that pays the bills?
Kamla: My radio show pays my bills.

14) I noticed you spend your time equally between US and India - is that for personal or professional reasons?
Kamla: I do this for professional reasons.

15) What are your plans / long term vision for the show?
Kamla: I would love to get on the airwaves in India.

16) Of all the podcasts you have done, any favorites?
Kamla: Oh there are so many that is difficult to choose. I enjoyed interviewing Shyam Benegal, Dr. Salman Akhtar, Mr. Ameen Sayani, Beth Watkins, Indu, the mallishwali, Baldev Sharma, the New Delhi cab driver and a couple of others who are in the pipeline like Mr. R.K. Laxman and Mr. V.K. Murthy cinematographer to Guru Dutt. Bottomline, I have enjoyed interviewing each one of the guests in the show and each time I come away learning something new and different and I feel richer for that.

17) If you were to sum up and list the single most benefit you’ve gained out of your podcasting experience, what would it be?

Kamla: When I used to report for various magazines my friends would always tell me that I had a knack of drawing out people. I did not believe them then and used to brush it off. But, now when I am producing my radio show I realize that I truly enjoy connecting with people and finding out what keeps them motivated and going. What can I learn from them at a personal level? What I hear most is from my subjects and from some of my fans as well - as to how they deal with their successes and their rejections, the ups and downs of life. These are people who have been there and done that and are in many ways much better informed than me.

18) Any suggestions to others who would be interested getting into podcasting?

Kamla: First, you need to have the time and dedication to do it on a consistent basis. Learning how to use the software and record the interview are not difficult. You cannot substitute passion and genuine interest in people. Do not fake it if you don’t have it.

19) Finally, how does it feel to be in the hot seat yourself ?

Kamla: Well, I don’t consider myself to be in the hot seat. Just answering your thoughtful questions gave me an opportunity to think and refresh my own perspective. And, thanks for taking the time to do this. Wish you all the best with your Startup Dunia venture Pranav.

Thanks Kamla for taking the time and sharing your experiences with us.

Comments

• April 10, 2007, Kamla Bhatt Blog » Interview with Startup Dunia commented: [...] Pranav from Startup Dunia has an interview with me that you can read here. No comments for Interview with Startup Dunia » [...]
• April 11, 2007, G Vishwanath commented: Kamla, That was great to read. For a change you were answering and not asking. A lot of questions that I had in mind were asked and answered. Keep up the good work which I find contemporary, creative, interesting, useful and entertaining. I have tried other podcasts and blogs (both desi and international) but your web site which I stumbled on quite by accident, just a few weeks ago, struck a chord in me and is one of the few I visit regularly. As part of my work, I spend over 10 hours in front of the computer every day and I find myself using every opportunity to cash in on small free time slices during my busy day to take a quick peep into your web site and catch up on the latest podcast you have to offer and download it in the background to listen to later or transfer to my ipod for the weekend treat. Often, the subject is such that I am unable to control the urge to react with a quick comment on the fly, like I am doing now. I said this before in a private maiil to your and I will say it again here in public. In addition to your dedication and passion for this medium, you have a great natural asset that is not so common. You have a great voice. It's just right for this medium. In me, you can count on a loyal listener of your podcasts and a "prolific" (to use your own word) commenter on your blog postings. I hope this unsolicited praise from me ( a person who has nothing to gain) will make your day and spur you on to even greater success. All the best. G Vishwanath JP Nagar, Bangalore.

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Niladri Roy has an interesting interview with K Ganesh on the topic of online tutoring, related obstacles and the future of online tutoring.

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Here’s an interview with the founders, Manish Agrawal and Kartik Jain.

1. How did Picsquare originate? How did you get the concept behind Picsquare?

Picsquare originated as the need felt by one of its founder when he was in US. There are roughly 20million Indians staying abroad and having connections in India. On many occasions they want to share their life with their loved ones abroad through medium of photographs. Hence Picsquare is providing them a convenient medium of sharing.

2. What is your target audience? Does Picsquare cater only to NRIs or to India-based customers too?

Picsquare started in December 2005 targeting only NRIs. Currently Picsquare is focusing on both India-based customers and NRIs.

3. There are other sites that provide a similar service. What is it that makes Picsquare unique amongst others offering similar services? Any significant features people should know about?

