Redwood Associates an emerging analytics company, researching the application of analytics in the social space have just launched their first product LookBeyondResumes.com. Every organization often has a “picture” of an ideal employee based on perception rather than information and this is the problem that LookBeyondResumes is aiming to solve. The process employed by LookBeyondResumes utilises the information, technology and powerful data mining algorithms available, to search and shortlist superior talent based on success patterns which are relevant to a role, function, company and an industry. These algorithms developed by LBR enable an employer to shortlist smarter and a job seeker to apply better. The engine also keeps adapting itself to changes in the environment, getting better at identifying the best with each new hire. “What you get is your personal Google to help you make better employment decisions,” says Pavan the COO of Redwood Associates. Redwood associates is an analytics company whose aim is to empower people through Intelligence.  Redwood Associates has empowered over 10, 000 students and 120 Corporates in the last 5 years. The organization started out as a training center called “Analytics Training India” which was launched in the year 2007.  Later in the year 2008, they launched their analytics firm called Redwood Associates, which is committed in developing intellectual property. Check out the website here  and stay tuned for an in-depth interview to know bout Redwood Associates.

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Startups are not smaller versions of big companies though they sure are the starting points. Today’s large behemoths too were once startups – J P Morgan was started as a sole entity by John Pierpont Morgan as an independent financier and banker;Facebook started in a college dorm; Apple started in a garage and Google too started in a garage. But do startups need to be managed the same way as large companies? Heck, no!  Steve Blank , the co-founder of E.piphany (also a professor of entrepreneurship at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University, Columbia University and the Joint Berkeley/Columbia Executive MBA program), postulated that  a startup is not a smaller version of a large company . According to him business practices that make sense for large companies are not appropriate for startups. Startups evolve and go through different stages to finally arrive at the stage of a large enterprise. Every stage differs in goals and challenges. Steve Blank lists these stages as: The Scalable startup stage Metamorphosis – the Transition stage The Large Company stage Steve’s postulation also indicates that each of these stages requires different combinations and flavours of: Management Style Work Culture Sales & Marketing Strategies Technical Skills Think of a situation where you want to hire the best tech talents for your startup. Would you go through the regular route that either Microsoft or Google would take? People would strive to join the larger established companies as they can provide an employee practically everything that she wants – the culture, the salary, the bonus, the exposure etc. But as a startup you will have to go the unconventional way to attract the best developers. The prospective employees and the co-founders must possess different sets of managerial skills in order to traverse into the next stage successfully. But why is it necessary to define what a startup is? It is for the simple reason that 99% of startups fail and have life expectancy of five years only (being optimistic here). Therefore, if you understand the anatomy of a startup you will be able to take care of it and nurture it with the right set of nutrients – the people, the skills and the processes. In his  dissection of a startup , Steve Blank has conceptually explained it well. You can infer from his explanation that startups are the ventures that are designed with intent to grow big but being at the startup stage means being on the lookout for scalable and sustainable business model. Co-founders go through a variety of versions of the initial idea to arrive at the one that best fits the market over a span of one or two years. Once the business model is found and the repeated revenues flow in, (you can say that your startup has reached  the tipping point ), the startup is ready to grow and transform into the next stage – the transition stage. Here is another reason why it is necessary to define a startup. This one is very important and needs to be understood in order to turn into a billion dollar business. In an ideal situation you would want a VC (Venture Capitalist) or an external investor to invest in your startup. So, here’s a little secret pulled out from some of Steve’s wisdom: VCs view startups as  an organization used to search for a scalable business model . Once the scalable business model is found, the VCs pitch in and the startup usually grows big. With external investors this scalable startup undergoes a metamorphosis. It progresses into the transition stage and finally into a large company. It is also  often at this stage  that the co-founders are fired. The reason is that as the startup progresses into the next stage, it needs different set of managerial skills. If you want to start up on your own then you must evaluate whether you have the kick to thrash out various ideas, work obscene hours and ultimately evolve into a scalable startup, so that you can seek external funds to grow really big. If not, then you may not want to leave your professional job career. Instead look for more entrepreneurial job opportunities. Many companies have the startup culture and offer entrepreneurial work opportunities that are equally challenging. The post was originally posted at BootStrapToday . Read their story here .

