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Taxiforsure.com raises funding from Accel, Helion & Blume

Arun Prabhudesai — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:04:31 +0000

Looks like online car rental companies are hot right now – In last 6 months alone more than 5 startups in similar space have raised funding.

Taxiforsure.com, the online taxi booking service run by Serendipity Infolabs Pvt. Ltd., is the most recent one to have done so. They have raised venture capital funding from Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. As part of the transaction Anand Daniel of Accel and Ritesh Banglani of Helion have joined the board of the company. The company did not disclose details of the financial transactions.

Taxiforsure.com is currently operational only in Bangalore and this venture funding is expected to help them expand across other cities in India. According to their website,Taxiforsure plans to offer wide range of choices to travelers which includes chauffeur driven, self-drive car rentals and radio taxis across India.

Taxiforsure.com does not plan to have its own fleet of cars, but have network of taxi providers under their umbrella. They will tech-enable and bridge the gap between consumers and local taxi providers.

Travellers need to follow 4 stage process on taxi4sure site – Search, Select, Details and Pay for booking pre-paid taxi service. They can also call their helpline number @ 080 – 6060 1010 (sixty-sixty-ten-ten) and do the taxi booking. Travellers can also directly make the payment on the website using following payment options – Credit card / Debit card / Net banking/ Cash card or they can directly pay cash to the driver during the time of travel.

As mentioned earlier, online cab booking services are on the rise. Taxiguide, Olacabs, Savaari and YourCabs.com have all raised funding in past few months alone. With Taxiforsure also joining the pool this space seem to be getting crowded. There are atleast 3 other startups in similar space who are also looking for funding at this point of time.

Would love to know from readers – Does this space have room for so many operators / aggregators?

The Startup Owner’s Manual [Review]

guest — Mon, 21 May 2012 04:23:26 +0000

The Startup Owner’s Manual is the latest book by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. It has been taking the business and startup world by storm. I read it only recently and realized how much you are losing by running your startup without reading and implementing this book.

These have been lot of gushing praise about this book, but one quote about this book in particular was apt.

"What Kent Beck and company did for agile software development, Steve Blank has done for the startup community."

If you don’t know Kent Beck, he was one of the first people to document design patterns, which allowed developers to talk about code at a higher level of abstraction. The startup owner’s manual documents the design patterns in early stage businesses. Kent Beck’s book is a seminal work in software development and I have no doubt that The Startup Owner’s manual is also going to be a game changer.

The book claims that it is "The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company". It lives up to it’s tagline. The book is highly prescriptive. It will tell you in detail what you should do on day 1 of your startup and what you should do once step X is done. (Most books in it genre have been descriptive, describing successful businesses and inferring what worked. The Startup Owner’s manual doesn’t pull punches. It is opinionated, it tells you exactly what you should be doing and when.)

Steve Blank is entrepreneur who started 8 companies, now is a professor at Stanford. He first wrote about customer development methodology in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which is credited with jumpstarting the lean startup movement. This books builds on the ideas proposed in The Four Steps to the Epiphany, and provides more detailed and step-by-step guideline on how to go about doing customer development.

The book preface says "Don’t read too much at a time" and say "… this book has more in common with a car repair manual than your favorite page turner." Good points as this book is fairly dense and if you try reading too much at one do you will probably not get much out of the book. Thankfully the book is well organized in various time phase a startup is.

Depending on the phase your startup is you can choose what you should be reading.

A bit about customer development

Customer Development is a methodology of finding product-customer fit. It says your first ideas about who your customers are going to be, why they by, what channels they buy from are wrong. Only by talking to customers and trying them to buy you Minimal Viable product would you be able to find a customer for your product. You have to get out of building to talk to customers, you have to pivot your product to fit what the customer wants. This book tell you how to do customer development via customer discovery and customer validation.

Most startups would be happy to get the Director of Sales at Oracle to join their company as sales. The book tells you why this is a bad idea. "A startup is not a miniature version of a large company." A person who has experience only at a large company would like to grow big fast. Startup owner’s manual advises against scaling until you have achieved a product-market fit. The book is full of advice and how-to like this.

The book is divided in these sections.

