The Indian Startup



What is the start-up story behind your venture?

pdStartup is one stop solution for startups and small companies to get consistent branding through functional designs. As an identity design studio, most of our clients would come to us with request to further their services with print and web designing. That is when we scrutinized the issues faced by our clients. After getting the logo designed by us, the client had to scout for other agencies for print and web solutions. The task turned out to be complex and redundant as they needed to explicate the same concept again, which may/ may not corroborate our design approach. We identified a need and decided to extend our services to offer one-stop solution for Identity, Print and Web, so clients could enjoy our design expertise for consistent branding without expending too much effort in terms of money and time.

Who is your target audience?

Like, I mentioned, we focus on reducing a startups time to market by partnering with them to develop functional designs for their brands. We also work with small businesses. An established company with an urge to enhance their brand recognition is also our client with whom we work to not only develop a new look but also develop designs that are in sync with their vision and brand values.

Who are your competitors? How do you try to differentiate yourself?

A small ad agency, creative studio or freelancer can pose as a competition to us.  But what we offer is of greater value. We have a well-defined process, wherein, we read our clients brand values, conduct research regarding their industry, competition and clientele. Based on which we develop designs that are functional in terms of effectiveness to communicate about the company and deliver results. With the breadth of our services, we maintain consistency in designs to build the brand the company aspires. Other key aspects about us are we are valued for the service and quality we offer and pride ourselves in establishing a close and open working relationship with our clients at every step.

How do you market your initiative and educate prospects?

Design is a highly relative service (what sounds music to you may sound noise to your client) so we aim at high client satisfaction, so that the client refers us to his/her network, and showcases our portfolio in different media.

Another initiative that we are focusing on currently is to develop knowledge base for entrepreneurs and small companies. We then broadcast the information through our blogs, twitter and facebook fan page. The idea is to develop a community of entrepreneurs and small business and aspiring entrepreneurs to discuss about their marketing initiatives, more specifically about brand designs.

What are your future plans?

Currently, we serve domestic clients and referred international clients. As per the preliminary study we have conducted, there is tremendous scope in the international market. So we plan to expand in the US, Middle & Eastern Europe and Australia region.

Another plan is with respect to the operational model; designers are scattered across India and mostly come from small towns and need to relocate in big cities for a career as designer. We are working on a novel operating model to be able to reach them in their cities and work with the best talent.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs?

For a budding Entrepreneur I have a three pointer advice. Apart from passion, drive and love for what you do, you need to

1. Be Pragmatic – Always have a back up.
2. Hire people who enthuse your company – Experience is secondary. A great hire will ensure your clients are delighted always.
3. Have a plan and stick to it. If it doesn’t work remember you already have a back up.

Our take on PDStartup:

Some of the first things you would want to get done as a startup are designing a professional looking logo for your firm,  developing  & hosting a smart website and creating attractive business cards!  pdStartup is not only a one stop shop for all these services but offers them at affordable prices as well.

We interviewed Mr. Mayur.K.Motwani (CEO,Styx Infogateway LLP) about his venture thehangout.in.

The Hangout is the perfect place to find about all those places where you can hang out with your gang or your special ones.

1)      Briefly, what is TheHangout.in about?

 TheHangout.in is all about enabling its users to hangout better by giving them information about various places to hangout in India. It is India’s 1^st Local Hangout Search Service. A visitor to our website can obtain information like the address and contact nos. etc. of various places to hangout like coffee shops, eat-outs, lounges or even the street food stalls and save himself/herself the torture of wasting their time on asking the address or taking directions from all kinds of people in that area, thus enabling him/her to spend more quality time to hangout with their friends or loved ones.

2)      What gave you the idea for TheHangout.in?  How has the product in its current form changed since its original idea?  What have been your biggest obstacles?

