What is there in a name? Googol transformed into Google after receiving their first cheque with later name, Yahoo! is Yet Another Hierarchical Of Officious Oracle. From the exterior view a set of startup founders spend lot of time in naming their company or product. It is one of the most difficult decision they indulge in since naming a company is largely subjective and need to understand the rational behind each choice of name. For this reason, the process often becomes one that antagonizes the company for too long and it shouldn’t be that way.
Best way is to have couple of people generating and filtering out the options, once the list of names is ready it should be discussed with different user group like advisors, marketing folks, investors etc and better to have debate for each choice of name. Situation is further greatly annoyed limitations of .com domain names available these days or the willingness of everyone to pay up for one that’s blocked.
Thumb rules for naming a startup/product -
Name should evoke what company does
Name should have four to seven letters for simplicity sake
It should be simple to pronounce and no mistake user should do while typing the URL
But its easier said and done with above mentioned limitations in .com domain names. I think founders should listen to all advice but then absolutely trust their own gut.
Research in Motion (RIM) announced the launch of their new tablet called Playbook in their annual Blackberry Developer Conference. RIM is trying hard to counter the runaway success iPad has achieved by introducing this tablet. The Playbook uses the OS developed by QNX(recently acquired company by RIM) and OS will offer full OpenGL and POSIX support alongside web standards such as HTML5. Playbook comes equipped with an HDMI port as well as a microUSB jack which are missing in an iPad
Specifications are as follows :
7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
1 GHz dual-core processor
1 GB RAM
Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
Monarch Innovative Pvt Ltd. is a leading global solutions provider of application specific software and high density hardware serving the needs of the Broadcast, Video and Photo Imaging Industry has raised INR 25 Cr. from Bangalore based Indo US Ventures (IUVP).
Monarch Innovative is started by Viren Satra, a videographer and photographer in 1996 and is now looking to aggressively scale its business.Monarch develops indigenous solutions that assure innovative excellence, unique user-friendliness, value, and support above all others.
Press Release
————————————————————————————-
MITPL provides virtual studio, online graphics systems and signal converters for broadcasters and cable operators. It has linear and non-linear (NLE) video editing & solutions for the video segment.
It also offers photo book designing and image editing software solutions to the photo market through its well known Karizma brand. Monarch is the market leader in the Indian wedding video editing segment.
Viren Satra, CMD of MITPL commented, “Our forthcoming NLE solution is ready to revolutionize the market. We are now all set to expand our reach globally. Broadcasting is an extremely promising market in the coming years and we are aggressively investing in it. We have
identified HD as the upcoming technology platform and we have proactively created HD solutions in line with our strategy to expand our product portfolio and reach. Partnering with IUVP would help us in working towards our vision. With support from IUVP we will continue on our high growth trajectory by expanding our product line and tapping newer markets.”
Its been quite sometime i have bought books from offline stores since i generally don’t browse the bookshelf and buy books, i know which books i need to buy and i order it through online bookstores since its quite convenient and they offer decent discount. Before ordering i check the pricing and availability across all of them, and this process is certainly tedious and time consuming.
Indiabookstore is here to address the need of a average buyer like me, Indiabookstore enables user to check the pricing of book, availability of book, days to deliver the book across various online bookstores.
Indiabookstore is one of the first online book shopping aggregator to hit the market. Its a hobby project stated by Animesh Jain, founder of iTasveer and it is generating good traction.
This meta book search compares online bookportals at a time and It pulls textual data through its servers while images are fetched from the online stores at the client’s end which increases the speed of searching. I searched for Chetan Bhagat’s ’2 States’ and here is the result set -
UI is simple, clutter free and quite user friendly. Search speed is amazingly quite good and user doesn’t encounter any lag. Search results are based on relevance and ISBN. Indiabookstore supports 8 online bookstores and via affiliate programs Indiabookstore generates revenue.
Greylock today announced a new $20 million seed fund. This announcement was made by Reid Hoffman a founder of Linkedin and partner with Venture capital firm Greylock Partners. It was announced by him in TechCrunch Disrupt a annual Startup event conducted by TechCrunch.
This fund is affiliated with Greylock for small scale investment into startups. It comes from the $575 million fund and each partner can investsmall portions of it as they see fit without committee approval.
Good news for Indian startups is this fund will cater to them also since Greylock partners operate in India and Arvin Babu is partner overseeing the investments in India. Indian startups can look up to him for granting the seedfund.Recently in India Greylock Partner invested in Taggle, a group discount portal.
Four companies have been funded by the seed project so far, though recipient companies wish to remain secretive.
Remember Bhuvan, a satellite mapping tool developed by ISRO. Bhuvan is poised with a vision to be a one-stop versatile Indian Earth Observation visualization system evincing the Indian imaging capabilities. Bhuvan has now got a new refreshing look and feel with loads of informative features and intuitive tools.
Collaborate tool – The community tool connects the Bhuvan users on one collaborative network. Connecting over the internet / intranet, users can chat, annotate the terrain with text labels and free hand drawing, point using a virtual cursor, and synchronize their flight. Bhuvan also allows the user to lead, follow, and share in real-time, interactive fly-through sessions, chat with other users, mark up areas on the terrain, and toggle information layers for further analysis.
Add Content – The ‘Add Content’ tool makes it easy for users to add their own information also known as VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information), on Bhuvan. It enables to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals. It allows users to create their own content, by marking locations (adding placemarks) on the base map information
Developer Tool – Bhuvan provides an assortment of functional code for developers that can be changed and used for different purposes. The Bhuvan Application Program Interface (API) lets you embed a true 3D digital globe, into your web pages. Using the API you can draw markers and lines, drape images over the terrain, allowing you to build sophisticated 3D map applications.