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The ties you form early will help mold you in life and in business. Here’s how to keep your parents happy and on your side while you’re starting up. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

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The online fashion market has seen many entrants in the recent times like Indan Hanger , Rooja , Fashion DownTown and IvoryTag . Former CEO of Reliance Trends, Arun Sirdeshmukh, and Global e-commerce expert, Darpan Munjal, have combined their rich and varied experience across fashion retail and e-commerce, to launch  Fashionara.com . The latest entrant into the buoyant online fashion market, Fashionara.com, is an online fashion mall that offers merchandise from premium and luxury fashion brands across apparel, footwear and accessories. Fashionara.com aims to position Indian online fashion retail among its global peers through a visually-enriched online shopping experience and enhanced offline customer engagement. Fashionara.com marks the beginning of e-retail 2.0 in India. The site is launched for private access with several features that have never been seen before in Indian e-commerce. Key Points the company vouches for- Social shopping Visual shopping experience Enhanced customer service ( A significant step towards making deliveries predictable is the ‘ Express Shipping ’ option of Fashionara, which offers guaranteed next day deliveries across 6 cities (currently) in India) Content Globally, the online fashion industry forms one of the biggest pies of e-commerce. A research study conducted by the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) reported that the global online fashion retail industry demonstrated exponential growth of 2,000% from 2001 to 2011. Fashionara.com comes at a time when this sector in India, while still at the growth stage, is showing immense potential with growing internet penetration and the availability of fashion brands online. Arun Sirdeshmukh, with experience of over 2 decades in fashion retail, has spearheaded the growth of brands like Indus League and Madura Garments. Darpan Munjal, has spent over 18 years in building internet companies in the US and in India. He has led the online / e-commerce initiatives of companies like Sears Holdings, CMC Ltd, as well as Indiatimes Shopping. Speaking on the launch, ArunSirdeshmukh, Co-founder and CEO said, “ India currently lacks true-to-fashion, full price, online retailers that provide the fashion experience customers have come to expect in good offline fashion malls. We hope to bridge that gap with kind of fashion content, innovations and customer centric features built on Fashionara.com. ” “ We believe that the customers now want better online experiences, seamless offline interfaces with ‘unexpected’ customer service. Our promise is to present a premium online fashion mall that will offer choice, convenience, superior value and a world-class user experience to customers in India”,  added Darpan Munjal, Co-founder and Director, Fashionara.com. More about them on the site

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This is the seventh article in the series of 20 articles by Santosh Sharma Whenever I come across startup entrepreneurs, I am usually told about the obstacles, hitches, funding constraints, infertile ecosystem for new ventures and the difficulties they face to put their idea into action. If one goes deeper, one will realize that most of these difficulties are self created . The real life situations become worries, as we fail to design solutions. The moment we are able to design a way out of the same situation, it becomes an opportunity. Yes, startups and even established organizations don’t realize that these mental boxes translate into major organizational bottlenecks. The only way to come out of these limitations is to “Dissolve the boxes”. Let’s analyze entrepreneurs who have tasted success on their way vis-a-vis those who met failures. The situation remaining the same, it is found that those less boxed have greater designing intelligence to absorb the shocks and design a way out compared to those who fiercely guard their boxes. A good case is Sarathbabu who started FoodKing unlike another entrepreneur Gaurav who wanted to start a similar business but gave up citing “unfavourable conditions”. In 2006, Sarathbabu decided to turn into an entrepreneur with just Rs 2,000. That was the start of ‘Food King’. Today, it’s a catering business across various cities and generates revenues of Rs 8 crore. SarathBabu’s story is about determination, a mother’s hard work and enterprise and a family’s fight against the odds. But there is something more behind all this and that is the ability to design solutions. This ability tends towards infinity if we are not hooked to our boxes but keep dissolving them. And this separates success and failures. The case is similar with established organizations too. Take the example of Air India – the box benefitting the self is so dominant that it does not allow the organization to actually take off. Pilots are thinking of their own benefits, ministers are thinking of their own and the ground staffs are hooked to their own benefits not allowing them space to think of the organization, as a result the organization is suffering. When entrepreneurs are boxed they have a narrow vision and fail to see the big picture. Some fail to scale-up, some scale-up but are not integrated with the society and some are integrated with the society too but only at the superficial level. These are the enterprises which fail to go global and sustain in the long run. Entrepreneurs set the mood, capabilities and the grand design for their enterprise because they are the chief architects of their enterprise. If the DNA is healthy the immunity is stronger and therefore they overcome obstacles. But if they are hooked to something say corruption, then they tend to engage and employ people who are corrupt and this ultimately trickles down to many aspects of the organization infecting them.  In many organizations you will only get bosses and not leaders so they promote bossism all around by trimming creativity. Set the Universal tone for your enterprise by dissolving all your boxes. This will make your enterprise relevant, intelligent and sustainable in the short, medium and long term.

