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CollegeKhabar.com: Enlightening students for a better career
For a student stepping into the final year of graduation, the big hunt for the next year is to plan and set the sail right for plunging into a good job. Out of the 17,000+ colleges in India, very a few lucky ones get to throw red carpet welcome for big companies to organize campus recruitments.
For the folks who succeeded in those campus interviews, the social talk around them praises of their intelligence, knowledge, luck, hard work et la,,. Sometimes this aura gets snuffed off once he/she gets the real experience as an employee in that company.
Before arriving at a college, for conducting campus recruitments, companies get to know enough about the college. But students who take part in the interviews would have hardly given enough thought to know about the company beforehand. Once selected, most of the students make a blind dive into their first job.
Is it a must for a student to know about the company beforehand?
“Yes. A prior focused and relevant information about the employer and the job profile, does equip the student to make their choice a better one” quips Hemant, Co-founder of CollegeKhabar.com, who himself had the real experience with his first employer as he did made a blind decision to join his first company.
Devendra’s passion in cyber space drove him to design his own website even while studying 11th standard. But after graduating in Metallurgical Engineering, he got placed in a company dealing with metals. His passion and career got a conflict of sorts and he realized the confusion that had mixed in his chemistry. He vouches that every aspirant should get to know of the job profile before heading for the interview.
Actually, information about the employers is hardly available on the public domain. Getting to know of the job profile before sitting for the interview is not so heard of by the students in India. Out of real life experience and with a dream to make students make their career choice a better one; Devendra and Hemant along with their friend Naveen had spruced up with CollegeKhabar.com. Those chats during their weekends and intrinsic discussions over the cup of coffee had given them enough steam to pep up their engines for their first ever entrepreneurial journey with an investment of Rs.70,000 in August 2009.
College Khabar as of now focuses on Engineering and Management institutes by providing news about placements happening across various campuses in India, apart from updates on rankings of colleges, prospects available for aspirants at different companies, etc.,
The first bottleneck in their business was the handicap to channelize the information of placements happening across the institutes in India. Then, they went on to identify Campus Partners popularly called Khabaris in each of the institutes to provide updates on placements taking place in their respective institutes. To make more out of it, rewards and benefits find their way to those Khabaris who make the more hay.
Reckoning with a 2000 registered users and 2Lac views a month, College Khabar aims to make its presence in top 100 engineering & 50 management institutes by this year. Now 25+ institutes are on their book across India from NITs to IITs.
Though they are very young and yet to make their risky plunge into a successful revenue model, their hungriness to guide the student fraternity in making their career decision a wiser one is to be adorned. Startupstory.in wishes them the very best.
CollegeKhabar.com204, Raison Armour,
IndiraPuram, Ghaziabad Uttarpradesh 201014 Contact: 9717891507 (Hemant), 9871903633 (Devendra) Email id info@collegekhabar.com
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eFarm.in: Innovating the Indian Agri Supply Chain
“In a regular employment at an IT company, you get the money and glory, but the real human connection outside your cubicle is absent” tells Venkat, the 36 year old social entrepreneur from Chennai. He had worked at different IT companies for more than a decade; had a top branded resume; got paid of fat salary month after month; but an empty feeling was haunting him of not serving the purpose of his life. Though he was eager to skip off and turn to social work, the need to balance financial needs, career ambitions and inner craving kept nagging for a solution.
“Why not become a social entrepreneur by myself?” This question made Venky to start “Matchbox Solutions”, an organization to channelize the collective energy of people and bring constructive change to the social and economic environment.
Venkata Subramanian started eFarm – an Agriculture Supply Chain business in Jan 2008
Having completed B.Arch from IIT Kharagpur in the year 1995 Donnie Darko film Magnifique, Le video , the IT wave made him to get pushed into an IT career through campus placement. After a decade long stints at various IT companies, he quit his high paying job as a Program Manager with a leading Indian IT firm, to start off his own social enterprise “Matchbox Solutions” in June 2007. With his parents from media background, his Dad retired from All India Radio and Mom from Doordarshan, Venky’s futuristic view got its nod rather liberally. Though there were little tirades popping up at home then and there, the global recession snuffed them off, a relief for Venky!
