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There are 6 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" 8 Ways to Get Your Web Startup Rolling While Still in College
Nevertheless, I will keep this blabber aside and get straight to the point. Presenting 8 ideas to go be a startup while still taking money from your parents, with a little help from the web: Start a Web Hosting CompanyThough internationally the web hosting market is saturated, it still presents a lot of opportunity locally especially in untapped markets like India. The good part is that a lot of these international players have reseller systems that you can use if you know a little about servers and web hosting in general. They can even take care of the support you need to provide to your customers. The best place to start - your college festival site of course. Become a Content ProviderVisit forums like Digital Point and you will be inundated with the amount of article writing and graphic design work that these guys want to freelance. Get a couple of friends along and start a small company providing content and providing it fast, you anyway don’t have much to do otherwise, so you can. Start a blog that makes money Start an Online Magazine and Then AnotherDon’t start a blog about making money, make a blog that makes money instead. Google has been kind enough to let us mere mortals also earn a bit of their revenue, so make the most while the hay shines. Point to note here though is that a blog on why you think the system needs to change and parents don’t listen might not be the best bet in this case. But why you think Pamela Anderson is hot might just click, maybe Rushabh can talk about it better. That’s about blogs, but I feel you can better invest your time and make an online magazine. Platforms like wordpress or more powerful frameworks like Drupal makes it really easy to start one and can be the perfect launchpad for a media company. Start a Forum/Community/WebsiteI have personally seen three of my friends start a forum when they were in college and have now become successful companies. Though with open source and web 2.0 making their mark you can perhaps make an even better community than a regular message board. In fact, if you are serious about it you can get a site made in a jiffy these days, and with some good marketing brains working on it you can have a pretty nifty website that you can leverage on for money. Start a Marketing Services CompanyYou are in college, you don’t need to worry whether the competition is too much or not. Start a web marketing company - learn SEO, put your graphic designing or video editing skills to use to make viral content or ad banners, do logo designing, do article marketing or provide copywriting services. Don’t do it for someone else though, then you are just a college kid not a startup. Start an Ebay StoreThere are tonnes of ways to make Ebay work for your business, and they have been in vogue so long that they seem ancient. But the fact is that they still work, it is a little like being an online Baniya, but then even Wal-Mart is one then (a baniya not an Ebay store). Use your coding skillsThe opportunities are plenty, you can make social networking apps, to open source scripts to games. Just build some sense enough to make these profitable ventures and you are set on a road to product development firm. The difference between being a coding freelancer and a business is in building your brand and being regular in getting new code stories (i.e. products out). Have a small plan, and decide on at least 3 or 4 programs before launching the first one so that you don’t lose the opportunity to be a fairly successful business. Your Art Can be BigCreate a portfolio of work, and help other make one to. Become an online art studio/gallery. There is no better place than the web to do it. So sing and record a video and have it up on YouTube, get others to do that too and you are now a music producer. Have your art on Deviantart and sell those good stuff that you paint. The possibilities that the web provides when it comes to being entrepreneurial is limitless. Now there can be better ways to set your business up, however, using the web as a platform certainly makes it easier to get things started. And we all know so many dudes who did such stuff while in college and went on to make truckloads of truckloads of money. Go be enterprising! Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Dina Mehta On Phweet - A Tool That Enables Voice Conversation On Twitter (Via WATShow)We caught up with Dina Mehta a social media evangelist and one of the founder of Mosoci a social media research firm started in 2005. The other founder of Mosoci happens to be Stuart Henshall who also happens to be the founder of Phweet.com. Because of her close association to Stuart and Phweet Dina was more than happy to talk us through phweet.com and what all it can do. Check out the WATShow below: Hope you enjoyed the WATShow this week! Check out more such interviews on WATShow.com Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Mauj Mobile To Power Radio City’s Mobile PresenceMauj Telecom has inked a deal with Radio City, the FM radio channel to power all mobile activities of Radio City. The deal is for 2 years. This includes Mauj managing the 57007 short-code mobile service of Radio City, through which, the audience can take part in various contests and programs. Also, Mauj will be building and managing a comprehensive wap site for accessing mobile content. On this occasion, Mr. Manoj Dawane, CEO, People Infocom (Mauj Mobile), said, “Our deal with Radio City brings together two extremely effective and promising communication mediums - the mobile phone and the radio. Considering the rising popularity of both these mediums in the market, we believe that the core brand experience at this access point will be further enhanced” Also a part of the deal is the agreement according to which Mauj will have exclusive telecom rights to Radio City’s content. This will enable them to offer localized content to the users. Commenting on this association, Ms. Apurva Purohit, CEO, Radio City 91.1FM, said, “Cellular phones have rapidly become an emerging platform for listeners to access Radio. As pioneers in the private FM arena, we believe that the core brand experience through this touch point can be greatly enhanced. To this effect, our association with Mauj will provide our listeners a direct and engaging Radio City experience allowing them seamless interactivity with the Radio City brand.” Integration of services has made sure the content no longer stays on a single media. Mobile is an emerging market. Both from the technological as well as users perspective. The telecom ministry has just announced the 3G policy which, if priced right, can give huge boost to the mobile content. Securing a 2 year deal with Mauj is a good step for Radio City, which doesn’t has to bother with the technological changes that might enter the scene when 3G becomes widely available. They can still focus on content and Mauj will take care of the technical upgradation. Even for Mauj, the deal is a step ahead. Mauj already powers most of the Bollywood films’ mobile content. Securing the rights to the deal makes sure Mauj’s position as a prime mobile content aggregator in India. Again, whenever the technological changes that’ll offer the country broadband speeds on mobile will become available. Mauj will find itself best suited to fulfill the (suddenly) rising demand for a variety of entertainment content. Just one doubt - Why WAP? Isn’t it dead, already? Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult IMDb Launches On-Site Videos; India not on the ListThe Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which has the largest collection of Movie and TV information on the internet, has always been the one-stop for all the information one needs about a Movie or TV Show, Actor or Actress, be it Indian or International. Owned by Amazon, the site claims to be visited by over 57 million people worldwide every month. However, the information flow ended there since it did not offer the visitors trailers or other videos for viewing. Though the site carried photos, they were often of the actors / actresses related to the movie, usually from the special screenings. Yesterday, the company has announced the launch of Videos on the site, that might come as a happy announcement for quite a few of its loyal followers. The site now carries a collection of 6000 full-length films and TV shows for everyone’s viewing pleasure. It is to be noted that the content is available as a stream and not for download. The videos are completely free to watch and can be viewed without downloading any additional software. According to this report, the content seems to be provided by Hulu and broadcasting corporations such as CBS, Sony and other independent filmmakers are involved too. Though late, this brings IMDb right into the competition with other big sites that offer streaming videos such as Hulu and Jaman. If you’ve been to the site before, the site has remained unchanged for quite a few years now and has the crammed look. A new user may take some time to get used to site’s content. Before you go ahead and try to access the site, let us tell you that the videos seem to be available only to visitors from the US. Since the content is largely from the US, there may be copyright issues involved and hence if you try to view a video, you are promptly told that video is not available in your country. To make things clear, a few videos from independent film makers and a few other videos can still be viewed, but movies and TV Shows are out of the bounds. There’s nothing IMDb can do about it, since it is merely showcasing the content from other sources.
