Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Some amount of consolidation taking place in group discount space after emerging in mushroom fashion 7-8 months back. Snapdeal, a group discount site promoted by Delhi based Jasper Infotech has acquired Bangalore based Grabbon, deal value has not been disclosed and it is termed as strategic acquisition by both Snapdeal and Grabbon.

Interestingly Grabbon is the 1st Groupon clone to hit the Indian market and founded by Tony Navin, Jackson Fernandez and Balamurugan all XLRI graduates. Few weeks back i interviewed Jackson, you may check here.

Benefit for Snapdeal from this acquisition- :

• Seasoned management guys who know the nitty gritty of discount space and have executed this model quite diligently.
• Getting Bangalore as a market where Snapdeal has no presence and being tech savvy metro, this model brings lot of value and readymade market for them by acquiring Grabbon.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Taggle Internet Ventures, an internet company which launched its online group buying initiative, taggle.com has received $8.75 million from Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners. The taggle.com promises to provide both the consumers and merchants a win-win platform.

Taggle has decided to use this funding for improvement in technology, marketing to drive traffic and increase its service performance. Taggle works with a variety of business partners from wellness to beauty, travel, adventure sports, fast food and fine-dining.

At present Bangalore is the base for Taggle’s “test market” which would be later introduced in “10 internet strong cities.” John Kuruvilla, Founder and CEO of Taggle said, “We spent about four months understanding the markets, what customers want and issues faced by the trade.” He added that customers want simple propositions and not the complicated ones with fine prints and asterisk.

Most of the people do not wish to transact over the internet, as 20-25 percent of the people get affected by the payment gateway. To solve such problems Taggle has come up with a contact center and Taggle Prepaid. The Taggle Prepaid works like a mobile prepaid recharge and earns a two percent bonus from it. Thus it does not require the customer to go through the payment gateway again.

Marketing through SMS is also an option as customers will be able to call the Taggle contact center on receiving the offer and pay via credit card. To protect the merchants from fraud, a security hologram has been created based on the coupons.

Arvin Babu, Partner, Greylock Partners, which has invested in companies like Facebook and Linkedin, said, in a statement, “India is definitely one of the world’s fastest growing markets and we see great potential in the concept of Group Buying in India. The business proposition of Taggle is certainly promising and we are sure it will take the market by storm.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

D.light Design, a global company that designs and manufactures solar powered consumer products for families without access to reliable electricity, today announced that it has secured USD5.5 million in Series B financing. The round is led by new investor Omidyar Network and includes all major Series A investors, including Acumen Fund, Nexus Venture Partners, Gray Matters Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Garage Technology Ventures.

“We are thrilled to have Omidyar Network on board as an investor. We appreciate the perspective they bring—they understand how social enterprise can solve problems and improve lives in emerging economies,” said Sam Goldman, CEO of D.light.  “Their investment will allow us to scale rapidly to reach millions of people around the world who lack access to electricity, offering them affordable products that meet vital daily needs.”

In its first three years of operation, D.light has expanded distribution to over 30 countries and positively impacted the lives of over 1.25 million people worldwide. The new funding will support plans to bring economical products to more than 100 million customers by 2020. Specifically, D.light will rapidly increase distribution throughout Africa and Asia as well as expand its product line beyond solar lighting.

Omidyar Network, now D.light’s largest investor, was drawn to the company’s innovative product design, strong business model, and scalable approach to meeting the urgent needs of people in emerging markets. In geographies such as India and sub-Saharan Africa, D.light’s solar lanterns typically replace toxic kerosene lamps, providing life-changing improvements in personal health and security, as well as enhanced productivity and access to information.

Jayant Sinha, Managing Director of Omidyar Network India, will join D.light’s Board of Directors. Sinha brings 20 years of investing and strategy consulting experience to his role, as well as deep expertise advising businesses in emerging markets.

“Omidyar Network believes that D.light is at a critical inflection point on its path to massive social impact,” said Sinha. “Our investment enables D.light to scale its pursuit of customer-focused design with extreme affordability, a combination poised to unleash greater opportunity for millions.“

Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Have you evaluated how well your website helps visitors meet their goal in an efficient and engaging way, if not i recommend these simple E’s for user friendly designs -

• Effective:
  Watch some people try to complete some goals. Look out for the results of each task – was the goal completed? Was the attempt successful. You might want to ask the person if they felt the task was completed successfully, since sometimes they’re not aware they’ve made a mistake and think the task was finished properly, which is important information to make a note of.It’s a good idea to let the person know that you’re testing how well the system helps them do something, rather than testing the person themselves, as this puts people under a lot of unfair pressure. And often the person hasn’t made a mistake, they’ve made a reasonable attempt to do something logical – you just didn’t happen to anticipate that way of working when you were thrashing out the design and the interactive features your product needs.