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Clickdesk, a combo of live chat, browser phone and a social toolbar, is specifically made for startups and targets companies with a team size of smaller than 10. “The goal is to provide multi-channel customer engagement platform for startups and entrepreneurs to communicate with web visitors and convert them to happy customers.” says co-founder Sreedhar Ambavati. Visitors can initiate chat/call/tweet or like from a small proactive popup while the agents can answer directly from their preferred IM – Skype/GTalk. This allows the agent to help even while they are on the go.As a next step in the direction of multi-channel engagement, “we have added ‘Help desk’ as the new channel for communication – without the bells and whistles you find in full-blown enterprise grade helpdesk systems but only the absolutely necessary features suitable for our customers (Startups and entrepreneurs) to help their web visitors quickly and efficiently.” explains Sreedhar when it comes to a differentiating factor when compared to Zendesk or Freshdesk. Founded by two BITS Pilani alumni, ClickDesk has more than 20,000 businesses. A huge chunk of their clients are in theUS(36%). 17% are from Europe and 34% from SouthEast Asia (primarilyIndia). With a cumulative corporate experience of more than 2 decades, Manohar Chapalamadugu and Sreedhar Ambati founded ClickDesk. Pricing Upto 50 chats per month – free forever plan – suitable for customers to get a feel of the product Unlimited chats/calls/emails – $9.99/agent/month Unlimited with white labeling - $14.99/agent/month “The pricing is per agent which works out best for our customers and us. Most of our customers start from startups who grow their agent headcount as their business grows. As a startup ourself, we want all the startups to have a chance to provide stellar answers and convert as many web visitors to happy customers and we would like to grow with their business.” believes Sreedhar. With over 30 million chat impressions per month, ClickDesk is growing fast and you can try out their service here

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“What are you doing here? You should be in Silicon Valley.” Do these words sound familiar to you? In Asia, it is not very uncommon for Founders with great ideas to either run their companies in boot strap mode or relocate to Silicon Valley. Even great talent is expected to take huge pay cuts when they plan to join a startup. We dont need a scientist to figure out the primary cause of this issue. This is primarily because of the scarcity of risk capital in Asia. Good ideas have to slog for cash. One of the key factor that gives wings to the dreams of most Silicon Valley startups is the free flow of capital that lets them dream big, really big. Silicon Valley is blessed with excess capital. And, that is probably why failure is embraced. How do they get that kind of money? What is the source? Who are these Limited Partners (LP)? As per Wikipedia, the sources of funds are Public pension funds, Corporate pension funds, Insurance companies, High Networth Individuals (HNI) / family offices, Endowments, Foundations, Fund-of-funds and Sovereign wealth funds. In addition, there are many cash rich corporates that have their strategic investment arms hunting for opportunities. Compare that with the sources of funds in Asia: 1. Do you think any government in Asia would allow pension funds to become LPs in Venture Capital funds? Certainly not. At the most, governments would allow use of pension funds to be invested in real estate and approved listed equities. CPF Board of Singapore allows a portion of provident funds into property, gold, selected equities and top 25 percentile managed funds. All the usual suspects of low risk investing. Nothing wrong with that. I also view that as prudent considering the fact that venture capital industry as a whole is a loss making industry. Of course, we hear everyday about the success stories of Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. But we choose to ignore the stories of failures. I read a report recently that mentioned that the average VC fund in US fails to return investor capital after fees. 2. Do we have foundations and endowments who can risk a portion of their money? No. Most endowments and foundations outside America would choose to place their money into fixed deposits with highest rated banks or managed funds. In Singapore, the three local universities (SMU, NUS and NTU) together have about $2.7 billion in endowment funds plus another $1.7 billion in accumulated surpluses and operating funds, some of which is actively managed. Portfolio allocation to venture capital is probably close to zero. Compare that with Yale and other educational institutions in USA. Yale allocates 33% of its portfolio to private equity (venture capital and leveraged buyouts). Average actual allocation of an american educational institution to private equity is around 10.5%. Since 1976, Yale participated in a number of startups that helped define the technology industry including Compaq computer, Oracle, Genentech, Dell Computer, Amgen, Amazon.com, Yahoo, CISCO, Red Hat, Juniper, Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Zynga. Its investment policy document says : Alternative assets, by their very nature, tend to be less efficiently priced than traditional marketable securities, providing an opportunity to exploit market inefficiencies through active management. 3. Do HNIs have any incentives to back risky tech startups? Not at all. High net worth individuals are so busy doubling and tripling their money every year in emerging economies and traditional sectors that no one has any bandwidth left for technology. Recently met some HNIs who were busy buying hotels and warehouses in Myanmar and Srilanka. What kind of IRR can GPs offer to beat emerging market returns? What I mean to say is that the traditional sectors are growing at such a fast rate that HNIs have no incentive to look for other alternative investments. The society is highly entrepreneurial but unfortunately no incentive yet to try out tech entrepreneurship. So what are we left with? How can tech entrepreneurship flourish in Asia? In my view, corporates can play a big role here. In South East Asia, SingTel has shown leadership by launching their fund Innov8 and sponsoring an incubator called JFDI. If top 10-20 corporates in each country can launch similar funds and sponsor incubators, it would certainly create a demand. And may be that demand for investment opportunities would act as a catalyst for some of the wannabe entrepreneurs as well as angel investors. In addition, if University endowment funds can also allocate 5-10% of their portfolios toward venture capital, it would be a great boost for the entire tech startup ecosystem. About the Author : Piyush Chaplot is VP-Finance & Investments at  www.innosightventures.com  and is based in Singapore. You can subscribe to his blog at  www.piyushchaplot.com  or follow him on twitter @piyushchaplot

