In startups you want to use your limited seed capital to produce tangible things that VC’s /angels can look at, get impressed and invest. ( This assumes you want VC/angel investment) These could be prototypes, beta customers, key business development deals or letters of intent. At Eko we have just signed a letter of intent […]
Games Indians Play
This is an extract from a post on another blog. Click here for the full post. In some ways I am trying to be a farmer sharing his seed corn when I write about trust or Eko. The major difference is that Eko is just starting and has won no awards but the intent to […]
Consumer ECommerce to grow to 9200 crores (IAMAI)
Latest report by IAMAI suggests consumer ecommerce will grow by around 30% this year. The high base effect of online travel is coming into play (almost accounting for 65-70% of the market). Not sure of the methodology (last three categories of Classifieds, Paid content and Digital downloads have somewhat uniform 50% growth rate) but a […]
Barcamp Mumbai 14th Oct
at IIT Mumbai – details here. 0
Wal-Mart era drawing to an end?
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article on shifts in the US retail scene. Wal-Mart seems set to slip from being the sole industry-defining company, and will become one of several such companies. I think the writer misses a trick in not looking at the impact of high-priced oil (most of the items that […]
Trust
We have recognized the importance of creating a ” Circle of Trust” at Eko. It is quite possible that trust may be an important element in the business of some other startups and they may get inspired by our thinking. With that in mind we have made the first version of our document available for […]
Facebook = Comcast (Lean Forward Entertainment)
This is along the lines of Alok’s post but different enough that I thought I would do a new post. When I look back in history for a model that may predict how the broad social networks will evolve, the Television industry comes to mind. Facebook would be Comcast and there will emerge channels like […]
Virtual worlds versus Social networks
CNet reports an estimate of $1b being invested in virtual worlds. While comparing with social networks, it says One of the reasons the genre still feels like a niche is that there is no single virtual world that everyone is using, like there is with social networks like MySpace or Facebook. World of Warcraft is […]
17M advanced users, growing at 2.5M a year
A friend of mine who is the founder and CEO of a major Indian internet group estimates that in India there are 15M internet users, beyond email, who log in every week, and this is growing at about 2.5M a year. Plus add another 2M NRIs. This is the relevant Indian market for all non […]
Booths in Large Conferences
This is a comment I posted here, and have converted this into a post by itself (Thanks, Alok!) While this may be irrelevant to some of you, this is a set of my thoughts on hiring a conference booth. In the past I’ve done the rounds of tented events, all of them named IT.COM in […]
The Importance of being Entrepreneur
Sramana has a post on venture compensation, but I found the part at the end more interesting: I would go so far as to submit, working for a VC-funded startup is more like having any other job, than true entrepreneurship where you actually are your own boss. Entrepreneurs / CEOs answer to a Board. There […]
Digital India 12 – 15 Dec 2007
We’ve been talk long at IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association India) about setting up a consumer facing expo with the twin aim of 1. giving our members a platform for interacting with consumers live, which is a critical component of marketing, severely lacking in India; 2. Increasing consumer awareness of the benefits of the Internet, […]