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There are 4 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" WATBlog Panel Bangalore @ Proto.in - A ReviewSo we published the pictures but by popular demand by our readers here we are publishing the review of the WATBlog panel discussion on “Lessons Learnt from Failure of Startups” that took place at NIMHANS Bangalore post proto.in on 23rd January. You know an event is successful when somebody else blogs about your event before even you do. This is exactly what happened to WATBlog Panel in Bangalore and we are lucky that someone did as we were so immersed in the Panel Discussion that we forgot to take notes for blogging. Nonetheless we would like to thank Theenmusketeers for taking notes which helped us put this review together. The WATBlog Panel included Rohit Agarwal of techTribe, Suresh Sambandam of OrangeScape, Ganapathy Subramanian of Myduniya Networks and Santosh Dawara of Lipikaar. The panel started with each entrepreneur introducing himself and narrating his experiences with failure: Q: About yourself and your experience with failure? Suresh stated that he started his first company when he was 19 which he felt was a little too early. He then went on to work for 7 years which gave him enough experience to start his current company Orangescape. Rohit spoke about how he started techtribe 3 years ago and how he had worked on 5 startups before this. But even with experience behind him he needed to shutdown techTribe and even reject investor money since it didn't make sense to accept it when the model (refferal recruitment) hadn't been proven even after 3 years. He went on to explain the indicators that told him that techtribe wasn’t working out: 1. Site statistics - There was no traction 2. Money wasn’t coming easily. Ganapathy talked about his journey as an entrepreneur and as a VC with firms like ICICI Ventures and Jump Startup. Santosh spoke about Bookeazy a movie ticketing startup which sold 60,000 tickets in the 1st year itself and they had a loyal userbase by since the first year the dynamics changed dramatically and multiplexes changed the way they dealt with their partners and who they distributed and sold their tickets to. This along with competition from big players put them out of business and then they were already working on an alternate project called Lipikaar which seemed more attractive. So they eventually decided to shutdown Bookeazy. Q: What can cause failure? How should entrepreneur avoid it?
Q: What are your learnings from failure?
I was of the view that In startups, entrepreneurs try to do much too soon and don’t delegate enough. Suresh contradicted my point stating that Tech entrepreneurs think that somebody else will come and create the "go-to-market" strategy for them, which according to him is a mistake. Q: What is a VC take on failure? Ganapathy said that the relationship between an entrepreneur and a VC evolves over time and the conversations are ongoing. So it depends on the history and chemistry they share with the VC. Rohit said that the communication with their VC’s was something that Techtribe did right i.e. the investors, senior management and top execs were always in the know of what was happening on a daily basis. So the eventual decision to shutdown wasn't really a surprise. Rohit also added that VCs usually spend around 80%-90% of there time hunting for new deals. However, right now it's 50% reserved for their portfolio companies and 50% for new deals… On the other hand, an entrepreneur spends around 10% of his time thinking about money. So who should be chasing who? Why are startups worried about VC validation? If the product is doing good, then the VCs will definitely come to you. There is no reason to believe otherwise. If there aren't any ethical issues, then past failures doesn't count much and it's all about current idea and execution. Related Posts Also Check Out: Will Twitter Go the Google Way and Use its Search Feature as the Prime Mover of MonetizationA couple of weeks back, Twitter named Kevin Thau as the person whose task it is to finally bring the money home for the popular micro blogging tool. It had earlier advertised an opening for this position ending months of talk on how it plans to monetize its business. Now one of the most popular application of Twitter is its search feature which earlier went around as Summize and was smartly acquired by Twitter last year. It was instantly linked to as Twitter service and re-christened as Search.Twitter.com. Summize before being taken over by Twitter faced relative competition from the likes of TweetScan, but with mother adoption by Twitter has essentially pulled the pluf on such services, with most Twitter users (which is growing in numbers every week) most likely to use the search function on their twitter pages. Even popular third party devices like Twhirl used Summize as their search backend