Srivalli with experience in leading MNCs and having run two start-ups and fund raising NGOs joined Venky to shoulder operations, administration, etc., and finally became his life partner too. She is now the Co-founder & CEO of eFarm.
In India, agriculture and education are usually stamped as if they should be taken care by the government or by an NGO. A professionally driven organized agricultural supply chain is non-existent in India. Driven by the inspiration of “An average Indian farmer”, Venky plunged in to connect people through creative use of technology and establish a profitable social enterprise. The first match stick to come out of the Matchbox in Jan 2008 is a ‘Mumbai dabaawallah’ style business named “eFarm” which strives to solve the logistics/distribution/marketing challenges plaguing the agricultural supply chain business.
Customers who wish to seek fresh agri produce at a reasonable price are the main target users of eFarm, apart from food & hospitality providers, institutional buyers and exporters. They now have 500+ clients and “Word of Mouth” is the marketing strategy working best for him. He makes revenue out of 5 to 10% margins on the transactions made and hopes to reach Rs.2 Crore turnover in the next 2 years.
This Chennai based self funded venture now seeking out first round external funding is pepping up for an organic growth to other metros. Now a team of ten is taking care of the supply chain from agriculture to retailing. To avoid pitfalls and keep newbie errors at bay, their small focus group which comprises of key stakeholders of eFarm come together every month to validate the progress and ideas. Venky is on the path to form a trust / NGO to better coordinate the activities of SHG members.
Unlearning all those years of corporate ‘wisdom’ is a pain point for Venky who had taken a business which for him is anew. He needs to work at grass root level and have a constant eye on market trend, price swings and supply sources; Both farmers and end retailers want to quit their trade for better options owing to high risks and poor remunerations. Finding and motivating people to stick to this trade is an uphill task. To win over these challenges they are imparting training programs for the farmers on how to run a business, basic economics of a trade, etc., to make them more professional in their dealings. Venky does not prefer expecting the common folk to flock to a computer based solution, but vouches for the simplest of technologies to solve the needs of even the layman. His business has given him the lesson of not to approach the poor as if ‘I am trying to help you’ and he thumps that they are competent enough to figure out for their survival.
On brand building, he tells to Startupstory that “One’s service and value should speak for itself; my satisfied customer is my best salesman”. Promotion is happening through mobile vans, blogs and online discussion groups. Models like micro finance, self help groups and government agri agencies helps eFarm to reach wider audience.
Since agriculture is highly dependent on the environment, unforeseen situations are bound to adversely impact this business. Fact is that nearly 70% of India is directly dependent on agriculture, even a small improvement by innovative social entrepreneurs like Venky is bound to impact a wider audience and improve the efficiency of the Indian economy.
Office address: www.efarm.in No. 11 Loganathan Colony, Mylapore, Chennai - 600004 M: +91 9884761354 T: +91 44 43577236, 24450613 E: venky@matchboxsolutions.in
Google : http://groups.google.com/group/efarm
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com “Agri India” Inferno
Video clips on 1.How eFarm works and 2. The supply chain trail
JobeeHive.com: Making career jump a smarter one
Accessing valuable insider information about employers and salaries in the corporate world has always been a pain point. Neither there was a platform to access, nor there any transparency. That was where this 27 year old Vishwas Mudagal from Bangalore saw an opportunity.
Vishwas got ignited of his entrepreneurial spark in 1999, at an early age of 18, with setting up a company named “InfoVision Academy” to impart computer skills to rural students. By 2001 to hone himself of his knowledge, he went on to pursue his graduation and then got into career stints at three different companies. Later, he made his journey as a full fledged entrepreneur with setting up India’s first ever employer / salary review portal in September 2007.