• Efficient:
  It’s also helpful to time users as they complete a specific scenario. You can compare this time against someone who’s more familiar with your product, as they can play the role of an expert user.  Look for places where the screen layout or navigation make the work harder than it needs to be and the person ends up struggling with the system.You can also write down the most efficient way to do the task and count each time the person deviates from that efficient method.

• Engaging:
  Watch for signs that the screens are confusing, or difficult to read, by asking the person to think aloud as they have a go at the task. You can also ask the person at the end of the scenario “How would you describe your experience using this system to do that scenario”. Always try not to ask leading questions like “Was that easy for you?” or “I thought that was difficult for you to complete, how did you feel about it”.

• Error Tolerant:
  Create a test in which you think mistakes are likely to happen, and see how well users can recover from problems and how helpful the product is. Count the number of times users see error messages and how helpful the message was and how they could be prevented from happening in the first place. If it’s a complex, important  system for employees or customers, you’ll probably want to make sure common mistakes are eliminated during training sessions.

• Easy to Learn:
  Try not to prompt the person if they come unstuck using the product. Sometimes the person will fix it themselves very quickly without any prompting from you – what I call a “Kayak Moment”. Even if they don’t fix the problem, it’s helpful to see how they go about solving it. If the person is having real difficulty, it’s OK to give them a brief prompt to get them back on track.When you’re briefing people before the session, control how much instruction is given to them, and give each participant the same information. This means during the sessions you’re testing the product, and not the effectiveness of the briefings.

These tips will help you evaluate your product and find out how well it meets your users needs. Post up a question if you’d like more tips on how to do this sort of evaluation.

Marina, vcBytes.com ; Marina is an UX manager at eBay.

Leading early-stage global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and Cisco today announced the 16 finalists in their second co-sponsored Global Business Plan Competition for university and business school students. The teams’ business plans address a diverse group of issues from sleep optimization and visual search to disk drive efficiency, energy-efficient microcontrollers and aquaculture. The finalists will be competing from their respective geographic areas via Cisco TelePresence(TM) suites on June 29, 2010, and the winning team will receive a minimum seed investment of $250,000.

“For the past 25 years we have invested in passionate entrepreneurs who want to change the world, and it is wonderful to see the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial spirit spreading to universities around the globe,” said Tim Draper, founder and managing director, DFJ. “We are thrilled by the quality of our finalists, and we are excited to meet these extraordinary individuals from all over the world through Cisco TelePresence conferences. We were also very pleased to discover that four of our finalist teams have female CEOs. DFJ has had a strong track record in investing in women CEOs, and the trend we’re seeing here may just be the start of a whole new era.”

The plans of the 16 finalists, nearly all of which won local university competitions, were selected from thousands of eligible business plans in 17 countries across the globe (Brazil, China, Finland, France, Japan, India, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.). Selection criteria included the quality of the management team, technical innovation, the addressable market size, competitive positioning, barriers, capital efficiency, and financial projections. Most of the finalists are still in the seed or early stages of business or technical development. In addition to the financial investment awarded to the winner, both DFJ and Cisco will assist the winner and finalists in leading the next wave of disruptive technologies by providing mentorship and professional assessments regarding their submissions.

“These 16 dynamic teams from around the world embody the entrepreneurial spirit of our global business plan competition,” said Hilton Romanski, vice president of corporate development at Cisco. “They are taking on interesting challenges and tackling tough issues with thoughtful and creative solutions, and we look forward to meeting them via Cisco TelePresence suites and learning more about their business plans next week.”

The competition will use Cisco TelePresence suites to allow the finalists to present their business plans to a San Jose-based panel of seasoned investors from DFJ, the DFJ Global Network of Partner Funds and Cisco. Cisco TelePresence technology enables collaboration through a live, face-to-face network communications experience where participants feel as though they are sitting in the same room even though they may be located thousands of miles apart.

