WatBlog Newsletter Archive: WATBlog Update "Saturday Startup Review I - Fachak.com" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Friday, January 16, 2009

WATBlog Update "Saturday Startup Review I - Fachak.com" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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"Saturday Startup Review I - Fachak.com" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Saturday Startup Review I - Fachak.com

This saturday we bring to you a startup which is still in alpha stage and is by invite only. This is Morpheus Venture Partners portfolio company and started by Sarabdeep. The startup is name Fachak.com and was first described on WATBlog here.

One sentence description: A platform for sharing non hosted docs, ppts, videos and pictures (currently compatible with youtube, flickr and slideshare and also has its own upload function).

About Startup: According to the founders Fachak is somewhat like Meebo of content sharing platforms that assimilates Youtubes, Slideshares & Flickrs in one single web-service. It’s not a pure aggregator, neither is it a pure bookmarker, rather it’s an independent ‘multi-format’ & ‘multi-source’ content sharing platform.

Fachak is -

· An independent platform that creates a new layer on top of existing rich-content sharing services.

· Format neutral; so a user can share & view a presentation, a video, an image & a document with equal ease.

· A one stop front-end solution, where a user can upload various rich format files from his computer within a single interface, besides sharing existing content on internet.

· A novel & awesome way to tie up content on the same topic present in different formats all over the internet.

About Founders: The founder Sarabdeep is an engineer turned car sales man turned banker turned internet entrepreneur. Also this started is backed by Morpheus Venture Partners.

Funding Status: : Very much self funded.

WAT's HOT: I think the concept a good one! Fachak essentially allows users to aggregate their favouite content in terms of videos, ppts, docs and pictures at one location. One could also do this around a certain theme for eg = social media videos, ppts and pictures or obama videos, ppts and pictures. This may be probably the hottest feature.

WAT's NOT: On the business model and on the usage front. I think Fachak may be a weak contender. Fachak as the about the startup states creates ‘another’ layer of usage over an existing layer. So if I want videos I can go to youtube and upload them or favourite them and same with slideshare. Also similar functions are available to me via facebook apps on my facebook profile so the value add by fachak’s service isn’t making me die to signup with them.

Another missing feature (though this service is still in alpha) is the fact that I input my youtube id and it pulls all my uploaded videos. Ditto for slideshare and flickr. Now that would be a great feature and then I can sort, tag and segregate them in separate groups with unique urls to share with whoever I want to. Then one can keep adding sites like vimeo, slide etc and even add feeds option for sharing ones blog posts on fachak.

On the revenue end I have no clue how this will make money. Even facebook finds it difficult so fachak may have huge issues. maybe branded content sharing pages i.e. microsofts videos, ppts and pictures of an event or product etc could work.

I hope Ive not been too critical on fachak though for an alpha stage its a nice execution of a platform. But in the long run just a good product doesn’t work its traction, use case, revenue model that needs to be thought through and worked upon from day 1. The greatest challenge would be for them to create a fachak community and increasing the wow factor and value factor of their platform. The current value factor is low.