If you are a startup planning to apply for the next batch at YCombinator’s incubation programe, know what it takes to make it there, what does Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston look for in a startup, what kind of preparation would you need , and what is it to experience life at YC.

About Interviewstreet : It  is a platform where you could simplify your process of filtering , screening and hiring candidates for companies. It helps you to create your own customized tests ranging from multiple-choice-questions, text-answer questions to programming questions (also it has an in-built codechecker to evaluate the applicant’s code), send it across to applicants and by just glancing through Interviewstreet’s reports, you would know whom to call for a phone interview!

» More @Pluggd.in TV

» Subscribe to Pluggd.in’s Youtube channel.

Nikita Upreti from Iamstarting will be the editor of Pluggd.in TV and she will drive a lot of content/interviews/discussions on the site (get in touch with her if you have any suggestion/request: nikita@pluggd.in).

Nikita was earlier running Iamstarting.com earlier, an online audio and video podcasting website, focused on interviewing entrepreneurs, investors, hackers. This is an important milestone for Pluggd.in as well as Iamstarting team and we look forward to your inputs/suggestions on our video channel.

Aside, if you are running a niche blog/content site and see a strong partnership with Pluggd.in (i.e. you think we can make it bigger by joining hands), let’s talk (email: ashish@pluggd.in)

Introducing Nikita Upreti

In her own words:

I had learnt how to sleep with my eyes open, I guess doing monotonous work each day was getting at me. This is when, I started meeting new tribe of people who had nothing but passion and a strong will to build something. I liked this culture and wanted to help them tell there stories. This is when with help of a friend of mine, I started an “unnamed project” and as luck would have it, the first story I told was of flipkart team.

I struggled with the name for this project for few days and then one day serendipity to be thanked, I came up with iamstarting. I started telling stories of startups who had just started and focused on what industry calls “early stage startups”. And then on, we talked to a lot of smart people on the way.

One such meeting was with founder of PI Ashish Sinha. We talked about technology, gadgets, trends and startups. This was good meeting and after a few more such meetings, countless discussions, bottomless cappuccinos – here I am – with Pluggd.in TV!

As Editor PI-TV and after few weeks of planning and learning, Pluggd.in TV goes live right now http://www.pluggd.in/tv/ and let us know your thoughts on what other content you would want to see on Pluggd.in TV!

Everyone has one good idea, all that people need is a blink! So, we’ll try and push people over the edge to just start-up. If you are still reading till here, stop and head over to PI TV.

Pi TV will be a delivering some of the most recognizable and inspiring faces in tech. The entrepreneurs, the investors, the developers — everyone in fact who is helping to change the world, one idea at a time (without soap music ). We will be visiting start-up offices, calling them to Pi office, absolutely where ever we can get our cameras. We will be covering startups & tech the way it should be.

» Subscribe to Pluggd.in’s Youtube channel.

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Translated, it means ‘The businessman who knows how to ‘Sell’ is truly successful”.

25 years later, I couldn’t agree with him more.

No matter which profession or job you are in, you have to know how to sell if you want an accelerated career.

Here are seven compelling reasons I have learnt personally:

1. Sales make you believe in yourself.

When I started an unheard concept of creating online contests (contests2win) in 1998, I couldn’t even explain the idea to people because the online world was alien to them.

In a famous meeting I had with Gunender Kapur (GK) of Hindustan Lever (that lasted for one hour), in which I pounded the idea of online promotions for the Annapurna Brand that he headed. He finally exclaimed, “I like you, I like the idea of ‘contesting’, but pray tell me what is ‘online?’ GK did not know what the Internet really was!

I did hundreds of meetings like those during 98-99, only to face rejection, doubts and outright bewilderment.  But each meeting made me hone my skill of explaining my idea in more detail; it forced me to add so many more dimensions to my concept in more ways than I had even envisaged. It made me learn my business better and reinforced my conviction in it!

Thirteen years later, how much I thank those painful years for teaching me the hardest lesson that an Entrepreneur sometimes finds most difficult to learn – to continue to BELIEVE in her idea when the world says ‘Huh?’

Just the sheer passion in your eyes and speech will make people like you, notice you and even believe in you instantly. Even though they may not understand your idea.

Yup. It ain’t ever easy! Pictured here – Raj Menon – 2win founding team trying to explain a concept to an MBA Class of De Paul University from Chicago who visited us.

2. Sales train you ‘Patience’.

A gentleman called Gareth Thomas who was a management trainee at Channel V in 1998 liked the concept of online contests.

Channel V had a popular ‘Viewers Choice’ awards on their channel and they were keen to convert the same into online contests.

The only problem was that Gareth liked calling me from my office in South Mumbai to meet his boss Vivek Paul usually at 2 pm to their Lakdawala office in Khar, and after making me wait till 5 pm, he would send a message via the receptionist (or come down himself) to tell me that Vivek could not meet me.

Both Vivek and he repeated this ‘ditch’ game three times with me. On my fifth visit, after the usual 3 hour wait, Vivek did finally meet me and gave me the business of hosting the Channel V Viewers’ Choice Awards on my website.

Despite the bitter anger and frustration of wasting time ‘waiting’, I learnt the hard lesson of being patient.

Sofas, secretaries and guards in offices became my best friends.

Waiting became my meditation.

Waiting is meditation. This is the Tenrikyo (Japanese) religious service I went to for 10 years; in the end I learnt the basics..

Today, if I have to wait for a day, a month, a year or even a decade to achieve what I really want, it’s cool with me.

The religion of Sales has taught me that the fruit of penance is very sweet.

3. Sales makes you meet like minded people.

The most like minded people I have met! First c2w group photo – Circa 2000

I met Rajiv Hiranadani (another ACE Salesman) when we used to both wait for 3 hours (minimum) to meet N.P. Thirukode of Shaw Wallace at Ballard Estate.

As salespeople, we clicked despite the fact that while sitting on that sofa we were arch competitors. Rajiv used to sell Yahoo and I used to represent MSN  (Microsoft) as a sales partner.

By 2002, we had become good friends and I invited Rajiv to start up Mobile2win in India. By meeting him constantly, I understood what he was about.

More importantly, if he could wait with a smile for 3 hours to close a small deal, he was my clone. He was my kind of CEO.

Today, 10 years later Rajiv is still running that business. (Read this story of my exit from mobile2win)

When I last counted, I had 5199 visiting cards that I have collected as an online entrepreneur.

Yup. I’ve met and interacted with over 5000 people. All thanks to SALES

Each and every one of them has a Sales Contact.

You have to go out there, SELL and  in the process meet the most interesting people in the world. For all you know, your business soul mate could be one of them!

