Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

FreMo is networked bicycle rental services company which aims to save considerable money for its members and indirectly contributing to the environment, its a smart ecological initiative started at Thane to begin with.  Fremo has bicycle depots placed strategically in centralized locations- railway and bus stations which facilitates commuters easy to pick and drop the bicycles.

I remember this concept of bicycle sharing programme was shared by Pradeep Mishra to me when we worked at Seventymm( online movie rental service company). Glad to find that someone has come forward and executed it.

FreMo is derived from the phrase “Freedom to Move”. Because, the objective of FreMo is to give its members Freedom to Move from one place to other, without really depending on availability of public transport or using car/bike for the short distance travel. FreMo also intends to bridge the first and last mile of your travel since the railway station or bus stop is not right at your door step. And it is not possible to carry a bicycle or other means of personal transport on the bus or train.

lets look at the paint points Fremo trying to address -:

• Daily travelling to and fro between residence and station is a pain in itself, besides the cost that one has to pay for the same.
• Further, the commuter goes through the terrible traffic jams and bad pollution levels
• Commuter also spends lot of time waiting for a bus at a bus stop or for auto who will take him to his destination

Fremo membership fees is quite nominal, 199/annum but there is a registration fees of 499 for life time and 2000 refundable deposit and members gets an insurance cover of 5L.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Symbian foundation has opened up its platform for web application developers and they can contribute to symbian platform by creating web application tools the simplest way possbile. Symbian platform will enable these web apps to be accessible to both consumers and handset makers around the world.

Mainly its been targetted for Symbian^3 devices and Nokia N8 the first device on this platform. These Symbian web application development tools provide an ideal entry point for web developers targeting the vast, new development opportunities offered by the Symbian^3 platform and the wider mobile marketplace.

Symbian’s web application development tools should enable any web developer to apply existing knowledge in HTML, CSS and JavaScript in a mobile context. There are only a few additional JavaScript APIs to explore, and developers will be able to directly access deep handset capabilities, so that they can deliver engaging applications that can benefit from handset functionalities like contacts, camera, accelerometers and even location.

Web applications for Symbian can be delivered through the use of any web development environment, yet the new tools add more value in segments like mobile-specific application preview, debugging and deployment features. These capabilities are also expected to support the transition of skills in the desktop environment to the mobile area.

The new tools have been recently released out of community beta, and can be used on all major platforms, including Windows, Mac and Linux. Those interested in downloading them should head over to the Symbian website here.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Examinations and entrance tests are nearing i will be covering startups in this space. Let’s begin with TopIITcoaching.

TopIITcoaching aims to be one stop solution for IIT aspirants. TopIITcoaching provides online course material in physics. mathematics and chemistry specifically designed by IIT faculties. Bundling of product is done quite smartly, student can opt for complete course or there is an option of selecting individual course.

Students can take upto 10 mock tests upon subscribing to the complete Mock tests package which costs Rs 900/-, student also have the flexibility of pay/mock test. Student can take up free sample test to assess themselves and also validate their content. Teasers are well placed in the homepage as well which will entice the users to subscribe to the course.

TopIITcoaching is well defined portal, quite user friendly, performance is quite good and well supported by rich content. Salient features include-

• Students can ask questions privately at any time to our faculty and receive response within 12 hours
• Their test analysis engine provides various reports based on difficulty level and time taken to answer each question, percentile for each question. Such reports are possible only with technology based learning
• Receive SMS alerts for all important Engineering exam events
• Discussion forum is well integrated, students can discuss with their peers on the related topics.

What do you think about TopIITcoaching, will they succeed?

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Chakpak is like Indian flixster which  provides loads of information about movies, film personalities. They have some fun features like wallpapers, quizs, forums, movies trailors, celebrity news etc which appeal to movie enthusiasts. Chakpak is a web2.0 startup and has social networking feature which allow user to add friends and allow them to see photos, movies they have bookmarked. User can also view the reviews, ratings and discussion of its friends on Chakpak. I like the bollywood news section, its quite comprehensive.

Chakpak was founded in 2007 and received $5M funding from Canaan Partners and Accel Partners till date.

Chakpak’s orkut and facebook app is quite popular, app enables allow users to take up quiz, compatibility tests. Lets have a look at their app traction on facebook -

 Lets analyse the monthly traction at Chakpak portial-

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	2.4M
Unique visitors (users)	1.7M
Reach	0.1%
Page views	10M
Total visits	2.9M
Avg visits per visitor	1.7
Avg time on site	4:00

Chakpak has been making money through advertisements by playing role of publisher, Ads seems to be their lonely means of monetizing. With 10M monthly pageviews Chakpak makes atleast Rs. 10L/month. But question arises is it enough revenue to achieve break even through ads.

