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 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 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 →