4. Sales teaches you how to ‘read’ People.

My 2win founding team member Raj Menon (Ace salesman again) and I had gone to Sony India (in their Faridabad office) in June 2003 to pitch a brand new format of contesting that we had conceptualized in collaboration with Jet Airways.

At the Sony office, we met a gentleman called Dinesh Chandra.

I began presenting the pitch. It was a 12-slide deck. The pitch price was on slide 12.

Raj and I have trained each other to watch and observe the client as a pitch progresses. As I crossed slide 9. I saw Raj reach for his phone. That was a subtle signal for me. I slowly finished slide 10. Just as slide 11 came up, I saw Raj’s sms message on my phone. It said ‘Do not go to 12. End now’.

After slide 11, I declared that we had reached the end of the PPT and thanked Dinesh Chandra for listening.

Just then Raj pretended to get a phone call, and in a couple of minutes, Raj looked at Dinesh Chandra and asked him ‘Sir, do you mind if Alok and I step out? I have an urgent business matter to discuss with him’.

Dinesh said “Sure.”

Raj took me out and said ‘Alok, Dinesh loves it. I saw his expression. We have asked for 7.5 lacs on slide 12. He will pay 15 lacs’.

I came back and sat down. Dinesh asked me ‘So, what does the Jet proposal cost?

I gently said ‘Sir, it costs Rs. 15 lacs’.

Dinesh said “Done”. “Send me the purchase order.” That was the fastest sale I have ever done in my life.

Both Raj and I left stunned and ecstatic.

Only a week later did we find out who really read whom!

It turned out that  Dinesh Chandra was launching the  Sony WEGA range in India for the first time and an interactive contest in Jet Airways that collected a live database for him was the most effective marketing he could have achieved.

He had actually ‘read’ Raj and Alok better than we thought we had read him.

In retrospect, we think he could have paid 30 lacs if we had known what he was planning to use the campaign for.

Sales makes you understand people – it trains you to see their invisible smile even when they maintain a poker face, it shows you the twinkle in their eyes even though they may be wearing sunglasses.

Can you read Gaurav Sharma? (One of 2win’s best Sales people clowning away to glory at the 2011 annual party)

5. VCs love SALES people!

I have been involved in raising Venture Capital (10+ transactions) for my own companies and for the companies I have mentored over the past 13 years.  I have a fair idea of what VCs like in Entrepreneurs and their businesses.

One of the things they expect is the fact that the entrepreneur should be able to SELL.

And here I mean Sales that are not necessarily revenue centric but also the ability to sell the idea, the concept or the service to potential customers and clients as proof of validation of the business.

Take what happened to me for the first time when I raised venture capital for Contests2win.com.

In June of 1999, I walked into the Khaitan Bhavan offices of  Acqauvit (what became E-Ventures in India) for the first time. There I met Neeraj Bhargava and Rajesh Jog.

The first question Neeraj asked me was “So, how many brands have used contests2win? What’s your proof of concept in the real world?”

Simply said, he was asking me ‘Boss, have you sold this idea to real brands or is it a concept on paper?”

I answered and said “Neeraj, seventy five of the Fortune 500 brands have already worked with us. Of them, fifteen have become repeat clients.”

Some of the Brands c2w has worked with

Neeraj could not believe me. He was a McKinsey veteran and knew how difficult it was to get even a single Fortune 500 brand to sign on.

I showed him the roster of clients and the campaigns they had done.

In that conversation, I volunteered and said “Neeraj, but you must know that all these brands have worked with me for free. I have not charged them anything”.

I still remember Neeraj’s reply so clearly. He said, “Alok, if you have got 75 brands to work with you, I will get them to pay. That’s the easy bit”.

E-Ventures funded me because I had shown proof of sales of a concept that did not exist in the world before – and none other than the biggest brands in the world being customers of that concept.

Today, when I sit in competitions in which real entrepreneurs compete for Money, I reflexively ask “So, who all have bought this?” Ever so often I have seen VCs politely asking entrepreneurs to come back to pitch to them AFTER they have had their first sale.

If you want to raise Capital, be sure you have proof of SALES in your pitch.

Some of the Best Sales People I have ever met in my life –  who became Founders of the 2win Companies. From left to right –  Mahesh (games2win), Rajiv (mobile2win India), GK (c2w), KK in white (media2win), Alok, Raj (c2w), Dinesh (c2w)

6. Sales teaches you the business models of the world.

I have sold over 2000 campaigns to over 1000 brands that belong to almost all the Fortune 500 companies in the world.

In the process, I have been exposed to the business models and insights of industries as diverse as telecom to trucks, airlines to antacids.

While selling my wares, I have been exposed to the sales problems of my partners, because after all, what they buy from me in terms of advertising solutions or games is only to help them sell better!

There is no MBA in the world that can teach you or expose you to live case studies, management issues, problems and solutions of the world’s biggest and best companies. Going into their offices to SELL them something is the best MBA program a person can attend.

Sales is the best education you get PAID to receive!

Just let me get a feel of it. I will figure it out. I’m a sales guy! Pictured – Alok being tutored how to ride a horse carriage in Budapest

7. Sales helps you Sell ‘yourself’.

What happens in a Job Interview?

The candidate ‘sells’ his personality, abilities and his experience to a potential employer. A resume is the sales pitch in a word format, while the interview thereafter is a meeting to close that sales pitch.

In today’s hyper competitive world I see the best bred, most outstanding professionals fast becoming extinct in the corporate world – because they don’t know how to sell themselves.

Today, it’s not good enough to be very good at your job or to have an expertise in your domain – you have to know how to sell yourself.

Take Steve Jobs for instance. He was not just brilliant in his vision and execution. He was a superlative salesman too – every keynote of his is a salesman’s Bible.  When he would go up on stage to present Apple products, the crowds would go crazy. He reinvented the concept of creating an explosive cocktail of emotion, innovation and sheer stage magic to capture the imagination of consumers; as if he was a rock star performing with his instruments, in front of his fans.

In the years to come, you will have to become a Rockstar yourself.

Think of what happens when people search for your name on google. What do they see? A list of linkedin, facebook and twitter links? I say that they need to see more. If you want to create an impact, you should be blogging, presenting a point of view, saying something compelling. They should be ‘pre-sold’ on you.

I’m relevant. Even on page 33 of a Google Search result on my name.

In February of 2010, Harvard Business School sent me an invite to speak to its students as part of an India Week. Their mail said, ‘We like what you write on rodinhood.com and wish you can present the ideas to our students’.

I think I had achieved a very rare and honorable ‘personal’ sale!

