Roundtable Recap: April 16 – 1M/1M Partners With Indian Angel Network Incubator
On April 16, I was in Mumbai doing a live 1M/1M event with TiE Mumbai and Indian Angel Network (IAN). While in Mumbai, I also finalized a deeper partnership with IAN, which I will discuss later in this post.
I presented my usual 1M/1M perspective on bootstrapping. After the event, I received an e-mail from Aneesh Khanna saying, “The Saturday Mumbai TiE session, was a very enriching experience. Even if there were fleeting thoughts of being bailed out by investors, they have now been banished and we are focusing on bootstrapping and making the model work with customer money.”
It’s rewarding to hear from people who attended the session and found immediate and actionable value.
The Mumbai roundtable was extremely interactive and fun. We did two sessions of five entrepreneurs each.
LocoBuzz
First up, Vishal Agarwal with Spatial Ideas presented LocoBuzz, a social media brand analytics platform coupled with location-specific insights. Vishal showed a terrific demo that was full of cool features but completely out of context. My key advice to him was to focus his pitch and demo on the brand analytics story, which has nothing to do with earthquakes and tsunamis – events he showed in the presentation, thoroughly confusing the audience and me before I was able to peel away the layers of the onion and determine what his real business was.
Food ka Mood
Next, Tanuj More pitched Food ka Mood, a waiters-on-wheels-type-concept for the Indian corporate market. Tanuj wants to offer sizable discounts to corporations for their employees to eat at various restaurants. Obvious questions about validation and core value proposition are still unanswered. My sense was that the discount could be interesting for HR organizations to offer to their employees as part of the benefits package, but this assumption needs validation.
TravDe.com
Then, Sameer Patil discussed TravDe.com, which offers steep discounts on hotels. Sameer wants to work with hotels and create special deals for his audience and wanted to know if the Indian online travel market has room for a deal site. Well, it seems to me that all online travel agencies do have deal sites, so to compete with that Sameer needs a specific strategy – perhaps exclusive discounts of some sort. I think TraveDe’s core value proposition has yet to be sorted out. The idea of exclusive deals appeals to me, but whether Sameer can get enough hotels to play ball with him and offer such discounts is something he has not yet confirmed.
Gomolo.in
We also had Pritam Roy present Gomolo.in, a social network and online hangout for movie lovers. Gomolo also has a good database of movies and related information that Pritam is trying to figure out how to create more traction for. I could not identify a good use case for the database utilization, but I learned that the company makes money by licensing content and providing mobile value-added service applications to carriers. This is good news: A revenue model is always good to have early on to sustain a venture, while the bigger scaling points are still being sorted out. I advised Pritam to focus on identifying the use cases that his audience of 250,000 is interested in to start building a product strategy that is likely to monetize – whether that is through mobile VAS apps or through advertising. It would also help figure out the audience engagement model of how to make the social network compelling.
Fragrochem
Last up during the first roundtable session was Chetan Thakkar pitching Fragrochem. Chetan has expertise in fragrance development and the company is in a turnaround situation. The discussion centered on where in the Indian market could Fragochem sell its fragrances with less competition, reasonably good margins, and adequate differentiation. I gave Chetan a framework for analysis, and if he comes back to me with the data framed accordingly, I can help him to answer the market penetration strategy questions.
Stopwaitin.com
After a coffee break, the second roundtable session began with Nimesh Khiara presenting Stopwaitin.com. Nimesh has pitched before, during the roundtable on March 10, 2011, and came back with additional competitive analysis on his OpenTable-like restaurant reservation system.
IRTEX
Ankur Tripathi then pitched IRTEX, the Indian Road Transportation EXchange, also a company that has pitched before during the roundtable on March 10, 2011. This is an excellent company, and although the business is extremely complex, it is solving a worthwhile problem. Ankur has a lot of issues with early adopters compared to late adopters, and I advised him to not waste time on those prospects that do not “get it” and are dragging their feet. Quoting Crossing the Chasm, I suggested Ankur and his team focus on identifying and recruiting early adopters. That’s the only way to build traction for now. We also discussed promotion and pricing strategy in some degree of detail.