and given they use Twitter’s API the future apps are also likely to use Twitter search rather than a separate search service. Interestingly, it is TweetScan which provides the model of revenue that is possible for Twitter. It uses a monetization method similar Google’s Ad words. The primary monetization tool being Text Link boxes limited up to 140 characters. They also have banner ads solutions which kind of makes the site congested, but the link boxes are very much a microblogging solution. So while Tweetscan has moved beyond Twitter to even integrate Identi.ca to its fold of searches, Twitter can perhaps look at the text link model on searches as a major monetization tool. In fact coming to think of it, search.twitter.com makes it a perfect candidate for a Google acquisition as well. What Mr. Kevin Thau and the two other people who will come to fill in the vacant slots (Product manager and Strategic Alliances) do to make some money for Twitter certainly seems interesting. Will it go the Google way..or will Google become its way remains to be seen. Related PostsAlso Check Out: An Introduction to Expression Engine - Content Management SystemWe have featured updates and views on various publishing platforms online over a period of time. Publishing of course referring to the whole concept of setting up a content driven website. One such platform we have mentioned fleetingly yet is a popular enough name in the world of content management online is Expression Engine. Though it doesn’t have the monstrous open source evangelism of Wordpress or Text Pattern, it has its share of loyal users and is a much admired CMS. This post aims to give a brief introduction to the content management system. The team at Expression Engine calls it the most flexible content management system you will ever meet. It is a paid platform with a free core version which obviously has limited features. Like a true content champ EE goes beyond a typical blogging platform like Wordpress (though it is fast gaining pace as a CMS onto itself) and includes modules that can add forums, photo galleries, member mangers, wikis and even commerce. However, despite its un-open source nature EE runs in a LAMP environment and requires PHP 4.1 or higher to install and run. Besides the free core, there are two other versions which cost $100 and $250 respectively. As you might have noticed from the above gist of EE, it is a high end and very flexible CMS system. It essentially is more robust than WP while more easy to use and build than Drupal which to my mind is a framework more than a CMS. In the past year or two we have seen a spate of new content driven websites, with a lot of offline publishing names getting their feet wet online. And to be honest, most of them have shabby websites with a stunning lack of design sense. A system like Expression Engine can help most of these sites get the flexibility they need while focusing purely on the design and usability and leaving the back end to EE’s modules and if required their support staff. And perhaps we can get to see some clean and valid websites and a beautiful web in general. The clear advantage of Expression Engine lies in its flexibility and varied modules. Right from managing multiple websites with a single installation to the near complete content modules, EE has made every part of a website click-made. If it is pure content management it has all the features one is used to in WP and a little more, article and comment pagination for instance. Also it offers a lot more control than other blog platforms, for instance it has a module that let’s the author choose related posts to an article from a drop down rather than relying on the algorithm of a plugin. That in essence is the major advantage of EE, everything is built in instead of add-ons and plugins. A better typography manager and spam control system only adds to the charm that is enhanced by a far superior multi author system. And with modules that include forms, wikis, RSS customzation and member manger and add to that a mailing list manager, Expressions Engine can help build a powerful system within the secure environments of your server. The biggest downfall if one can call it one is without doubt the price. The free version is essentially just a blogging platform and none of the features that make EE flexible is not available with it. Even after purchasing the system, version updates include a yearly subscription charge. Even the two paid versions essentially is just to distinguish commercial users from personal non-commercial users with commercial usage attracting the added cost, and not just for the preliminary purchase but even for additional modules. Another notorious disadvantage among its users is ironically its huge feature set, EE simply offers too much at times for relatively simple projects. Given these reasons EE is ideally suited and heavily recommended for commercial publications