His simple idea was to host employer and salary reviews obtained from present or past employees of the company and publishing them anonymously for everyone to read on his Web 2.0 portal ‘JobeeHive.com‘.
“We offer something that is very useful for professionals, which other social networks do not offer. This is precisely why we have generated so much interest in the market today” Vishwas tells to Startupstory.in.
When he etched his business thought, there were too many critics running the mill and it was hard for him to make others believe in his idea. Couple of years down the lane, his yester year critics were proved wrong with his portal now hosting 30K plus user reviews, 70K registered users and clocking a whopping 3 to 4 Lac page views a month.
“Your service should solve some need in the market; should be cool to use. Then it will propagate virally on itself” Vishwas advises.
Most of the content on JobeeHive.com is free for everyone to see, though diving deep for specific information needs a sign up The Secret of Moonacre move . Now in BETA version, JobeeHive keeps its content fresh and accurate by having a ‘give-and-take’ model requiring users to submit a review of their employer or a salary report before they can view the reviews at the site. With stringent moderation process in place, the reviews, before getting published, gets into the sharp eyes of the team at JobeeHive. Abuses and confidential information are kept at bay. Like Wikipedia, the content gets better as more and more people read and rate them on the Web 2.0 platform.
Professionals are using JobeeHive.com to make their career jump a smarter one by comparing between prospective employers to negotiate for a much better pay package. More of positive experience by the users has led to viral growth with users turning up as passive brand ambassadors. Without spending a penny on marketing, JobeeHive has received great traction with Alexa ranking it the No.1 user generated employer review website in India. Tying up with job portals to provide content on ‘Job research’ and publishing out ‘Best Employer Ratings’ for each year are on the cards.
Though employees some times sling mud about their company, Vishwas admits that no company is perfect and claims that companies themselves confess to it. Employers have been getting a transparent feedback about their own company; taking it in a positive manner; benchmarking their salary package and as well comparing with their competitors. So there is now a platform for employees to voice their opinion; there are employers listening to employees and no one is now ignoring about what has been written on JobeeHive.com.
Cliffhanger video Queen of the Damned buy
The revenue model is based on several streams including corporate subscriptions, branding solutions, jobs and partnerships. Recently JobeeHive got to be selected for ‘The Power of Ideas contest’ by Economic Times. The 9 member strong self funded Banglore based startup is in talks with few investors.
“Be passionate about your idea and never say die. The one who executes well wins. The team which you put together matters a lot. Many a times it happens that your partners quit in the mid of the journey, but you need to have the strength to carry on” advises Vishwas to upcoming entrepreneurs.
Blog: jobeehive.blogspot.com
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Twitter: @jobeehive
Facebook: facebook.com/group.php?gid=51095468667&ref=share
Contact: contact@jobeehive.com
IsDueOn.com: Powerful, yet simple bill tracker
If we forget things, we have to pay for it; but when it comes to bills, we need to pay with penalty. The best way to remember one bill due, is to forget it once. “But, there exists a much better way!’” tells Yash
, the 28 years old entrepreneur. It might sound like a question, but actually answers most of your financial queries. His web based application, IsDueOn makes tracking of bank balances, bills etc., a breeze.
In fact, IsDueOn is not his first invention. This Mumbai Indian’s thirst of doing something “New” started during his school days. His first venture was comic books which had his class mates as target audience. Their appreciations stepped up enough steam to become an entrepreneur of today. By capitalizing his two years of work experience at two IT companies Magnet and Mastek, he plunged into entrepreneurship and started “Uconomix Technologies Private Limited” on April 2005.
With inadequate capital and without any partner, his entrepreneurial journey during the initial days was rather a difficult one. During inception, his team size was four and at a certain point, he had to handle it all alone. But his hunger for recognition never ever took even a nap. Rather, it let him to come up with his first product, “uMark”, an image watermarking software followed by two more windows based products, “Encryption Engine” and “Snap Logger” succeeded by “Janoos.com”, a homepage for bookmarks. By May, 2009, he made out his first ever commercial web product, IsDueOn, which he now counts on.