What can be the new means of making money for Chakpak, share your feedback and suggestions.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

If you are super busy person and you need 4 different numbers to cater to your office, personal, family and gf needs motorola has got the solution for you. Now cellphone users would soon be able to use up to four phone numbers in a single handset, without even having to buy a multi-SIM one.

The US-based company Motorola is in talks with all Indian telecom service providers to launch iSIM — a flexible wafer that can be attached to the original SIM. This allows the user to access three other numbers on the same handset. iSIM is based on a flexible wafer that can be attached to the subscriber’s original SIM providing additional services that can be controlled via SIM tool kit (STK), allowing third-party developers to build applications and services,

Each iSIM supports up to four IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) profiles and each IMSI profile can be provisioned to one phone number. Subscribers can switch between different phone numbers provisioned to different networks, or the same network, without changing SIMs.

An IMSI is a unique, usually 15-digit, number associated with mobile users. It is stored in the SIM inside the phone and is sent by the phone to the network. It is also possible to define a special “Killer SMS” in this application, which blocks or resets the mobile when it is lost or stolen. Besides parental control applications, Motorola’s iSIM platform would offer compelling value proposition for applications such as mobile commerce for banking, payment and near field communications (NFC), call control, alternative call routing and call back system, among other things.

Bipper Communication AS, a Scandinavian web-based company involved in providing services to keep children safe when using mobiles, would use Motorola’s iSIM platform to enable parental control services, making mobiles safer and better adapted for use by children.

The parental control service from Bipper would help parents manage their children’s approved number list from the Bipper website. Parents could then monitor their children’s use of mobiles through an easy-to-use portal. Who they communicate with, how much and when they use they use the phone can also be tracked.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

The definition of a landing page is simply “the first page that visitors hit on your site”, so it is not strictly a certain page but any page that a user “lands” on. All websites have landing pages, whether they like it or not, even if it was not specifically designed as such. Understanding this is a key part of good website marketing.

anding pages can have a substantial impact on your e-commerce website. A poorly-developed one can hasten its breakdown just as an effective landing page can drive traffic to your site,  respond to calls to action and make your business website a success.

One vital measure of the effectiveness of your ecommerce website is the “bounce rate”, or the percentage of visitors who immediately leave your site without making any other click. The bounce rate is inversely proportional to the effectiveness of the landing page. Basically, this means that a high bounce rate indicates that your landing page isn’t compelling enough for the visitor to pursue his interest or take some other action.

Most users prefer to skip information which is irrelevant to their needs. They want to get directly to their search, hence the need for a landing page that delivers just that. They are spared the time and hassle of having to navigate through layers of data when they already have an idea of what they want. The bounce rate is a key measurement for determining the effectiveness of landing pages.

Another measure for landing pages is the success of a “next action”. It might be purchasing the product, requesting more information, signing up for a free trial, etc. A concept that is intrinsic in creating effective landing pages is “alignment”. This is the connection between your source (where the visitor came from) and your landing page. The more connected they are, the higher the success of conversion.

A good example is a banner ad for a specific product from a beauty products company. Clicking on the banner ad and being directed to a landing page showing the exact same product yields a higher conversion rate. Conversely, if the alignment is absent, there will be a significant drop in conversion rates.

In general, a landing page must stir these positive emotions in a visitor for it to be effective:

• Credibility
  Your page must be able to capture the visitor’s trust by presenting a credible appearance. Get rid of red flags, such as lack of contact information, typo errors and wrong grammar, use of incorrect jargon, low-resolution graphics, and excessive use of Times Roman font.
• Recognition
  Your page must provide your visitor a “This is what I’m looking for!” moment upon landing.
• Persuasiveness
  Your page must be able to convince visitors that your product or service can help them achieve their goal. Keep in mind what attracted the visitor to your product in the first place so you will understand what he is looking for.
• Action
  You must highlight an action for the visitor to take while he is in your landing page.

Techniques to Use with Landing Pages

Read the rest of this entry »

Mozilla is working on integrating features that would normally be part of a web service directly into the browser. One example of this is the Firefox Contacts add-on, which creates a sort of local and integrated address book by pulling contact data from various sources either online or from local address books. The project is in its infancy, but with Firefox Contacts 0.3.1, it’s starting to take shape.

“Firefox has  added support for Yahoo! and Facebook contacts, put people into the AwesomeBar, and enhanced Contacts’ ability to find information about people by asking around the web.

