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There are 2 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" Saturday Startup Review II - Mentorsquare.com - A Mentoring PlatformThis is the second startup we are reviewing in the day and its probably the most interesting ones that we’ve reviewed till date. Reason? Well thats because a lot of times entrepreneurs have turned VC but rarely does a VC turn into an entrepreneur! Yes MentorSquare is a startup that comes from the Mentor Partners stable a pretty well know Venture firm in the Indian space. One sentence description: A platform for connection and conversation between mentors and entrepreneurs About the startup: The startup is focussing on democratizing the mentoring process by bringing all the mentors and the entrepreneurs on one platform. The revenue model is ofcourse via subscription through entrepreneurs. About Founder: As stated earlier the founder is Ravi Narayan who is also a MD at Mentor Partners a VC firm. WAT’s HOT: Well for starters this is a completely vacant space! Mentorsquare has no direct competition except for maybe GENportal which is an initiative by IIT ECell Mumbai. But even that can’t match what these guys can do as Ravi is a known space in the venture space and has closely worked with startups as he was on the board of Proto.in the startup event. But besides for being an innovative initiative from an idea perspective there is also a dying need for such a networking platform because there are too many raw entrepreneurs i.e. first time entrepreneurs that are around across the board in the Indian business space and given the reserved culture in India no one seem to be wanting to part with equity for mentorship. This platform provides a solution to a very strong need. WAT’s NOT: Well what’s a little grey area is the interest of mentors and their availability and response times. I spoke to Ravi and he stated that there were already 35 mentors on board and they were working on keeping the response times lower than 48 hours. Well so far so good is all I will say. It isnt easy to manage this kind of platform where demand far exceeds supply i.e. number of entrepreneurs over mentors. Also the other issue is what if a college student and aspiring entrepreneur poses really basic questions? To which Ravi stated that their plan was to recruit a set of baseline mentors who would take care of basic questions. Well all I can say is it wont be easy to maintain quality and thats something the mentorsquare team would have to watch for. But all in all this is surely an impressive startup idea. Also given that a VC has turned entrepreneur there shouldn’t be any problem of funding and scaling Im guessing and also for a change it would be nice to see VC’s walk the talk! Most Commented PostsAlso Check Out: Saturday Startup Review I - Bandhan.comWell this saturday we have two startups to review. Both from the web space but looking at very diverse audiences. So we have divided our reviews in two parts. Lets look at the first startup. One Sentence Description: Vertical Search Engine focussed on Matrimony About the startup: This a pune based startup and is owned by a company by the name of Discrete Technologies. About the founder: Shashikant Kore is the founder who is an ex IITian from Kanpur and was earlier the Principal Software Engineer at Webaroo. WAT’s HOT: Well its the approach thats hot! The best part about the site is that it reflects the search engine look. The reason I say this is because this isn’t the first matrimony search engine we are reviewing. We have reviewed Sapne.com but one look at sapne and one look at bandhan and you know that bandhan is way more serious about being a ‘real’ search engine for matrimony. Also Matrimony is a fast growing space and even in the downturn it is likely to be one space that remains unaffected as far as the online classified space is concerned. The reason? Well people dont stop getting married in India! or around the world as a matter of fact. On the search front Bandhan does a phenomenal job with the volume of results that have been indexed. It does seem that the relevant matrimony sites were contacted and proper tie up has been established to form this kind of data. Also the refine search option on the left is amazing for users to filter their search results. WAT’s NOT: Well a few things that are challenging for a platform like bandhan is the relevancy of search results that show up on the first page. Google which is in general search ranks pages according to profiles. It would be great if the profiles are listed according to their last visit to the original matrimony site (which means that the users are active). Im not sure this is how Bandhan is currently listing its profiles. Also the revenue model is big question mark if you ask me. The only two models i see is advertising and maybe matrimony sites paying to be listed but that will kick in only when it gets sizable traction. The other possible model could be that matrimony sites pay them for each paid user that is created due to a redirect from their search engine but again thats dependant upon the negotiation with the matrimony guys.
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