Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Classle is creating a social learning network, with the focus of Learning. Classle connects not only individuals but also private learning environments. Classle offers free service to students pursuing higher education to enhance their academic and professional level.

Classle is founded by Vaidya Nathan, He had previously worked with Cognizant Technology Solutions where he held many portfolios including Head-Global Innovation Office, Global Head – Learning and Research, Chief Architect, etc.

Classle provides fast, easy and free access to a wide variety of organized contents. Classle help learners find highly valued, targeted, appropriate and closely related information quickly. Classle’s technology-powered online platform, which integrates social technologies together, takes a learner beyond the narrow confines of their Institution.  Freeing the learner from the limitations of their present Knowledge Group, it puts them in a virtual learning group of educators, professionals and peers of their own choosing.

Classle allows you to create and access posts, pages, edit and clone learning based content, join and participate in groups and discussions and network with others to seek and give help. Classle has a simple and intuitive user interface. This way both technical and non-technical learners can easily search, create, manage, and track their preferred contents.

Recently Classle has introduced new feature “Classle Events” targeting at educational institutes, its a service to make organizing events like seminars, symposium, paper contest, Business Plan contest, etc., enjoyable and easy.

Organizing academic events is a very important part of a College experience. This is a crucial vehicle to not only broaden the scope of learning beyond what is offered in curriculum and increase scope of interaction outside the class and institute boundary, but also give students experience in creativity, managerial and leadership experience.  Classle Events takes all those drudgery out and lets you increase the experience and success of the event itself.

The partnership benefit comes along with Campus Classle©, Classle’s unique cloud campus platform and PlacementNet©.

-Hitesh

Sequoia Capital India along with Song Investment Advisors have invested $15 million  into K-12 Techno Services Pvt Ltd, a firm that manages a network of over 50 schools owned by Hyderabad-headquartered Gowtham Educational Institutions.

Sequoia led the investments in K-12 Techno, an infrastructure and technology firm that manages schools, as the domestic regulatory environment prohibits investor ownership of not-for-profit educational assets. Gowtham is among the top three private educational groups in Andhra Pradesh.

The investment will be deployed for expanding Gowtham’s network of model schools across India, sources directly familiar with the development said. Gowtham owns schools, junior colleges and an international school with over 50,000 students on its rolls.

With the investment, KP Balaraj, managing director and Ravishankar G V, principal of Sequoia Capital and Vishal Vasishth of SONG have joined the board of K12.

This marks Sequoia’s second investment in India’s education sector. It is already an investor in TutorVista that is rolling out K-12 schools in a joint initiative with Manipal Education.  ISB based Song Investment Advisors is backed by Soros Economic Development Fund, Omidiyar Network and Google.

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.

MeraCareerguide is a one stop destination for Education & Career related information, aims to address problems of students who are confused and have numerous questions about their particular field of interests.  MeraCareerguide is founded by BITS Pilani graduate Surabhi dewra in 2008, Surabhi is quite a young entrepreneur she worked for 1 year after college and then started meracareerguide.

MeraCareerGuide acts as a career counseling platform and addresses the need of students falling in age group of 15-24 , who are confused and have numerous questions about a career direction. For educational institutes It’s a platform to target their prospective admissions.

MeraCareerGuide , assist students for free. It guides young students in helping them decide which career option is best for them. MeraCareerGuide.Com seeks to extend any type of guidance for education and career purposes.

MeraCareerGuide.Com’s work broadly falls in three broad problem areas:

• Many youth do not have the access to good mentors. MeraCareerGuide fills the gap of unavailability of right mentorship and hence guides students not to take up courses based on herd instinct or random selection process.
• Help students undergo self-analysis and career exploration where they can match their skills and abilities and choose a career. As we are moving towards the knowledge economy we require well educated and skilled workforce.
• Help students to engage in career decision and career planning activity from an early age.

MeraCareerguide USP  is personalized career counseling to students through live chat and forums and panel of 50 experts who contribute their knowledge on and off to the students

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com