Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

E-commerce ventures have suddenly taken off in india since couple of years and lot many players foraying into this segment, some selling books, flowers, apparels, shoes etc. Important marketing and acquisition tool for ecommerce portals are affiliate programs. Affiliate program is form of marketing by which you drive traffic from one website to another.

Let’s investigate if affiliate program is really helpful and the need for your ecommerce portal. You may need to find the answers for these queries -

• First and foremost question is does your product will appeal affiliates to sell, is it good enough users will buy online, affiliates will thoroughly assess your product offering against other vendors.
• Do you have the right kind of setup, infrastructure to support the affiliate program, need to have marketing team which will work with affiliates like true partners. Ui team will be needed to handover the htmls, banners, images etc to the affiliates and guide them in its implementation.
• How easily affiliates can join your program. Steps to be taken to make sure joining is simple and hassle free.
• Do you have billing system in place to pay out their commission – billing system has to transparent and robust to display all their sales and conversion commission and can be easily accessible by the affiliate partners. Does your affiliate program stand out with other ecommerce players, why they should choose you.
• How easily you can carry out payment. End of the day what matters is the commission amount to the affiliates. Any delay or tedious procedure to redeem commission can really hamper your affiliate program.

In short affiliate programs are not easy to set and run it. Having said that portals like shaadi.com, simplilearn are doing well from their affiliate programs.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Noida-based Vriti Infocom Private Limited, an exam preparation company today announced that it has closed a US$5 million Series B round of funding. JAFCO Asia led the round and Intel Capital, which had previously invested in the company’s Series A round in 2008, made a follow-on investment.

Vriti’s model involves creating a Knowledge Exchange where students consume practice examinations and quality content aggregated from numerous authors and publishers. This is distributed via schools, coaching classes and colleges. Besides high quality content made available in classrooms or online via each institution’s website, the Knowledge Exchange also provides each student preparing for a particular exam with aggregated, national-level comparative performance assessment reports and highly granular and personalized study tips.

Vriti’s proprietary nationwide platform has seen over 450 partner deployments in schools, coaching centres and colleges with over 375,000 students enrolled, and is already India’s largest such platform. Over 33 million questions have been answered. In addition, its free “edusocial” exam-based communities for students have over 500,000 registered students.

“Exam preparation is a key requirement for students and this can be monetized,” said Swapnil Shrivastav, founder and CEO of Vriti Infocom. “With thousands of exams, hundreds of thousands of authors & institutions, and millions of students, exam preparation represents a unique opportunity in education. Our Knowledge Exchange is directly analogous to exchanges such as the ones well established in travel, auctions, content sharing, etc. Similarly, we bring the various players in education together leveraging technology and social networking.”

Vriti’s cloud-based, SaaS business model allows even the smallest of distributors — such as a coaching centre run by an individual tutor in a small town such as Darbangha in Bihar — the ability to offer to its students the benefits of quality content, online testing, benchmarking against peers nationwide and personalized assessment. Vriti’s simple per-student pricing model means the distributor does not need to incur any upfront costs or change any pre-existing business process related to acquiring students and teaching them.

Mr. Shrivastav stated, “Since our first discussions with Intel Capital in 2008 and more recently with JAFCO Asia, we are excited to see that leading technology-focused funds see value in our proposition. Since last year, we have seen considerable customer traction as we have developed the features of our platform. We are now signing up over 100 paying partners and rolling out about 10 new examinations each quarter. We have now deployed our platform with partners in over 80 cities across India and abroad.”

AppLabs announced that it has acquired, Hyderabad based ValueMinds, the developer of TestersDesk.com(TM), a set of tools for test data generation and automated test case creation.

Post this acquisition, AppLabs will continue to support TestersDesk.com(TM) as a free community based tool for test design and test data generation for quality and testing professionals globally.

Commenting on the acquisition, Sashi Reddi, Founder and Chairman of AppLabs said “ValueMinds would bring to the table not only some key customized tools like WS TestersDesk – a test case generator for SOA/web services and Record Generator – a test data creator for databases and performance testing, but will also demonstrate AppLabs’ thought leadership in community driven testing activities” .

With the acquisition, Ashwin Palaparthi, Founder/Chief Architect of ValueMinds will join AppLabs as the Vice President, Innovation and will run several key initiatives of the company such as its Centers of Excellence in test automation, performance testing, and security testing.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

PhoneCurry is a new website that aims to help Indian consumers decide which mobile phone to purchase in a simple, uncluttered way. In times, when consumers are flooded with a choice of phones, with new models launched every week,  many people are using the Internet to find out about phones before buying. It is for such consumers, that PhoneCurry can come in handy.