[Guest article contributed by Alok Kejriwal, founder of Games2Win. Reproduced from Alok's blog]

“As part of the rollout of our integrated publishing product, we’re also announcing new pricing plans that include our new Touchsite product for tablets. The most significant change we’ve made is that we’re now dropping our free Basic plan entirely and replacing it with a $5/month plan. Our loyal readers will remember that we supported our free plan through an ad revenue sharing program. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to foot the bill of serving all that mobile traffic so we did what every startup must do: make a tough choice. We thank all our publishers for supporting us and helping improve our product leaps and bounds with their feedback and active involvement.

Our new pricing plans are the result of data we’ve gathered from new customers we’ve signed up, feedback from potential customers we’ve spoken to, and an analysis of how different publishers on our network have been using MobStac. We believe the new plans align better with how publishers want to use our product and have also updated our pricing accordingly.“ [mail]

Mobstac Pricing Plans

Mobile/Widget Platforms

The key challenge for India based mobile/widget platforms is not just the lack of early adopters, but also lack of early-adopters-who-are-also-big-players in the country. For instance, how many active bloggers in India can really help Mobstac in monetizing the traffic (so that they can keep the service free)? Very few – I can bet that there are hardly 20 blogs which have more than even 200K pageviews/month for mobile site (and by the way, 200K pageviews means nothing!).

Having said that, Mobstac is looking at cracking the US market and killing freemium model probably works if they have a strong pipeline (especially in the enterprise segment), otherwise it just might backfire as the market is getting too competitive and freemium provides the friction-less entry.

Aside, Pluggd.in has been using Mobstac for the last few years  and very recently, we announced our touchsite for iPad (http://m.pluggd.in) – so do give it a shot and share your feedback.

Video: The Mobtac Story

Set up by a team of management graduates with extensive experience in the FMCG sector in the Human Resources and Sales Management, Peel-Works offers customized as well as productized solutions for very large to medium size companies in FMCG, telecom and insurance sector that conduct their business using indirect sales force.

Founded by former Hindustan Unilever HR and Sales professional, Peel-Works focuses on enhancing the productivity of the indirect sales force of large FMCG, telecom and insurance companies that contributes to almost 80 percent of the revenues. Using Peel-Works cloud based model, a disengaged indirect sales force can be converted into a high performance sales force by tracking their performance, training them for higher roles and rewarding them with sales incentives accurately and on time.

The investment will be utilized in expanding product offering, creating technology differentiators and human capital. Productized sales force consulting and transformation solution is planned to be hosted on the cloud and will be charged on pay per use basis.

Two of IAN members–Sadeesh Raghavan and Srikant Sastri–who will be joining Peel-Works board.

Aside, Peel-Works seems highly inspired by Apple website (design/typography).

On the other hand, I was using one of the games at a social networking site – I didn’t login for 2 month and recently got a mail mentioning about picking up the daily rewards (if I check/play the game daily).

These two companies have chosen two completely different path to inform the user of their inactivity on the platform. One is punishing and other is rewarding him.

The technical term for rewarding behavior is “reinforcement”. Punishment is the opposite of positive reinforcement. They have specific meanings that come from behavior modification. Reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior (increasing its frequency, making it more likely to occur in the future) and punishment is the weakening of behavior (decreasing its frequency, making it less likely to occur in the future).

Is it right to induce fear into user directly/indirectly and make them work? I don’t think so. The carrot has more power than a stick, specially in a corporate setting.

I don’t know which way your startup prefer, but I definitely like the latter option more.

What’s your take?

[Guest article contributed by Kunalkant Sen, ex-operations manager at Pluggd.in and now running his gaming startup.]

TRAI has received representations from the stakeholders that in view of the limit of 200 SMS per day per SIM, they are not able to send machine to machine and person to machine SMSs  which are sent by them to initiate process or application for their operational requirements (like OTP). TRAI has duly considered such representations and has excluded  all machine to machine and person to machine messages from the limit of 200 SMS per day per SIM (i.e. if the device used is not a mobile device and no manual intervention is required).

TRAI has categorized information sent by a registered company to its employees or agents or its customers pertaining to services or goods to be delivered to such customer under Transactional message. So a registered company may send  information pertaining to services or goods to be delivered to customer under Transactional message category. [link (pdf)]

Also see: TRAI SMS Regulation – 5p Termination Charge For Promotional SMS; eCommerce Exempted | SMS Spam: TRAI to Block Bulk International SMS Beginning with Alphanumeric Combination

The four officers were being tracked for quite some time by naval authorities for allegedly leaking confidential information, including location of warships, armaments being carried by them and their patrolling patterns (source) and now, government is reported to have issued orders asking all its men, officers and other ranks, who had joined social networking sites like Facebook or Orkut earlier to immediately quit them.

Similar incident happened in 2009 when government advised army to stay away from social networking sites and even banned social networking sites/picture sharing sites for Indian diplomats.

“The Army’s worry is that public access to such information could increase the vulnerabilities of both the Army and its personnel. Some information could provide clues to the Army’s strategies. It could also make personnel more vulnerable to things like honeytraps (spies using sex to extract information)”.

Incidentally, Indian Prime Minster joined Twitter 2 days back.

10 :00 am – Open snapdeal , dealsandyou , mydala , crazeal , and many other groupon clones to get to know which merchant is giving the deal .
11:00 am- Open Justdial or Zomato; find the numbers of the merchants of those who have given the deal. Pitch them false sales numbers , and schedule a meeting .
2:00 pm – Finish a meeting. Got a deal with a restaurant (40% discount!), with all your toiling , hard work , false pitch , inflated numbers of vouchers selling , free advertising sh*t , free brand promotion and blah blah blah .After that you make a call to your reporting officer , who says “NO! Get a bigger discount”; and you are in the same vicious circle.

 This was my life from Jan 2011 – Oct 2011 , when I was an Assistant Sales Manager for a Hyderabad based start-up , which was one of the group buying portals . And this is still the story of many more guys working for deal sites in India. My major concern is except Snapdeal , no one is really looking from the merchants POV.

My Reporting officer, a guy from Chennai , who was given the role to handle Delhi sales team had no clue how smart and clever Delhi merchants are. He used to harass me for getting lower discounts; and when he came to Delhi , he was not able to crack a single Delhi merchant!

But what happened had happened. And yes I was thrown out from the office , saying I am noncompetitive.

But I wana tell you a secret.

I had stopped working for them!

Because I had realized the more I will get into this trap , the more I am taking my career graph down south .

So all those who are working (and following the same routine), make sure you get huge discounts, or else…start looking somewhere else.

[Plug from Pluggd.in team: we are hiring for our sales team - i.e. if you know how to sell ad inventory for a niche site like ours, without getting into the CPM/CPC/CPA trap, do connect: ashish@pluggd.in]

Google’s Republic day Doodle.

The Journey Of A Flag

This short film depicts the journey of an Indian flag from sunrise to sunset, where it confronts the social evils plaguing our Country. From poverty to corruption to discourteous youth, the flag is in desperate search of a sailor to take the nation towards the wisdom of light.