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No matter how old you are, no matter what you do for a living, there are always times when you desperately want to take a break from your tough routine, unwind and do something different. Going away into the woods is always an option. A more practical one would be to try out the Wonder of Words (WoW). Wonder of Words (WoW) is a young, innovative organization that was established in 2010 and is based out of Mumbai. WoW offers services that gives people hope, opens the door to a new beginning, and brings about a positive transformation in lives and attitudes. The WoW story: WoW was initially formed with the aspiration of enabling youngsters and adults to fall in love with the English Language and also making them explore the body, the mind, the spirit and the connection between the same. It all began with Megha Bajaj, the founder, receiving an overwhelming response to start off with an online training series on the skills of writing. She adds, “ This is when I started realizing that life skills and language skills could somehow be woven together and help people significantly. The workshop kept growing by word of mouth and Facebook marketing and soon enough we felt workshops should be taken to a school level so that many more lives can be touched. ” “ We were able to reach out to 20,000 odd kids last year itself .” Team WoW: Besides Megha, the founder, the core team consists of Saloni, an MBA grad from the US , Nandhitha Hariharan, a Chennai based student , Jamuna Rangachari, formerly the assistant editor of Life Positive, Prity Gandhi , the web solutions head and Nidhi Gupta , a physiotherapist who works part time at WoW . “ As you can see, we are an all girls team,” Megha points out. “Besides this, we have a lot of people whom we hire as and when there is a need for training programs or otherwise .” Services Offered: WoW offers services that include a number of online workshops, which are for all ages, and also attempts to bring about a radical change in the way English is taught, with the development of an English workbook on Attitude development, called I AM WOW . WoW conducts training programs, primarily in three areas, Teachers training, corporate training and student training. “ Our training programs have been deeply appreciated and all those involved stand testimony to the immense positive impact of these workshops. ” Besides this, they also offer web creation courses. “ A website is the most important mass media advertising portal for your company, ” says Megha. “ Therefore right from conceptualization, planning, producing, post-production, research, and advertising, WoW will show you the path to success by having a beautiful website.  “ One very interesting aspect about the WoW experience is the presence of spirituality that is intertwined along with learning experience. “ The two ‘spiritual’ workshops we have are: A New Beginning , which is for adults and is to do a lot with expressive writing and Ten Attitude for kids , which is an experiential workshop that again aims to help kids understand their world better. ” “ We have had enquiries from companies like Lakme and Merck and hope to have our first corporate training program by November. ” Revenue Model and Marketing Megha says, “ All our online workshops are priced at 10,000 INR for ten sessions (each session has about 3 sections). The way it works is, we send participants a session – they complete it in their own time and space and send it back to us. Within a week we re-send it to them with suggestions, ideas, tips and the next session. ” Also, the ‘I AM WOW’ workbooks are priced at Rs. 200 each. Referring to the growing popularity so far, Megha says, “ We have a facebook page that has over 8000 fans. We get about 15,000-20,000 hits per week on our page which we feel is great considering WoW is just a 1.5 year old baby and we began most of our marketing efforts only in August 2011. We have several events and competitions on this page making it very interactive and exciting. ” Challenges and road ahead One of the biggest challenges for the team has been to convince schools of the actual worth of these courses. “ M ost principals see their job as a role – as something that gives them money, power and a designation. Unfortunately, they aren’t visionaries who genuinely care about the welfare of kids. WoW booklets are extremely economical and yet, to convince the schools the need for life skills for kids has been a herculean effort. ” Megha remains optimistic though, and hopes that WoW becomes a subject in many schools in India. “ Every week, one period should be a WoW period where kids are taught life skills ,” she asserts. With the evidence of growth so far, the road ahead only seems positive. “ We are already on our way to buying a space which we shall be calling The WoW Center. This is going to be a body-mind-spirit space whereby various workshops will be conducted for kids and adult. ”  The online sessions are also to be transformed into contact classes. “ The aim is that WoW should become a part of people’s lives even beyond the ten sessions. We hope to have a lot of scale-able workshops and ongoing talks and discussions so that WoW becomes a culture for people. ” “ We have to create a world where ‘I, me, myself’ starts changing into ‘we’, and the next generation thinks of the world as a family. I know it sounds very idealistic – but we have to begin somewhere. Cynicism is not an option any more – each of us, in our own little way, will have to start creating a better world, one student at a time. WoW is our humble effort, ” says Megha signing off. Incidentally, Megha Bajaj is also the acclaimed author of the book, ‘Thank you Cancer’ and writes for several popular publications. Do check out the website  and the movie   here .

