Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Fashionandyou is a 7 month old startup founded by Pearl Uppal(ex Yahoo director sales) and Harish Bahl of Smile Interactive (Tyroo, Zoomtra, Quasar media). Fashionandyou is an online retail store of high fashion brands and lifestyle products. Definitely they have taken a cue from 99labels which was covered earlier, Isn’t this herd mentality.

Fashionandyou offers its users upto 70% off (upto is just a crowd puller in reality there will be very few items sold at 70% off). Fashionandyou brings high end fashion labels in its online store, only members can buy, to become a member you need an invitation or request an invite code.

Fashionandyou is following 99labels in terms of business model, even registration, goto market strategy, there is no clear differentiating factor.

Lets look at their monthly traction -

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	53K
Unique visitors (users)	84K
Page views	64K
Total visits	57K
Avg visits per visitor	0.68
Avg time on site	0:31

Fashionandyou give an incentive of Rs.1000 to the user if its referral joins in and buy merchandise.

Try this online fashion store and share your feedback.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

99labels is an event based member only ecommerce portal, this 1year old startup based out of New Delhi is targeting customers who adore luxurious clothing, high end accessories, lifestyle products and wants to buy them at a discounted rate.

The people behind this concept of exclusive event-based online sales are Anchal Jain, Ankur Prakash and Ishita Swarup, veterans of the fashion and communication industry.

99Labels has partnered with various national and international brands to sell their products to its members.  Membership to 99Labels.com is by invitation only i.e i can’t signup with them directly either i need to referred by an existing member or i need to request an invite code if i don’t know any existing member. This strategy is taken off from MLM (Multi level Marketing) companies and its designed to give them free publicity through WOM (word of mouth).

 Lets have a look at their monthly traction -:

Unique visitors	39K
Unique visitors	48K
Page views	220K
Total visits	51K
Avg visits per visitor	1.1
Avg time on site	7:00

99labels offers payment options like cash on delivery, internet banking and credit card, 99labels ship products within India and international location 3-5 days.

vcBytes review – Like their strategy of developing user base first through referrals and invitation and then pushing products, certainly conversion rate and sales will be higher. Is the system scalable? can they able to boast lacs of users, these are the questions i am left with.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

To achieve maximum effectiveness, primary calls-to-action (e.g., add to basket) are usually placed at the top of web pages. Yet, it is equally important to include calls-to-action at the bottom of the pages, too.

You might lose customers who have not selected a call-to-action from the top and will just exit for lack of further push from you. Such calls-to-action are determined by the goals you have set for the site or page.

They may consist of links to the following:

1. Contact details

Contact information should be seen at the bottom of every single page of your website if this is what you want your users to do. Your email address and phone number, along with a short, friendly message like “We’d love to hear from you” can produce more results than a curtly worded “Fill up the form to make an enquiry”.

2. Registering or Signing Up

If getting users to register or sign up (e.g. for a newsletter or an event) is your site’s main objective, place an appropriate call-to-action at the bottom of the page that follows your sales message. If you exerted time and effort to write killer copy, you must end it with a call-to-action so the user knows what the next step is: sign up.

3. Related Products or Services

The user may not find your main products or services to his liking. As he scrolls down without making any action, display images or descriptions of other products or services at the bottom of the page so he’ll have other options to purchase instead of leaving the site with his needs unmet.

4. Social networking bookmarking services

Social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and Digg store web pages and recommend them to other users. Placing a link at the page bottom to these sites will automatically add your web page to users’ bookmarks on that site if they click on the link. The list of users’ bookmarks is open to the public, making other users and search engines aware of the existence of your site.

Guest Post by Marina, a UX manager at eBay

Flipkart, leader in online bookstore has inspired many entrepreneurs to plunge into this space and companies like Popabook, Lebooks, Simplybooks have put in effort in developing the portal and establishing the business and operational logistics.

Bookwaale is one company which is trying to do something related to book, they are very smartly imitating Flipkart in terms of look and feel of the homepage. I took couple of seconds to realize its not flipkart. Here is the snapshot of Bookwaale -

Interestingly if you search bookwaale, you see the 1st result points to globalshiksha. Is it globalshiksha portal or they promoting it by cross linkging, something fishy i must say.

In my view Bookwaale is up for grabs, some smart jack plans to make quick bucks by enticing potential buyer  by developing oops copying the web framework of flipkart.

Good programmer innovate and smart programmer copy and paste

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

PopAbook is startup which is joining the crowded online bookstore space. PopAbook is founded by Praveen an ex motorola architect and very passionate about books which propelled him to develop an ecommerce site on books which will improve browsing and shopping experience.

Popabook besides selling new books also sell old/used books with 50-60% discount on MRP, this is the differentiating factor from the existing online bookstores. Popabook also allow users(buyers) to sell their books, there is simple work flow has been implemented to sell books. In short popabook is aiming to become a marketplace to trade books.

Popabook claims to have 1lac new books and 30k used books in their inventory under 30 categories. 10% is standard discount user can get across all books and it can go upto 20%, all shipments are free irrespective of ticket size. I ordered a book “Management and Entrepreneurship” by Kanishka Bedi priced at Rs. 180/- and availed 10% discount so final amount i paid was Rs.162/-, surprisingly the same book at Flipkart is priced Rs. 185/- and no discount in the offering

Popabook is quite unconventional, for instance its totally secured site i.e you see “https” through out, even home page is secured. But i wonder does homepage has to be secured? not good design as per me.

Popabook user interface is quite simple and intuitive, checkout process is highly simple (i rechecked twice to believe its been done).