Surprise Dance on Finnair Flight

A Dance Crew surprises passengers after boarding of a Finnair flight to Delhi to celebrate India’s Republic Day on January 26th 2012.

A R Rahman

The ever awesome – Maa Tujhe Salaam.

Our Wishlist

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. [Rabindranath Tagore]
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Wishing you all a happy republic day. Shine on.

Oracle Big Data Appliance includes:

• Open source distribution of Apache Hadoop to transform data
• Oracle NoSQL Database Enterprise Edition to capture and manage data
• Oracle Data Integrator Application Adapter for Hadoop to simplify data integration from Hadoop and an Oracle Database
• Oracle Loader for Hadoop to quickly load data into Oracle Database
• Open source distribution of R
• Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle Java HotSpot Virtual Machine

Recommended Read: What is the Big Fuss about Big Data?

Recent Big Data funding: Mu Sigma Closes $108 Million Investment Round, Led by General Atlantic

The Hide it Pro app is completely free and importantly one of the few app in android market having full 5 stars rating with 1,000,000 downloads.

The app is cleverly disguised as “Audio Manager” in the App Drawer and can be used to turn the volumes up and down. But if you Long press on the Audio Manager title the actual Hide It Pro app will launch!

You can hide Images/Videos/Audio Recordings etc. from the Phone’s stock gallery by selecting all the pics that you want to hide and selecting SHARE. Applications can be hidden from within the Hide it Pro app.

Features :

1.) Super clean and smooth UI.
2.) Proper segregation of videos/pictures audio with dashboard
3.) Categorize media into folders of your choice
4.) Batch(Multi-Select) support for hiding and unhiding files
5.) Unhide entire folders, or select multiple files to unhide at once
6.) Move files between folders
7.) Sort files by date/size/name and sort folders by count/name
8.) Thumbnails for pictures and videos on all devices
9.) Gallery features Pinch to Zoom , Double tap to zoom , One finger hold and move zoom
10.) Slideshow with Fade and Zoom effects
11.) Send/Share pictures , Get picture details and other miscellaneous options
12.) Image for seamless browsing
13.) Special optimization for low end phones. (uncheck the low memory mod from settings to get crisper pics back)
14.) Video player features play/pause/forward/rewind/next video/prev video support
15.) Ability to choose and save custom video player
16.) Disappears from recent apps list
17.) Two lock screen options viz Pin and Password
18.) Escape pin/password for times when you get caught
19.) Has built in full featured file manager with ability to hide/move/share/delete multiple files
20.) Built in encryption tool(with military standard 256-bit AES encryption) to secure your most important files
21.) Special support for Incognito Browser(vBrowser) with hidden bookmarks ,and special ability like downloading from 14+ video streaming websites
22.) Full Support for Locking apps from within the app. etc.
There are a lot more features like custom slideshow durations/slideshow order/effects , custom folder thumbnails etc.

Hide it Pro: App Details

Operating System(s): Android
Pricing Free
Supported Phone: phones with android version 1.6 and above
App Download Link: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.smartanuj.hideitpro&hl=en

[Appnomy's One App a Day series is sponsored by Mojostreet - A Real world mobile game with Real world benefits. Submit your app here]

Earlier in this series: Problem of Plenty– Choosing How to Startup [PART 2], LLP vs. Private Limited: How to Choose Company Incorporation]

Agneepth - An Entrepreneurial Journey

I am entering into a high risk, high return business. Although we have decided to start it, we are not sure about the right mode of business formation to use. We would like to form a private limited company, obviously, but I am concerned that a private limited company will be more difficult to wind up in case things go south. What do I do? Should I form an LLP?

It seems here that you are debating between a Company and an LLP, and your doubt is as regards which is easier to shut down in case things don’t work out the way you want them to.

To clear the air a little bit, find here a detailed procedure on how to wind up a Company and an LLP. A partnership or a sole proprietorship is much, much easier to shut down. An unregistered partnership or proprietorship can be shut down by merely closing the bank account of the partnership or proprietorship.

Procedure for Voluntary Winding up of a Company

Step 1: A special resolution has to be passed by the Board and the members

Step 2: Within fourteen days of the passing of the resolution, a notice of the resolution by advertisement in the Official Gazette, and also in some newspaper circulating in the district where the registered office of the company is situated. (If default is made in complying with this clause, the company and every officer of the company who is in default shall be punishable with fine which may extend to five hundred rupees for every day during which the default continues.)

Step 3: The Business activities are to cease the day the resolution is passed.

Step 4: The directors have to make a declaration verified by an affidavit, that they have made a full inquiry into the affairs of the company, and that the company has no debts, or that it will be able to pay its debts in full within three years from the commencement of the winding up.

Step 5: The above declaration has to be made and submitted to the registrar within 5 weeks (35 days) of passing the resolution for winding up along with the auditor’s report for the most recent financial period.

Step 6: The members have to appoint a liquidator to distribute the assets and pay off the liabilities.

Step 7: The registrar has to be notified about the appointment (or resignation) of the liquidator in writing.

Step 8: If the dissolution takes more than a year, the liquidator is to hold a general meeting at the end of every year giving the report of the dissolution process and progress with accounts. The same is to be done even on the final meeting for dissolution.

Step 9: The minutes of these meetings should be submitted to the registrar as usual.

Voluntary Winding of an LLP

Step 1: Any LLP may be wound-up voluntarily if the LLP passes a resolution to wind up the LLP with approval of at least three-fourths of the total number of its partners.

Step 2: A copy of the resolution shall be filed with the Registrar within thirty days of passing of such resolution in Form No. 1 of the LLP Rules, 2010.

Step 3: The majority of its designated partners (being not less than two) shall make a declaration in Form No. 2 LLP Rules, 2010, in an affidavit saying that the LLP has no debt or that it will be able to pay its debts in full within one year from the commencement of the winding up.

Step 4: The above Form and affidavit are to be submitted to the registrar within 15 days of the resolution along with form 3 of the LLP Rules, 2010, a statement saying that such winding up is not being done to defraud anyone, form no .4 of the LLP Rules, 2010, and a report of the value of the assets of the LLP.

Step 5: Consent needs to be obtained from atleast 2/3^rds of the creditors in terms of value.

Step 6: The Creditors consent is to be filed with Form no.5 of the LLP rules, 2010.

Step 7: Within fourteen days of the receipt of creditors’ consent, give notice of the resolution by advertisement in a newspaper circulating in the district where the registered office or the principal office of the LLP is situated.

Step 8: The partners then have to appoint a liquidator within 30 days of receiving creditors consent.

Step 9: This liquidator is to file a declaration in form no.6 of the LLP rules, 2010.

