Online travel continues to get interest. After half a dozen early stage investments and launches, consumer experience remains at abyssmal levels. My own view is that these players will figure it out over next few months, but a person I was talking to made a valid point — focus on user experience is in the […]
In bay area 15-21 Sep
Would love to meet any folks on venturewoods who might be there too! Pls respond to this post and I’ll get the notification. 0
BoA on Gigaom
Gigaom has recently written about some of the ongoing efforts at Band of Angels, India. Most of the regular stuff regarding our desire and passion to create large businesses out of India, the progress so far, and whats in the pipeline. We have also been getting regular feedback from the entrepreneurial community, including some pretty […]
Evalueserve India VC report
Evalueserve has come out with a report on Indian early stage VCs. It points out that the VC activity in India is increasing and soon, there will be as many as 44 early stage VC firms operating in India, with around $4.4b to invest! While my own estimates are on a lower side, whats undeniable […]
Web 2.0 startup sold on ebay
This is via Rishab from silklist. A web2.0 startup Kiko which was into AJAX based online calendering was sold on ebay for just over $250K. I guess they matched up with Google at least in the style of exit if nothing else! Here’s the auction link. 0
Redherring 100 List – Indian companies
Redherring has announced the final 100 for this year — there are 23 Indian companies 24/7 Customer, 24×7 Learning, ACL Wireless, Advanced Radio Engineering, Avestha Gen, ConvergeLabs, Coruscant, Drishtee, Esqube Communications, Evalueserve, Indiaideas, Naukri, Innoviti, makemytrip, mauj telecom, mobile2win, NeoAccel, n-logue communications, Novatium Solutions, Ocimum Biosolutions, People Interactive, SoftJin, Toonz Animation Remember, you saw it […]
Starting points for Indian languages internet
Fair bit of interest developing around local language content on the internet. Have been wondering what opportunities will present themselves over next few years as the opportunity unfolds. Some pieces of the puzzle: 1. Authoring tools 2. Standard rendering technology (still see too many floating around) 3. Content creation – Since english remains the main […]
Does long tail work?
Lee Gomes provides some data into the long tail — or rather, the lack of it. In a critique to “The Long Tail”, Lee quotes examples such as: – With expansion of inventory, the no-play list on Ecast has gone up from 2 to 12%. The number on Rhapsody is 22%. – 2.7% of Amazon’s […]
Redherring on Google M&A in India
Redherring has an interesting article on Google’s potental M&A plans in India. It is interesting to contrast Google’s acquisitions from Yahoo’s. Google has tended to acquire early and for technology, not for communities. Also, Google is totally focussed on stuff that can add to their advertiser business, unlike Yahoo which is also interested in ecommerce […]
Entrepreneurship top career aspiration
According to a recent HT-Cfore survey amongst youth, Entrepreneurship is the top career aspiration at 22% of respondents. Others such as Science, Engineering etc follow later. I guess this survey did not cover people already in jobs, and that number might only be higher. I remember fifteen years back, it used to be Engineering, Medicine, […]
Business 2.0 – Startup Ideas
Business 2.0 has a list of startup ideas they like. For India, a mobile based ad network, and wine imports business make it to the list… I would have thought there are far better ideas available as well — not that these ones are not good. But I like these guys for being specific rather […]
BW – Venture Capital: The Good, Bad, and Ugly
A very well balanced article in businessweek on what value VCs add, how they constraint the team, and what can go wrong. I think its useful to link this back to the objectives of the core team in terms of building scale versus lifestyle businesses, timing issues to scaleup and associated competitive threats, and so […]