Games2win secures $6 million Series B Funding

Games2win, the globally top ranked online games company has announced a successful Series B investment round from Clearstone Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB India Capital Partners).

The Company has raised 6 million US$ in financing.

Alok Kejriwal and Mahesh Khambadkone founded Games2win in 2007. The Company has been very successful in creating an original casual games library of over 400 games that are played by over 20 million consumers each month, as per comScore data. The Company’s games are unique in their originality and are actively licensed by the world’s largest publishers such as Yahoo.com, Viacom Kids and the Discovery Channel.
Rajan Mehra of Clearstone Venture Partners  has joined the board of Games2win.

Recommended Read: “The toughest decision of my life” – Alok Kejriwal on his decision to sell Mobile2Win

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Twitter Trends Hacked In India – Make Anything Trend With A Single Tweet

[Editor's Note - We have decided not to reveal this hack as we believe Twitter trending topic is too good a tool to be exploited by mass users who have shown signs of being irresponsible in the past. Read on if you think you can crack this hack with the clues below. We will reach out to Twitter and walk them through the process.]

It all started as a general twitter conversation with a friend on “Why is Ekta Kapoor trending on Twitter?“. To my surprise there were roughly about 40-50 tweets on Ekta Kapoor and almost all were talking about why is it trending, stating that they tweeted only when it was already trending, hence not contributing to get it up there. Over the weeks I noticed similar stuff with other trending topics as well. (For the uninitiated – Ekta Kapoor is a popular Indian TV soap Producer/Director)

I discovered one possible reason and tried to trend my name ‘naman’ using that trick. After continuous failed attempts I noticed that ‘naman’ is a common word in Philippines and such common word do not trend. Things like “born this day” may not trend as these are common words but “bornthisday” is a new string for Twitter and is easier to trend.

The trick that I discovered did not work even when I tried trending another word ‘Sarawagi’. Though after repeated attempts I had reasons to believe that the reason for failure was something else this time. Finally, on Saturday when I saw a weird trending topic “Tharanga” is when the hack struck me. Although it was a popular topic that hour due to Sri Lanka – England Cricket match but what’s weird was that “Dilshan” was equally talked about in all tweets and even more because he was awarded man of the match but Dilshan wasn’t trending.

"Tharanga" trending on Twitter but not "Dilshan"

I applied the same discovery here and was able to trend “Sarawagi” with just 2 tweets. Though that trend lasted for only about 15-20mins. Just enough for me take a screenshot to show off .

"Sarawagi" trending on Twitter. Dad will be proud

For now the editor of this blog does not allow me to reveal the hack but if you wish to participate in the next experiment and learn the hack this is what you need to do. Leave a comment with your twitter ID, follower count, city and whether you use the native twitter web app or any other mobile based app. We will contact some of you and include you in the next experiment. In public interest we will keep the experiments late night or early morning, so as to not bother fellow tweeples with all the test tweets.

In the meanwhile, let me find out if any brand owner is ready to pay $$s for this.

Earlier discovery from this author - Secret Behind In.com’s traffic

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Interesting Web Apps Round Up – Throw Eggs At Teachers, Get Internships, Get Jobs

Some interesting application on the web that wntd us to write about them. Give it a try and let me know if they are worth or only good to throw eggs at. Read on for context.

1. Wntd.in is social recruitment tool. It is a simple way to notify others in your network via twitter (Facebook and LinkedIn support will be available soon) that you are either trying to fill a job or searching for a job. Users post very brief descriptions of their jobs or profiles on wntd.in, and then they automatically get broadcast weekly to their friends on twitter. The status updates can be stopped at any time if the user chooses to do so. Wntd.in also creates a block of text from the information provided that you can paste into your email signature.

2. Let Me Know - A social venture that spreads information about internships, scholarships, events and competitions from around India. The mailing list has about 21K subscribers and new opportunities are posted regularly. A must try for students and fresh graduates.