The site attempts to make the process easy for a consumer by having:

1. Search oriented interface to help people find phones according to their exact and specific requirements. For instance, a user can do a search such as “Nokia and Samsung phones, costing between Rs 8,000 and 10,000, launched during the last year, having touchscreen, 3G support, full keyboard and in-built social networking”
2. Phone features explained in simple layman terms.
3. Overall opinion around each phone (collated and summarized from various publicly available phone reviews), and an overall rating, to make it easy for the consumer to make his decision.
4. Video reviews for popular phones.

The entire website has been structured to help a consumer make his/her decisions, as easily and as quickly as possible, with minimum of clutter.

Do give it a spin and share your views.

-Hitesh,vcBytes.com

Gensol Consultants Pvt. Ltd., one of the leading carbon consultancies in India has successfully raised capital for 15-20% stake to a US based venture capital firm, India Venture Partnership Ltd., managed by India Venture Partnership Management, a Mauritius GBL1 company, with the deal being of an enterprise value within the range of $4-$6 million. Expressing his delight on this transaction Mr. Anmol Jaggi, Director, Gensol Consultants Pvt. Ltd stated, “There is a landscape of opportunities for carbon advisory firms with the topical issues of global warming and climate change experiencing heightened focus by both public and private domain. The post-2012 market is also expected to gain momentum with an augmented demand and supply of carbon credits and number of new emerging schemes being introduced by various developing countries in order to meet their targets. With a firm expertise of India Venture Partners advisory committee, sufficient liquidity along with a highly skilled team supporting Gensol’s vision of intensifying its expertise in the complete Energy space and tap the growing market opportunities, we can certainly scale new heights in no time.” Since its inception, Gensol has always kept itself abreast with dynamic market conditions and is rapidly growing its client base, with an aggressive expansion mode adopted right from the beginning. Subsequent to establishing a strong base in India with offices in major cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Gurgaon, the company is ready to spread its reach in the international markets by commencing its operations in South East Asia, Europe and UK.

Gensol’s existing turnover is slated to grow 15 times by 2012 and the team size is also expected to escalate from the present 120 to 600 in the next three years. Gensol has recently introduced a whole new set of advisory and trading services for Renewable Energy Certificates, a scheme to be launched by the Government of India under National Action Plane on Climate Change later this month. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Navneet Gosal, Advisor at India Venture Partners commented, “This partnership is a definite step for us in the clean technology arena which is growing faster than any other industry. Since at India Venture Partners we value passion and knowledge, Gensol, with both these qualities imbibed in its every team member, supports our vision of engaging the complete carbon consultancy space. We foresee Gensol Consultants as one of the premium clean and green service providers in India along with a strong global foothold in the next few years.”

Products from the homeland invoke a sense of nostalgia for Non Resident Indians that are separated by distances from their loved ones. Infibeam embarks on international expansion by launching a website Infibeam.us to cater to the Indians living abroad in US & Canada. The website will offer products from retailers in India for sale in the US & Canada.

Speaking on the launch, CEO and Founder, Infibeam Mr. Vishal Mehta said, “For Indians living abroad, receiving products from India at your doorstep is indeed a delight. In a bid to cater to our shoppers in the US & Canada, we have embarked on Infibeam.us in time for the Rakhi season”. He added, “The website will carry the best Indian brands in lifestyle categories. We will continue to expand the selection by adding more product categories starting with Books, Movies & Music.”

Many Indian retailers, publishers and distributors who wish to have their products sold in the US will use Infibeam.us platform and fulfillment services. The new site already carries a great selection of products in Apparel & Accessories, Beauty, Titan & Fastrack Watches, Jewelry etc.

Customers can now shop for authentic religion and spirituality products, traditional Indian clothing, handicrafts created by local artisans, decorative home furnishings that add an Indian touch to the interiors, ethnic gifts that emanate an Indian aura and get them shipped directly to their addresses in US. The website launch comes right in time for upcoming Rakhi festival and will carry rakhis and festival gifts as well.

Infibeam.us targeted at residents from the US and Canada is a novel idea and with this launch, Infibeam becomes one of the first Indian retail brand which is now global.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

I met an entrepreneur recently and was shocked to find his free trial period runs for 60 days i.e 2 months, Wow awesome isn’t it. I was wondering isn’t it too too long free trial period and they should focus on migrating customer into a paid customer. Question arises what is an ideal duration for free trial period 1 week, 10 days, 2weeks, 1month? And also what information you should seek from users before initiating the free trial offer

But before that another question arises why you are offering free trial. You have come out with a new product/web service and would like to pull in users to use your system. So in order to pull users into the system you have to offer dry run of your system. So would you enable all features to be accessed by user during the free trial period or would like to insulate some features in the free trial period.