Out Of The Box
Next Nimit Shah discussed Out Of The Box, a consulting firm offering brand strategy, design services, and interactive marketing services. The discussion centered on positioning and scalability and explored points such as strategic partnerships as a way to mitigate scalability challenges. Nimit has a difficult task ahead of him: Indian customers think consulting should be free. Convincing them to pay him for consulting will be an uphill battle.
StratExcel
Then Vishal Zinjuvadia presented StratExcel, a simulation technology for developing case studies. Vishal is looking at three different segments and use cases: management schools, corporate training, and recruitment evaluation. I went over all three use cases with him and suggested he pick one for his go-to-market strategy. My sense is that he should focus on corporate training because that’s where there is both budget and awareness about the case-based training method. Management schools have awareness, but not enough budget. And HR departments typically are not used to applying case-based methods in recruitment, so Vishal would need to do a lot of concept selling, which is unnecessary.
System-Sea
Our last presenter of the day was Ashwini Otta pitching System-Sea, a company with core competency in the shipping sector that is bootstrapping a product company using its services revenues. What I liked about this company were its deep domain knowledge and niche nature. The product is already validated at a very high-end price point, and Ashwini is planning to offer it at a substantially lower price.
Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge grant applications will be open for all entrepreneurs to file. Please feel free to use the 1M/1M premium program to prepare for the grant.
We have also finalized a partnership with the Indian Angel Network whereby we will offer deep discounts to IAN-recommended companies to avail of the 1M/1M premium program. To apply, please contact Apoorv Sharma at IAN.
Pritam Roy’s Gomolo.in was chosen the best business of those presented by the audience through a poll on the 1M/1M Facebook page.
The next online roundtable is on April 28, 2011, and will focus on entrepreneurs from the Mountain States region of the U.S. Recordings of previous online roundtables are all available here. You can register for the upcoming roundtables here.
This segment is a part in the series : Roundtable Recap
. March 25 – A Mixed Bag Of Advice . April 1 – Bootstrapping Tips . April 8 – A Focus On E-Commerce . April 15 – Small Is OK; The Goal Is Profitability . April 22 – The Original Runners . April 29 – Finding The Right Direction . May 6 – Defining Value Proposition . May 20 – Validation, Validation, Validation . May 27 – Is The Venture Worth Your Time? . June 3 – Defining Market Segments . June 10 – Efficient Targeting . June 17 – Online Education Startups . June 24 – Three Startups That Can Hit One Million Dollars . July 1 - Get Your Pricing Model Validated . July 8 - The EJ Methodology . July 15 - A Market Of Late Adopters . July 22 - Bootstrap Using Services . July 29 - Startups In Malaysia . August 5 - Paying Customers =>Validation =>Valuation . August 19 - Niche E-Commerce Is Great For Bootstrapping . August 26 - 85%-90% Of Search Traffic Comes From Organic Search . September 2 - Find High Velocity Channels . September 9 - Open Opportunities In Cloud Computing And Rural BPO . September 16 – 5 Cloud Computing Opportunities for Entrepreneurs . September 23 - Do Not Spray And Pray . September 30 - Investors Don't Fund Broad Ideas . October 7 - Try To Get At Least $2M Pre-Money In Seed Round Valuation . October 14 - Professional Investors Do Not Invest In $20 Million Markets . October 21 - Bootstrapping Comes In Many Flavors . October 28 – Convert Potential Competitors