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Chakpak Gets Funding From Canaan - A Look At Canaan’s Internet Investments

Canaan Partners has funded Chakpak an entertainment and bollywood centric community site according to this article. The amount is not disclosed as yet but the news is confirmed. This is the third company in the consumer internet space that Canaan has invested in. The earlier two are Bharatmatrimony and Techtribe.

As far as talks in the industry circles is concerned both their earlier investments seem to have hit a rough patch in recent times. While bharatmatrimony was in the news recently for laying off people techtribe on the other hand hasn’t had much apparent success in monetization of the tech community via job referrals which is their core revenue model. Also with the slowdown.. jobs as a space has taken a beating and hence the jobs space which looked very promising a few months back looks extremely dismal now.

Same is the case for Clickjobs which is again a bharatmatrimony company and there was news of it looking for a strategic partner for sometime now and denial of it being shut down.

The only saviour for Canaan in both these businesses seems to be bharatmatrimony.com as marriages will probably be the least hurt by the slowdown as per industry sources. Even Consim Info’s (The company behind bharatmatrimony) other businesses like Indiaproperty would see a slowdown soon with the property market being hit.

Techtribe on the other hand needs to rework its monetization model and our sources tell us that they are already working on it and should be out with something early next year.

Coming back to this new investment by canaan in Chakpak.com. I first heard about chakpak through their early stage investors erasmic which is now Accel India. I must say they seem to have been doing very well on the number’s front. One look at their homepage and you would know that a vibrant community around entertainment and movies is building at chakpak. But the question of monetization still remains for chakpak as well. The top banner ad on their homepage being a google ad banner tells a story on how its difficult to crack direct advertisers and VC funded or no there is no difference if you see it from an advertiser point of view.

All in all advertising seems to be the toughest form of monetization in this space and Canaan which had earlier not invested in an advertising based business. Both Consim Info and Techtribe had transaction and subscription driven models. Given that even those businesses seem to be suffering at the hands of the slowdown Im not sure how chakpak would fair. One thing is for sure though the VC’s money will help chakpak to ride this downturn and be ready when the upswing comes around in a couple of years.

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ThomasCook.in To Focus on Domestic Market & B2B Segment

These are tough times for travel in India and tough times need tough and precise measures. That is what we are seeing across the board in online travel with companies focussing on niche’s rather than mass market and whole hog as I may put it. Thomascook.in the travel portal for Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, which was launched in May this year will now focus on domestic holidays and the B2B segment according to this report. This strategy in change of focus would be implemented from next year onwards.

Talking about the future plans, Amitabh Pandey, President & Head – eBusiness, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd said, "We are planning to add most of the domestic destinations online with various segmentation and categories. For instance Kerala packages may also be sold as ayurveda package, ecotours, back water tours, rejuvenation tours, etc. We are process of segmenting the tours under each category to enhance the search experience."

On the B2B focus he also stated, "We are looking at adding more aspects to our portal. We are aiming to focus in a big way on the B2B segment for travel agents and corporates. Currently we have about 200 registered agents online, but we aim to expand our penetration in Tier-II and Tier-III cities."

We had done a WATShow with Amitabh sometime back and asked him his thoughts on the travel space. The same can be viewed here.

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Microsoft Launches BizSpark - Takes On Sun’s Startup Programme

Microsoft yesterday lauched the Bizspark programme which makes microsoft technologies and network easily available to the startup community in India. This programme is very much like Sun’s Startup Essentials programme which has been running in India for sometime now.

The BizSpark program will give a startup access to:

Design tools (Microsoft Expression Studio with MSDN Subscription)
Development test and demonstration (Visual Studio Professional; Microsoft Server Software, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office System 2007)
Production hosting (Hosting Servers, IT Operations Servers)
Support resources (Both technical and non-technical)

They have also partnered with network partners like TiE, NEN, Proto, NASSCOM and IDG to deliver support across the start-up lifecycle by providing mentoring, idea validation, technology readiness and visibility.

This is microsoft attempt to attract the early startups and technologists who have been known for their staunch support for open source and ‘free’ software. This move my microsoft also provides the entire microsoft suite at almost no cost at all. The reason why microsoft would do this is to acquire startups at an early stage so that as they grow bigger chances are they would stick to microsoft technologies in the future as well.

All in all competition in this space between Sun and Microsoft only means good news for startup entrepreneurs especially those with higher technology needs.

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