The unique value that Picsquare is providing to users is the service quality. Picsquare is focusing a lot on providing world quality service to users; be it print quality, delivery times, user experience. It’s an ongoing effort; we are continuously innovating, learning from our mistakes and are trying to improve ourselves.

A part from photo prints, users can create few other exciting stuff like personalized greeting cards and t-shirts. We are looking out for vendors to introduce more products.

4. If India based customers can also use Picsquare, how do you plan to compete with local photo printing services?

Picsquare has clear differentiator with the local photo printing services – convenience and ability to do much more with photo other than printing different sizes on paper like personalized greeting cards and t-shirts.

However, Picsquare is not directly competing with all the printing labs. The strategy is to partner with them and create a win-win for both the business.

5. A lot of users have existing photos uploaded to Yahoo Photos/Flickr — any features in the works to import those pictures to Picsquare?

Yes, that’s true; a lot of users have uploaded their photographs else where. And it’s a big hassle to upload it again. We would definitely be trying to solve this problem. At this time, we can commit when exactly we will have that solution.

6. How well is Picsquare doing? Any significant milestones/accomplishments so far?

Picsquare has been doing well so far. It’s a year old company; the journey so far has been very exciting and exhilarating.

7. We just noticed that the Site design and the layout were recently overhauled — what prompted this change? What changes/feedback (if any) have you noticed after this site redesign?

Picsquare is an India focused website, we wanted to make the website look more Indian. The colors, pictures all have been selected keeping Indian audience in mind. The overhaul is not a one time process. We are constantly working on the user feedback to make it more users friendly.

8. Some of the key technologies used on Picsquare?

Picsquare provides features like a) Uploader tool – for easy upload of photos, b) Tagging – for effective management of photographs, c) Storage – unlimited storage capacity.

There are few new features in pipeline and will be introduced soon.

9. Could you tell us more about your team and their roles? Before founding Picsquare, what did you guys do in your previous life?

Picsquare is founded by two first generation entrepreneurs – Kartik Jain and Manish Agrawal. They both are engineer graduated from IIT Bombay. They worked for

Kartik before starting Picsquare, worked with large scale IT company. Manish did his Masters from Purdue and worked with a startup company.

Picsquare is a small team of 6 members including founders. Currently both founders are wearing multiple hats and handling responsibilities including overall execution, marketing, operation and technology development.

However Picsquare is looking for passionate individuals who could join the team and help take Picsquare to the next level.

10. How is your startup being funded so far? You did receive an offer for VC funding some time back, but decided not to go for it — what prompted that decision? Going forward, are you looking for any angel / VC funding?

Picsquare is funded by angel investors from Silicon Valley.

Yes, Picsquare did receive favorable response from US based investors, however the deal didn’t happen as the negotiation couldn’t reach to a common ground.
Picsquare is looking for Series-A VC funding for growing the business and taking it to next level.

11. Do you have any advisors / mentors whom you seek advise about day to day operations or strategy?

Picsquare from day one is actively mentored by advisors and that has helped a lot. Sanjay Swamy was our first advisor; he is currently heading mobile payment startup - mChq.

12. Where do you see Picsquare going forward? How do you plan on accomplishing your goals?

We would like to see Picsquare as one stop shop for all the photography related needs of Indian community. The only way we can accomplish this is by execution. And the team has its head down on execution. We are confidant that we will reach there.

13. What are some of the key challenges you face and how do you plan on tackling them?

The biggest challenge that Picsquare is facing is hiring people. It’s hard to find people who are interested in working for startups.
We are actively looking to have a senior biz development in our team.

14. How has the entrepreneurial journey been so far? What part of entrepreneurship do you love? What do you hate?

The entrepreneurial journey so far has been very exciting. It’s been very challenging bumpy ride but end of the day it’s a very satisfactory experience.
The part we love about entrepreneurship is: we get to meet lot of different people and there is a learning opportunity in every meeting. And success is all about learning process. There is nothing particular that we hate about entrepreneurship.

15. Any advice for current/future entrepreneurs?

We have seen many people spending too much time analyzing their idea before actually going out and executing. They spend so much time that at the end they loose all enthu, get distracted and end up not executing.
One should analyze but should not go over board. An idea without execution is worth nothing.

16. What is your daily schedule like?

We end up working 13-14 hours a day, but trust me its fun.