“This Freakin’ simple bill tracker!” as Yash fondly claims, remembers your bills and notifies you through Email well before the due date. “IsDueOn differs from other reminding applications, by dealing only with tasks that involve money, whereas others are just task managers” quips Yash. The upcoming reporting feature will help users to analyze their spending habits. Another planned feature called budgeting allows them to specify various bank accounts, payable and receivable items. Hence it gets you the clear picture of how much balance will be left in your bank accounts after paying your bills for a particular month. “Using IsDueOn is a child’s play. Even your grandma can use it”, bets Yash. Now, he is setting up to make out a premium version of IsDueOn which will become the sole point of focus for his company.
He feels recession is still a good period to launch a product like IsDueOn and as likely, he is experiencing better business conditions for last few months. For upcoming entrepreneurs, he counsels, ”If you have an idea and if it’s not going to take much to launch it, please go ahead. It may or may not succeed. If it works, you can grow. If not, at least you tried; made something new and had fun! But whatever happens, never lose your passion. Because talent can be hired, whereas passion has to come from within”.
“By serving an employer, you can be financially secured; whereas, as an entrepreneur, you can get the complete credit for your hard work while running your own show. Startupstory.in wouldn’t have interviewed me, if I was just another employee at a company”, delights Yash.
Address: Caprica dvdrip IsDueOn.com Uconomix Technologies Private Limited,112, Mahavir Industrial Estate, Kanchpada, Malad (West), Mumbai – 400064,
T: 022 – 4003 8302. E: yash@uconomix.com
Blog – yash.info
Twitter - twitter.com/yashg
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/yashgadhiya
Facebook – facebook.com/yashg
Inkfruit.com: Socializing the T-Shirt
Buying a tee shirt involves going up to the shop and picking the one which has your favorite colour and design. Probability of being unlucky, your choice of design and colour gets overruled with the availability at the shop. But, how about getting your own customized tee shirt. Inkfruit.com, a Mumbai based startup by two IIT passed outs, spices up to quench the need for awesome T-Shirts by utilizing the power of Web 2.0 and the artistic strength of the designer community.
At Inkfruit, a designer submits his design for free; a 10,000 strong online community gives their votes and feedback; the winning design gets to do its cat walk to the printing lab; the designer gets paid for his work; his name gets etched in each and every tee that comes out into the market.
28 year old Kashyap Dalal, a 2002 IIT-Mumbai passed out of Civil Engg. stream has an MBA from IIM Lucknow with a couple of years experience as Sales & Marketing Executive with HLL in Chennai.
29 year old Navneet Rai, a 2002 IIT-Mumbai passed out of Civil Engg stream had a stint for 2 years as Product Manager at “Tex Indus”, a textile production house in Gurgaon
Good designs gets churned out from top Indian design institutes, but many of these get shelved to the bin due to the absence of a platform for such designers. The vision in Rai & Dalal to bridge this gap by providing a Web 2.0 platform saw the birth of Inkfruit.com, during mid 2007. The jump off the cliff into a new kinda business was not an easy ride for them. Having shelled out their own savings of Rs.4 Lakhs, initial days were like sailing in a rough sea. From running errands of a delivery boy to that of being execution manager and taking care of customer servicing of their own company,, their financial constraints often decided for them, rather than their business logic.
With commitment levels being given a litmus test, all the hulla bulla got to settle down a bit with seed capital coming in from two of their seniors at IIT during 2007, thereafter receiving angel funding in the year 2008. This financial support allowed Inkfruit
Daylight movie to pursue a more aggressive business plan which paid off Rs.2 Crores as turnover in just one year of its inception. Inkfruit.com is now setting its strings to attract design talent from across the world to create awesome merchandise, which they say is still not so far available from leading brands even though they are equipped with professional design teams. Is that the power of Web 2.0 ??
