Sick Of Job Spam? Join ThePlatinumCircle – Job Portal For Rs.12 Lakhs+ Jobs

I had joined a PHP group on Linkedin and from then on have been receiving calls from hiring consultants for LAMP developer positions. The reason I joined was to post about openings at my startup. This was still a little better but I hear about a lot of CTOs/Managers who receive such spam calls/mail because their profile has that keyword from a position 10 yrs ago. This and there are many other issues that Job portals have.

ThePlatinumCircle is a startup exclusively for Rs.12 Lakhs+ jobs. The portal is a by-invitation-only network and also does not allow any mass mails by recruiters. They claim to maintain quality of candidates and jobs by pre-screening all profiles and postings. Job posting on the site is free and allows 48hrs access to database and 10 resume downloads. The portal, launched in Sep’10, claims to have 35K+ candidate profiles and 500+ recruiters.

The startup is directly competing with services like Naukri Premium and HeadHonchos from ABC Consultants. IIMJobs is another portal catering to the same needs and actually works.

What the startup is attempting does solve a problem for candidates but how many of such high level recruitments are actually done by companies themselves vis-a-vis through consultants who browse through Linkedin profiles? Also, is manually screening each profile a scalable model?

Do give ThePlatinumCircle a try and let us know if you found a hire for your startup?

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A 101 On Kickstarting A New Age Startup [Lean Model]

The fall of product-centric startups

I have been associated with the startups for a little over the past 5 years. In this time, I have witnessed a lot of improvement in the startup ecosystem in India. Everything from raising capital, getting experienced advisors, to recruiting a talented team has become significantly easy. We have also had some much needed success stories either in terms of exists, buyouts, or pure growth.
However, the mortality rates for startups are still very high. I have always been curious about reasons for startup failures and possible mitigation strategies. The reason for failure certainly does not seem to be technology challenges. The majority of startups in India are not really technology breakthroughs (nothing wrong in that at all). Majority of them are either trying to solve an unaddressed problem or improve an existing solution.
Most startups just seem to fail because of lack of market adoption. So it seems to a case of either incorrect understanding of the customer needs or not creating the right kind of mouse trap. It is interesting that both of these are classic problems associated with using a product development model to take a new product/ offering to the market.
The product-centric model is a process that evolved in manufacturing industries and since was adopted by the consumer packaged goods industry in the 1950s and finally became the de facto standard and an integral part of the tech startup culture till recently.

Startups following this model start with defining a concept and associated business plan, then get into product development, followed by alpha-beta test, and finally product launch. The model is not really bad, in fact it is a great approach if you are building an offering where the customer’s problem and the solution are well known (e.g extending an existing and successful offering). However, we all know that the majority of startups are dealing with ambiguity not only in one but both of these areas (i.e. both the customer’s problem and possible solutions are not completely clear at the start).

In such situations, this model is sure to lead to disaster because of its inherent disadvantages. The issue with this model is that it is purely focused towards product development. All the goals and milestones are associated with defining the scope of the product, achieving development milestones, and then shipping it out the first set of customers. There are no real milestones associated with marketing or sales other than creating collaterals, developing partnerships, and creating a sales force. I like to term this problem as the cocoon effect. The cocoon effect is when a startup functions in a closed environment and just keeps working on developing the product in isolation. This results in feature bloat (i.e. over engineering) and in most cases the market / customer completely rejecting the product.

Customer development and the lean startup

Steve blank a serial entrepreneur from the valley articulates this problem in his book the four steps to the epiphany (if you are a founder and have not read this book, I would urge you to pick it up ASAP). He defined a better alternative to the product centric development model. He proposed the use of a “customer development model“, where the customer and his needs were at the heart of the startup’s approach and not the product.

This model focuses on understanding the customer and constantly validating your solution with them till you get it right and then starting with outreach programs and company building initiatives. This model works really well when the problem that is being solved is not completely understood.
Eric Ries another serial entrepreneur from the valley used this model and further extended it for software tech startups to even account for ambiguity about the solution to the problem. He proposed that startups should use extreme programming methods to come up with quick release cycles. This prototyping based approach can help startups to arrive to the optimal solution without losing too much time or resources. Such agile startups would in turn be able to increase their chances of success.

Even though the lean approach is a great way to run your startup, you may still have to deal with the issue of funding while in the prototyping stage. Even if available, it may not be smart idea to raise serious capital as you are still not at a stage where you fully understand your customers, the problem or know the right solution. You could raise funding from angels but finding the right kind of person is always very hard. I think there is better way to solve this funding problem using the social web.