Competitors and the media will be invited to view the competition via simulcast beginning at 8 a.m. PDT on June 29, and the winner will be announced at 5 a.m. PDT on July 1, 2010.

Please contact Kristin Carvell at Cisco if you are a member of the media interested in attending the competition or viewing it via a live webcast.

Finalists hail from 18 schools in seven countries. The complete list is as follows:

Name of Company Company  University      Business Plan Summary
                Location

Ambiq Micro     US       University of   Leads the way to ubiquitous
                         Michigan        computing with the world's most
                                         energy-efficient microcontroller
                                         (MCU).

Cambridge       UK       University of   Provides unique high-energy
Nanotubes                Cambridge       materials capable of increasing
                                         battery life for laptops and cell
                                         phones by up to 100%.

CellTV          Israel   Ariel           Enables multiple HD channel
                         University      broadcasts to an unlimited number
                         Center          of clients without decreasing the
                                         throughput of Wi-Fi networks.

Commuter        US       DePaul          Creates and sells relevant and
Advertising              University and  entertaining 10-second audio
                         University of   sponsorships inside trains and
                         Dayton          buses that are geo-coded and played
                                         at specific times; shares revenue
                                         with public transit agencies.

Deli Worm       China    Sun Yat-sen     Uses automation systems to mass
                         University      produce live organic worms to
                                         substitute current fish meals and
                                         mitigate the depletion of fish
                                         stock.

Digital Proctor US       University of   Creates enterprise online security
                         Texas-Austin    company with first market vertical
                                         in distance education.

Epythia         Russia   Higher School   Enables context-aware planning
                         of Economics    service with alerting and
                                         rescheduling based on a user's
                                         current and planned location.

F.A.N. MEDIA    China    Peking          Provides free printing service to
                         University      consumers that places targeted
                                         advertisements on one side of the
                                         free F.A.N. MEDIA printing paper
                                         and allows consumers to use the
                                         blank side for printing documents
                                         or photographs.

FayShine        China/US University of   Provides next-gen image-recognition
                         Illinois at     technology for comprehensive
                         Urbana-         shopping guidance.
                         Champaign

GlucaGo         US       Purdue          Provides revolutionary drug
                         University and  injector that is easy to use and
                         Indiana         low cost, and has been designed to
                         University      fit in existing filling lines for
                                         freeze-dried products, allowing
                                         unstable drugs or vaccines to
                                         maintain their stability at room
                                         temperature

IOS Financial   US       Northwestern    Enables online marketplace that, in
                         University      a targeted and value-added way,
                                         matches banks seeking to grow with
                                         small businesses seeking commercial
                                         loans

Lark            US       MIT             Provides compelling nonmedical
Technologies                             solutions around optimizing sleep
                                         via smart phones.

MicroMed        India    IIT Kharagpur   Provides microfluidics technology
                                         for use in pathological detection
                                         that requires minimal human
                                         intervention, reduces costs, and
                                         improves efficiency in India health
                                         care markets.

Nanodyne        US       UC Davis        Increases hard disk drive capacity
                                         by 800% through a process that
                                         utilizes metal-organic-silicon thin
                                         film, or MOSTF (code-named
                                         HyperDrive).

OsComp Systems  US       Harvard and MIT Commercializes a breakthrough
                                         patent-pending compression
                                         technology that will revolutionize
                                         the natural gas industry.

Silicon Reef    Brazil   Federal         Designs high-efficiency power
                         University of   converters and power management
                         Pernambuco      circuits for handling the energy-
                                         harvesting process.

Oyegirl is a bangalore based ecommerce portal which aims to be one stop shop for all fashion needs of a urban girl. Oyegirl is a complete online store for women, Infact, its India’s first complete online store for women.

Oyegirl is founded by Bijoy Nair and Abhishek Chipre, Bijoy comes from an Ad agency and worked as creative head for Radio Mirchi while Abhishek is hardcore techie and analytics guy and before venturing worked with Bajaj Motors.

Oyegirl.com’s proposition is to be the shopping destination for women all over India. This is where they can shop for if they want to buy apparel, lingerie, accessories, shoes, bags etc. Products are delivered at user doorsteps and they service pan India.

Oyegirl site is well planned and layout is clean, easy to navigate, search and filter.

Girls, check out Oyegirl and share your feedback.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for measuring website usability and the user experience.

