Startup Buddies is an initiative from Amit Singh of HeadStart - In Amit’s words - “Startup Buddies is a community initiative where 5-6 entrepreneurs meet every month to acknowledge what they have accomplished in the previous month and declare what they are taking on for the next. This way they all push each other to set and meet higher targets while building a culture of excellence amongst themselves.”

Group of 26 folks met on May 8th after the startup saturday event and are randomly divided into 4 groups. I (representing ApnaComplex) am of the first group along with  Amit, Jesintha from JoJe, Harsha from Variable3,  Saji from Shaman Collections, and Suresh.

We had the first meet today amongst our group to discuss in depth of current problems, brainstorming on solutions and taking up action items to implement in coming month.  Though Harsha & Suresh could not make it, I must say this was a very effective session today with ideas flowing in all participants for the challenges. We almost went to extent of re-defining the entire business itself  for couple of us. We were also pushing each other to take more. Am sure everyone has some take away from the meeting.

The meeting also helped to see my business thru others eyes - which is of immense help. In addition, it helped socialize a bit - which was missing in life after I moved out of the job.

Overall, very good meeting as a starting point - need to see how it will be going forward.

Would definitely recommend to fellow entrepreneurs.

May be I am thinking too much.

It was a trip on a wednesday (now, that’s THE benefit of being an entrepreneur). Started at 11:30 AM at home. Reached Siripuram at 2:30 PM. Had halt as usual at BP Station near Krishnagiri - more for A2B coffee than for diesel :). The drive was so mechanical  - this is one thing I miss about the non-GQ days.

Now on NH47 as you reach Vellore, there are quite a few sign boards that show directions to Siripuram. Apparently all of them reach Siripuram through a different route. The one I took was pretty narrow with few potholes - but not that bad. From the highway, Siripuram is about 4 kms from where I took the turn - but if you take the right turn near Pallikonda (immediately after the toll gate), it would be about 11 kms - but the road is bit wide compared to what I took.

It was so hot in Vellore that we skipped our plans to visit Vellore fort and decided to take rest in Innova itself for an hour before we venture out into the temple.  We took the Rs. 250/- ticket even though there is not much of a rush - just to see the sprawling campus and the temple more closer. Once inside the temple, we had to walk around 2 kms in a star shaped path before we actually get near the deity. It was an easy walk. We walked slowly so that we can see the golden temple in lights. Once our darshan was over, came back and started off at 8:00pm. Reached Bangalore at 12:00am. Got significantly slowed down due to the traffic and also was feeling sleepy. So had to take 3-4 breaks. While coming back I took the 11kms road from Siripuram joining NH47 at Pallikonda.

I felt that the temple is more of a commercial establishment than a temple. There were too many photos/images of Amma Shakti to my liking. You will forced to enter to small stalls selling some pooja items, sarees, souvenirs as a part of the queue to the temple. All said and done, worth a visit once just to see the beauty of temple in gold than anything else.

The vibrant, yet extremely simple logo for Apnacomplex and the home was designed by Dotline Designs. They seem to have done a good job - have got quite a few good comments from friends on the logo and I really love it (both the logo and the comments ).

Looking back it is probably one of the fastest launches - while the idea for apnacomplex dates back to 2007, full time work only started in April 2010. I must say the past 7 weeks have been the most satisfying as far the quality of work is concerned. The work is as varied as it can get - from UI Design, to finding why IE6 displays the forms weirdly, finalizing the name “apnacomplex”, evaluating hosting providers, reading SEO articles, putting thoughts together for logo design, finding open source libraries (more on that in a separate post), figuring out why Yahoo! blocks some mails as spam,  midnight installations, with latest activity on searching free pressrelease sites

Have lots of new features lined up for apnacomplex and ideas for few more products. Let me see how it goes.

More later.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

“Yes Ma’am - can I help you?”

“Are you looking for skin products, for face or body, madam?”

“Would you like to try this herbal henna ma’am, it give you very soft hair ma’am?”

As it is you are a little confused by the one thousand and one products on the display array and you are trying to search for that elusive magical-cream-that-works-wonders-in-14-days that was advertised on the telly. When you finally think you spotted it, you realize that the other-magical-cream-that-renews-your-husband’s-love-in-7-days is standing right next to it on the shelf. That is when you move closer to the rack get attacked right-on with the barrage of questions.

“Hold on a minute, please. I would like to check this out for myself,” you reply sternly and start looking at the ingredients to help make you an informed choice of night creams, day creams, face-washes, lotions, masks, screens, scrubs and so on and so forth. After a few minutes of fiddling around - you give up and look around for the very help that you had dismissed earlier. Gently, with a I-told-you-so smirk she will guide you to another line of products for which you had never seen any sort of campaigning anywhere before. That’s when it hits on you that even in this small stretch of mall-space there are domains and terrains. Reflecting back, realization dawns on you slowly - the shop-girl whose area of products you were looking at must have stepped out for a quick cuppa. That’s when this shop-girl marked you “TARGET” the moment you entered the “Cosmetics and Skin Care Products” section all the while chatting gupshup with her buddy from the other lane.

You let yourself be guided now and look at the products that she has in offer. She hands you a pencil-thin tube and urges - “This a Zenaaz Golden Choco Oyster Cream. It will make you look like a bride. Results in 5 days. Just apply daily night before going to sleep” You look at the price, make some mental calculations (you should have attended those abacus classes mum insisted on), 70ml for Rs.267.50 vs 90ml for Rs.289 (why do they make it so difficult to compare?) and gawk in surprise when you finally figure out the figures.

“Hmm Thanks! I think I will come back after finishing with the groceries section.” you murmur to the racks in general, trying to wriggle out of the situation. “OK ma’am, your wish” she replies with “I-know-these-types” wink to her buddies at the nail- polish and lipstick section. You try to step away without so much as glance. But the girls who look like page-three socialites with their immaculately coloured lips and nails still try to entice you with “Yes, Ma’am, can I help you?”

“That’s OK” you give a nod and step past. Finally in the comfort of your home, you pick for the brochure you had thrown away the previous week, tear out the Free Sample Form, fill it and mail it - waiting in anticipation for the home delivery to happen in 4 days.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

 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.

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.

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!