Here you go – http://www.desistartups.in is going to be the new address for all Indian Startups related stuffs, which includes reviews, interviews, blah blah blah. If you are a RSS subscriber via feedburner, you should not see any difference.

But traditional readers, who used to type in my blog address, well you can type few characters less now to come in.

See you soon in the new location.

-Prabhu

Is funding a startup alone sufficient enough for making it a big success?

Keep your guesses coming in. Curious ones, can of course email me and ask straight.

P.S: Few people already know what I am upto and few have guessed and shown interest already via email. Do feel free to email me at prabhu [at] desistartups [dot] in, for clues.

First teaser post.  Do try to guess, what I am upto.

To begin with, lets categorize the different kinds of techies in India.

• People who have been working in Indian services/product companies all along.
• People who moved abroad (so called onsite) through an Indian company.
• People who returned back from abroad, after working as just another employee oversees.
• People who returned back after achieving or wanting to achieve something .
• People involved with a startup in India.

I dont find any problem with any of these categories. Why blame someone just because he is/was abroad, just for the sake of it?

Now lets assume Kumar belonging to one of these five categories is interested in starting up on his own. Lets discuss some of the problems, Kumar would be facing during his entrepreneurship journey in India.

• Impossible to hire people

Ask any Indian startup how much effort they have to put in to hire a single employee, you will understand what I am trying to convey. A number of startups are continuing to show their frustration on this. Number of fresh engineers willing to join IT biggies is still very high compared to number of freshers willing to join startups. This is something to do with the mentality of the people. Startups in US/UK doesn’t seem to have this problem at all. Either, they get sufficient funding very early to afford costlier resources or to outsource to some desi company in Bangalore or manage to hire people directly, because the startup ecosystem is very matured that people don’t seem to differentiate a small garage startup Vs Google. Infact, this blog post of mine is based entirely on my personal experience in trying to hire people in India.

Any person – Indian or non Indian trying to change this situation is definitely on my wanted list. Having said that, events like “Startup Lunch” are more than welcome. Kudos to Team Proto, for coming up with this idea. Lets hope for more such ideas from other similar groups too.

• VCs are still without V

Yet to come across a VC who has taken the absolute risk by investing in an Indian Startup very early.

Any person – Indian or non Indian who can cause significant impact to this issue to the best of the ecosystem, stands second on my wanted list.

• Not much support from fellow people!

Which is the most popular Social network in India? Orkut. Which is the most hot topic related to social networks in India? Launch of Myspace India. Which is the popular search engine in India? Google. Which is the popular website in India? Yahoo! Should I mention that in china – Baidu and other native ones are the most popular and are giving other companies a run for their name and fame?

500-600 startups starting up every year and eventually only a handful of startups remain. Others exist either for some adsense money or just because their hosting service has not expired?

What is the reason? Very simple … When was the last time you used Guruji to search for some India specific site instead of Google? When was the last time you accessed your rediff or indiatimes mail account instead of Yahoo/Gmail? Well to be honest, even I am not doing any of these. But at some point in time, people should show their support right? Best place to start is to check the Startups Directory page in this blog and tryout the different startups in each category.

Now if an American blogging about our Indian Startup, can increase the visibility and hence convince a significant number of people to try out our startups, then he is most welcome to do that. He is the third guy on my wanted list.

• Global approach

How many Indian startups which target the entire world are known outside of India? If these startups are really serious about the global audience, then they should either showcase their startup to the global audience or encourage foreigners to visit them and tell the world on their behalf. Instead of this, making noise from a closed room doesn’t make any sense.

So the fourth person on my wanted list is someone who can take the startups to this international level. I don’t mind what nationality he belongs to.

Thus I conclude that we do need everyone on my wanted list. Sorry if this post appears to be emotional and feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

UPDATE: Interesting discussion in the comments section.

We happened to see this post of yours. We agree that Israel is far from the US. But India unfortunately is on the other side of the US and literally not many bloggers really care about the startup ecosystem over here. The number of VCs investing are just handful and the number of investors really taking risks by investing in early stage startups is meagre.

How about a trip to India to meet the startups over here? It would be ideal if you can attend an event like proto or headstart during your trip. Given that the next edition of proto is on July 18th and 19th in our capital (Delhi), we believe there could not be a better time than this.

We promise that you will get to know about a number of interesting/promising startups that You or Mike or Sarah, have never heard about! Of course, more QIK videos for your collection too

Feel free to bring along other blogger friends of yours too!

