The Reason Why I Do Not Trust Banner Ads [and Indian OTAs]

We have been very vocal about the lack of trust eCommerce companies bestow upon the consumers and while few companies openly state that they sell your data, most of them (OTAs) have really failed to build a useful portal [read:Customer Focus : Why Indian online travel space is not with it, mostly].

The rush has been to be on top of Google search result page, to collect your email address (and sell it); but it really is frustrating that companies are misleading customers with wrong advertising of ticket rates which are NOT available on the site!

Misleading Yatra Banner Ad

On the left side is Yatra’s banner ad which clearly mentions that Delhi to Bangalore ticket is priced at Rs. 4739. And on the right side, the real ticket price is Rs. 5,114+ (click on the image for a  better resolution).

While you might want to say ‘chalta hai’ (the great Indian mentality), but isn’t it time that companies stand accountable for what they advertise vis-à-vis what they offer?Do we need an online version of ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India) to stop such misleading advertisements?

What’s your take? As far as I am concerned, this was my last visit to Yatra website.

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EC Navi Establishes “EC Navi Ventures”, Plans To Invest In Japanese And Asian Startups

Things haven’t been looking good for many Japanese VC firms lately, but that didn’t stop Tokyo-based e-commerce company EC Navi, which today announced the establishment of a VC arm called EC Navi Ventures.

EC Navi Ventures is set up as a separate company (also based in Tokyo), which is 100% owned by EC Navi. The VC subsidiary is capitalized at 100 million yen and led by Hidenori Nagaoka (who is the CFO of EC Navi proper).

What will EC Navi Ventures do?
The company says that it will invest between one and ten million yen ($12,000 to $120,000) in seed/early stage web and mobile startups in Japan, China and the rest of Asia. Apart from capital, the startups can expect support in other areas, too, for example business development or organization.

EC Navi is sure to be of help in this regard: founded in 1999, EC Navi is one of Japan’s oldest web companies. It already made various investments in startups before establishing EC Navi Ventures (in Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia).

If you’re an Asia-based startup interested in getting in touch with this new VC firm, you can find the contact information here (English).

Via Venture Now

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Jobs: Web Designer, Senior Technical Lead, iPhone App Developer [and lots more]

Pluggd.in’s job board reaches out to the smartest geeky crowd in India and we are quite proud of the conversion rate that our job board offers. In the next few weeks, we will be announcing a revamped/much better job board catering to needs of startups.

For now, here are the latest and promising jobs for geeks and marketers.