To Partners . November 4 - Premium Lounge Sneak Preview . November 11 - African Tech Entrepreneurs Emerging . November 18 - Not Coming To The Rescue Of Victory . December 2 - Niche Marketplace Businesses Can Be Interesting . December 9 - Where Should You Raise Money? . December 16 - Top 10 Tech Trends To Watch . January 6 - Top 10 Vertical and Social Web Trends For The Decade . January 13 - Top 10 Online Advertising Trends For The Decade . January 20 - Personalization Remains An Open Problem . January 27 - Non-Dilutive Financing Through Revenue Sharing . February 3 - Indian Entrepreneurs Are Maturing . February 10 - When Keywords Are Competitive . February 17 - Indian Company Plugs Gap In Google’s Enterprise Solution . February 24 - VCs, Angels, Incubators, Accelerators – What Are You Doing With Your Rejects? . March 3 - Spotlight On The Northwest . March 10 - Spotlight On India . March 17 - Spotlight On Latin And Central America . March 24 - 75th Session Spotlights The Midwest . March 31 - Microsoft’s $100,000 India Startup Challenge Grant . April 6 - 1M/1M Announces Important Partnership With MAD Incubator, Malaysia . April 9 - 1M/1M Announces Partnership With TiE Chennai . April 16 - 1M/1M Partners With Indian Angel Network Incubator . April 17 - High-Octane Energy In Pune . April 21- Incubators Are Reaching Out To 1M/1M . April 28 - Guerrilla P.R. & SEO Most Profitable Customer Acquisition Strategies . May 5 - Ownership Matters . May 12 - Two Really Cool Companies . May 19, Making Money From Blogs . May 26 - Twitter, LinkedIn - Why Not Affiliates? . June 2 - 1M/1M And Incubators - What We Have Learned . June 9 - Silicon Valley . June 16 - Exciting Companies Lined Up For Microsoft Startup Grant Finals . June 23 - New Assessment Tool For Entrepreneurs . June 30 - Continued International Participation . July 21 - Crowd Sourced Funding Exchanges - An Emerging Trend . July 28 - Investors And Incubators Need To Look At Pre-Incubation . August 4 - How Do You Bootstrap Freemium Ventures? . August 11 - Menlo Park And The Silicon Valley Renaissance . August 25 - How To Use Twitter For Lead Generation . September 1 - Fall Call To Action . September 8 - A View Into Israeli Start-ups . September 15 - Do Your Homework First . September 22 - How Do You Catalyze A Region’s Entrepreneurship? . September 29 - From Poland To Argentina . October 6 - Dedicated To Steve Jobs, Reinforcing Mission To Restructure Capitalism . October 13 - FREE Is Not A Business Model . October 20 - Non-profits And For-profits . October 27 - Check Out Stanzr . November 3 - VCs Are Not Always Right . November 17 - Business Schools And Early Stage Entrepreneurship . December 1 - 1M/1M Premium Company Freshdesk Wins Funding From Accel Partners . December 8 - Three Open Opportunities For 2012 . December 15 - Web 3.0 And Social Dancing; Romania Emerging . December 22 - Free Apps, Ad-Supported Business Models => Dangerous! . January 5 - ERP Galore . January 12-13 - Spotlight On IIT Kharagpur, India . January 19 - Are Media Sites Fundable? . January 26th - Spotlight On Jacksonville, Florida . February 2 - YCombinator vs. 1M/1M . February 9 - Are You Fundable? . February 16 - What’s Happening In Turkey? . February 23 - Microsoft Israel To Offer 1M/1M Scholarships . March 1 - Strategy Gaps Need To Be Plugged . March 12 - Winners Of Microsoft Israel Scholarships . March 15 - Spotlight On 3 Day Startup Tel-Aviv . April 3 - Rendezvous In Bangalore . April 12 - More From Indian Entrepreneurs . April 19 - Tyranny Of The TAM . April 26 - A Rare Women-Only Session . May 3 - Some Wonderful Opportunities With Corporate Partners . May 10 - BlueSnap-Elance Contest Applications Deadline This Weekend . May 22 - Winners Of TechHub-A&N Media Battle Of The Startups Contest In London Win 1M/1M Scholarships