In general as a norm companies offer free trial period of 30days, i firmly believe if a customer will become paid customer after 30 days, it can happen in 14 days also. If you can’t show them the value in a week-10days time, time to look at product positioning and product features. In free trial period onboarding of customer should be the primary goal and show value by making sure you have designed fantastic product which will address customer need after they input information.

I personally believe you should never ask for Credit card information during trial period, though u will charge their credit card after the trial period but this act can really put off your potential customer and they will drop out.

Do share your stories on free trial.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Are you looking to raise seed fund and not able to fool your family and friends to provide you seedfund, no need to dishearten since SBI is there to back you. Yes finally India’s biggest bank has turned Venture Capitalist.

State Bank of India (SBI) will provide interest-free seed capital of up to Rs 10 lakh to aspiring entreprenuers under a new scheme, SBI SMILE, which is specially targeted to encourage small and medium enterprises in the country.

The scheme will be in place initially for one year, after which the bank could extend it, if the situation warrants. “Given the economic downturn, some entrepreneurs have not been unable to raise any capital. The scheme will provide them a platform to kick-start their businesses,” said BS Bhasin, chief general manager, SME, at the country’s largest lender.

Currently, banks give loans to the entrepreneurs, only if they have a substantial capital to invest. The loan amount is around 70-80% of the total project cost. Under the new scheme, SBI will provide the seed capital and entrepreneur will also be able to seek a loan. Loan terms and interest rates will be determined as per the existing guidelines. “There will be no interest on the seed capital.

You can pay that amount after you’ve serviced your loan,” Mr Bhasin said. The bank will offer a five-year moratorium on paying the seed capital amount.

The bank, however, has not set any target for the amount it will disburse under the scheme. Already, SBI has SME loans of Rs 1,00,000 crore outstanding on its account books.

As per the central bank guidelines, a bank can give up to Rs 10 crore as loan to a medium enterprises for investment in plant and machinery.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Welcome to the world of Group buying, one more startup called Groffr derived from for Group Offer has emerged but with a difference. Unlike other group websites which offer discounts on spas or restaurant spends, Groffr groups people together for buying high value items like real estate and cars.

Groffr is a a year old Mumbai based startup founded by Vikhyat Srivastav and Sandeep Reddy, both IIMK graduate and worked earlier with PE real estate funds. The group aggregates people interested in a particular property and negotiates with the developers for a discounted price for everyone.

Given the recent volatility in the sector, it makes sense for the real estate developers and car dealers also as they are able to sell a good chunk of their high value inventory in one shot. It’s a win-win situation for both the parties. Buyers get a good bargain while developers are able to sell a lot of flats in one go while saving on marketing cost.

Groffr has worked on deals with Emaar MGF, Indiabulls reality, Mahindra Lifespaces and has tied up with real estate consulting firms like Knight Frank to source lucrative deals from the developers.

Groff USP –

•  Only player to club people so that everyone gets discounts on high valuable items like homes, cars.
• Collective wisdom also influences decision while making purchases which Groffr enables.
• Finally high margin on which Groffr operates.

Sequoia Capital India today announced that it has invested INR 60 crore in Quick Heal Technologies, India’s leading provider of computer security software products. This investment will help Quick Heal Technologies in growing its product portfolio, expanding its global distribution footprint and funding future acquisitions.

Quick Heal Technologies has been growing at a CAGR of almost 100% for the last three years, making it the fastest growing software product company in the computer security space in India. The Company registered revenues of more than INR 100 crore in FY 09-10, all from its indigenously developed product portfolio. With this investment Sumir Chadha, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India will join the board of the company.

Sumir Chadha, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India said, “Quick Heal is today the first choice computer security product for consumers and business owners. We are confident that the company will continue to strengthen its dominant position in India and replicate this success in overseas markets.”

Quick Heal has a suite of award-winning computer security products that are installed in corporate, small businesses and consumer’s homes protecting their computers from viruses and other security threats. The Quick Heal Total Security product, addresses a wide range of distinct security needs that protect the PC from online and offline threats, in addition to providing privacy protection and PC optimization. The company also added a unique feature to Quick Heal Total Security called the PC2Mobile Scan, which enables users to scan, detect and delete malware, spyware and viruses from mobile phones.

Kailash Katkar, Managing Director and CEO, Quick Heal Technologies said, “We are proud to have Sequoia Capital partner us in our quest to be a global market leader in computer security. While we continue to build on the strong platform in the domestic market, we will also look to expand our global network through organic and inorganic growth.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com