 The original idea for TheHangout.in was of a social networking portal but after analysing the social networking space for a few months we felt that the idea of launching a social networking website was not very much challenging and different enough for us due to the presence of a large number of social networking portals on the internet. The idea of TheHangout.in then went under a drastic change when I (Mayur Motwani) and Mr. Lokesh Motwani were very frustrated on a Sunday when we were not able to locate a very popular street burger stall in Thane in Mumbai and ended up wasting more than one and half hour just to locate it. It was at that moment that it came to our mind to start with a hangout search service which would save other people the kind of torture we had faced that day and in this way the current idea of TheHangout.in was born. There were many obstacles on the way to launch TheHangout.in as it is today but, I would say the biggest obstacles were of tracking down the types of places people would hangout at and also of getting information about places to hangout in India. To overcome these obstacles we undertook a study through our sources to understand at what type of places, people in India like to hangout at and in the process the innovative and very different categories of Street Treats and Highway Hangouts were evolved. After overcoming this obstacle, the only major obstacle that remained was of getting information about places to hangout in India which we were able to overcome only with the help of many of our loyal visitors who since the pre-launch, till today keep on giving us various details about different places to hangout in India. We are highly indebted to them for all the information about various hangouts we have got on TheHangout.in.

3)      What are the barriers of entry in such a listing venture? How is this service different from search engines? What core technologies do you use?

Frankly speaking, there are almost no barriers if one is truly committed towards entering in such a venture. It’s very true that barriers give us the opportunity to re-think and come up with an innovation to breakthrough that barrier. But, if one thinks at it from a realistic view, the biggest barriers of entry into such a venture are of lack of funding for gathering information about various places all over a vast and diverse country like India and the presence of many corporate giants in this industry which makes it very difficult for one to be competitive enough in the market. TheHangout.in is different from search engines in a way that it gives local information like the address and contact nos. of places to hangout in an area. It saves its users the pain of putting all the types of keywords one could think under the roof and still not finding that perfect category of places to hangout by enabling them to search for the type of hangout they want to search by simply clicking a button. Also, TheHangout.in is different from other local search engines in a way that it is focused primarily on finding information about places to hangout almost anywhere and everywhere in India and is not limited to only a handful of cities in the country. In today’s world, technologies keep on changing at blazing speeds replacing the older technologies by performing many times faster than the old ones. The basket of technologies that we use are very sophisticated and helps the users of TheHangout.in to search for the places to hangout even by the names of buildings, street names or even by the name of a landmark nearby as opposed to the technologies used by many of our competitors which restricts them to search only by their pre-specified areas.

4)      What is the major traffic to your website? What marketing and promotional methods do you find most effective?

 The major traffic to our website is from Mumbai since it is a city which adapts to the new trends very easily but, we also do get a good amount of traffic from other cities like Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore etc. and also from many other non-metro cities like Nellore, Amritsar etc. Currently, we are trying to promote TheHangout.in through channels like Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing and SMS Marketing. But, for us the social media marketing through facebook, twitter & other social media marketing channels and Internet Marketing through Google adwords have been most effective.

5)      How do you source your location listings? What is the process of being listed on the website?  What checks do you have in place for accuracy of information?

 There are two types of listings on our website, free listings and premium listings, the free listings only have certain essential information such as address and contact no. etc. whereas the premium listings have almost all the information about a particular place to hangout including the personalized photos and videos galleries for it & the offers going on at that particular hangout and also, the premium listings are listed above the free listings, thereby getting more focus of the visitors. The free listings are listed on the website with the help of the submission of listings by our registered users and also by our own independent research for an area whereas the premium listing of a particular place to hangout is listed on our website when one of their authorized personnel chooses to get their hangout listed on our website. One can get their listing done on our website by two ways; the first one is by becoming a registered user of our website and submitting their listing as a free listing. The second one is by opting for a premium listing by shooting us a mail at sales@thehangout.in. Our sales department then takes the customer through the process by explaining him/her the procedure and by discussing the charges for premium listing of their hangout. The listings on TheHangout.in are subject to a check by the visitors as well as our own research panel. The visitors can report to us if they find any information about a particular listing as incorrect or abusive by using the “Report Incorrect” and “Report Abuse” buttons on the website.

6)      What is your target market for consumers?