17. How has entrepreneurship affected your lifestyle?

It depends on how you see it. Entrepreneurs do spend long hours working and people think it affects their life style as they don’t find much time for themselves. However, we feel it has improved our lifestyle. It has ingrained in us a sense of confidence that we have ability to take any challenge no matter what.

18. Anything that you wished, you would have done differently?

Nothing so far

19. Any question you may want to answer and no one has asked so far?

We would like ask readers a question:
What do you think is the risk you are taking when you decide to leave your job a take a plunge into entrepreneurship? Looking forward to read your comments on this.

Comments

• December 2, 2006, Sarang commented: Well.... The only risk I think in quitting job is monetary backup. I have been chewing this idea about entrepreneurship right from the day I started thinking about 'What I want to be?' With some Rs. 50k-100k in my bank account, I may not make an effort to jump into an effort which will not pay me back, at least for a couple of years. But then - ultimately this is one of the problems faced by almost all the first-gen entrepreneurs. And moreover, the excitement of building something from scratch is worth taking this risk!
• January 9, 2007, dharma commented: I really have some great entrepreneurial ideas but have no idea how to go for it or get funding for the same. I have a project report etc ready, do we go with a limited working prototype and get funding to add the advanced features or go with the project report to a VC, sell the project report and get the funding to implement a full scale product?
• March 22, 2007, Uday Kadam commented: Hey, As you asked...you want someone to join your company..and take it to the new level....i am interested....please do call me...919326828336. or mail me at udkadam@gmail.com. waiting for reply.... Thanks And Regards, Uday

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Bixee was founded by Ruban Phukan and Rajesh Warrier - ex-yahooligans from Bangalore, who now call themselves as RHR Networks Pvt. Ltd. They seem to be dabbling in quite a number of things : * PixRat - Bookmark and Tag Photos from the Web * ApnaMarket - Bangalore Classifieds * QuestionBank - Job Interview Questions and Answers

Here’s an interview with Ruban Phukan about Bixee:

1. Can you tell us more about Bixee ? Also, does “Bixee” signify/mean anything ?
Ruban: Bixee is a job search engine for India. It crawls and indexes jobs from various leading job portals, company websites and newpaper websites and provides an advanced search interface to users to do their research for jobs available in India. It is very similar to a web search engine, just that it indexes jobs instead of webpages. The users can do a search, get the most relevant results from across these various websites with a snippet of the job description and then click on a result title to go to the destination website (job portal, company website etc) where they can view the complete details and also apply for the job.

Regarding the name “Bixee”, we wanted a name that was unique and cool and also easy to remember. The product that we were building was to enable users get the best matching jobs from the “big sea” of the Indian job market. Bixee is phonetically similar to “big sea”.

2. How and when did Bixee originate ? How did you get the concept behind Bixee ?
Ruban: We launched Bixee around the last quarter of 2005. The Indian job market was growing exponentially (it still is). And there were many jobs portals getting launched (there still are). Also the job consultants were coming up with their own websites and the companies were listing jobs on their corporate websites. All these resulted in an increased fragmentation of the online job listings market, making it difficult for a job searcher to keep pace with the new opportunities in the job market.

We wanted to provide the job searchers a unique tool that provides them an aggregated view of jobs available across these various websites. Hence we came up with the concept of a job search engine for India.

3. What audience are you targetting ?
Ruban: Our target audiences are all professionals irrespective of whether they are actively seeking for jobs or not. This is because Bixee is not only a job search engine for the job searchers but also a great tool to research for the new opportunities and demands in the market and also to keep an eye on the growth of the industry in general.

4. What technologies are used on Bixee?
Ruban: In Bixee we use a combination of open source and our proprietary technologies.

5. What is Bixee’s business model ?
Ruban: The primary business model for Bixee is advertisements. We are working on several different models which we would be rolling out soon.

6. How is Bixee doing so far? Job market in India is currently on a roll. Have you been seeing a spike in the user base ? Any new features in the works ?
Ruban: Bixee is doing quite satisfactorily. We have seen a steady growth in our traffic throughout. We are constantly working on improving the coverage of jobs and the relevance of the results to help the job searchers get the best matching jobs. We would also be rolling out several features to aid and improve the overall search experience.

7. What are some of the sites Bixee covers/crawls ?What are some of the most popular job searches ?
Ruban: Bixee covers most of the leading job portals and companies in India.

We get a fairly distributed searches happening on Bixee across various job categories. Most common searches happen for jobs in the technology sector.

