1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2013: Kobster

The Indian ecommerce market has attracted many a retailer. In particular, niche sectors like office supplies that has an annual growth rate of 15 to 20% is attracting quite a few ecommerce ventures. One such ecommerce startup is Kobster.com, a one-stop e-destination for office supplies.

In the highly unorganized office supplies market, Kobster provides an online platform that makes it easy for companies and educational institutes to procure a wide range of office supplies, furniture, customizable stationery and gifts. With doorstep delivery, flexible payment options such as cash on delivery, and the convenience and efficiency of online shopping, Kobster aims to eliminate the need to engage with multiple vendors and end the office supplies procurement nightmare.

Kobster was founded in July 2012 by three college friends, Karthik Ramaiah, Mohan Gayam and Vineet Neeraj. Vineet, a former software developer with Cognizant, manages the marketing and sales aspect of the business. He had earlier launched an event services startup, Yippie, followed by a product startup, ArrayShield.  Karthik, a former Java developer at Cognizant handles all the technical aspects as well as customer support, while Mohan, a former HCL Technologies employee, is responsible for the product catalog and ensuring best deals from suppliers.
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MIT and the Digital Economy: Sramana Mitra – Doug Leone Panel Discussion

Sramana participated in a panel discussion as part of the MIT and the Digital Economy program earlier this year.

This video is a recording of the session. It is an extremely interesting discussion. We highly recommend you listen to it.

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Harvard Business Review: How to Reduce ‘Infant Entrepreneur Mortality’

Harvard Business Review recently published Sramana Mitra’s piece, How to Reduce ‘Infant Entrepreneur Mortality’. You can read the entire article here.

How To Start An Incubator

This is REALLY exciting!

As you know, we’ve been working with many partners around the world over the last year.

This has helped us develop an informed perspective on the need for a scalable incubation system that our partners can use easily, affordably, seamlessly to launch their own incubators, with our help, anywhere in the world, but with deep ties into Silicon Valley.

And now, we present the 1M/1M Incubator-in-a-Box, a new program to support partners in how to start a business incubator.

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1M/1M Incubator-In-A-Box Democratizes Business Incubation

To enable everyone in any part of the world – companies, angels, VCs, governments, schools and entrepreneurship development organizations – to easily, rapidly, and affordably launch an incubator, the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) global virtual incubator has announced the 1M/1M Incubator-in-a-Box. This program has grown out of 1M/1M’s extensive work with various partners interested in expanding their footprints in entrepreneurship and innovation eco-systems around the world.

Once an organization decides how many entrepreneurs they would like to incubate and from where, 1M/1M will run contests and help the partner organization recruit appropriate entrepreneurs to bring into their custom portfolio. 1M/1M will provide the base-level incubation to the chosen entrepreneurs through the 1M/1M Premium Program. This includes online curriculum, mentoring and strategy consulting, introductions to customers, channel partners, investors, and access to the 1M/1M media and social media channels. 1M/1M will also screen the best performers from the incubation portfolio for the partner organization to invest further resources in, after a few months of incubation.
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Is The Current Market Full Of Bad Ideas?

Yesterday, Chamath Palihapitiya made a big splash at TechCrunch Disrupt:

Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and founder of investment firm The Social+Capital Partnership, said today that the tech world should be “utterly ashamed,” because “we are at an absolute minimum in terms of things that are being started.”

Palihapitiya was interviewed onstage at our Disrupt NY conference. He argued that in contrast to past decades, where tech entrepreneurs were inventing silicon chips, putting computers on every desktop, or wiring the world, we’re now “rehashing ideas from 2003.” He didn’t name a specific company, but when Palihapitiya talked disdainfully about an instant messaging app that allows you to send photos of everything from an apple orchard to your genitalia, and that the message disappears after a short period of time, it’s not too hard to decipher who he’s talking about.

“That was a bad business plan 10 years ago, and it’s a bad business plan now,” he said.

Here’s what I think of the situation.

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Celebrate Entrepreneurs Helping Entrepreneurs In Chennai

In the true spirit of giving back, a community of Chennai entrepreneurs has come together to award partial scholarships to the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) global virtual incubator to three local startups.

The scholarship recipients were selected after participating in TiE Chennai’s Start-up Super Saturday in early March, during which Sramana Mitra gave a keynote talk and helped with judging a business pitch competition. To ensure full commitment to make the most of this opportunity, the recipients have also paid for a portion of their 1M/1M memberships. For one year, Vineet Neeraj/Kobster, Manigandan V/DACAM Systems, and Sathish K/Yakkay Technologies will each receive extensive incubation support to make sure each venture lives up to its potential.
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Apply For SAP Startup Focus – 1M/1M Scholarships

Entrepreneurs developing products and services on the SAP HANA platform are reminded that we are still accepting applications. Through this application process, twelve scholarships to One Million by One Million (1M/1M) – valued at $1000 for the annual membership fee – will be awarded by SAP to provide extensive incubation support to entrepreneurs developing products and services on HANA. This effort launches a new partnership between SAP Startup Focus and 1M/1M, a virtual incubation program that will work closely with scholarship winners for one year to help their ventures achieve their potential.

You can find the application form here.

You can learn more about the application process here.
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