Try Popabook and share your feedback.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Mospay is a 2.5 year old startup based out of Delhi. They develop smart mobile solutions mainly in learning and enterprise space. Mospay is founded by Shantanu Dash, a bitsian and i happen to meet him in one of the BITS alumni meet.

MosPay provides a platform for delivering mobile learning and info contents to its customers like carriers, handsets, training schools, which offer various study materials through the application for its users or students.

The training schools either give the content to MosPay for using it in their applications, or the schools themselves upload the contents by using the online system that the company has developed. Mospay has tied up with various content providers including McMilan and Sultan Chand publication.

Product offerings: Mospay develops products cater to learning, utility and enterprise space. Their product supports 150+ handsets from lowest end to high end phones. Mospay is now concentrating on iPhone and android platform.

Their main products are -:
mGurujee: Helps students to learn courses/crack entrance examinations by preparing for it through their mobile phones.

mLocate: A location search mobile application
mAstrox: An application to tell your personalized and interesting predictions
mEvents: Provides alerts to happening events in town
mBackup: Backup your personal data through this application

Clients include Aircel, Tataindicom, Virgin and in handsets LG, fly, spice, samsung are prominent clients.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

NetCore Solutions has acquired  web portal OneIndia and online classifieds portal Click, both are properties of Greynium Information Technologies.   NetCore’s founder and managing director, Rajesh Jain, had earlier invested in Greynium through his personal venture capital fund Emergic Venture Capital. However the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Interestingly both the portals have good traction which would have been a driving force behind this acquisition.

Monthly traction at OneIndia

Worldwide Unique visitors (cookies) 7.3M Unique visitors (users) 3.5M Reach 0.2% Page views 62M Total visits 12M Avg visits per visitor 2.2 Avg time on site 6:00

3.5M unique visitiors is pretty good and more importantly average time on site is 6mins which means they have sticky content keeping users engaged. With 7.3M they must be minting atleast 8-10Lacs from the Advertising.

Monthly traction at Click.in

Worldwide
Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	350K
Unique visitors (users)	430K
Reach	0.0%
Page views	2.6M
Total visits	510K
Avg visits per visitor	1.2
Avg time on site	6:20

In the current scenarios portal having good traction has various options to monetize. Earlier I have covered How Traction can lead it to IPO, check out here.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

TolMol is a social comparison shopping platform. With millions of products and online/local businesses listed on its website, TolMol offers one of the most comprehensive shopping destinations for consumers in India.  TolMol is one stop search and comparison service that saves your time – you no longer need to jump from site to site to find that best deal on the product you are looking to buy.

TolMol’s mission is to empower people in making informed decisions. Using TolMol, user can search and compare prices, features, and ratings of products and services in all popular categories like Mobiles, Computers, Electronics, Clothing and more.

Lets analyse their monthly traction -

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	150K
Unique visitors (users)	170K
Page views	420K
Total visits	160K
Avg visits per visitor	0.99
Avg time on site	6:50

vcBytes review – There are some obvious bugs which needs to be fixed, i clicked on Nokia products and result sets is showing Samsung products on top, webpage loading time is quite high, it took 10-13secs on an average to load a webpage and i am browsing it in 1Mbps, not acceptable.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Simplilearn is Bangalore based startup targeting global audience who aspire for PMP certification. Simplilearn is a SaaS based online learning platform, integrated with essential Web 2.0 tools, which provides professional organizations and training solutions providers with a fast and flexible way to configure and deploy their learning contents.

Simplilearn is a certification preparation Portal. Simplilearn provide working professionals the option of attending Live virtual classes from the convenience of their home or office. It provides a balanced mix of e-learning, classroom learning and live virtual classes to address the unique learning needs of working needs of working professionals.

Simplilearn is founded by Krishna kumar a serial entrepreneur, earlier he cofounded TechUnified, which got acquired by a public listed company in Feb 2007. By the time of acquisition, TechUnified had world class products in the areas of Mobile Banking, Voice Banking and Telecom Self Care.

SimpliLMS the LMS from Simplilearn, helps them create, manage and deliver various standard as well as customized courses that are of global values and provides them all the features of a good blended learning. Simplilearn also addresses those organizations that have a good course curricula and a strong base of learners but are looking out for economical LMS to go online. SImplilearn develops fully customized learning portals that yields higher ROI.

Simplilearn has trained more than 3000 PMP aspirants from across 100+ countries. Simplilearn provides customizable solutions to meet unique training requirements of organizations. Simplilearn plans to introduce other certification training programs like ITIL Training, CAPM Training, CISA, and Six Sigma training in the near future.

Simplilearn competes with global players like PMCC, CELTEM, PMSTUDY.

Simplilearn USP -

• Live Virtual Classes from India to global audience.
• Pioneers of blended learning approach for certification preparation.
• Intuitive and excellent user interface.
• Product bundling done quite smartly, user can buy the complete package or individual item like online courses, mock tests.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

I always strongly oppose to the view its a male dominated society, infact its Women who dictates the terms. Naukri for women is a web startup job portal which supports my view, there isn’t such specific job portals only for men.

Naukri for women aims to empower Indian women to work(either from home) or go out and make a difference to the society. Its founded by duo serial entrepreneur Priya and pullak Mohanty who had started Memsaab( a women centric portal).

Naukri for women have listed jobs like – Front officePersonal Secretary, Stenos, kinder garden teachers, HR executives, telesales associate which relatively suits women.

Naukri for women is certainly poised to target the mass audience, home makers who can work from their home unlike monster a niche job search portal.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com