Started by two grads from NIT, Trichy - interviewstreet.com takes the preparation for interviews to a new level. The idea is very simple - making me wonder why it has not occurred to me earlier any time :-).

In simple terms, the product provides a platform for interviewees to attend mock interviews. While the interviews are mock, the interviewers are not - the interviewers are experienced folks in their areas of expertise. Both the interviewer and interviewee should register on the site. The actual interview happens through phone (mobile/voip). The interviewee will have to pay for every mock interview s/he attends. The interviewer will get part of that money and the difference goes to interviewstreet.com for providing a commong platform for the interviewer and interviewee.

This is actually one of the very few web startups that I have seen where there is a revenue model clearly defined at such an early stage.

The website currently focuses on job interviews - especially for final year graduates. But from what I heard, it will be extended to provide mock interviews for various competitive exams also in future.  There are quite a few areas services can be expanded by providing webcam based interviews, tie up with organizations to screen people at first levels etc etc.

The website also provides nice user generated content in form of question banks for written exams and discussion forums to discuss answers. The site also recognizes people with highest and accurate contributions by giving them ratings. This will definitely increase the stickiness of the site.

The user interface still can improve (does not seem to provide consistent experience across browsers), but considering that the website states it is “alpha” release, this should be fine.

Overall, simple idea - neatly executed.

Anyone who has a kid at home knows how “useless” it is buy a toy - most of time the toy becomes useless from the next day it is bought home as the child quickly loses interest in the toy after the initial exploration. Now starts the trouble for parents  - first the toy is so expensive, next no one uses it and thirdly there is no space to keep it!

Here is the answer in form of online toy library - rentoys.in where one can rent branded toys of choice instead of buying expensive stuff. While the concept of online rentals is not at all new - the freshness of idea is on the product that is being rented out - toys.

The website is a very well laid out with attractive toy theme. Here is the process - become a member by paying a refundable deposit, non-refundable membership fee and monthly rentals there on. There are three different packages to choose from (Rs. 199/- pm to Rs. 399/- pm). Post that, browse the toys catalogue, pick up one or more toys (based on your package) and order it online. The selected toy will get delivered at door step in 2-5 days.

Some things that I really liked:

1. Excellent User Interface.
2. Good categorization of toys based on age groups
3. You can rent for short periods as well instead of becoming a member and pay monthly rentals. This is very useful during vacation period for kids or when one kids of relatives visiting homes for holidays.
4. You can buy the toy you have taken on rent at probably much lesser price.
5. You get discount of 5-15% on new toys!

Overall simple concept, nicely executed. Now the bad news - as of now this is available only in Bangalore. Not sure if the founders want to extend to other cities.

I came across this start up - TrackEveryCoin.com. The website name tells it all. This is basically a way to track the money one spends. The product/service is yet to be launched. As per the website, there are two ways to use this service -

1. Download a app on to your mobile (needs GPRS) and/or

2. Buy a key chain sort of hardware (called as TECI)

Basically, either the mobile or the TECI will provide mechanism to input data that gets synched up with database.

Though the startup seems to be funded by Govt. of India, to me this is absolutely not exciting.  This seems to be a very complicated solution to a very simple and common problem of expense tracking - especially the custom hardware piece.

See how elegantly the problem of expense management is solved by Xpenser. One can submit the expenses by myriad ways - email, sms, twitter, voice mail(!), IM, website itself etc. One can take picture of the bill/receipt and send email along with the description - you can have your expenses and the associated bills together! It even provides API for anyone to use/extend Xpenser the way they would like to!  People in India (or non-US/Canada residents) can use sms interface of Xpenser via twitter - as mentioned in the faq.

Actually, I hope that someone will work with Xpenser folks and create SMS interface so that users can send SMS to an India based number - instead of the current work around via Twitter. Given the way SMS is popular in India, it will be embraced by one and all very easily.

If you have a dream of leaving your well paid job and then starting something on your own you MUST read this one on Sky Diving (hopefully before leaving the job :)  ) - Sky Diving.  Too good.

I could not find a better summary of the thought process that goes in the mind of a Entrepreneur.

If “Buying home to get safer..” article in Times of India comes true - this is a huge reason to cheer for most Indians. This is a proposal to impose regulations on the property developers to ensure the buyer is protected.

Buying a property is a nightmare here with not even a single builder treating customers fairly. Almost every builder will promise more and deliver less and at times does not even deliver. The buyers are left high and dry as they would have already deposited their hard earned savings and in addition paying the bank loans.

If this bill becomes a reality, the developer will have to specify the “living area” clearly. Everywhere the sale is done based on the super built up area which is ~30-35% more than the living area and this is where the developers make their money.

The clause I liked most here is

“If there is any deviation from the advertisement, the promoter has to compensate buyers for any loss due to false information. In case of pulling out of a project, the builder has to return the money with interest at a rate not more than current rate.”