Selling out about 6,000 tee shirts a month and their website clocking 5 Lakh plus web views a month, inkfruit.com now has a team of 15 people to take care of activities like web designing, managing the social media, graphics designing, buzzing with retail outlets, serving the customer, supplying t-shirts, etc.,,
Marketing is done more through online with presence on Orkut, Facebook Paycheck dvdrip and Twitter; added up with reviews by bloggers and through mobile Ad campaigns. Offline promotions take place by sponsoring of events at colleges and campaigns in design schools and monthly contests offering upto Rs.10,000 for the winning designs. Of course online marketing is getting its veto due to its reach and cost effective factors.
On entrepreneurship the quip from them is “Your passionate customers are extensions of your company and they are your valuable assets”
Address: Inkfruit.com., Tenement No.105/846, Ground Floor, Motilal Nagar, Road No. 1, Goregaon (W.) Mumbai - 400104 Contact: priyanka@inkfruit.com; Tel: +91-22-65292584Blog: www.blog.inkfruit.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/inkfruit-design-your-graphic-t-shirt/21172612060
Twitter: www.twitter.com/inkfruit
Letzknow.com: Student entrepreneurs setting to kill the information gap
The taste of entrepreneurship kindled their spirit since their age of 14 while studying 8th grade with registering a company named “Tech Track Technologies” through which they churned out their own good quality self assembled computers to schools and renowned banks such as State Bank of India, Indian Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, etc., After two and half years they switched to multimedia and data recovery services.
While studying 11th grade the duo created a mark of being recipients of United Nations’ Youth Leadership Award from Mr.Kofi Annan, the then Secretary-General of UNO, at the Global Young Leaders Conference 2003, in New York. This award recognizes youth leadership in business, social as well as cultural activities. The two were selected on the basis of “empowerment by self employment”. The trip to United States got them an exposure on the functioning of American educational bodies. By comparison back in India, there is a huge information gap in the academic field. The vision to bridge this information gap saw the birth of letzknow.com during end 2007.
Mani pursuing Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering discipline at the Amrita University in Coimbatore
Sures is now a student of BioTech Engineering discipline at the VIT University, Vellore
Mani and Sures hail from Salem a town in Tamil Nadu. They have had their time together for 12 years at the same school. Interestingly they were childhood enemies till 5th grade and best friends after that. Their travel to USA for the UN conference gave an opportunity to explore and understand each other for a lifetime relationship. While pursuing their studies they were on the lookout for external events to enrich their knowledge. But, many a time, most of these wonderful opportunities came to be known too late to be missed. Lesson is that, timely information is wealth; and the duo strive to achieve this through their www.letzknow.com to dissipate information such as upcoming academic conferences, symposiums, cultural festivals, technical contests, workshops, scholarships etc.., on immediate basis complemented
A 6 member core team of students with clearly assigned roles run the show, besides an ever-growing number of young minds taking up various responsibilities like campus ambassadors, contributors, et la..,
The big challenge for them is that, their web site is to handle nation-wide traffic and has to open up fast even in the slowest internet connection in the remotest corner of the country. Making the right choices of the back end technology and the front end user interface is a life lesson for these young thrillers. Bouquet for them is their site clocking 16K + unique visitors in two months since going live. Their target users being students, faculty, alumni and anyone with academia, they are serving out for free with an idea of pepping it up with a bit of premium services in the future.
On marketing, “If the product and service is strong then every user is a marketing guy for us, Word of the Mouth is our style of marketing” quips Mani.
On entrepreneurship Mani is of sure that it doesn’t pay unless until the person in the driving seat is really passionate about it. “So get in only if your heart and mind is in line with it” tells Mani.
Address: www.letzknow.com #87, Ansari Street, Ramnagar, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu - 641009. Contact: info@letzknow.com Tel: Mani: +91 98945 80664, Sures: +91 98948 49647Blog: letzknow.wordpress.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/pub/dir/manikandan/hk
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