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In the vast range of designer clothes available in today’s markets, Entropy, defined in thermodynamics as degree of randomness, is a unique brand of hand designed t-shirts. Entropy, started by Shruti and Shradha, is a result of their quest for finding t-shirts that are simple yet interesting, feminine yet fun and artistic yet subtle, or to fit it all in a word, random. “ Every Entropy t-shirt is hand designed, which makes it impossible for any two of our t-shirts to be identical. We’ve tried to put things we see around in our designs which are inspired from life itself ,” says Shruti. “ Entropy designs are random and most unique, as every t-shirt here is specially hand designed ,” adds Shradha. Starting up Based currently in Jodhpur,Rajasthan, Entropy was started on Facebook in October 2011. The webstore recently took off in Feb. this year. Shruti informs, “ Ours is a team of two at present. Shradha, my sister, and an engineer by profession, is our designer who also takes care of online marketing and I manage the accounts, content, stock, logistics, shoots etc .” “ Though we are as different as chalk and cheese, we share this common passion for anything creative and beautiful.  That gave us the idea of hand designed t-shirts and coming from a business family, carrying it forward as a venture came naturally to us . What propelled us forward with the venture was the lack of t-shirt brands (especially for girls) in the market which are cool yet not screaming for attention. We are trying to fill that gap and create our own niche ,” adds Shruti. The venture is currently self funded. The initial stumbles included procuring good quality and well stitched t-shirts at reasonable prices. “We tried samples from all over India, and finally got a manufacturer in Bangalore- Dash n dots, who provides us t-shirts of our requirement and all thanks to them, we could start,” informs Shruti. Products and services Some of the products that are on offer include good quality cotton (180 GSM), great fits (slim and regular), soothing pastels and light coloured tees. “ We do bulk orders as well for colleges/corporates/friend groups/events. Our tshirts can also be asked for a gift wrap with a personal note. For people who wish to gift their loved ones on time, we have also keep the option of ordering a gift in advance (within a month), and we make sure that its delivered around the mentioned date ,” adds Shruti. About the clientele, Shradha says, “ The major chunks of our customers are in the age group of 18-25 age brackets but for our designs, age is actually not a bar. Anyone who likes wearing simple, smart and interesting clothes without looking like a message board or a graffiti wall could grab one. ” Also, Entropy has tie ups with several e-commerce players in the industry today. “ There are so many online markets which provide a great platform for new products and handmade goods. We are selling through many online and offline stores. Entropy t-shirts are available on Rangiru.com, Craftsvilla.com, Shopclues.com, Unwrapindia.com, Indiologie.com, and Tadpolestore.com, ” adds Shruti. Some of the competitors are other online brands like esbe, bootika etc., which sell handmade t-shirts. “ Our USP though, is our unique designs which are interesting yet not flashy. Also the fact that every t-shirt is handmade adds value to our products, ” says Shruti. Talking about expansion plans, Shradha says, “ Our next step would be to introduce tshirts for men. We have plans to introduce accessories and lifestyle products later this year. ” Do check  their website out at – http://www.entropystore.com/

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SpiceLabs embarked on a journey in to the Mobile Application two years ago. The mobile app space was still pretty alien and starting a mobile app company at par with global standards was not something many would not have aimed at doing. After 2 Years, 20 Apps, 250 Release Cycles, 4 Global Awards and much more, SpiceLabs crossed 50 million downloads. They have created an infographic for the same.  

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