like the NYTimes clones and other powerful content driven websites with huge author lists and reader base. Comparing with other CMS Movable Type is a name that strikes a resemblance to what Expression Engine has to offer and recently they have taken a couple of strides ahead of many of their counterparts. However, can these systems really take on the open source might and the ‘free’dom that platforms like Text Pattern and Wordpress provide? Related PostsAlso Check Out: Q3 Results Roundup: Rediff, Infoedge, Sify, HTMedia, Idea, Bharti & RcomThe Q3 results are out and this quarter can be termed as the worst quarter in terms of earnings since the last 2-3 years or so. Many companies internet and mobile companies are in the negative and the future looks uncertain as far as growth numbers is concerned given the slowdown. Rediff - Rediff’s quarter earnings from India were down 33% while from US was down 50%. A cumulative drop of 38% in total revenue from Q3 07-08. This drop also impacted its net income which was a loss of 2.84 million dollars. Rediff though said that they were in cash conservation mode and currently had a cash/bank balance of 47 million $. Rediff also made clear that it would continue to focus on investments in mobile, local search and regional languages. Download entire earnings release here. Infoedge - Infoedge continued to be in the positive as was indicated by its CEO Sanjeev Bikhchandani on the WATShow interview. The total revenue increased to Rs. 58.92 crores up from Rs.54.79 crores in the same quarter last year. The company resistered a net profit of 17.2 crores this quarter which was a rise of 31.47% from Rs. 13.92 crores in the corresponding quarter in FY 07-08. All in all naukri seems to acknowledge the slow growth but that hasn’t stopped new initiatives like Firstnaukri being launched. It also continues to state that Jeevansathi its matrimony portal and 99acres its property portal continue to be in investment mode. Download entire earnings release here. Sify - Sify reported revenues of $32.87 million for the quarter ended 31st December 2008, 4% higher than the same quarter in the previous year. The growth came from the enterprise business which registered a rise of 13% over the same quarter of the previous year and an increase of 2% over the previous quarter while the consumer business revenues showed the downward slide of 11% over the previous quarter. Even with the slowdown the international business continued to grow with an increase of 9% over the previous quarter. Sify made quite a few launches in new gaming vertical Antzill and also its tie up ith Google to power up its email services. In the future sify hopes to see growth from VOIP busines and data centre services. On the cost front they are reviewing costs such as their current facilities and infrastructure, and are consolidating them to reduce overall operating costs. Some of their outsourced services have also been scaled back given the current environment. Read the entire earnings report here. HTMedia - HT Media’s net profit was at Rs 7.82 crore versus Rs 36.86 crore during the same quarter 07-08. Its net sales were pegged at Rs 337.1 crore. The operating profit was at Rs 45.7 crore versus Rs 59.22 crore during the same quarter last year. HTMedia disclosed that total registered users on Shine.com its jobsite were now pegged at 1.6 million. During this quarter it also forayed into mobile marketing through a joint venture with Velti. Read the entire earnings report here. Idea - Idea Cellular posted a net profit of Rs 219.45 crore which is a 7.32% fall from Rs 236.77 crore same quarter 07-08. I feel a new player like Idea could benefit a lot from data card markets as they have recently launched the netsetter card which could help them position better against giants like BPL mobile, Vodafone and Bharti. Also if and when Mobile number portability comes in it would be great for MVNO’s and smaller players like Idea. Download the entire earnings release here. Bharti Airtel - Bharti posted a 26% growth and also added a record number of subscribers this quarter. Net income showed a rise to Rs 2,160 crore from Rs 1,720 crore same quarter last year. Total sales grew by 38%. Read a report on the Q3 earnings here. Rcom - RCom which is the second largest telecom player after Bharti reported a 2.7% rise in quarterly profit with respect to same quarter last year. Total income decreased to Rs 3,398.73 crore from Rs 3,410.82 crore same quarter 07-08. Though the subscriber numbers grew by 5.3 million mobile users during the quarter to take its total to 61.3 million users at the end of December, up about 50 per cent from a year earlier. It was stated that the company would have a reduced capex of Rs 15,000 crore in the coming financial year. Read an earnings report on Rcom here. Related PostsAlso Check Out: More Recent Articles
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