Step 10: After all formalities are over, final accounts of the LLP are to be submitted with form no.9 of the LLP rules, 2010.

Conclusion: From the facts presented above, it does appear quite clear that there is not much of a difference with regard to ease of winding up between an LLP and a Private Limited Company.

A Private Limited Company brings certain other advantages, such as the ability to issue stock options, appoint independent directors, dilute stake to investors and valuable employees and a lot more. The law on Companies is also far more mature, since the Companies Act was passed almost 60 years ago.

So if ease of winding up is your major concern, form a Private Limited Company.

[About the author: Contributed by Hrishikesh Datar, founder of vakilsearch.com, online legal services provider (Legal Advice, Legal Documents & more.]

» More legal resources for startups.

Freecharge has developed a unique business model (hint: they are not in the business of recharge)and the company has partnerships with more than 50 retailers (Café Coffeeday, McDoanld’s, Domino’s Pizza, Croma etc) and have attracted quite a few clones as well. The funds will be used to add new products, add merchants who can use Freecharge to target consumers, and to advertise the service to consumers. The company received a seed investment from Sequoia Capital in 2011, followed by a Series A more recently.

What’s really interesting about Freecharge is the cult status they have developed among college students, given the business model of ‘freebies’. In terms of coupon sold, Kunal Shah (founder & CEO of Freecharge) mentioned the following (on a discussion at Pluggd.in forum: Freecharge copycats):

If you look at FreeCharge carefully there are many coupons which are not available anywhere and we distribute/sell more coupons than all daily deal sites put together in India.

We are aware of atleast 5-10 new sites trying to imitate FreeCharge, and we do have a patent pending status for our business model to protect it

In its current form, the market is wide open for atleast 4-5 coupon players, but the key for couponing sites is to not sell coupons, but to upsell coupons. And Freecharge knows it very well.

Aside, Freecharge was part of Pluggd.in’s most promising startups of 2011 list.
» Follow the discussion: Freecharge copycats for more on Freecharge’ business model/copycats.

All investors have exited and Netmagic founder/CEO, Sharad Sanghi has only sold a very minor stake and will continue to build the company.

The addition of Netmagic Solutions’ datacenter services and sites will expand NTT Com’s capability to provide one-stop ICT solutions in the fast-growing Indian market, as well as accelerate its offering of globally seamless cloud services through expanded ICT infrastructure Asia-wide.

Netmagic Solutions, an experienced provider of managed IT hosting services, currently operates seven datacenters in major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, Noida (Delhi-NCR) and Bangalore. It provides services such as colocation and managed hosting to more than 1,000 customers, as well as ISP and cloud services to many other customers. The company was named India’s Datacenter Service Provider of the Year 2011 by Frost & Sullivan. Established in 1998, Netmagic Solutions is headed by CEO Sharad Sanghi and operates bases in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi. It employs about 500 people. The company’s headquarters are located at 2^nd Floor, (North Side), Block B-2, Phase I, Nirlon Knowledge Park, Goregaon (East), Mumbai.

The Netmagic Story

At Unpluggd, Sharad spoke at length about Netmagic story and he did talk about IPO and acquisition. Watch the video

“The Indian enterprise market is quite distinct from other markets in Asia/Pacific. The retail industry is expected to achieve the strongest growth in percentage terms in 2012, where IT spending is forecast to grow 11.8 percent. Recent decisions to allow 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in single brand retail, and up to 51percent in multi brand retail, are expected to provide the sector with a significant boost in terms of IT usage and adoption. Selection of partners with deep vertical expertise will be crucial to success.”

Now go back and visualize the first time you heard about a device called iPad. If not for Apple, who else could have done that? If asked “Who do you think has built this device?”, would you have said ‘RIM, Nokia, Microsoft’?

Probably not.

Easier said than done, but that’s what a company soul [read: Entrepreneurs : Define What’s Non-Negotiable. Define a Soul.] is all about and biggest validation comes from your customers when they ask:

‘Is that You?’

That is, when people tend to relate you (you as in you : the product, the brand) with a certain product/feature (of course in the right sense) without even knowing who built it.

An Exercise

Now open all the ecommerce websites in India, hide their logos and tell us ‘which is which and who is who’. You will be surprised that half of these sites never cared to built that connect with the audience – they just focused on transactional aspect of a business and spent more time on ‘Facebook likes’ than an emotional like.

Similarly, a whole lot of companies/startups are getting lost in ‘we need to win the race’ and in the whole process, they are not focusing on “embedding” their soul in the product. In fact, there is nothing that comes out as a core differentiator. And while we are talking about differentiators, let’s not forget that even a bad/ugly looking site with great content or great product (think craiglist) stands out vs. several other mediocre yet good looking products.

Long story short, answer what aspect of your product would you prefer to be related with when somebody asks “Is That You”?
Are you prepared for this question?

*Title inspired by Pink Floyd’s Us and Them. Aside, another interesting read: How Pink Floyd Can Help Every Entrepreneur [Heroes for Ghosts?]

[Img credit:wikipedia]

The account will be handled by Prime minister office and unlike @BarrackObama, Manmohan Singh’s account is mainly an organizational account and will hopefully be used for future PMs as well.

Mr. Prime Minister on Twitter

In short, #fail.

BlueStone is founded by Vidya Nataraj and Gaurav Kushwaha and offers latest jewellery designs and a wide range of products.

Gaurav Khushwha was earlier the CEO of Chakpak (which was later acquired by Flipkart). Vidya Nataraj is an MBA from INSEAD and earlier worked with family-owned Landmark Ltd (a books and lifestyle pan-India retail chain later sold to TATA Trent).

The funding was actually closed 2-3 months back and even Pepperfry, the ecommerce startup by ex-eBay India head is betting big on selling jewellery online. Earlier, another online jewellery store CaratLane raised $6mn from Tiger Global Management LLC.

Recommended Read: 5 Reasons Why There Is No E-commerce Bubble in India [Hint:Women Have Yet To Begin Shopping Online]

RTINation is a startup by Prashant Gupta, a student at IIT Kanpur. The site enables one to file RTI (Right to Information) online and so far, the site has enabled 3,000 RTIs [from 5,000 registered userbase].

Once you file a RTI from the site, RTINation generally takes 2-3 business days to process an application. The PIO (Public Information Officer) takes 30-40 days to reply to your application and replies are sent directly to the individual.

The site charges Rs. 150 (including government fees, service charges and taxes) and receives around 30,000 visits per month. In terms of technology implementation, the site is a basic implementation of Joomla, though what matters is the focus on solving a specific pain point.

Do give the site a spin and share your feedback with the team.

[Our coverage of Student Startups is supported by Lenovo's DoNetwork initiative.]