8. Any significant milestones / accomplishments so far ?
Ruban: Comprehensiveness is definitely one of the most important milestones for us. We have a very good coverage of jobs in India now.

9. Recently, there were some legal problems related to Bixee’s crawling and deeplinking of other India based job portals. What is the status of those legal problems ? Any changes that you needed to make to Bixee to accomodate the legal bindings ?
Ruban: They have been resolved.

10. Could you tell us more about your team and their roles? Before founding Bixee, what did you guys do in your previous life ?
Ruban: Bixee team now comprises of just the two founders – Rajesh Warrier and Ruban Phukan (that’s me). We were working with Yahoo! prior to starting Bixee.

11. How is your startup being funded so far?
Ruban: As of now we are self-funded.

12. Any known competitors in this space ?
Ruban: Bixee was the first job search engine to launch in India. Our primary competitors in India now are Yahoo! and Rediff who have also launched job search.

13. Do you have any advisors / mentors whom you seek advise about day to day operations or strategy ?
Ruban: We have several advisors and well wishers both in India and abroad, both from the technology and the business arenas, who have been providing us with valuable guidance from time to time. We are currently working on setting up the Board of Advisors and bringing them onboard officially.

14. Where do you see Bixee going forward? How do you plan on accomplishing your goals? Any exit strategy on mind ?
Ruban: The short term goal is definitely to continue to improve the service offered by Bixee and provide the best value to the job searchers in India. We plan to expand the team and continue to innovate and improve on the technology that powers our job search.

We plan to expand our coverage globally in the long term.

15. What are some of the key challenges you face and how do you plan on tackling them?
Ruban: The primary challenges for any web service provider are: user acquisition, retention, engagement and monetization. So far we have been moderately successful with acquisition and retention. But we still have a long way to go. We have some clearly defined plans and strategies for tackling each of these key challenges.

16. If this is your first venture into entrepreneurship,how has the entrepreneurial journey been so far ? What part of entrepreneurship do you love ? What do you hate?
Ruban: Yes, this is our first venture into entrepreneurship. It has been a roller coaster ride with a rich and diverse learning experience. What we love most, is to be able to offer a service to users that help them in their career growth. We hate the small distractions, of various kinds, which of course are quite inevitable while running a business and more so at the early startup stages.

17. Any advice for current/future entrepreneurs?
Ruban: This is something that we religiously follow ourselves – “Great products that cater to urgent needs of consumers, build great businesses”. So focusing on building a great product and solving urgent needs of users will automatically build a great business. And this can only be achieved by thinking like a consumer while building the products.

18. What is your daily schedule like ?
Ruban: We don’t have a fixed schedule. We are still a two person startup and we wear different hats at different times. So our schedule varies much according to the hat that we are wear.

19. How has entrepreneurship affected your lifestyle ?
Ruban: It definitely has affected our lifestyle to a certain extent. We now can’t really tell a weekday from a weekend

20. Anything that you wished, you would have done differently ?
Ruban: Well, there are many things. But this is very nature of entrepreneurship. You experiment a lot. Some experiments go right and others go wrong. For all those that have gone wrong, you always wish that you had done it differently. But the good part is that every failed experiment brings with it a rich learning. And we believe that success that is built on the foundation of experience learnt from failed experiments is much more sustainable and replicable.

21. Any question you may want to answer and no one has asked so far?
Ruban:Q: Which came first – chicken or egg ?
A: Chicken. Do a whois lookup for chicken.com and egg.com and compare the creation dates

That was Ruban Phukan, co-founder of Bixee.com. We wish Ruban and Rajesh good luck with their venture.

Comments

• December 30, 2006, suraj kumar sharma commented: Ruban was my one of the best friend and guide before semester exam when we were at REC Surathkal. He had always a passion for opening his own dream company. This guy has vision and never say die attitude and i strongly believe that's all is required to be successful as an entrepreneur. Also he is a great human being and has lots of integrity .I wish him good luck for the path he has chosen. All the best Ruban.
• February 24, 2007, Startup Dunia - Indian startups and Entrepreneurship » Blog Archive » RHR Networks - owners of Bixee, Pixrat acquired !!! commented: [...] Here’s my interview with Ruban Phukan, one of the founders of RHR Networks. [...]
• April 25, 2007, mohit batra commented: Bixee has another competitor in Gladoo.com an IT focused job search engine in India.

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