Lately, there have been a lot of sites that have sprung up to offer streaming media content, including movies and TV Show online. Even though these require a fairly fat bandwidth pipe, they have had a decent amount of traffic coming their way. Some of the companies from India which offer streaming media include Rajshri.com, BIGFlix.com and WatchIndia.tv Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Event Review: Startup Saturday Mumbai & Some StartUp ConcernsI was present at the recently organized startup saturday event in Mumbai S.P.Jain auditorium. Attended both the sessions out of which the first one was given by Vishal Gupta of Seclore on How to use the competition as your weapon - Importance, processes and methodologies for mapping competition and the second session was on Microfinance in India by Ramakrishna of Rang De. This was my second startup saturday that I attended in Mumbai. The feeling was very entrepreneurial with atleast an audience of 40 people and the speakers very eager to answer all questions. Here is a review of what was spoken at the event. How to use the competition as your weapon - Importance, processes and methodologies for mapping competition Though I was a little late for this session Vishal was basically driving down the point of how knowing your competition helps not only from a competitive intelligence point of view but from also a venture capital point of view. He said if you do your research well and present it to a VC you inturn reduce the efforts required by him to do reserach on your competitors and their USP and compare it against yours. There was also a debate on whether competitors can collaborate together? But Vishal disagreed and pointed out that he has rarely seen any collaboration between a startup and a big company who are competitors or two startups who are competitors. He felt only startups catering to two different geographical location mght collaborate even if they were competitors. Microfinance in India Ramkrishna’s presentation on Rangde blew me away as it was great to see so much of passion in the social entrepreneurship field. The whole objective of Rangde is to bring down the cost of microfinance in India. So instead of the regular 24% that most other microfinance institutions charge these guys charge 8.5%. They are a not for profit organization which is driven primarily through the web medium. Rangde feels it real revenue would come in through the advertising on the website. Discussion During Networking The discussion I had with a few people revolved around what was lacking in the startup ecosystem in India currently.. And like me most people felt that there were enough founders and there were enough employees as well but what the space lacked was the Intrapreneurs i.e. the management team or the second line in a startup. Most people agreed that building that management team with the intrapreneurial ability was the most difficult task! The reason for the same were pointed out as Lack of value for equity, lack of role clarification and Peer pressure for fat salary. What do you guys feel? Anyone disagrees? PS: Next startup saturday is on 11th October at SPJain
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult High Reserve Price for WiMax Auction upsets ISPs Again while India’s Internet Usage sees a Steady RiseThe country’s Department of Telecom (DoT) have come up with some new set of guidelines for auctioning off the spectrum for WiMax in the country, something which has greatly upset the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country. As per the new guidelines laid down by DoT, the reserve price for the auction has been raised from the earlier Rs. 550 crore to a whopping Rs. 1010 crore. This, according to ET, has ‘deeply distressed’ the ISPs who are looking forward to the implementation of the WiMax services in the country. The country holds a great deal of scope for internet usage which has been increasing over the years. More and more people are getting access to the internet and the reach of the new-age media is definitely maximizing its outreach. According to a recent report released by Akamai Technologies, one of the largest enterprise application providers, among the total traffic monitored by them, India ranked 14th in terms of unique IPs, accounting over 2.1 million unique IPs from the country. This is a growth of over 4.5 percent over the previous years, reports ChannelTimes. Implementation of WiMax technologies across the country will make it even easier for consumers to get access to the internet. However, with the DoT constantly increasing the reserve prices of the auction, that doesn’t seem to be a possibility in the coming days. Mr. Jasjit Sawhney, CEO of Net4, who spoke to the paper, said:
The ISPs are now trying to demand a separate auction for WiMax and will soon draft a letter to the country’s communications minister Mr. A Raja. Presently, the DoT cannot carry out the auction unless these ISPs vacate the 2.5Ghz spectrum that has been allotted to them since 2003. The ISPs had already threatened to move TDSAT if the government tried to take back the spectrum, but now seem to have softened their stance. The ISPs maintain that the auctioning of the WiMax spectrum should be completely separated from the overall process of auctioning the 3G spectrum and that blocks should be reserved by the DoT for exclusive bidding by the ISPs. The country is all set to undergo a complete revolution w.r.t to the telecommunications industry with the auctioning of the 3G spectrum auction for GSM, CDMA and even WiMax services set to happen in the coming weeks. There has been a lot of activity in this space in the days approaching the auction and it can only be left upon time to tell us what the future holds.
Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult More Recent Articles
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While I certainly miss sitting in the parking lot of my college and planning the next big thing in business with my best friend, I also realize these days that I could have put my time to better use then. The best thing that colleges in India give you is ample of free time. Just see 
Actually you could do well to see all the stuff he does while still being in college, so technically this could have been a post best done by him. That and 
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