[Are you a student working on a startup idea, we would like to talk to you. Fill in the form athttp://www.pluggd.in/students/ and we will get in touch with you.]

In 2010, these losses translated into annual losses of 600 billion rupees ($13.3 billion) and number is expected to rise to 1 trillion rupees ($22 billion) by March 2015, according to the country’s finance ministry. Over 50% of Indian utility companies are operating at loss levels between 45-60%.

Chintan Soni co-founded Ecolibrium Energy two years back with a conviction that information technology will be an answer to this problem. Ecolibrium Energy provides smart grid solutions using its multi functional platform for industries and power utility companies to improve their efficiency and energy economics.

Incubated at CIIE – IIM Ahmedabad, startup holds 4 patents and has 6 industries as their customers. In 2010, company also implemented Gandhinagar Smart Grid Pilot Project in partnership with Govt. of Gujarat and Torrent Power.

What Ecolibrium Offers?

For industries

- Real time energy tracking

- Monitoring & control of specific equipment / appliances from a central location wirelessly

- Rule based engine for scheduling of loads, to maintain peak load at time when power tariff is low.

Benefits:

- Check energy wastage and cut down energy bill by shifting power consumption pattern to hours when cost of energy is low.

For power utility companies

- 2 way communication / control with consumer

- Demand prediction

- Remote meter reading

- Remote outrage and fault detection

- Theft detection

Benefits:

- Cut down of thefts and pilferage

- Capital reduction on manual meter tracking

- Demand prediction helps optimizing supply planning to increase revenues

Below is a brief Q&A with Chintan Soni, Co-Founder of Ecolibrium Energy

PI: How has been initial response from customers? You are also targeting government bodies (state utility companies) which can be difficult customers. How are you going about selling to government companies?

Response from industry has been good so far. We have 6 paying customers at this point. Our products are competitively priced, and few customers have realized return on their investment in less than six months (in form of energy bill cut down).

Regarding, government customers – most of these are loss making companies. Moment you tell them, your solution can help them turn profitable they listen to you.

PI: You became a revenue earning company in 18 months from inception. That is very aggressive. How did you go about it?

One year back, we wanted to raise capital and our business plan showed revenues in 12 months. This was challenged by some of the prospective investors. We took that as a challenge, and turned into a revenue earning entity in 8 months from that point.

PI: What is your vision for Ecolibrium Energy?

We believe, that energy saved is the energy produced and we want to be the largest virtual power plant in India.

On one side we have Fortune 500 companies like GE, CISCO etc. eyeing smart grid markets in India and on the other end homegrown companies like Ecolibrium Energy are coming up with solutions for India. As smart grid become India’s priority, it would be interesting to watch how this eco-system will evolve in India.

Another startup in this space: HameshaON

REASON #1: A Few Failures Does Not Make a Bubble

It is absolutely normal for there to be a few failures in new markets. VCs don’t have or expect a 100% success rate. There will be at least a few spectacular e-commerce failures but as long as it is balanced out by an even greater number of successes, we’ll continue to see valuations near where they are now. Yes, each failure will naturally send valuations downward, but it’s going to take a fundamental weakness for one to come to the conclusion that valuations are at a bubble level.

A bubble implies that the underlying financial assumptions of the industry as a whole, both present and future, are unreasonable. Taggle raised money with the assumption that becoming a leader in the Daily Deal space would make for a highly valuable company. That assumption was correct but Taggle failed due to bad execution. So let’s not make Taggle out to be Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers.

REASON #2: Daily Deals Is Not E-commerce

Many have rightly identified Daily Deals as a saturated market that is dominated by the existing 2-3 big players such as Snapdeal and Mydala with no room for new entrants. But, the Daily Deal segment is not real e-commerce. Let’s not extrapolate the saturation of a sub-segment of e-commerce to come to conclusions about e-commerce as a whole. Daily Deals has declined in popularity because of audience fatigue. Who can really put up with offers for facials and yoga day after day? It was a novel concept but one with a short shelf life.

But selling products to consumers is a time-tested business. Users have not tired of buying online. They have tired of buying useless coupons online. Taggle’s failure was indicative of the saturation of the daily deal market ONLY. Taggle was unable to create any type of differentiation or scale compared to their competitors. Yes, they pivoted to selling products but that was a case of too little, too late. Once again, don’t read too much into Taggle’s failure. They executed poorly within a declining sub-segment of e-commerce.

To that, some of you might say “but even the retail e-commerce merchants are not profitable.” However…

REASON #3: We’ve Learnt From the Dot Com Crash

The doubters compare the current e-commerce market in India to the dot com boom era in the USA in the late 1990s. During the boom, a whole new set of metrics was created to evaluate the worth of a businesses such as “eyeballs” or “mindshare.” Profitability in the near or even midterm was ignored because investors and executives believed the Internet would grow so substantially it would make up for astonishing levels of spending. This thought process created an environment of epic failures such as eToys.com which raised $220 million, went public, reached a market cap of $11 billion, and then went bankrupt two years later.

So what makes India different in 2012? Well for one we have the above as an example to learn from. Most investors and founders are weary of spending of their startups spending cash too quickly because of lessons learnt from the dot com era. Yes founders are looking for money to accelerate their growth and improve their tech, logistics, and supply chain. But the scale of these investments is nowhere like it was in the USA in the late 1990s.

The examples of Amazon.com, NewEgg.com, Drugstore.com, and BlueNile.com are proof of success from the same period. They go to show that if a merchant follows a reasonable financial model that it can survive for years without being profitable. As long as revenue is following a similar trajectory to spending and the company is making a healthy gross profit (revenue minus cost of goods), it will be in a position for a safe landing if the market goes south. Management can reduce its investments and overhead to turn itself profitable or at least conserve cash (albeit doing so will sacrifice future growth during the down period). The four mentioned merchants have vastly different stories but all show that putting growth before profitability in e-commerce is viable when done in an intelligent fashion.

REASON #4: Women Have Yet To Begin Shopping Online

The most significant aspect of why valuations of e-commerce startups are priced at high multiples is because of the huge growth that is expected. If that growth does not materialize, then it certainly would be a bubble. To estimate the future e-commerce market, most look at indicators such as the growth in online penetration, growth in income, improvements in reliability and coverage of couriers, easier payment methods, etc. These are all important metrics and will contribute greatly to the e-commerce story. But, there is one important angle that no one is talking about:

Women love to shop (sorry for stereotyping!). Are shopping malls full of men or are they full of women? It’s the ladies who drive the offline shopping market. So then why is it that the online shopping world is dominated by male shoppers to the point that our internal statistics indicate that online shoppers are at least 80% men? That discrepancy is because women tend to lag behind men when it comes to adopting new technology. Online shopping is still at a nascent stage in India, so it’s to be expected that not many women currently shop online.