Before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data – the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

See Page Views not Hits

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 10 graphics on it, the server records this as 10 “hits”, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits overestimate website traffic. Page views are a better reflection of the number of eyes that gazed on your content.

Are there Enough Visitors to Create Meaningful Data-Sets

The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.  The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

Why People Leave Quickly, assess it

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

When Do Visitors Click Out of Your Site

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice an exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

Do Visitors Type in Your URL?

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivations. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Marina, vcBytes.com

Flipkart has raised its second round of venture funding from New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management. Sources familiar with the development told VCCircle that the new round of funding was closed a few months back and is believed to be in the tune of $8 million to $10 million. Flipkart earlier raised funding early venture capital firm Accel India.

This development comes as Flipkart has expanded from being an online book retailer to offering products in movies, games and music. It also plans to launch sale of software like Norton Anti-virus, Adobe, Windows, and others. Indian CD/DVD market was worth approximately Rs 10 billion in 2008 and is expected to grow to Rs 16 billion by 2013 at an yearly growth rate of 10 to 15%, said Flipkart.

Flipkart currently has over 6 million titles listed ranging across all categories. The Bangalore-based company is targeting revenues of Rs 100 crore by March 2011, said a  recent release. The funding from Tiger Global, which has backed companies like local search firm Just Dial and coaching institute T.I.M.E, will help in this expansion. The new round of funding for Flipkart had attracted several venture capital firms, said a source.

Flipkart had revenue of Rs 25 crore in 2009-10, Flipkart said in an interview to CNBC-TV18 recently. It was set up in 2007 by IIT Delhi classmates Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who later worked at Amazon before starting Flipkart. The company has a team of 200 members and currently operates from offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi.

Sohan Lal Commodity Management (SLCM), an agri-commodity logistics and procurement company based in Delhi, announced on Friday that it has received a Rs.10 crore investment from Nexus Venture Partners, a leading venture capital firm.

SLCM provides comprehensive agri-commodity warehouse management and procurement solutions to farmers, processors, traders, agri-exchanges and government organizations across 70 locations and 12 states in India.

Last year the company handled over Rs.5000 crore of agri-commodities ranging from grains, oilseeds, pulses and spices among others. SLCM works with leading commodity exchanges as their delivery partner across India and provides collateral management for banks for their warehouse receipt-based financing products.

Speaking about the funding, Sandeep Sabharwal, Founder & CEO, SLCM, said, “We plan to become the leading agri-logistics company in India covering the whole gamut from farm to port. The funding will help us expand our warehousing capacity and help us grow our pan-India presence. Nexus Venture Partners with its strong understanding of the agriculture ecosystem in India is an ideal partner for us in this journey. We are happy to be associated with them.”

Sandeep Singhal of Nexus Venture Partners who will join the SLCM board, said, “The agriculture supply chain in India is currently very inefficient leading to huge losses in agri commodities in India. Sabharwal is a high energy passionate entrepreneur who has developed high quality processes to ensure very low wastage while procuring, transporting and warehousing of commodities.”

ICICI bank was the sole advisor to this transaction.

Leading Indian digital media network Komli Media, announced its acquisition of PostClick, Australia’s leading premium website representation firm, this week. Together the company now reaches over 30 million unique audiences across Asia to become the leading digital media network platform in the region, according to a press statement.

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Sydney with offices across Melbourne and Singapore, PostClick represents Bloomberg and Hotfrog among other premium websites. Headquarted in Mumbai, Komli Media partners exclusively with top global publishers including Facebook, Expedia and Miniclip in India. The network also has offices in New York, Toronto, Palo Alto and New Delhi.

Andrew Lockwood will continue as managing director of PostClick as it becomes a division of Komli Media.

“We are extremely excited to partner with PostClick to expand our presence in the Australian and Southeast Asian markets and bring Komli Media’s industry leading solutions to new advertiser and publisher partners,” said Amar Goel, Komli Media founder and CEO.

Performance products under the expanded online media network include premium brand solutions, performance marketing and audience measurement. “Komli Media has been at the forefront of bringing leading solutions to the digital ecosystem and we are thrilled to be part of the Komli Media team,” said Andrew Lockwood, founder and MD of PostClick. “We are confident that joining forces with Komli Media will help us deliver more value to our partners and grow our foot print across Australia and Southeast Asia.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com