Expertise via simplicity; make my returns!

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“If you have an idea and the experience to back it up, just go with it. Just make sure you have clearly thought through every possible loophole in your business plan and covered all loose ends – a watertight business plan helps you streamline your day to day actions and is extremely attractive to Venture Capitalists and startup funds. That worked for us, and would probably work for you too.” says Vikram Ramchand, CEO and Co-founder of makemyreturns.com.

Vikram completed his Computer Science degree from Georgia Tech in 2005 and returned to India. Since, he earns some interest income in the US, he still has to file his US Tax Returns (the dreaded 1040) every year. Despite coming from an engineering background, he had never faced any trouble in filing returns or understanding the tax system in the US. That’s because every law and regulation is clearly explained in the millions of online resources available.

In 2011, while Vikram was filing his 1040 NR using an online e-filing service, at his brother Aashish’s tax practice office in Mumbai, he found that most Indians had little control of their taxes & had little access to tax resources.

“There are probably a million people like me in India, who need to have access to tax resources and want to probably take control of their taxes just like I wanted to. I had the knowledge and experience in Computer programming & web technologies and my brother, Aashish – the brilliant Chartered Accountant – was an authority in the tax space with years of experience; a perfect combination to build an online tax filing and planning system for India and there began our journey.“ says Vikram.
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Has geek in it!

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“I’ve been with Barcamp since the first edition in Bangalore in 2006 and one of the things about Barcamp was that it always had a pool of exceptional individuals volunteering their time. We used to remark that we could never hope to assemble such a team at our respective workplaces. What was it about the community that drew such people in?

I also learnt quickly that any event has boring detail that never goes away: running logistics, raising money, things that are invisible to a participant and have no bearing on the content, but are nevertheless critical to make the event possible. Because they are boring detail, the individuals who volunteer their time tend to move on after each edition of Barcamp and the new team that takes their place effectively begins from scratch.

What if we paid someone to do that job full time, and let the community run the fun part of the event? That was the idea behind HasGeek. I had a job I dearly loved at that time (2007) and wasn’t prepared to move on, but in 2010, I found myself free and no one was doing this yet, so I founded HasGeek.” says Kiran Jonnalagadda.

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Buy Low, Get High!

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“I am still too young in entrepreneurship. There is lot to learn. But I can definitely suggest folks who are still in the dilemma of answering the big question. What If – What If I chuck the job, Start-Up and fail?

Guys, just start up. Its hell of an adventurous journey and the best learning you could ever get. Don’t just think, do it. Now is the right time!” says Puneet Sharma, CEO of BearShop.

After almost 5 year, in July 2011, Puneet Sharma left his job at TCS. Puneet wanted to travel for a few months; wanted to recharge himself. Before the trip, he ordered a camera from a leading online store at what he believed was the best possible price; as this was after much price comparison and coupon research.

A week later, Puneet landed in Mumbai, at his friend’s place. His friend really liked the camera and went onto order the same camera from the same leading online store, but this time, the price was 1000 rupees less. Puneet paid 1000 bucks extra because he was 6 days early. His heart sank!

This was the time when Puneet Sharma started observing prices of a few products in different categories on a daily basis with an excel sheet. Within a few days’ time, he realized that online stores change prices very frequently and the fluctuations were way more significant than what many expects. Eureka!
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Weaving the Web

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“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.” – Mahatma Gandhi.

It is not product startups alone, but service companies can also be successful. But always keep in mind that “Client is God”! says Ashwin Narasimha, CEO of Veeble Softtech.

Ashwin Narasimha was doing his Btech 6th sem at College of Engineering, Chengannur, Kerala, when he got a Linux VPS @ $1 per month. The VPS had no graphical control panel and the only way he could access the VPS was through command line. He started learning the commands one by one, got familiar with its administration, and soon bootstrapped a hosting service in the name intelz hosting. His then hostel mates Nikhil and Nisanth joined him soon.
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Interview with Pratik Adani, Founder & CEO, PricePaaji.com

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What is PricePaaji?

PricePaaji gives prices of various products from local shops via our website www.pricepaaji.com . It connects customers to stores (local & online).

The idea is to go hyperlocal by incorporating local stores in a web platform. We aim to emulate the local shopping experience online i.e. you can interact with the shop next to your house or office just sitting @ home. Be it store reviews, best buys, shop prices, we give it to you @ your fingertips. Right now we cover 120+ local stores and around 40 areas or Suburbs in and around Mumbai ,Thane and Navi Mumbai.
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Investor ready. Idea ready?

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Are you a product start up looking for funding in the near future? If you are, Reverse Pitch should interest you. At Reverse Pitch – Kerala edition organized by Kerala Startups, along with Subhendu Panigrahi of Innovation Angels, Bangalore – Venture Capital firms & Angel Investors will present a demo/pitch on their firms. The pitch would include their Operational Experience, Sectors, Investment Thesis, Portfolio etc. Question would be asked after every pitch, followed by an informal one-on-one networking session between Start-ups and Investors.

“The core purpose of Reverse Pitch is to provide a fairly transparent platform where both investors and entrepreneurs get to see the best among each other, and thereby develop relationships which can contribute to a very healthy ecosystem.” – Sanju Thomas, Co-founder of TechZag Solutions, who is bringing this event to Kerala told thestartupblog.
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Interview with Siddharth Goel, CEO, iKen solutions

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Explain a lit bit about your company.

iKen is an IIT Bombay research spin-off specializing in Artificial Intelligence based Consumer Analytics that can be used to enable highly personalized user experiences. Our USP lies in analyzing customers on an N=1 level where each customer is treated individually. This empowers any customer facing business with tremendous leverage to enhance its revenue streams, increase conversions on users consuming any service/content and retain its customers for longer period of time.

Why the name iKen SOLUTIONS?

Ken means “body of knowledge” in greek. iKen is supposed to me “intelligent body of knowledge”
Mooga , our first product taken to market, means “wave” in arabic. We believe we are the next analytics wave for consumer centric businesses.

How big is your team? and what were you guys doing before starting up?


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How to Choose the Best Social Network for Your Business

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Experts and analysts are constantly encouraging organizations to hop on the bandwagon and go social with their marketing efforts. It is sound advice, but easier said than done when considering that there is so much to choose from. With options ranging from Facebook and Instagram to Google+ and the flailing MySpace, social media can be challenging for even the most established business.

Many brands are learning that social integration is a complex undertaking, but here’s the thing – it doesn’t have to be. There’s a method to the madness, and it starts with choosing the right social network for your business needs.
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Interview with Ajith George, CEO of finahub

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What is Finahub and What do you do?

Finahub is one of the hottest start-ups in India. We are now listed as Top 10 start-ups to lookout for in 2013”. Finahub provides a SaaS (Software as a Service) customer management platform for retail broking firms in India. Our product, called Kinship Platform, acts as the one place to go for managing all the customer interfacing activities of the retail broker.

The platform enables the firms to improve customer engagement, achieve higher operational efficiency by automating processes such as report sending, customer ticket tracking and get better understanding of their customers using all the customer interaction data available on the platform.
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Interview with Aravind Ajith, CEO, entecity.com

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entecity logoExplain a lit bit about your company.

EnteCity.com – a portal that intends to be a one-window-shop for all your needs in a city – We offer a one stop shop of information for business, professionals, job openings, events,happenings and programmes in the city; currently Trivandrum. The site really is in its infant stage. We are working on leveraging our database to add more and more info in entecity. In addition to that we are also coming up with solutions to help local business owners – EnteMart and EnteDeals. Guess what they are going to be?
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