But it’s only a matter of time until Indian women start to become comfortable with shopping online. As that process begins, a whole new wave of growth in the e-commerce market will begin. It will effectively double the reach of e-commerce merchants within a few years. In the USA, more women shop online then do men. India may not reach that point for years, but there’s absolutely no reason why women will not start to shop online in large numbers in the near future which will be a boon for the e-commerce market.

REASON #5: Organic Growth Makes Up For Any Bubble “Burst”

Let’s pretend that six months or a year from now it turns out the e-commerce bubble theorists were right. Valuations were too high and many more e-commerce merchants fail because they burnt through their money and couldn’t convince VC’s to invest in their subsequent down-round.

Okay now what? Well if it’s a bubble, you won’t see further investment in the space for years because of the scars of losing money. But what will happen, even in this worst case scenario, is that the failure of those startups will leave a void. Demand for online shopping from consumers will vastly outgrow the number of quality e-commerce startups in a very short time. Entrepreneurs will continue to jump into the e-commerce space. Investors will be unable to ignore the staggering amount of growth in e-commerce and will resume making investments

You just don’t have real bubbles in categories with extreme growth. You have a few failures and a correction of valuations. The bad startups and unwise investors are weeded out, but then investment activity will continue in that same space to service the amazing growth you’ll see. It’s just not a bubble if we can safely predict we’re going to see investments and growth in that sector for the next ten years. If some of the me-too investors in that category get burnt, then call it a slowdown or correction if you must, but it’s no bubble.

A real bubble is one in which there is no impetus to restart growth. For example, once the US housing market bubble burst, the only thing that would have saved the future of the market was sudden new demand for housing. And of course that did not materialize because there was no population growth or wealth growth in the US. But in this case, if e-commerce valuations do crash, its effects will be minimal. The increasing demand Indians have to shop online is in no way tied to the valuations of these companies and in no way would be affected by a drop in valuation. The continued growth in e-commerce would revitalize the market and spur new VC investments into e-commerce very shortly after any crash. Let’s not call it a bubble if the “bursting” of that bubble isn’t even going to cause lasting damage.

CONCLUSION

E-commerce in India is healthy. Taggle failed but it was not indicative of a systematic problem. A few other VC backed e-commerce startups may even fail, but we are seeing and will continue to see many success stories. As long as those startups continue to spend money within reason, the amazing growth in online shopping will make up for moderate short term losses. If anything, we may see a correction, but that will be short-lived as demand from consumers for quality online merchants will push money back into the e-commerce space.

[Sameer Parwani is the founder of CouponDunia which provides free coupon codes users can avail for discounts at online merchants.]

MunchWithUs partners with high-quality restaurants that agree to offer discounted pre-fix meals and you can use the site to reserve your seatch to either meet new people or meet someone special (celebrity et al) or even plan your own group meal.

For instance, the Bangalore based startup has currently launched ‘Lunch with Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners)’ that costs Rs. 2,500 (proceedings go to Akshaya Patra Foundation), inviting entrepreneurs and others to meet Alok for lunch (aside, we appreciate Alok’s openness towards being an early adopter of the site).

Somewhat based on Grubwithus model, Munchwithus concept can potentially evolve into a big play by simply connecting the dots and helping people ‘move forward’ in their career/venture. For instance, there is potentially big money in enterprise version of this concept, after all there are enough ‘VIPs’ in corporate world too.

To start off, the site needs to convince more big shots/VIPs to offer their time (for lunch) and target the audience that is willing to pay to meet these VIPs.  Maybe there is a way to reverse the game – i.e. have people vote for their favorite VIPs and have VIP pay to meet his/her fans? I don’t know! But for sure, there is a need for informal business meetups and Muchwithus can potentially provide that opportunity.

How much would you pay to meet a VIP/celebrity (for lunch) you always wanted to meet?

Aside, Silicon Valley based LetsLunch too is launching in India.

Designed specifically for best Power Performance and Multi-tasking Experience, Adam II will be based on Google’s IceCream Sandwich Operating System.

Adam II will release the world’s first Modular Based Software Architecture which will further expand the scope of application development and use nearly every single hardware feature in a “user customizable” application. Drag and drop features will enable easy application modification and Open Source Module will further expand the use cases and tablet deployment. Node operations like in Blender, and “Application Authoring Tools” are primarily aimed at non-programmers for composing applications, games and use-case flows in a drag-and-drop fashion, utilizing visual editors and behavior-based logic system.[blog]

Essentially, you will be able to use the tablet as a logic analyzer, medical imaging device, signal acquisition and processing, 3D modeling and multi-media.

Is this a hardware release or a software release? If it’s a hardware release, be assured that the novelty will die down in 2-3 months and given Notion Ink’s earlier history of delayed launches, do you think Notion Ink V1 users will find V2 exciting enough to buy?

Existing customers Vs. New Customers – Where should Notion Ink focus on?

Education in India is all about “How much marks a child is getting” or “Whether he will make it to IIT / IIM or not”. Child’s academic report card is considered to be a determinant of his/her IQ.

This approach has been questioned by Howard Gardner (American developmental psychologist and professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education) in his Theory of Multiple Intelligences. According to him, current approach only evaluates two types of intelligences – linguistic and logical. There are five other types of intelligences which one should access to understand overall intelligence level or areas of core competence of an individual.

Mysuperbrain is attempting to bring this theory to practice, thus helping in overall development of children and helping them make career choices in which they can excel. This is done by a mix of learning, competitions and recognition in areas of 7 intelligences.

Below is Q&A with Mr. Bojja Raghavendar Reddy, CEO & Co-Founder at MySuperBrain.com

Q: What can a student do on your portal?

We have found that overall development of child is not a focus for majority schools and stress is laid only on academic performance. We help in overall development of children, going beyond academics.

At MySuperBrain.com, we believe that there are three main aspects of all round development: Learning, Competing, and Recognition. We offer the following to students:

1. We offer learning material relating to diverse topics – health, science, vedic mathematics, current affairs, leadership etc.

2. Student can participate in Educational Games, Quizzes and Competition – puzzles, Sudoku, painting, creative writing etc.

3. As student keeps participating and performing, he /she keeps gathering points. Each month we recognize winners with prizes and medals. Also, students get visibility amongst audience and mentoring from our team of experts.

Q: You are working in the area of child development, which is very sensitive area and needs in-depth expertise. Is the content & approach accredited by any industry body?

No there is no accreditation. However, we have researched and talked to several subject matter experts in India and abroad. Also, we have few child psychologists on board as consultants who work with us. All learning material is prepared by subject matter experts.

Q: Which classes / age group are you targeting? Is the content same for all age groups / classes?

