Roundtable Recap: June 30 – Continued International Participation

True to the international dynamic of 1M/1M, during today’s roundtable we had entrepreneurs from the U.S., India, and Israel pitch their businesses. And in the audience, there were people from at least 30 different corners of the world.

directdialogs
First, Senthil Natchimuthu from Coimbatire, India, discussed directdialogs. Senthil is doing a small business marketing solution that combines loyalty programs with email marketing and campaign management. The product roadmap is quite ambitious, and I was concerned about the viability of a minimum viable product with such a large scope. It turns out that the product has been built over the last two years, and a MVP is already in place. Now, Senthil is working on the positioning and go-to-market strategy for the business.

This is a very crowded market, and I asked Senthil to do some competitive analysis on some possible markets, and we discussed some of the pros and cons of those markets. We’ll look at the options based on the analysis.

tapTank
Next, Yael Greenberg from Tel Aviv, Israel, pitched tapTank, a concept stage business where Yael wants to help consumers barter, collaborate, and compete on specific tasks. She gave a series of use cases from group travel to competing in marathons, and the one that resonated with me was barter. Each of her use cases is potentially a separate business, and I advised her to focus on fleshing out the barter concept.

PinkVilla
Then Jeu George from Redmond, Washington, presented PinkVilla, one of the largest user-generated content-driven portals for Bollywood aficionados. The site has 11 million page views a month. The site’s unique visitors are at about 600k a month.

Jeu is trying to figure out his financing options, and the majority of the discussion today was around target market, product roadmap, and monetization models, which are the factors that would drive investment strategy.

This is a promising business, but clearly under-monetized. The revenue models need to be revisited, and the customer acquisition strategy as well. Their penetration in India seems relatively low, given that Bollywood is really an Indian phenomenon, its international following notwithstanding.

Reach360
Finally, Kiran Nagarajappa and Rajesh Agarwal from Bangalore, India, pitched Reach360, a neat advertising optimization solution to help agencies, advertisers, and publishers get better eyeballs and click throughs out of their current campaigns. The product has been validated on campaigns by a dozen major Indian brands and / or agencies, and has shown great metrics. Now, Kiran and Rajesh are looking to take this to the next level. Last week, they won Microsoft’s Indian Startup Challenge grant of $40k.

Very interesting company with lots of great possibilities of working with major display advertising players, ad networks, and of course, advertisers and agencies.

You can select the business you like best of those discussed today through a poll on the 1M/1M Facebook page.

The recording of today’s roundtable can be found here. Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here. We will be holding future roundtables at 8:00 a.m. PDT on the following dates:

Thursday, July 21, 2011: Register Here.

Thursday, July 28, 2011: Register Here.

And you can sign up for the 1M/1M premium program here and take the 1M/1M self assessment test 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