A startup is not a small version of a large company.
The customer development model.
Introduction to customer discovery
State your business model hypothesis
Get out of the building: Do People care
Get out of the building: Test the solutions
Introduction to customer validation
Get ready to sell
Get out of the building and sell
Company positioning
Proceed or Pivot.

Each of these chapters deal with specific times of a startup lifecycle and tell you what you should be doing in that stage in a detailed how-to way.

Some caveats

The book is highly prescriptive and suited for US markets. Apply your common sense before applying everything suggested here.
The book is big 500+ pages, give it time and read chapters which affect you.

Links to Books

[This is a guest post by Shabda Raaj of Agiliq. Their blog talks about many technical topics such as build web and mobile apps.]

[Note: Book links are affiliate links]

Critical Clauses in Shareholders’ agreement – A brief overview

Nirupama Krishnaswami — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:33:02 +0000

[Editor’s Note: We at trak.in, have been getting requests from our readers to cover legal aspects involved during company formation, mergers, Copyright / Trademark issues, equity investments etc. Therefore, we are starting a series where these issues will be covered]

A Shareholders’ Agreement between shareholders of a private limited company is a contract that details the various provisions that will govern each of the shareholders who are party to the agreement vis-à-vis the Company and the shares held by each such shareholder and also the provisions that will govern the management of the Company as agreed to by the parties to the agreement. It may be noted that in case of a public limited company, there may be enforceability issues with certain provisions of the shareholders’ agreement.

Under Indian law and based on the judicial pronouncements of Indian courts in respect of Shareholders’ Agreements, it may be noted that in order for the Shareholders’ Agreement to be binding on all Shareholders of a company and also on the company itself, many provisions o of the Shareholders’ Agreement would have to be also incorporated in the Articles of Association of the Company and the Articles must be amended to remove any inconsistencies with the provisions of the Shareholders’ Agreement.

Some of the critical clauses in a typical Shareholders’ Agreement between shareholders of a private limited company would be:

1. Representations and warranties from the Company and its Promoters

Any investor who invests in a company would insist on certain representations and warranties being made by the Company and its promoters about the financial position of the company, compliance with laws by the company, litigations and claims against the company, assets of the company, liabilities of the company, status of the shares that are to be issued to/purchase by the investor and so on. The language of each representation and warranty should be carefully reviewed and if necessary, negotiated. Any exceptions to such representations and warranties must also be clearly captured. Promoters may make certain representations and warranties on a “best of their knowledge and belief” basis.

2. Composition of Board of directors of the company and other management related matters

The shareholders may agree on the maximum number of directors on the Board, the number of nominee directors from each party, who will be the chairman of the Board meeting, quorum for board meeting, whether chairman will have casting vote and other such matters pertaining to the Board. Matters that require unanimous consent of the directors and matters on which a party’s nominee director shall have veto rights will also be addressed in this clause. By virtue of this provision, a shareholder may get control of the Board and the decisions of the Company that are taken at the Board level may also be steered through veto rights.

3. Lock-in/first right of refusal/tag along/drag along

A lock in clause impose restrictions on alienation/sale of shares held in the company by either party without prior approval of other party for a certain period of time. A First right of refusal clause makes it obligatory on a shareholders who wants to sell his shareholding, to first offer his shares to the other shareholder who is party to the Shareholders’ Agreement on the same terms and condition on which he proposes to sell it to a third party. If the Shareholders’ Agreement has a drag along clause then in the event that one shareholder wishes to sell his shares to a third party, then he can require the other shareholder who is party to the Shareholders’ Agreement to also sell his shares to the same third party on the same terms and conditions. A tag along clause gives a shareholder the right to insist that his shares also be sold to a third party to whom the other shareholder proposes to sell his shares, on the same terms and conditions.

3. Restriction further issue of shares, any anti dilution rights, Pre-emptive rights

By these clauses, the Company’s right to issue further shares or raise further capital can be curtailed. Further, pursuant to an anti dilution right, in case the company issues shares to any other person at a price lower than the price at which a shareholder who is party to the Shareholders’ Agreement was issued shares, then the shareholder who is party to the Shareholders’ Agreement has the right to receive such additional shares (at no cost to him) so as to reduce the price per share held by him to the same price as that at which shares were issued to the other person. A pre-emptive right obligates the Company to offer any future shares that may be issued, first to the Shareholder (on a pro rate basis) before offering it to any other party and may allow the shareholder to continue maintaining its shareholding percentage in the Company.