Firefox has added experimental support for ‘person:’ URLs. You can look up people in your contacts list, or anybody on the web, using this technique. Firefox will combine information found from your local address book with web-based information to create a profile page about the person.”

Firefox Contacts 0.3.1 brings support for two new services, two of the biggest in the world, Yahoo and Facebook. Yahoo Mail is the most popular email service in the world and access to Yahoo Contacts greatly expands the number of available contacts for most people. And the importance of Facebook contacts needs no explaining, with close to 500 million users and probably one of the most complex and relevant social graphs out there, the addition of the social network is a great boon for the add-on.

In terms of features, the latest version brings support for “person:” addresses. Typing a person’s name in the AwesomeBar will bring up suggestions for contacts matching the name. You can then check out a local page for the contact that aggregates all the data Firefox has been able to grab from various services. The feature works for people who aren’t in your address book as well, just point it at a URL and the add-on will try to retrieve as much info as possible.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Twitter has acquired a startup called Cloudhopper a messaging infrastructure company that enables Twitter to connect directly to mobile carrier networks in countries all over the planet. Cloudhopper is run by two techies and acquisition amount hasn’t been disclosed.

Cloudhopper provides mobile messaging technology and expertise to businesses in the wireless space. Currently, Cloudhopper powers some of the largest and most successful mobile messaging (SMS and MMS) campaigns in North America, Europe, and Africa.

Twitter has SMS written in its DNA. It started out with deep text message integration, the idea was to make it easy to broadcast a message to a number of ‘followers’ using mobile phones. Over time, as the service evolved, SMS became too expensive for the company, so it started dropping support for the free service. SMS is now making a comeback, as Twitter expands into areas where smartphones and even Internet access is limited. With the Cloudhopper technology, it will be able to manage the huge number of SMS it sends out to users.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

YouTube is plowing ahead with video rentals, despite initial results being less than encouraging. The Google-owned video site has now opened up a rental store to house all of the available material. The range of videos offered has grown considerably since the January tests, but it’s not exactly exhaustive. Videos rent for $0.99 to $3.99 and range from full-length movies to TV-show episodes.

The video site hasn’t made any official announcement, but had said that it will expand its catalogue when it first launches video rentals. And the move hasn’t been kept a secret either.  YouTube announced Rentals in January and would be creating a destination after more partners joined the program. As of now 500 partners that have joined our Rental program.

The content is pretty varied, but with a heavy sway towards niche works. You can find some mainstream, full-length films like Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs or Lord of War, but stuff like Bollywood movies or Japanese anime top the Popular Shows charts. There’s nothing to make the big guys like Netlfix, Amazon or Apple sweat just yet and the pricing may be a bit off too. TV-episode downloads usually sell for $0.99, but, with YouTube, you’re only getting them for 24 to 72 hours.

However, if there’s one thing that YouTube proved, it was that you could become quite popular with niche content, which user-generated videos pretty much still are. The long tail could end up being a successful approach for YouTube, though it will need a much, much bigger catalogue for that. As for the financial side, it’s probably too early to tell. YouTube’s initial tests weren’t that successful, with movies bringing in paltry sums. But the rental store may pick up steam in time and, with YouTube’s huge monthly audience, there’s certainly a lot of room to grow.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Foostor is an e-commerce portal developed by eYantra which marks its foray into the B2C segment, eYantra is a B2B player in merchandising, stationary and corporate gifting and recently it closed a funding of $7.5M covered here.

I have a pretty bad experience while buying products from Rediff, products were of bad quality and what they display and what you get is very different and i have almost given up buying products online.

I generally buy books online from online bookstores like flipkart, simplybooks, lebooks. After long time i bought few stuffs from foostor. I like the overall experience –  pretty simply and neat UI,  checkout process is quite easy – new user doesn’t have to signup they can directly checkout by giving shipping address, payment gateway integration done quite well.

Product categories include mobiles, memory disks, kids toys, ladies apparel, mp3 players, perfumes. If they need to evolve into a complete B2C ecommerce portal they should expand their product category and at present seem to be focusing on woman related products.

Foostor also allows merchants to showcase their product catalog and items like ebay shops, you can find fernsnpetals displaying their stuff with respective categories.

Best part was getting a confirmation call from Foostor sales team within 20 secs of placing the order.

Let’s analyse monthly traction at Foostor:

• World wide Alexa Traffic Rank: 56,341
• Traffic Rank in IN: 7,029

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Unique visitors (estimated cookies) 76K Unique visitors (users) 93K     Page views 900K Total visits 110K Avg visits per visitor 1.2 Avg time on site 9:50

Quite impressive hits and pageviews numbers achieved within 5 months of its launch.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com