Job Profile	Description
UI/Web Designer Location: Delhi/NCR	We are looking for a highly creative web designer with 1+ year(s) of experience. MUST HAVE >> Proficiency in Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver >> Excellent XHTML/CSS skills and comfortable with creating cross browser compatible designs (including IE6) >> Ability to write complex JQuery/JavaScript programs >> PSD to XHTML/CSS creation
Senior Technical Lead Location: Bangalore	Very hands-on developers – leads who cannot code just would not do. You would ideally be very smart in at least 2 or more areas mentioned in the technical stack and be willing to become smart in the other areas. We need coders who are self starters, stick to coding guidelines, do reviews, have a good sense of design patterns and write unit tests.
iPhone Developer / Programmer Location: Bangalore	- High proficiency in Objective C and OOPs. -Strong Analytical Skills -Strong understanding of technology -Good understanding of modern use-cases (social, augmented reality, location based, 1-1, 1-many etc.)
Front-end/PHP Developer Location: Bangalore	We’re a growing US-based social commerce startup out of Austin, Texas looking for a talented front-end developer who is comfortable with the following tools/technologies: – PHP – MVC/CodeIgniter – jQuery – Javascript/AJAX – Memcached – XHTML – Facebook Open Graph API – Twitter Oauth API
Front End Dev Location: Gurgaon	We are looking for a skilled Front End Developer for our Gurgaon office who can translate Photoshop file into clean HTML/CSS, swiftly debug cross-browser issues and use Javascript and AJAX to provide an excellent user experience.
LAMP Developers Location: Bangalore	1.can write production level code in PHP like poetry. 2.can understand HTML/CSS/JS well enough to help produce an efficient front end. 3.have ability to design production level DB schema from product definition. 4.can play with Apache servers without crashing them. Atleast 2 yrs experience is required.
Content and Social media Strategist Location: Bangalore	We need a a very creative person who can manage our Content & Social Media. Objectively, we seek a person, who has/is: ? Ability to work in a very fast paced environment. ? Ultra creative with content writing. ? Ability to run several social campaigns and generate buzz around it. ? Addicted to the Internet. ? Eye for collecting intelligence from social networks.
Marketing Manager Location: Bangalore	Roles:- Coordinate with internal teams and external agencies for developing new marketing creatives and keeping the existing ones up-to-date – Coordinate with SEO and PPC agencies to get marketing strategy devised by Marketing head executed – Complete affiliate management including onboarding, sending updates on new products and releases, answering any queries they have and having the FusionCharts brand on the tip of their tongue
Tech Evangelist cum Community Manager Location: Bangalore	Develop technical content for our blog and soon-to-come newsletter including implementation tutorials, feature discussions, use cases and community showcase – Handle the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts completely – share educative and interactive content on them on a regular basis, reply to all queries asked and manage minute-by-minute interactions – Develop technical content for external blogs and websites as and when required
PHP & MySQL Developer Location: Chennai	As a Developer, you will be responsible for design and development initiatives in creating high level designs and complex system architecture for the product and website. You will be responsible to develop the detailed specifications and implementation plan for the inhouse and outsourced development team. You will identify and architect frameworks and methodologies that deliver value to the product.
Core Team – Engineering Location: Pune.	1. Good understanding of MVC architecture, Agile Development methodologies & language independent Object Oriented Concepts2. Understanding of process flow and ability to see through execution while clearly recognizing the dependencies and impact points.
Core Team Member – Sr. Software Engineer Location: Pune	* have experience building web applications either in PHP/Python/RoR* have experience with MySQL/PostgreSQL, Testing Frameworks and BDD/TDD tools, Git etc. * 2+ years of work experience
Software Engineer Location: Mumbai	* Enhancement / Development of new modules for our current product. • Working closely with engineering team & founders of the company. • Design and implement key technology parts and make them available to other developers as framework or components. • Be proactive, opinionated and pragmatic, and yet a team player.
Software Design Engineer in Test Location: Pune	- Ability to solve complex problems and write automation systems – Ability to elaborate testing techinques and commanding development procedures by understanding the functional requirements.
Online Community Manager Location: Anywhere (Work Virtually)	We constantly require community managers for our increasing clientèle. In order to apply you should have the following attributes, 1. Web savvy 2. Good internet access 3. Professionalism towards your work Prior social media marketing experience is a plus.
Software Engineer – Back End & Front End Location: Mumbai	Must have excellent OOPS knowledge and should have worked extensively on MVC based frameworks. – Extensive knowledge and work experience using tools like PEAR and Smarty. – Detailed knowledge on HTML, Javascript, AJAX and css a must. – Knowledge of open source scripts like ZenCart, Joomla, Drupal and WordPress will be a plus.
Software Design Engineer (Platform Tools) Location: Pune	Atleast a bachelors in computers. – Atleast 3 years of experience in software development. – Atleast 3 years of experience in Linux. This would warrant a strong command over the OS to the extent of system administration.
Various positions in Software Design Engineering Location: Pune	- Strong inclination to command “nothing is impossible” in Software. – Strong skills in any object oriented language. We don’t believe that language qualifies merit. Rather language is a conduit to building software. – Knowledge in database, dataminining, algorithm, distributed systems is a mus
Technical Director (Anywhere)	We are looking for a new Technology Director interested in bringing their CS skills to the public service sector. Our Tech Director needs to start in April and commit to working over the Summer in India. During April-June, you will be working from your hometown while the team is in the US. In the Summer, our team will travel to India to meet up with you in India and implement our technology with Indian partner organizations.

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Book Review: Women Entrepreneurship [Case Studies of Women Entrepreneurs]

Women in entrepreneurial roles and women at work have garnered a whole lot of literature and attention recently. Women’s Entrepreneurship as a space in focus – both for discourse and action planning will not only boost the body of work but also provide examples to scores of women considering the entrepreneurial path.

The book begins with a reference to Steve Jobs and his entrepreneurial vision. True, that Steve rules the imagination of many entrepreneurial dreams. He also epitomizes the male-driven tech scene, where women have minimal role to play. Apple executive team has no women on it. Moreover, when you propel the conversation by referencing one of world’s most cash-rich, market leading firm, the expectation moves to similar ground. References to the Mckinsey literature on the subject belittle Mridula’s own effort, which is far more contextual and original.

The beauty of the book (buy from Pothi) is that the entrepreneurial journeys are endearing, especially ones like MAYA Care. They are also easy to read and contain no heavy jargon or concepts. A great read for anyone seeking to explore the space, find some inspiration and also understand the landscape a little more. There is a warm-personalized touch to each story and each conversation.

What Mridula has managed to do is bring out consistent threads of information via her questions from each entrepreneur she spoke with. One can see some patterns emerging through the book. These include:

• Majority of entrepreneurs work with co-founders and many are husband-wife co-founder teams
• Removal from core sectors like manufacturing
• Entrepreneurial triggers include motherhood, need for alternate formats and keen interest or specializations.
• Huge amount of personal motivation from each of the entrepreneurs

One of the revelations of the book is how success is defined differently by and for men and women entrepreneurs. Absolute removal from critical questions of scale, market share and strategic intent is visible. However, one does also notice the fact the patterns of balancing personal-professional aspirations emerges.

What one is left wondering about the scale and scope of each business and like often, this time too financials and scale are not delved into in detail. It would have been interesting to see a comparative on geography, sector and demographic as a concluding chapter.

However, that does not take away from the fact it is an easy and interesting read for anyone interested in learning about women and entrepreneurial roles.

The book does not meet the expectations of language and grammar purists, with much left to be desired towards editorial finesse. A visual element would have been welcome too.