4. Management of the Company

The Shareholders’ Agreement can have clauses on who will manage the Company on a day to day basis, how the MD will be appointed and whether company can change or appoint an MD without concurrence of both parties.

5. Threshold Shareholding

The Shareholders’ agreement can also specify a minimum shareholding that a party must have in order to have all the special rights specified in the shareholders agreement.

6. Matters requiring consent of both parties

The Shareholders’ agreement can also specify matters that will require the consent of both parties in general meeting (eg. change in capital structure of the Company, fresh issue of capital, amendment of memorandum and articles of the Company, change in auditors etc.).

7. Indemnification

The Shareholders’ Agreement may require one of the parties (usually the founders or promoters) and/or the Company to indemnify the investing shareholder against any breach of representations and warranties.

8. Non-compete

Usually promoters/founders will be required to undertake that they will not directly or indirectly engage in or be employed by any party, to carry on similar business as the Company. The period of non-compete is usually a matter of negotiation.

9. Information rights

Usually any investing shareholder will insist on certain financial information being made available to such shareholder periodically by the Company, including balance sheets and profit and loss accounts.

The above are only indicative clauses that may be contained in a shareholders’ agreement. It would be advisable to seek the opinion of your legal counsel in respect of any shareholders’ agreement that you may be intending to execute.

Entrepreneurs Rejoice – Startup Tax (GAAR) decision deferred

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:49:32 +0000

This is sure to bring smile on the faces of entrepreneurs. The General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) which threatened to affect the VC’s, angel investors the most has been deferred by Government for a year.

In the Finance bill, it was announced that Funding of startups could be one of the heads classified as an income and was taxable under (GAAR). GAAR was intended to be introduced from April 1, 2011, but there were lot of gray areas as well as fierce opposition from Industry bodies.

Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, in his speech to the Parliament yesterday proposed to exempt angel investments from the purview of the proposed share premium tax. He said:

It has been proposed in the Finance Bill that any consideration received by a closely held company in excess of the fair market value of its shares would be taxable. Considering the concerns raised by ‘angel’ investors who invest in start-up companies, I propose to provide an enabling provision in the Income Tax Act for exemption to a notified class of investors.

This is sure to come as a major boost to entrepreneurial space which threatened angel investments in India!

[source]

Linkedin Acquires Slideshare for USD 119 Million!

Arun Prabhudesai — Fri, 04 May 2012 03:33:02 +0000

I am extremely happy to hear this – Linkedin has acquired Slideshare for a cool USD 119 million ( Roughly 630 crore at today’s rate). By any means this is one of the biggest startup success stories. Hearty congratulations to Rashmi Sinha, Amit Ranjan & entire team of Slideshare.

The blog post published by Linkedin does not offer much detail, however Rashmi’s post clearly mentions the strategic fit between Linkedin & Slideshare. Also, Slideshare may not be completely merged with Linkedin from Branding perspective. Here is what Rashmi says in her blog post:

So, what does this news mean for you – our dear users? I want to address the question that often comes up with acquisitions. People often worry whether the service they use is going to go away. If not today, then tomorrow. I want to assure you, that will not happen here. The SlideShare you have come to know and love will remain a place where you can continue to upload, share, and find presentations that help you grow professionally.

What does this mean for SlideShare the company? I will continue to run SlideShare and our team will continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is to develop new features and make the site even better. Over time you will see some integrations that take advantage of the great fit between SlideShare and LinkedIn.

You could ask why did we agree to sell? For one, I firmly believe that SlideShare will grow faster with LinkedIn. Second, I have watched as LinkedIn has grown from being a place to share your resume to a much richer site, where you go to keep up with what your professional network is doing and sharing. We like the path they are on, and are excited to join them on this journey.

This acquisition is probably one of the biggest successes in Indian startup Industry – I am sure this will provide a great fillip to entire Indian Startup Ecosystem.