 Currently we are targeting at the visitors to our website between the ages of 18-35, as people in this age group have larger access to internet and spend a lot of their free time in leisure activities. Also, a large share of the internet surfing population in India is from this age group. But, by saying this we don’t want to deny the fact that everyone irrespective of their age nowadays do like to spend a quality time by hanging out with their friends or their loved ones and TheHangout.in proves as an apt medium to help them hangout better.

7)      How do you make revenue? Can you share current revenue figures?

 We get majority of our revenue from two sources, through banner advertisements and through the sale of premium listings on our website. At this moment, it would be difficult for us to share our current revenue figures but, we for a fact can surely say that the revenue that we are currently making is sufficient enough for us to fund our cost of operations as well as invest in the growth of our venture.

8)      How many people are included in your startup team? What are the skills and the experience that they bring to the table? Do you think it is essential for the founders to have experience before starting up a venture?

 Currently our startup team includes only 2 people i.e. I (Mayur Motwani) and Mr. Lokesh Motwani. I, Mayur Motwani, a graduate in BMS (Marketing) from Mumbai University, am primarily concerned with the Operations and Marketing aspect of our Organization whereas Mr. Lokesh Motwani, currently pursuing MMS in Finance from Welingkar Institute of Management, looks after the Finance and Administration department. I have a hand on experience of Field Marketing of services like Market Research Services, Web Designing Services etc., while Mr. Lokesh Motwani has been actively managing his Family Business of Garment Exports since 2004. Experience is always a welcome ingredient in the mix of every startup’s core points. But in the case of Styx Infogateway LLP, of which TheHangout.in is the premiere venture, which is primarily a service solutions provider in the web arena, experience is not absolutely essential as the business model requires constant change in organizational dynamics.

9)      How would you define success for your venture?

 Success for our venture means every Indian who wants to have a good time or just wants to get away for a little while should think of TheHangout.in every time he/she wants to get out and have some fun. Not to mention, the Streetside Thelawalas who will be jumping around the aisles with all that added collateral publicity.

10)  What are your future plans for the next 6 months? What are the New Features that you would like to include in your website?

 The future plans for the next 6 months currently I would say are to aggressively market our service through various marketing mediums and to also make our services available to a wider audience through more channels other than only the internet. It is too early I think to let everyone know what New Features we would be including on the website since many of the New Features are still under testing mode. But, I could say this with a lot of confidence that there are a host of New Features that you would see getting included on TheHangout.in very soon which would ease the usability of the website and enhance the experience of the users on the website.

Our views on thehangout.in

Thehangout.in is an interesting venture.TheHangout.in, India’s 1st Local Hangout Search Service which enables you to search for the places to hangout in your city, let it be any local club, theatre, restaurant or even the local pav-bhaji waala’s thela.

The website is extremely user friendly and well- designed.All-in-all this is the perfect information providing website.

We wish the team of thehangout.in all the very best ! 

Do you have any questions for Mr. Mayur or his co-founders? Post them in the comments here and we’ll ask the team to respond.

We interviewed Mr Rohan Rehani of EntrAct Consulting. EntrAct Consulting is a fast growing consulting firm in the Indian startup space.

1.) What is your startup about?
EntrAct Consulting is an intermediary between Entrepreneurs and Investors. Startups are generally of amongst three types – an unproven idea, a small business running successfully at a local scale and a company which is looking to expand  from is current base and structure. Each of these types has its own requirements for growth in terms of mentorship, team formation,  financial planning and most importantly, funding. From germinating an idea by providing the necessary support framework and  guiding the entrepreneur to getting the right team and attaining initial seed funding, to helping an established business attain funds for expansion, EntrAct helps connect startups to mentors, partners and Investors necessary for their respective growth.