Books like these play an important part in highlighting streaks of innovation and change, which typically get little attention in mainstream writing. Overall an easy and simple read especially for anyone interested in the subject. However, if you seek path-breaking research or intellectual stimulation, one needs to find it elsewhere.

PS: I think the book’s title needs to be reviewed – grammatically challenged – Women’s Entrepreneurship or Women Entrepreneurs.

[Guest book review done by Sairee Chahal of Fleximoms. If you want to write book reviews on Pluggd.in, do connect with us.]

Recent Book Reviews:

• Book Review: Delivering Happiness
• Book Review–The Intelligent Entrepreneur
• Book Review–The Design of Design by Fred Brooks

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Tokyo’s Start-ups To Hold A Presentation Night In Seoul

In the beginning of next month, four tech start-ups from Tokyo and two start-ups from Seoul will jointly hold a presentation evening event in South Korea’s capital, which is called Asia Startup Summit, for expanding their presence in Asia and exchanging their perspectives on the region’s start-up community.

Presentations are:

• Revolutionizing Digital Entertainment by advanced video search technology
  by Jonnpyo Lee (이준표), Enswers Inc.

• Big trends in Japan – Optimization and Personalization Technology
  by Takashi Uemura(上村崇), ALBERT Inc.

• Information to collective intelligence LastSupper – spot to intelligent map / mironi – listen, share, enjoy
  by Jongil Yoon (윤정일), Revilx

• Japanese mobile market and Global mobile ads
  by Kiyotaka Kobayashi(小林清剛), Nobot Inc. (see these Asiajin stories for more details)

• Social Monitoring “@hentaiAlert”
  by  Yusuke Takahashi(高橋雄介), Individual Company

• Social translation “Conyac”
  by Naoki Yamada, Anydoor Co-founder (see these Asiajin stories for more details)

 

Venue: Spaceplus (스페이스 플러스), 810-10, Yeoksam 1-dong, Gangnam-gu.
서울特別市江南区駅三一洞810-10

Time: 7pm-9pm, April 6th (Wednesday), 2011

Admission fee: Free

The organizers are currently inviting techpreneurs and geeks to the event, if you are interested in attending, please contact them from their Facebook page.   According to Mr. Kobayashi, one of the organizers, their entire presentation will be livestreamed.

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When To Pivot In A Startup? [Lean Startups]

I was recently talking to an early stage startup who actually started off with a big bang and are now revisiting the product. The team basically needs to explore if they started off on a ‘wrong’ note or they should just keep on going.

“When to Pivot” is a very difficult question to answer, but here are a few early signs that you need to keep looking.

a. Hypothesis.

First build a hypothesis around the core of your product (“People want to write short messages/get instant gratification” Twitter’s probable hypothesis before the first release). Validating hypothesis is a function of who you are talking to. A lot of startups tend to talk to other startup peers or friends ‘n’ family (Friends and Family – Are they Startup’s Best Friends?) during ideation phase.
Talking to potential customer always helps (heck! this is a no-brainer, but how many startups actually do this?). Infact, some of the startups tend not to reach out to customers for the fear of negative response.

After the first release, ask yourself if your hypothesis stands correct and you are close to the reality?

b. Too Soon To Pivot?

“Startups that succeed are those that manage to iterate enough times before running out of resources”
-Eric Ries

After all, it’s a high speed chase game and as an entrepreneur, you are simply running against time/resources. Your goal is to minimize the waste and keep running till your find a product/market fit. A lot of startups tend to avoid a fundamental conflict that questions the basic vision of the product.

As a startup, track metrics like a ninja and track the important ones (and not the only ones that are going up).

c. What Exactly is Pivoting?

Pivoting is not A/B testing. Pivoting is change of direction. Pivoting is about change of vision.
To give you an idea, InMobi (earlier mKhoj) started as a local deals search, realized that the it will take a good number of years to build a solid business around it and immediately pivoted to building an ad network (Naveen shared the details at the last UnPluggd event).

How much of code was thrown in the entire process? Heartaches? Can you really handle so much of heartache – in the hope that next vision will bring the much needed success?

Pivoting at times is also about solving a similar problem (to the one you were solving earlier) and using a different approach. And at times, it’s about solving a related problem (which need not be similar).

Pivoting is not an art – it’s pure science (i.e. driven by numbers and hard facts)

If you are a startup that has pivoted, do share your experience.

[img credit]

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SuperHappyDevHouse SG is set for May

SuperHappyDevHouse SG, or SHDH.sg, is an all day/night hack fest that traces its roots all the way back to Silicon Valley.

The simplest way to describe this event would be part hackathon, part social party, interesting people, fun projects, lightning talks and, best of all, free beer and food.

We think this is enough to entice you geeks out there to leave your custom-built systems, grab your laptop and come join the SHDH gang.

This event is organized by Vinnie Lauria, Jason Ong and Adrianna Tan.

Event Details

Date: Saturday May 14, 2011, 2pm till Sunday 9am

Venue: The Pigeonhole, 52 Duxton Road

Who should attend: Geeks, Hackers, Startups, and Creative Thinkers — it’s FREE!

RSVP here.

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