I wish this was the case when I bought my flat. The builder where I bought the flat promised to provide facilities like Jogging track, Maze Garden, Koi Pond (not sure how it looks )- and towards the end of the project, these mystically vanished. Most other amenities promised are of scaled down versions of what was promised (or what was marketed as). Any questions to the builder on these are met with a blank response and evasive answers if the owners persist. 

Also, per the proposed law, builder cannot impose additional charges once the sale deed is done - this is a real boon. The number of times builders charge extra in name of cost escalation of input materials and in name of getting additional approvals from civic agencies is very frequent. For example, my builder suddenly discovered towards the completion of project that installing Solar Water Heater is mandatory to get clearance and thus asked owners to cough up Rs. 50,000/- extra.

Hopefully, with the new bill, these issues will be reduced drastically.

I would like to meet the person who has invented break-time in the TV world. I’d send him/her flowers or maybe just go up to them and give a congratulatory pat on the back. It is one of the best things that ever happened to the TV, since TV.

For without breaks – the dish on the stove would have got burnt for lack of stirring for the past 10 whole minutes. If not for them – family members would have never caught up with each other’s day and stealthily change the channel to the one of their choice. Thanks to breaks you get tomorrow’s preview of your favourite serial and you can better plan your allegiances to the dance contest or the talent show. I personally found it most useful whenever I watch horror movies alone at night. It is nail-biting moment when the heroine is backing up against the wall pensively looking to her left and right. Suddenly the white eyeballed vampire juts his long sharp nails through the wall and around her neck. At the precise moment, your screams and her screams are muffled mercifully in the happy jingle of the coy wife who simply loves her husband’s irresistible inner wear.

Breaks are life savers – you get just the optimum time to get your heartbeat back to normal, make that long pending visit to the nearest rest room and get that bowl of popcorn for company for which they claim the ad was made in the first place. By extension – break-time gets ingrained into all spheres of life – showing how well rounded and applicable the concept is. At office, you don’t have to remind yourself to look far, near, up and down to counter that dry eye. Your body gets so used to the “break after 10 minutes” routine that you automatically get up, stretch your self, chat with your colleague across the cubicle wall and go back to your computer refreshed.

Even your friendly neighbourhood Bai signs off her day with a “See you same time, same place, after the break.” And you are rest assured that she will indeed turn up the next day. You can return missed calls, open the door for hubby waiting outside, paint your nails, water half the plants – the possibilities are endless. In fact, there’s cooperation from all quarters assisting you in the endeavor.

There’s the story of this beggar who was about to knock at the door for a little meal. He was advised thus - “Wait for the break. You are more likely to get something from the lady of the house”. Needless to say he was suitably given the break-fast he wanted.

I had a little surprise in store today from ICICI - the bank quietly has imposed a service charge of Rs. 5 + service tax for online fund transfers effective Aug 24th 2009. While the amount is nominal, I am 100% sure this is a regressive step. I was about to do a fund transfer, then realized this service tax, cancelled the transaction and issued a check. I am sure ICICI is going to spend more to process this check.

Is it not in the ICICI’s interest to reduce paper work and efforts? While every other organization is going the extra mile to move things online and cut their costs, not sure of this absolutely regressive decision by ICICI. May be Ms. Kochhar saw this as a huge revenue generating initiative.

This is not the first time ICICI has given such shock treatment to me. They  charged 100/- to my acct since I did not spend min. limit of 10,000/- on the ATM card. When I said, I don’t need the ATM card as my primary transactions are online, they say it is mandatory to have ATM card.

Next time, probably I will just go back to old days, withdraw cash and do cash transactions directly or even better move out of ICICI and go to a better bank.

Came across this really cool technology - ScreenR.

This is a online screen casting tool - one can record screens directly thru web browser with out installing any sort of software. One can record a screencast of up to 5 minutes. The resulting video can be tweeted, uplaoded to youtube, downloaded on to hard disk in mp4 format.

I was able to generate the following screencast in less than a minute.

Very very useful to create brief demos or advertisements or user guides.

The best part is - it is FREE! No hassles of freeware/shareware installations.

You can bookmark this link - http://screenr.com/record/recordingbookmark and can start recording from anywhere.

Happy screencasting!

Came across this online group shopping place - govasool.com.

The basic idea is simple, yet very innovative. Buyers can form a virtual group to buy one item. Sellers can bid for the order with their prices. Idea is that the more the number of buyers, the lower the prices will be at which sellers will bid, providing a bulk discount. The buyers will finally have to pay the lowest price  bid creating a win-win situation for everyone.

I do not remember seeing such online service anywhere else.

One can search and compare products as well on the website. As of now this portal services only Bangalore city. This is a killer idea (and unfortunately easily replicable for people who are already in the online market place biz). The founders will have to rapidly expand to other cities to make an impact.

I haven’t tried buying anything yet, so cannot really comment on the timely and accurate delivery.

Wordpress announced url shortening - wp.me. This is absolutely brilliant stuff. The awsesome part is that every wordpress post will now have a permanent short url. Simple idea, brilliantly executed.

