Of love, life and the internet

Got a first taste of the startup scene in Delhi at bcd7. My brother recommended the event and it turned out to be a pretty good Sunday. Free breakfast, Free lunch .. Free T Shirt - you can’t go wrong! For the tweeters/ twitterers(#bcd7)

Overall, I was impressed.

The host - International Management Insitute.

The host B. school IMI was impressive and the entrepreurship club (Ecell) seems very progressive. They have been doing live projects with startups (next one in November). There’s a John Mullens seminar coming up. Top that with barcamp and I give them full marks.

My 3 favourite startups - phokatcopy, videotap and imo

1. Phokatcopy - A startup is as good or bad as the founding team. The ideas will change, the model will get modified - so it’s basically what the people are like. That’s where I believe that Harsh Narang has what it takes to make this a good business. The company essentially provides free paper (good quality, non-wood based) to the photocopy wallahs at the colleges. The paper has ads on one side and they are meant to use the back side to copy. If the student spends Rs. 20 or more on phokat copy, he/she can re-deem that money through mobile talk time, ice creams, clothes etc. Every 100th phokatcopy user wins an ipod.  The advertising medium is novel - repeat viewing for same ad - extremely targeted for the segment. Every player in the game is incentivised.
2. Voicetap- The basic premise here is that they provide access to experts for any and every subject. So in case you’re not getting any joy from google or you’d rather talk to a person then all you have to do is add getafixx@voicetap.in to your gmail contacts and say ‘hi’ in the chat window. Young dynamic team. Look out for a new site and launch in Jan. They’ve got a phone based model as well. Their revenue model is based on payments from corporates for the branding they get out of promoting their experts.
3. Imo - Out of 50 finalists at TC50, there were about 48 from US and these guys were the only ones from India. The company has made an iphone app which can then use the phone like a joystick or mouse for PC games. The future versions aim to make it as good as the wii experience for any PC game. The went on to win the best presentation at TC50. Watch the video on the site - it’s pretty funny!

While some people were asking ‘What’s TC 50?’, for me this company is the hottest thing in India right now. Keep an eye on these kids!

Here are the top results from TC50 this year.

I’m sitting here in India now and thought I’d follow up with Part II.

Here were the inspiring moments.

1. Discovery of Shiply.com - (beautiful, poetic, stroke of genius)… basically the funda is that if you want to ship anything (ranging from a small table lamp to a few streets down all the way to all your household belongings to another country) to anywhere then this site rocks. You put the basic information of what you’re sending and where and you will have shipping agencies bid for the project. I shipped a chest of drawers from north west London to South East London for about 15 quid. amazing. once again - simple user interface.. no confusion.. got the best dealer out there.

2. Meeting celebrities - Sold some good furniture and knick knacks to this young lady. As we put the stuff in her car I noticed a cricket helmet.. got chatting and turns out she’s this mega superstar cricketer. Kicking myself for not taking an autograph.

3. Landlady - Long story short, I had to slimey-ly bypass my property agent during the August long weekend to go get my security deposit from the landlady. She was an orphan from WW2 sent to UK from Czechoslovakia. She’s got a broken spine, kidney failure, she can barely walk. When I walked into her house it was almost as if it were a film set from the 1960s. She sat chain smoking as we chatted about her grandkids and my moving woes. She’s being sued by a previous estate agency where we had initially contracted but got acquired in the interim.  Anyway - kind soul.. gave me the whole deposit. God Bless.

Other interesting pieces:

- Barclays bank at first told me that non EU residents can’t have a bank account in the UK and I would need to shut the account or open a ‘high charges’ offshore account with them. On the day I was leaving, a different branch was able to change my address to my new India one and rubbished the earlier advice.

- Seven Seas has yet to tell me the expected date of arrival for my stuff. They had estimated 77 days on their site and it’s been about 45 days already.

- I’m designing creative solutions for vengeance on the property agent. Once I’m a millionaire, I’ll hire a private investigator… etc etc..

- After London, my wife and I went for a holiday in the US on US airways. No major goof-ups, but I have to say that is by far the worst service I have seen. My fears were confirmed when the immigration officer said “It’s not a joke. I will never let any of my family fly that airline”

- British Gas, Virgin Media sent refund cheques to our previous address a few weeks after we left. It’s quite a pain dealing with that sitting far away. Council tax refund took 3 weeks as well.

Hope that helps some poor souls who have to go through moving houses. That over - here’s to a new life back in India!