Text Me: Share web content on SMS with ease

Arun Prabhudesai — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:18:52 +0000

I am a big fan of simplicity and I love apps/solutions that “Just get the job done” without much user effort. Textme is one such nifty browser add-on that once you have used it, you will never let it go!

But first, what is Textme?

Textme is probably the simplest web to mobile content sharing service service that I have come across. It is a browser add-on that will allow you to send any text, images, videos, news, jokes or articles from the browser to any mobile number through SMS. After installing the browser add-on, you will have to just select the text on the webpage, right-click and share selected text with mobile number of your choice.

Textme is completely free and there are absolutely no limits as to how much content you can share. A user just needs to register once at the start and he/she can start using the service. Textme is currently available only for Indian Mobile users.

Check out this video to see how textme works:

Along with browser addon, textme also has share button for website publishers. The button allows visitors of a webpage to share the article or link. It also has a counter which shows how many times a particular webpage has been shared.

I used textme 3-4 times and everything worked fabulously. I must say the developer of Textme – Dayson Pais – has done a great job with this nifty app. My only question to him would be that how will he monetize this service?

Give textme a spin and let us know what you feel!

Instamedia launches India-centric content network

Arun Prabhudesai — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:10:00 +0000

Instamedia, a content network platform, which had received a USD 4 mln funding from Times Group back in 2010, seems to have shifted its focus to India now.

According to the press release sent to us, Instamedia has launched a Indian-centric Content Network with primarily 4 websites targeting Entertainment and Politics (www.instablogs.com), Autos(www.automotto.com), CellPhones (www.cellphonebeat.com) and Health (www.diyhealth.com).

It is interesting to note that Instamedia content network already has over 17 different niche sites (probably more) catering to different verticals.

Out of these, Instablogs.com was/is earlier a citizen journalism site which has now (presumably) shifted its focus from being global to India news coverage site. I did browse the other 3 sites from the said network as well and it looks like these global sites will now focus on India news only. I am not sure why this shift of focus specifically towards India, but it looks like Instamedia wants to capitalize on the Internet growth which India is expected to witness in coming years.

Another interesting thing we noticed was – instablogs.com, which was their main flagship site and used to get over 3 millions visitors monthly couple of years back seems to have lost quite a bit of traffic based on alexa rankings. We also wonder if that was the reason for shift of focus specifically to India.

Also, one of the reason Times Internet Ltd. invested in Instablogs back in 2010 was due to Instamedia’s Instapress offering – a content management system that powers all Instamedia network sites and which was also expected to power Times web properties (we are not sure if that’s the case). We have not heard much about Instapress’s growth since its launch.

Overall, it looks like Instamedia is changing its focus back to content – that too… India only!

5 famous Startup Incubation Centers in India

Kaushambi — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:57:00 +0000

Startup Incubation holds significant importance in a country like India where entrepreneurs by the score are launching new setups and changing the game of business by minutes. For the uninitiated, business incubation programs or centers provide support functions, mentorship and resources to individual entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial setups. This enables them to get all the expert advice and technical guidance that they need to survive for a longer time, unlike most other entrepreneurial ventures that fizzle out within a few months of their launch.

Almost every other prestigious B-school today houses an incubation center so that great ideas can be nurtured from their very source. Currently there are about 100 incubation centers supported by the ISBA which is the apex Indian professional body supporting business incubators. Private incubators are a handful, but gradually growing. These numbers are expected to double within the next two years. Let’s take a look at some of the good business incubation centers in India.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT Mumbai,

If you’ve heard of Webaroo, Bhugol GIS and SMSGupshup.com, then you must know that these ventures came into existence because they were nurtured and incubated by SINE – the tech incubator housed at IIT Bombay. ThinkLABS Technosolutions, an educational robotics venture, Myzus Technologies and Elnfinitus are amongst some of the famous businesses that SINE has incubated. These startups have been successful in raising venture capital investment after incubation of upto Rs. 3 crore from the market.

Established in 2004, SINE can incubate an average of 15 companies at a time and has an infrastructure spread over 10,000 sq.ft. They still haven’t opened up to external business incubation because ideas from within IIT just don’t stop flowing! To know more, visit their website.

