Disclaimer : This article is entirely based on my reflection on what I read in the media It was exciting and encouraging to experience the marketing campaigns of Flipkart’s billion dollar day and painful and demoralizing to witness pitfalls. I completely empathize with Sachin and Binny who had to write an unconditional apology letter to …
Product Evangelism for B2B Startups
If you are a B2B startup building an innovative enterprise product, it’s the dream of millions of users that keeps you going in the initial days. Sometimes however, as you acquire early customers and users for your product, it seems that the demands they make and attention they seek is almost distracting you from your …
Make in India – A Social and Cultural Revolution starting at Home
Delighted and enthusiastic to hear and read about the “Make in India” initiative by PM Modi. I came back to India after a short stay in Qualcomm, USA in 1995 to start a software company, to ship software that is made in India to USA. Along with my brothers Sridhar and Sekar, we started our journey with Vembu Systems. The passion and drive then was to create a software product …
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Bootstrapping! Great or Bad?
Off-late, I have been seeing many articles on “Funded” V/S “Bootstrapped” models. Few articles have projected bootstrapped ventures as great in comparison to funded ones. I run a company that is profitable without any external funding and at times find it very odd with these sorts of comparisons. Many entrepreneur friends suggest me to continue …
Making the world flat, one programmer at a time. Vivek Ravishankar, Co-founder at HackerRank. #PNHangout.
I am one of the founders of HackerRank, formally called InterviewStreet, where we are building a platform for programmers to hone their skills and companies to streamline their recruiting process. Currently we are a team of 66 split across Palo Alto and Bangalore and we have been signing up companies like FB, Amazon, VMWare, Bloomberg, …
Internet’s Truth or Dare game of anonimisation
A while ago, I broke my self imposed “participate in only one social network policy” when I installed popular networking app Secret. It was out of sheer curiosity and an intention to experiment with its technology of anonymous social networking. The underlying premise is very interesting as the people participating are from your extended friend …
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#BootUpINDIA Inner Circle kicks off with 8 companies!
Thank you for your enthusiastic participation in BootUpINDIA. We received over 100 high quality applications. The Jury painstakingly went through each of them to pick 8 companies who are being inducted into BootUpINDIA Inner Circle today! Before I share the 8 selected companies, I want to tell the applicants that didn’t make to the Inner …
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Gandhigiri to the Software & Technology Entrepreneur – Part II
Gandhi and Customer Centricity The progression of Economic activity as it stands in the Global Economy today has accelerated from commodities->products->services->experiences->transformations. (Pine and Gilmore) Today we are already in the Experience Economy (Its Apple like experience, its not apple like products), but as professionals we are still grappling with how we build Products, let alone …
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CultureAlley: Simplifying Language Learning
CultureAlley combines the 2 most addictive online habits – Social Media and Gamification, to help people learn foreign languages. It attacks boring, generic, and old school pedagogy in education and turns it on its head. It turns the ridiculous number of hours spent on social media, and the web, into a language lesson. CultureAlley was …
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Looking for business leads? Want to be seen among the top level CXOs and decision maker? @CeBITINDIA
The premiere edition of CeBIT in Asia is all set to get off to a very strong start. From 12-14 November over 600 companies spread over 9 topic clusters will showcase global enterprise technology innovations. 200 of these 600 exhibitors are international companies who are completely new to the Indian market. iSPIRT is a key …
Why B2B Startups Need an Enterprise Integration Strategy
B2B startups usually solve a unique problem that existing enterprise applications do not address. In some cases, they even create a new solution niche as they expand their customer base. As your B2B startup grows and acquires more customers and users, it is critical that the early adoption rate is not only sustained but multiplied. …
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I Just Wanted 50K INR per month, but ended up building company with $9M revenue – Paras Chopra, VWO.com
Paras Chopra from Wingify is great story for startup ecosystem in India and I personally become a fan of him after I watched his Unpluggd Talk on “How To Bootstrap A Tech Startup In India” – His simplicity and honesty gives lot of clarity on how he started his company. All that he wanted to …
Cloud Based #MadeInIndia Accounting Software
Cloud based Accounting Software are becoming increasingly popular for small and medium business. There is no hassle of installing it, the data is safer on the cloud and the costs works out to be much less for the multi user version. India, has managed to produce quite a few efficient cloud accounting software. Here is …
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The Changing Landscape of Inbound Marketing and Why Should Marketers Care!
Traditional Marketing – including advertising, print media, branding and corporate communication – isn’t the same anymore. Physical subscriptions have significantly dropped. People now handle all their bills online. Interruptive cold calling is a big no-no. And yes, more marketers are rolling their eyes than ever before. With access to a wealth of information literally, only …
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“Bootstrapping is tough. Most of the time things take three times longer than what we think. The only way to enjoy this journey is to absolutely love what you do. That is what sustains you.” – Rushabh, ERPNext
Continuing our journey to bring to limelight bootstrapped entrepreneurs from India, we got a chance to speak with Rushabh Mehta, Founder of Web Notes Technologies, a software product company that publishes a free and open source web based ERP called ERPNext for small and medium businesses. Built by a small team of 8 people, ERPNext …