3. MyFaveTeacher is teacher review portal. It lets Indian students rate their teachers anonymously on a scale of 1 to 5 in three categories: Subject Clarity, Helpfulness and Easiness. The teachers with bad overall rating have a ‘thrown egg’ at their profile page. The objective is to ensure a platform for Indian students to review, and thus influence, their teachers and the entire educational system in the process. Small step but an appreciable one for a larger change.

Give them a spin and spread the word if you like.

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Interesting Web Apps Round Up – Throw Eggs At Teachers, Get Internships, Get Jobs

Some interesting application on the web that wntd us to write about them. Give it a try and let me know if they are worth or only good to throw eggs at. Read on for context.

1. Wntd.in is social recruitment tool. It is a simple way to notify others in your network via twitter (Facebook and LinkedIn support will be available soon) that you are either trying to fill a job or searching for a job. Users post very brief descriptions of their jobs or profiles on wntd.in, and then they automatically get broadcast weekly to their friends on twitter. The status updates can be stopped at any time if the user chooses to do so. Wntd.in also creates a block of text from the information provided that you can paste into your email signature.

2. Let Me Know - A social venture that spreads information about internships, scholarships, events and competitions from around India. The mailing list has about 21K subscribers and new opportunities are posted regularly. A must try for students and fresh graduates.

3. MyFaveTeacher is teacher review portal. It lets Indian students rate their teachers anonymously on a scale of 1 to 5 in three categories: Subject Clarity, Helpfulness and Easiness. The teachers with bad overall rating have a ‘thrown egg’ at their profile page. The objective is to ensure a platform for Indian students to review, and thus influence, their teachers and the entire educational system in the process. Small step but an appreciable one for a larger change.

Give them a spin and spread the word if you like.

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News Roundup:Idea Launches App Store

Idea Launches 3G services in MP, Chattisgarh, Gujarat & HP

Idea has launched 3G services in Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

The company has also introduced data and time-based billing plan for 3G services enabling users to avail high-end data services. Idea has planned a pan India roll out of 3G services in 200 towns by April. Next year, it aims to launch 3G services in 4,000 towns. [source]

The company has also launched an app store, Idea Mall.

Reliance Broadcast enters regional TV space with Big Magic

Anil Ambani-led Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd (RBNL) today announced its foray into the regional television space with the launch of its Hindi entertainment channel — Big Magic.
The channel, which will be targeted at the core Hindi heartland, will be launched on April 4.
Big Magic, which will feature locally relevant entertainment around humour, music and Bollywood, will derive huge synergies with its radio brand, 92.7 BIG FM , RBNL said in a statement.

Pvt FM radio to be allowed to carry news sourced from AIR

"In a short time private FM (radio) channels will be able to carry news as these channels will be allowed to broadcast news bulletins of the All India Radio, unaltered," [ET].
Asked about the pricing and the kind of revenues that the government will generate, he said: "The base price will be at par with the highest price across categories and locations for the licenses during the phase two of the FM launch."

Qualcomm to sell BWA stake to LTE promoters

Qualcomm has reiterated that it will sell its yet-to-be-launched Indian BWA business to any company that promotes LTE technology in India.  Qualcomm plans to exit the venture after creating a LTE network to roll out broadband wireless access services. It has also made it clear that it does not want to be an operator, but was only blocking the spectrum to jump-start demand for its 4G chips. [ET]

Recommended Read: Future of Wireless in India – UMTS or LTE?

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PHOTOS! Singapore At SXSW 2011 – Part 2

South by Southwest (SXSW) was a BLAST. If you haven’t, you should check out my pictures in part one on SGE.

This yearly conference saw Music, Film and Interactive people descend upon Austin, Texas in the US for two weeks of panels, meetups, day parties (with beer), night parties (with beer x 10) and drunken networking revelry.

I was there to check out the conference, stalk the Singapore delegation, meet old friends and make new ones.