Very broadly, the services we provide to Entrepreneurs and Investors are as below:
1. For Entrepreneurs / Startups
After understanding the requirements of the business, we start with a feasibility review where we get inputs and insights from experts in the relevant sector. From helping with formulating and framing the business plan, getting industry experts onto the advisory board, streamlining the business and finally helping the entrepreneur get its initial growth or push and then help them connect with Investors until funding is procured, we work with the startup in every step of the way.
2. For Investors
Besides the most obvious offering of bringing forward to investors quality projects that have been streamlined  to have the potential to grow exponentially, we also scout amongst our network of Entrepreneurs for businesses and hence connect them to the most appropriate quality projects.

2.What is the story behind EntrAct Consulting? What led to the inception of EntrAct?
Shruti had her own flower retailing business servicing major corporates in NCR. In 2007, she got the opportunity to go to ISB, Hyderabad where the faculty took her business and made into a project and business plan, showing her the field of opportunities available for her business. Having an entire B-School analyze your business and its potential can really be an eye opener! Subsequently, Shruti went through the process of raising Debt as well as VC funding for her venture
With this experience, she was asked to be a support consultant to the first batch of 29 women entrepreneurs for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 women initiative. It was here that Shruti realized that a lot of the 29 women were at the same stage she was before she joined ISB – i.e. naive about the potential of their businesses and with limited idea of how to grow it.
It was with this in mind EntrAct was started. As with any venture, getting the team right for EntrAct was essential as each member needed to complement the others strengths and experiences. Some of us have experience working with startups while others bring on board their networks of Investors and Mentors. We’re trying to do what ISB did for Shruti – show entrepreneurs the true potential of their business and put them on the right path for growth and ultimately connecting them to potential Investors.

3.What experience do the founders bring and what are their roles?
Having started recently ourselves, there are no fixed roles or defined KRA’s for the founding members of EntrAct. That being said, there are of course, somethings unique about each of us. Here is some information about our team:-
Shruti Dhanda
Before EntrAct, Shruti, an ISB alumni, had successfully raised funding for her own company before selling it in 2010. She has also worked in various capacities with other startups in their own fund raising process. Shruti helps our Entrepreneurs see the largest possible picture in terms of what their business idea can grow to.
Sanjeev Sapra
Sanjeev is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of experience with extensive experience in diverse sectors ranging from Media, Telecom, Technology, Infrastructure, Manufacturing, Trading/Retailing, Healthcare, Hospitality, Education etc. Sanjeev looks into the financial aspects and viability of all the projects that come our way.
Kuldeep Singh
Presently pursuing his MBA from IIM Ahemdabad, Kuldeep has a prior experience in IT in the Insurance domain. Kuldeep brings on board his excellent networks of Entrepreneurs, Mentors and Advisers.
Rohan Rehani
After his engineering, Rohan has worked in various roles in manufacturing, marketing and sales in the Manufacturing and Dot Com sectors. Before EntrAct, he has also worked with a number of startups in their initial stages in order to help them gain market traction. Rohan mainly  is responsible for the Business development. He also supports the entrepreneurs in the ideation stage by evaluating their growth plans and handholds them during each phase in its execution.

4.Which is the most popular feature of your service and which one are you most excited about? Who is your target audience?
I think what appeals to our clients the most is that we adopt a very hands on approach with our projects. We become somewhat of a guiding partner in the process.
Due to this approach, we tend to take an active part in planning of vision, growth, scalability and sustainability of the business. This, in fact is quite appealing to our entrepreneurs as we try and see their business in a new light.
Our target audience is entrepreneurs and startups who are looking to grow, but don’t know how.

5.Who are your competitors? How do you try to differentiate yourself?
There is no competition in this field per se. The requirement is huge and there are not enough players to serve it.
Our differentiation lies in the fact that we aim to create value by adding something new and different to the idea / business in its existing form. By helping the entrepreneur look beyond the obvious, we create the distinguishing factor that makes the venture appealing from an Investors perspective.

6.How did you fund the venture? Do you have external funding? When did external partners step in?
EntrAct is self funded through savings and reserves of the partners. As our operational costs are relatively low, we do not need any external funding and so do not have any external partners.