We cater to students from 3^rd to 9^th standard. We have separate quizzes / contests for different age groups.

Q: Are schools and especially parents open to this idea?

I think, several schools and parents realize this problem and are open to this idea. To demonstrate effectiveness of our offering, we conduct free workshops in selected schools. We also provide free pass to our website few months if schools are interested in our offering. We also interact with parents in parent-teacher meetings to make them aware about our offering.

Q: What is the business model?

For us, customers are schools but success will be determined by students coming back to our website again and again on their own. At present, we offer two models:

Freemium model: Students get access to the site for free. In this case, we will be having ads as source of revenue.

Premium model: In this case, student will get access to our monthly publication apart from educational content on the website. Also, one will not get to see any ads. Annual fee for this offering is 720 Rs.

We started 10 months back and 25-30 schools in South India are trying our offering.

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TRAI today issued a  direction to all the Access Providers and the ILD operators mandating them to take the following steps, within 30 days, keeping in view the time required to put the necessary system in place:

• All international SMS  containing alphabet header or alphanumeric header  or +91 as originating country code should not be delivered through the network.
• If any source or number from outside the country generates more than two hundred SMS per hour with similar ‘signature’, the same  should not be delivered through the network. However, such restriction shall not be applicable on blackout days.
• Only valid codes associated with the network  of those entities  with whom agreements have been signed by the Access Providers shall be allowed in the network

Operators have been asked to implement the rule within 30 days [source: TRAI release/pdf]

• The difference between visible and invisible elements of a startup ecosystem
• Indian Government Announces Mobile Governance Framework [App Store, Mobile Friendly Sites, Payment Gateway and more]
• Student Startup, Bluegape sells Customized Posters Online, Sells 5,000 Posters in 5 months
• 2 Missed Calls & Farmers Can Operate their Irrigation System Remotely [Realtech System’s Mobile Starter Controller]
• DataWind Announces App Contest for Students
• And India’s First Startup Village Launched at Kochi

Startups

• Enlyte : Free Note-taking App on iPad [Appnomy App of the Day]
• Corporate Gifting Service eYantra Acquires Privilege Corner, a startup by ex Via Cofounder
• Take Your VPN to Cloud with CipherGraph
• The Hatch Launches Start-Up Accelerator Programme, Incubates 7 Startups
• Quillpad Launches Indic Input Touch Interface with Handwritten Gestures for iPad [App of the day]
• Sequoia Capital Invests INR 35 Crores in Knowlarity, Cloud Telephony Startup
• eTechies Secures $2 mn Series A funding from Inventus Capital Partners
• Neha Dhupia Launches HerStyle, an Online Store Selling Lingerie, Nightwear and Thermals.
• moneysights launches Facebook app–Now Plan Tax Saving on Facebook
• iXiGo Brings Flight Search to Twitter and Facebook [And It’s Awesome]
• Fetise Partners with Gharpay to Launch Cash Before Delivery (CBD)
• Moneno: Set to Democratize Opinion Polls
• Eco capitalism in India – Time to Light the Thinking Bulb?
• Problem of Plenty– Choosing How to Startup [PART 2]

Student Startups

• 7 Ultra Cool Student Projects on Lenovo’s DoNetwork [Student Startups]
• Student Startup, WhatNextPlus Helps You Decide Which College to Attend
• Student Startup, Bluegape sells Customized Posters Online, Sells 5,000 Posters in 5 months

Student Startups: Please share more details here.

Telecom/Mobile/India Online

• Vodafone Wins $2.5Bn Tax Case, Also Planning an IPO
• Aakash Tablet Preordering Crosses 2 million
• Of SOPA, Sibal, SMS and Email SPAM
• Dos and Don’ts of Web Design [It pays to be simple because it pays to be understood.]
• OpenStreetMap Accuses Google of Vandalizing Open Source Maps, IP Originate from Google India
• Appnomy App of the Day: KooKoo Voice App Directory
• LLP vs. Private Limited: How to Choose Company Incorporation
• A Look at How Celebrities Are Using Social Media
• News Roundup: MLAs want iPad3
• Yahoo India Launches Stars to help you follow celebrity updates and Tweets

Quick Links:

- Follow us on Twitter, Fahttp://facebook.com/pluggdincebook.

- Submit your startup (http://www.pluggd.in/s).

Here are the latest discussions on the forum:

What Golf has taught me about Entrepreneurship

My love of golf developed during my teenage years. Playing golf with my dad and brothers was always a great bonding session for the four of us. Over the years, golf has actually helped me learn a lot about myself and entrepreneurship as well…….
It’s easy to start something with a bang, but can you finish it?
In the golfing circles, I have always been known as a good striker, I can hit the ball a hell of a long way straight down the fairway. Sure it makes getting to the green easier, but once your there, you still have to finish.
Entrepreneurship is the same way. Putting requires focus and patience. Building a business is the same way, losing focus and getting impatient is the fastest route to a 4 putt.

search volume for keywords

I would like to know search volume (relative or absolute) for certain keywords on google. Can you please point me to some sources which can help me in this regard?

Freecharge copycats

Freecharge has defined a new business model – something that nobody in India ever tried. What’s interesting is a set of clones that the company has inspired. Is this the NEXT big thing?

Questions

Legal implications of working with a firm(MNC) and partnering in a start up?

What are the general/Legal implications of working with a firm(MNC) and partnering in a start up? How to tackle it?

Are you paying Service Tax on Adsense Income?

Many say consult a CA but not many CAs know abt Google Adsense (GA) program in India, making it tougher to get some guidance.So thought of asking here as people from various varied interests congregate here .

My question is -  ‘I earn more than 10lacs /annum through GA.Should I pay service tax (ST)?

Allotting fair stakes to founders if all of them are not equally involved in a startup

What is the best way to allot stakes to founders of a startup if all of them are not equally involved?
For example,
- Some of them are working full time and some of them still have their jobs and work part time.
- Some of them are ready to invest some money but some of them cannot invest any money.
We plan to keep stakes equal if it gets too complicated, but is there an easy way to allot stakes so that its fair to everyone involved?

Useful Resource

• The Startup Checklist
• Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors
• Amazon DynamoDB Looks Like A Game Changer

Frustration against ecomm companies

• And now fashionandyou.com : Ecommerce is not just online selling
• How not to do ecommerce like BigAdda
• Irrelevant Marketing by Yebhi on Facebook
• Fraud from eBay India

hack

• Youtube Lyrics Finder [Chrome Extension]

Most Active Participants

Sameer, Sagar , sameerparwani, HemanPatel.

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Got questions? Have insights to share? Wanna build invisible elements in Indian startup ecosystem?, participate in the forum – there are amazing people out there, sharing insights/helping others.