So let’s start with…

The SXSW Trade Show:

Exploring the booths.

A message board at the trade show.

A Fedora mascot prancing around.

There were many games and prizes to be won at various booths.

Introducing…the Singapore Pavilion:

(Some 101 on incorporating a company in Singapore.)

Steven from IDA speaking to someone interested in Singapore.

The lounge at the Singapore Pavilion.

Introducing…the startups:

(From left): Hong Ting and Wenhan from 2359media, the company behind MobDis

Julian from Zopim doing his pitch.

Socialico presenting GameMaki.

Audrey, cofounder of PlayMoolah

MobileWalla (previously Wordster)

Varun of GoToCamera was momentarily displaced when I was there snapping away. Check out our quick 5-question interview with him at SXSW. More on GoToCamera.

Lichi from Chalkboard

Jay from Brandtology doing a demo. Brandtology was recently acquired.

Another startup, Sambaash also had a booth, but when I was there taking pics, they haven’t yet arrived at SXSW. I didn’t take a pic of their empty booth.

On the contrary, Foound was not found at SXSW…(sorry, couldn’t resist):

While mobile startup Foound was supposed to have been at SXSW, they pulled out and remained in Singapore to focus on their product instead.

Danny Tan, founder and CEO of Foound told SGE, “We felt that SXSW was getting too “noisy” and didn’t feel that we would have achieved as much there as we originally wanted. More importantly, our team is focused on building the next iteration of our service here, which will be quite a major revamp.”

2359 Media found SXSW useful:

“For MobDis, SXSW brought together some of the top creative and design minds from interactive agencies across US (and to a lesser extend across the world), who provided us with invaluable feedback and, through the friendships established both during and after conference hours, opened doors for potential business deals to be completed in the months to come.”

(From left): Gwen (SGE), Keith (GameMaki), Audrey (PlayMoolah), Lichi (Chalkboard)

(From left): Gwen (SGE), Steven (IDA), Joachim (IDA)

Introducing…the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator pitching sessions:

Advisory board and judges of the Accelerator.

GoToCamera pitched under the Innovative Web Technologies category. They didn’t make it to the finals, but great try, Varun!

ViKi pitched under the Entertainment Technologies category and got into the finals but unfortunately, didn’t win. Great effort, Razmig, nonetheless!

Razmig (pictured center) pitching ViKi on stage during the finals. Photo by Audrey of PlayMoolah.

At the Singapore @ Tech Summit…

We had a really good one hour session where entrepreneurs and people interested in business opportunities in Singapore engaged with our Singapore delegation.

SG ROARS! The Singapore SXSW Party at 512 bar:

Mingling. Singapore + Beer + Asian food + Live music = Wicked!

(From left): Unnamed, Steven (IDA), Julian (Zopim), Joachim (IDA), Audrey (PlayMoolah), Gwen (SGE)

You can see Shashank (SimpliFlying) on the right.

(From left): Gwen (SGE), Vlad (WebOfThings), Rafi (inventor of the first smart rabbit, Nabaztag), Dom (WebOfThings), Vahe (INM), Christine (CityInnovation)

(From left): Gwen (SGE) and Joachim (IDA) with the band in our background.

The goodie bag included a chilli crab soft toy.

With a recipe to boot!

Twilight at the Singapore party.

As cofounder and CEO of Zopim, Julian says, “SXSWi was in one word: EPIC. SXSi was essentially Social Media meets Tech meets Townhall size meetings. To say that we networked with top minds in our industry is an understatement. Ingratiation would be a better term as we got closer to quite a few potential clients and partners. Biz opportunities were opened, high value business targets which we would otherwise never have met were befriended. If you are launching your next product to the world, there is clearly no other better place than SXSW to showcase your service.”

NEXT YEAR, SXSW Interactive 2012 will happen over March 9-13. Set aside those dates!

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