7.How do you plan to market your initiative and educate prospects ?
We follow a very basic approach to marketing:-
a) We intend to meet as many Entrepreneurs as possible by attending Startup Meetings that happen in and around Delhi.
b) Increasingly participate in Startup Forums online to garner more visibility
c) Referrals from our existing clients.

8.Can you disclose statistics? User base? Revenue? Profitability?
Presently we have 9 projects ranging from F&B, Telecom, Music, Sports, Automotive, Hospitality and Education sectors. 2 projects are in the idea stage, 4 are post revenue and pre-profit  and 3 are post profit.
We have not had our first real success yet, but are expecting a major round of funding happening within the next two months to one of our projects. Talks are on at the moment and we can’t divulge any more information.
Once we have our projects rolling we will publish our successes.

9.What are your future plans?
We’re currently increasing the projects in our pipeline. Also, as I mentioned earlier, we have not yet had our first success. We expect that to happen within another two months. Once that happens, we will also take a more aggressive approach to marketing.

Our take on EntrAct Consulting:
Most good ideas fizzle out because they remain just that! In fact, it is said that 90% of startups fail within the first 120 days! Therefore, it is imperative to execute an idea by involving the right people and making smart decisions. By promising to offer proper guidance, EntrAct Consulting seems to be the guide startups have been searching for!

We interviewed Mr Prabhat Kiran about his venture Clayology.com. He is the Founder & CEO of this firm which has been helping companies to adopt ‘fresh’ techniques for their marketing campaigns.

What is your startup about?

Clayology Interactive Agency is a Social Media Marketing & Production company with a twist.

We understand that the success of every viral campaign, be it a viral video, game or an application is in its uniqueness.  Claymation or Stop Motion Animation is something quite different and unique because it does not involve computer generated avatars. They are hand-made and completely organic.

So, when we came up with this unique combination ( Claymation and Viral seeding) we were greeted with open hands by Media Agencies.

What is the story behind Clayology? What led to the inception of Clayology?

I have been in the internet marketing industry for quite sometime.  I have been an Online Marketing & Brand Management Consultant for various companies and so always had to come up with tailor-made strategies for each of them.

Industries like Travel, Gambling etc had high competition. The media buying slabs sometimes don’t even justify a decent break even for them.
I was consulting for a poker company in China , they wanted to tap the local market with local games.  We decided to go with a viral game campaign with a ‘fresh’ approach.

The so called ‘fresh’ approach clicked and that inspired me to come up with an Agency with a twist..something that grabs attention & something that cannot be replicated easily.

What experience do the founders bring and what are their roles?

The company has been founded by Prabhat Kiran who is a Social Media Strategist, who has developed strategies & consulted for many A list Venture funded companies in India, Hong Kong, China & UK.

The expertise lies in Social Media Marketing, Optimization, Branding Establishing Features, Functionality and Traffic Promotions.

He has experience with various Web 2.0 promotions like Viral Marketing (Video, Games), Third-party Applications, WOM, Video Promotions, Pod casting, Google / Yahoo Verticals, Mobile Marketing, SEO, PPC  etc  and has covered various researches on segments like Social Network / Online Video / Media / Web 2.0 platforms.

Each and every member of the team has ample experience and a strong background to boast in their respective forte.

Which is the most popular feature of your service and which one are you most excited about? Who is your target audience?

The most popular feature of our service is of-course claymation.  Since we are a B2B company we target Media Agencies in major.

Who are your competitors? How do you try to differentiate yourself?

Our competitors are mainly companies like Webchutney &  -  involved in viral creation and campaigning but since we are exclusively into claymation, we have an edge over them.

How did you fund the venture? Do you have external funding? When did external partners step in?

All the funding had been raised internally.  We are negotiating with some Venture Capitalists at this moment.

How do you market your initiative & educate prospects?

Since our target is Media Agencies, we have customized brochures and show-reels  for them.  We do a lot of Media Buying in Facebook and Google Adwords and also do Organic Optimisations.

Can you disclose statistics? User base? Revenue? Profitability?

Its too early to disclose.

What are your future plans?