Navigation Maps – Live Map (Rediff maps) data is integrated with Bhuvan to help users navigate, locate and search the India Map.
Interoperability – Now users can load OGC WMS/WFS data on Bhuvan.
User Data Sharing – It enables users to add/share any desired thematic/geographic information (upon registration only) and helps in analyzing and predicting any result.
Mithaimate is a online sweet store which delivers sweets at your doorstep. User can buy sweets, chocolates, cakes, bakery items from their portal and can get it delivered at desired shipping address.
In other words Mithaimate is the branded mithai delivery service in the country. All the products at Mithaimate are sourced from famous sweet shops of respective cities to provide unmatched quality and are hand delivered. They basically fullfill the procurement process and delivers at the address specified while making the order.
MithaiMate collects the fresh stock from the vendor and within 24 hours, delivers the package to you. These sweets are delivered by Mithaimate staff themselves at customer’s doorsteps. Customer can a personal note while gifting the sweets to their loved ones and it will be tagged with the sweet box to be delivered.
User can browse through sweets catalog, they are categorized quite neatly and also user can filter the sweet listings by price. Mithaimate serves 150+ cities in India.
I recently used Mithaimate service and was quite impressed with their turn around time, product was delivered within 5hrs at a place in Delhi. Mithaimate seems to be targeting NRI audience largely and would be interesting to see if they cross deliver i.e sweets sourced from Delhi sweet shop and courier it to a Bangalore based user.
If you looking for some free stuff like mp3, movies etc on the internet you are inviting trouble, McAfee has published in its recent report such searches and subsequent downloads lets virus and malware invade your system.
It is found that prefixing the word “free” in software, MP3s, videos to searches increases the risk of landing on a malicious site. McAfee also revealed that cybercriminals hide malicious content in music and movie-related sites, and even fan clubs sites. The research found that adding the word “free” to a search for music ringtones resulted in a 300 percentincrease in the riskiness of sites returned by major search engines in English.
Searching for “MP3s” added risk to music search results, while searching for “free MP3s” made those searches even riskier. Even when a consumer indicated that they wanted to pay for the MP3 in their search, results still sent them to pirated content.
Malicious advertising or “malvertising,” where an ad is used to distribute malware or exploit the user’s browser, is a common means of infection.
How to remain safe -
Try to avoid searching searching for “free” content. Look for reliable content provider preferably a paid site.
Avoid clicking on links in banner ads on music, movie and download sites that aren’t well-established
Use common sense: Beware while clicking on links posted in forums or on fan pages, Better avoid it.
Realize that the more popular a topic, movie or artist is, the more risky the search results.
Arzoo , one of India’s leading online travel portals is launching a dedicated website for the convenience of the tourists/visitors of commonwealth games in Delhi, which will sense them as a ready reckoner giving out information related to the games and everything tourists need to know about India, its tourists attractions and essential services. Arzoo.com is amongst the top four online travel portals in India and it is acknowledged by over 200 million people in India and oversees.
The newly launched website, commonwealthgamestravel will provide various types of information to the visitors which will include information on hospitals, hotels, cafés, shopping destinations, chemist, etc in Delhi. It is not only a significant event for sports fraternity but also a huge opportunity for tourists to explore India and is cultural heritage. According to an official estimates, Common Wealth Games 2010 will be visited by around two million foreign tourists and 3.5 million tourists from different part of India.
Arzoo.com boasts of a wide network of over 10,000 PSA’s(Preferred sales agents) and over 100 franchises. The website is also endorsed by their numerous corporate clients. Arzoo.com is equally strong when it comes to serving individual customers. The website is known to provide complete travel solutions, personalized services and dedicated support to several corporate houses as well individual customers.
Right traffic is the key for driving factor for high conversion rate. You can follow some of the underlying principles to get the right traffic -
Identify your USP – USP i.e unique selling proposition should state clearly what products you are offering to shoppers and how its different from competitor. Setting USP clearly can turn into a source of competitive advantage. For instance if you are selling footwear make sure you emphasize it and make it clear in all your marketing campaigns.
Advertise Rightly – If you are advertising your website, your priority should be to use advertising copy specific to your offering. Using broad terms may drive more visitors to your website that have no intention to purchase, resulting in a decrease in conversion rate. For instance you would like to sell Tour packages for Havelock in Andaman Islands but you bought keyword for “Andaman tour” chances are you will attract visitors interested in Andaman package rather than Havelock.
Generate good visibility and reviews in shopping comparison sites - Get your product listed in shopping comparison sites, Many Web users rely on shopping comparison sites to find the best-value products that are most suitable to their needs and requirements. They like to read the product reviews specified by other users and then decide on purchasing. You need to have a dedicated resource managing this task in shopping comparison and review sites. Naaptol, Tolmol, compareindia are popular shopping comparison sites in India.
Clear Landing Pages – If you are running marketing campaigns such as emails or PPC advertising, your landing page should be designed to sell your products and nothing else. The page should only have one purpose: to sell. Give the visitor the page that they want complete with product description, price and picture.
Webpage Performance – Users are quite put off if webpages takes considerable time to load and chances are quite minimal they would come back again. The faster your website, the higher the chances of engaging the visitor quickly.
Analyse your traffic - Your web metrics can give you clues as to how visitors are using your website, and what areas can be improved to help improve your sales conversion. Web analysis tools can help you analyze customer behavior and improve your site’s business success. Google Analytics can provide revenue based metrics with customer behavior. For example, companies can use techniques such as funnel-based analysis, in which they compare drop-off rates with lost revenue. Check the top exit pages and understand why people are leaving your website. Or why they are abandoning their shopping carts. Analyze your statistics at the product level.