Regards,

Prabhu

(On behalf of Indian startups)

We wish both our sponsors – pringoo and chennaimobiles all the very best in their endeavour.

• First our revenue model – banner ads on the sidebar. Thanks to Jai of Pringoo, for being the first sponsor. For readers new to Pringoo, they allow you to “create customized gifts, personalized t-shirt, teddy bear and so on“. You can learn more about pringoo from here, about their competitors and how they compare against them from here and about the management team here. There is space for one more startup to showcase. Hurry, before it gets used up!
• Secondly guest posts. I am sure every reader wants more quality posts over here. If you feel that you can write something related to indian startups – comparison posts, review of a feature, technical ones like when to use s3/slicehost, feel free to send across your post to prabhu [at] desistartups [dot] in.

More interesting announcements to follow; time to keep your RSS readers alive!

8. Big names in Board of Directors/Advisory Panel

Take a moment to check out the about us section of all successful startups. You will find a number of big names in their panel. While me not arguing that you can be successful only with Big names on board, at the same time, being able to convince someone to become a advisory itself, is definitely a great start. Something, a number of startups have to think about.

9. International Focus

I was wondering how many Indian Startups registered to the “Under the Radar” conference.  If you refer to my Interview with Lalit of Mobisy, for the question “Any changes after MoMo Barcelona. More calls from VCs? More Job Applications?“, his response was

Surely, last few months have been extremely hectic for Management team thanks to MoMo Barcelona. For me , biggest takeaway from Barcelona was more customer interest rather than anything else. Obviously customer interest helps a lot also to get more attention from VCs or prospective employees.

Out of ‘n’ number of startups in India, only few are really looking for the international reach, while a number of them are quite content with the Adsense money that they get from their site. My point is simple. If your target market is just India, then continue to participate in India specific conferences alone. But on the other hand, if you are thinking of a Global audience, then you definitely need to have a global approach. Plan your investment accordingly.

10. Willingness to listen to comments

When Meebo was a startup, I used to email some of my comments (over enthu guy).  And I used to get replies to all my emails; whether they are going to consider them or not is a different issue and this is one of the reason I liked Meebo. I find it really strange to see few Indian Startups not caring to reply to emails at all. Are you guys too busy and hence not able to reply for ages? A few of them will not thank/appreciate the comments. They are so keen on their image that the moment, a blogger mentions something negative, he doesn’t deserve any respect at all. Well I may be a little partial here, due to some recent unpleasant experiences. But in simple terms, listen to what others say. They might have something valuable too!

And finally, what do my readers miss out? Comments! 100+ visitors reading and yet only 2 or 3 leaving comments is not appearing fair. Expecting more comments from now on.

(Image of me and Sreeram happily enjoying our dosa in London)

While Burrp has been around for a number of years in this domain, NeedGrub is the new entrant. (Related Read : iBurrp – Burrp for iPhone by desistartups). This gives Burrp a good advantage as far as the UI, Reviews, City coverage is concerned.

Ignoring these parameters, lets try to analyze other features found in these two sites.

Map at last!

I am one of those guys who definitely need a map. Although, both Google and Yahoo maps for India are not accurate, still it would help someone like me to plan my travel. (One of the reason I liked SadakMap). Very happy that NeedGrub has started straight with the maps feature, where as Burrp has strangely ignored this functionality till this time!

No Popups please!

NeedGrub keeps on showing a popup asking me to register. To make matters worse, this window is resembling Windows XP UI. This is something that would annoy a person like me. Can Anu and her team think about this?

Send2Phone, Send2Friends, Add to List …

Burrp clearly has the time to market advantage and hence more features than NeedGrub. Lot of catching up needed from the latter. It will be interesting to see what path they take.

Some of my thoughts

• When I was with a services company, we used to have a list of restaurants which offers discount – either for my company name or for the credit card or group discount blah blah blah. We used to keep on going to the restaurants in that list. This is something completely missing in both these sites.
• Typical services company don’t offer Internet(s). So how about other ways of getting restaurant list – sms, mobile search, email?
• Restaurants near my place is a very important feature. A number of times, me and my friends have called Justdial, to find out some good restaurants near our office. Strangely, none of the websites have matured enough as far as this is concerned.
• Word-of-mouth advertising or Partnering with a major player: You should try and spread the name somehow. Otherwise, you are going to end up purely dependent on organic searches for which Google will try to have an upper hand. (Of course, Anu is not worried regarding this)

Now an open question to both the startups. What is the funda behind your startup’s name?

Readers, what do you think about these two sites? Just give a try and let us know through your comments.