We are on some plans which are still on paper but you can expect a new venture from  Clayology in next 6 months time.

Our Views on Clayology.com

Claymation constitutes only around 5% of the Rs 1200 crores Indian animation sector, however it is slowly becoming a force to reckon with.

Although firms like O&M and Vaibhav Studio are present in this area, Clayology.com is the only Indian venture which combines social media with claymation and shall surely reap the benefits of being a first mover in this category

What is your startup about?

What is the story behind Innoz Technologies.  What led to the inception of SmsGyan?

Initially we were taking the content from free sources. Now SmsGyan is joining into partnerships to provide users with more accurate results. Moreover we are trying to do a step more than just provide information. We have already partnered with companies like LifeMojo, Sutrajobs, etc. So we also act as a medium for such companies to let their services get noticed and people interested can apply via sms!

Taking LifeMojo as an example, our users get to know about LifeMojo services on queries about health and if they are interested we let them sign up via sms.

Which is the most popular feature of your service and which one are you most excited about?

What made you expand your services from the sms domain to instant messaging? Do you expect this to affect your sms revenue generation?

You provide several types of information services to users that can be accessed by using a combination of keywords.  How do you educate your user base on how to use your existing and new services?

Keywords is always an issue in this kind of a scenario. We do have a help option to give the users a list of keywords. We do have the spell checks working and we are trying to reduce the hassles of keywords by accepting the requests and analyzing what the user actually wants. To educate users about the new keywords, we make sure the promotion of the new keyword is top priority.

For us personally it was a big learning point. Moving from just the technology to actually looking into financial points too. There were some good advices and we are working in too.

SmsGyan has succeeded in getting a lot of PR coverage from print and web media.  Whats your secret?

The secret is the service. When we talk to people about it, they try it out and like it.

Each request costs the user Rs. 3. So the costs are covered if we mange to answer a considerable amount of queries per month.

In our beta stage we had around 25000 unique users and have successfully answered more than 3 lakh queries.

What are the future plans for SmsGyan and Innoz Technologies?

We interviewed Sitashwa Srivastava and Manik Kinra about their startup creADivity

Please explain what your company does in a few simple words

creADivity is an online platform for creatives and clients to come together for building advertising and design solutions for the industry. With more than 550 freelance creatives (mainly design talent, marketing freelancers and students, and agency professionals) available on the platform, we are able to generate designs to satisfy real life business needs such as advertisements in print and digital forms, OOH designs, logos, calendars, web UIs etc. for our clients Read the rest of this entry →

We interviewed Sangeeta Venkat and Venkat Kandaswamy about their startup ApartmentAdda.com

How would you describe your startup to a layman?

ApartmentAdda is a single online platform for Apartment Residents and Association Committee – to communicate among themselves and manage their Apartment Complex.

Today 65% of the home-owning middle-class-and-above demographic in large Indian cities lives in an Apartment, leads a very busy work life, is often globetrotting, and is connected by internet or SMS. These apartment residents seek to utilize technology for a convenient way of handling residential issues and participating in community initiatives. ApartmentAdda.com is the solution for them. Read the rest of this entry →

We interviewed Namit Nangia about his startup LifeMojo.com:

How would you describe your startup to a layman?

LifeMojo is a company focused on helping you achieve your fitness goals faster.

Our web platform LifeMojo.com helps you start your fitness journey, monitor your progress and figure out how to eat right and stay healthy. Read the rest of this entry →

Our first interview on this blog is with Harshad Joglekar, co-founder of Uproot.in, an online classifieds portal. Read the rest of this entry →

I am excited to launch TheIndianStartup’s very own startup interview blog!.  If you would like us to interview your startup, please send us a message from here.  In the next couple of days, we will be putting up our first startup interview.

Hopefully, this will become a weekly feature.  If there are any questions that you would like to get a response to but which were not asked as part of the interview, please post them in the comments under the interview article and we will ask the interviees to respond to you in the same manner.

P.S. This is also TheIndianStartup’s first featured blog.  To vote for the featured blog you want to see launched next, see this post.