Technopark Technology Business Incubator (T-TBI), Kerala

Established in 2006 with the support of the Government of Kerala, T-TBI offers fully furnished working spaces spread over 15,000 sq.ft, expert opinions and guidance from the industry, marketing and legal management consultancy and financial assistance.

T-TBI has till date successfully incubated about 60 companies and has had a 92 percent success rate. In early 2011, T-TBI was chosen as the world’s best software incubating company and the first Indian organization to have achieved this status. To know more, visit their website.

Indian Angel Network (IAN)

IAN in an equity based business incubator center that gives priority to ventures in the areas of healthcare, gaming and animation cloud computing, retail, mobile VAS, media and entertainment, alternative energy, education and clean technology. It has been established with the support of the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board and the Department of Science & Technology of the Government of India.

In addition to the regular functions of a business incubator, the IAN incubator helps startups to get seed funding and pre angel funding through its tie-up with Small Industries Development Bank of India. The IAN also has strategic alliances with DST supported incubators, corporate, R&D labs and many industry associations.

The IAN incubator is particularly famous for the activities it organizes – from its ‘Open Saturdays’ to angel investors meet to workshops for training entrepreneurs. To know more, visit their website.

Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad

A business incubator housed at India’s prime business school simply cannot be left out of the list. Having started incubation initiatives since 2007, CIIE has an interesting perspective on why it doesn’t provide physical space for business incubation. They want entrepreneurs to build their ideas from wherever they are stationed, so that the local economy benefits from its growth.

From the time it started, CIIE has incubated more than 50 companies, only a handful of which were owned by IIM students. CIIE has been incubating businesses in the areas of internet and mobile technology, clean technology, social sector startups and healthcare.

From mentoring clinics to art exhibitions from global warming initiatives to social enterprise funds, CIIE has evolved as a prestigious business incubation centre in India. Some of the CIIE’s incubatees are Colored.by, Biosense, Boond, Croak.it, Flick2Know, Ideophone, amongst a host of others. To know more, visit their website.

AngelPrime

AngelPrime was launched recently in 2011 in Bengaluru by well known names in the Indian tech industry like Bala Parathasarathy, Shripati Acharya and Sanjay Swamy. The areas that AngelPrime aims to incubate in are mobile payments, e-commerce and smartphone / tablet apps. It has already begun incubating a mobile payments company and a smartphone and tablet startup.

Unlike the CIIE, AngelPrime believes in incubating their ventures at their office space so that they can be closely monitored. AngelPrime has an edge in its services because the founders bring their previous corporate networks and experiences into incubating new ventures. To know more, visit their website.

Business incubators play a large role in reducing the gap between new products / services in stages of ideation to their commercial rollout. It also provides an equal platform to all entrepreneurs so that they can create products and services that will benefit all sections of the society.

Latest news about Business Incubators in India:

India’s first public-private partnership (PPP) telecom business incubator called Startup Village is being set up in collaboration by The National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Technopark and MobME Wireless, reported ET.
The Ministry of Science and Technology cleared a proposal for setting up a Rs. 36 crore biotechnology business incubation center at the University of Pune called the The Science and Technology (Scitech) Park.
The Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation in the North Karnataka region is planning to open an incubation center at the Aryabhata IT Park in Hubli to attract and hone entrepreneurs in the IT sector from Hubli and Dharwad.
In 2012-13, The Ministry of Science and Technology has proposed to set up a Nano Park near the Bengaluru International Airport (BIA). This will host a nano-incubation center, science and technology-based business incubator, physical infrastructure and other support systems.

Startup Buzzwords every Entrepreneur should know [Infographic]

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:37:05 +0000

Does words like “Freemium” or “Virality” or “Pivot” sound confusing to you? If you are an Entrepreneur, especially in online space you would be familiar with them. These buzzwords are commonplace in Silicon Valley and now very much part of Indian startup scene as well.

Folks at Udemy have put together an awesome infographic called The Founders Dictionary that lists down quite a few of those startup related buzzwords. It is interesting to go through the definitions, especially because some of them really funny as well.

And BTW, Out of all the ones given below, I was not aware of 2 of them. Mock Vortex Principle & Wheelhouse. Check-out yourself to find out how many you know (or don’t know).

[Note: Click on the image below to zoom, which will make it much more readable]

So what’s your score? how many did you know?