Looks like one of the good start up ideas is to start a portal for the Indian Startups

This post is about a few portals/blogs that I came across which are focused on Indian Startups. I am listing them here (in probably no order of preference) -

1. Pluggd.in
2. Startups.in
3. Theindianstartup.com
4. StartupDuniya

There are couple more I am familiar with like Hot Indian Startups and  Indian Web 2, but they exactly do not fall under the category of portals/blogs similar to the ones mentioned in above list.

Then, there is Proto.in which is not really a portal, but a platform that provides product startups to get visibility with media/investors. The website is more to cover the Proto.in events than anything else.

Now, almost all these blogs/portals’ objective is very similar - do a review or provide a online place / community for startups with special focus on companies that are based out of India (or startups targeting Indian customers). 

Most of them attempt to bring various Entrepreneurs, VCs,  Investors together, provide an online community sharing/discussing content that aids entrepreneurs.  They also provide a “free” platform to promote the start up by getting in listed in their respective directories and then provide reviews of various startups. Almost all of them attempt to get revenues thru online ADs.

A quick comparison on Alexa throws up that the most popular portal is pluggd.in and that it is way ahead of others.

Traffic trend comparison of Indian Startup portals

 

Page View Trend comparison of Indian Startup Portals

From content perspective, I believe pluggd.in has it all. But the look & feel of pluggd.in leaves a lot to be desired, in my view. Its too bland & disorganized for my liking.

TheIndianStartups appears to have been launched recently and is yet to attain critical mass w.r.t content.

I found that StartupDuniya even though is a personal blog, has quite unique content and has lots of potential to scale.

Overall, there definitely seems quite a head room for some one to start one more online portal for Indian Startups.

Came across this start up - bighelp.in - provider of virutal private assistants - to take care of errands that take up time. Basically, BigHelp is a service provider who provides a virtual personal assistant who takes orders from you and does the job - freeing up your time.

I am sure this is a great business to be in provided the service is perfect. This is only available in Mumbai as of now, hope to see it in Bangalore soon to experiment the service.

Similar providers elsewhere -

http://www.taskseveryday.com/
http://www.taskus.com/
http://www.siri.com/ 
http://getfriday.com/

Got this below thru forwarded email (also remember seeing a news snippet in Times of India).

You can now get any vehicle’s details from RTO. Just SMS, RTO followed by registration no. (Example: RTO KA-05-MR-7678) to 56006. This will be very useful in hit & run cases. Pass it on to as many people you know. This works well for Karnataka (KA) registered vehicles only. SMS charge will be Rs.3

I tried with my car number and immediately got response with name, chasis number etc. (no address - thankfully). I am really puzzled with this service. How exactly does this benefit the a common citizen? Even for hit & run cases, the biggest challange is in noting down the number - if one can note down the number the same can be passed on to police who can track down the vehicle.

I see this more as a security risk as it just exposes the vehicle details to any one who can potentially misuse. Not really sure what purpose of this sms service is. I really hope this will be stopped soon.

Google did the most expected - announce an OS to compete with Microsoft. After all, if Microsoft announces Bing which reportedly scared Google, what else can Google do other than this? May be Google will launch a “internet” database soon stating current databases are created when internet was not there. 

Is Google forgetting its own philosophy? The #2 item in its philosophy states

“It’s best to do one thing really, really well.“

Not sure in what way competing with MS on OS is really the thing that Google wants to do. Definitely a big deviation from the thing it does best - search.

I have no doubt that Google OS will have some cool and amazing features like its other products and with all the brains Google has hired it may even be the best OS that we have seen till date - but my bigger question - is this OS really necessary? Does this really benefit the end  users? Is this re-inventing old stuff really necessary? Google did this re-invention earlier with GMail which was in beta for 4+ years. Did it change anything in the way we communicate other than providing one more email id to users and some more free disk space. Needless to say it added some cool UI features, but beyond that nothing much.

With Google OS, instead of having MS monopoly on just the OS, users now will have Google monopoly on data/information. Already Google provides easy access of “your” data to every one with ease. GMail anyway “peeks into” your email  to serve context sensitive ads. Now, with Google internet savvy OS, Google can track everything the end user does, potentially aim to store everything byte of information that a user has within Google servers.

In my view, Windows will anyway evolve to cater to the internet generation. Google just accelerated it by announcing the Google OS. 

Google should really concentrate on innovating something new and different instead of blindly competing with Microsoft. I am sure Google can do better.

Just came across this cool website - http://txt2re.com/ thru Venkat’s tweet. It is basically regular expression generator in several languages - Perl, PHP, Python, Javascript, ColdFusion , C /C++ , Java, Ruby , VB , VBScript,  J#.net , C#.net , C++.net , VB.net.

Its  really useful and reduces lots and lots of effort, time & headache when writing scripts where we typically parse for specific fields in an input string.  Simple and extremely useful website.