Kick-starting your passion

Recently, I read about how some startups used crowd sourcing based approach to raise funds to kick-start their business. Kickstarter is the largest online crowd funding platform for creative projects in the fields of Art, Dance, Film, Music, Photography, Publishing, Theater, Food, Design, Fashion, Technology, Games, Comics and Journalism. It can help startups raise capital directly from their potential customers (i.e. people who share a common passion with the founders for a problem).

Some of the key guidelines for using this community to raise funds are:

• Members are only allowed to raise funding for projects. A project in this case is something with a very clear beginning and end. This makes it easy for the community to decide whether a project is completed as per expectations ( it is actually good for the entrepreneur because there will be no ambiguity about your progress )
• The projects cannot be related to charity, causes, self-help, or As-Seen-on-TV products
• The funding cannot be used to hire programmers/developers to build your website/app

C-loop is a great example of a startup which leveraged the kickstarter platform to raise capital and build their business. Ivan Wong, a professional sports photographer struggled with his camera strap while taking snaps. He checked with his brother, Ben, and friend Anne Bui (a programmer) and all of them seem to have the same problem.  So they went ahead and designed their own solution. The idea was to connect the strap to one point on the bottom of the camera—the threaded tripod mount—instead of two points on the top.
They quickly built a prototype that wasn’t pretty, but it worked and called it the C-Loop.
The team needed $15,000 to produce the initial lot of C-Loops, which they could take to the market. Through kickstarter they were able to raise $63,163 in their funding period which was used to develop 1,800 c-loops. The engagement on kickstarter also helped them to book their initial pre-sales with the very same people who funded the project. They now have distributors across the world and have also launched other successful products like the Spilt Strap (an ergonomic accessory for camera, laptop bag, duffel, or guitar).

Social crowd-funding platforms like kickstarter can help founders adopt a new and low risk model for building their business. Some of the salient features of the model would be:

• Discover a problem and validate if others seem to have the same problem ( understand your customer really well )
• Create a quick prototype solution. It does not have to be pretty, it just needs to work and solve the problem ( kind of like a jugaad)
• Use social platforms like kickstarter to discover others who suffer from the problem enough to be willing to fund the solution.
• Use the funding to build the first version and ship it out to initial customers who have funded the project.
• Collaborate with these initial customers to improve offering and get great stories of how they were able to improve themselves by solving the problem using your product / service
• Use these studies and learning then to scale your outreach efforts and leverage the initial set of people as your product evangelists. This is the perfect time to also look out for venture capital if you want scale quickly or just focus on growth through smart viral with your initial passionate customers as the base group.

This model ensures you build something that you and your initial customers are truly passionate about, there is a clear purpose to your venture which is validated by the funding from potential customers and the best part, there is clear profits (however small you remain as a company).
I truly hope we see more Indian startups following this model and create startups which collaborate with their customers using social platforms and create more long lasting businesses. What’s your take?

[This guest post has been written by Kaushal Sarda. Kaushal works as a chief evangelist at Kuliza – a Bangalore based social technology firm. You can read more of his posts on the Kuliza blog.]

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Meet The Top 11 Startups Pitching At Echelon 2011

Out of 100 startup entries, 40 were selected to pitch at satellite events in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Out of these 40, a final 11 were chosen. These 11 will present at the grand finale – Launchpad at Echelon 2011 in Singapore in June. Echelon 2011 is a two-day, double-track event with various workshops and panel discussion you can go to. There will also be a demo pit with startups showcasing their products.

Amongst the 11 startup who will be pitching at the main event, there are 2 startups from Singapore, 2 from Malaysia, 1 from Taiwan, 2 from Korea, 3 from Indonesia and 1 from India.

Here are the final 11!

Cardinal Blue Software (Taiwan)

Cardinal Blue Software has built a 7 million strong online support community with Tribute Balloon. The community allows users to share their hardships using “Balloons” and in return garner support and encouragements from fellow users who are able to send virtual gifts, comments or help spread the balloons.

Fetchplus (Singapore)

Fetch Plus’ product, FetchFans, is an interactive custom brand design engine built for commercial use that designs templates for Facebook, Twitter and blogs through a three-step process. This allows companies to update their pages with messages, new offers and promotions quickly in order to always be in contact with their customer base.

Jelly Bus (Korea)

While there are a lot of photo apps out there, these apps only focus on allowing users to share their photos on more popular social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. Jellybus aims to fill in the gap with qbro. qbro is an interesting and easy to use photo app that also allows users to share their photos on more localized social network sites such as Cyworld and me2day.

Moglue (Korea)

Moglue provides a simple solution to self-publishing interactive ebooks on iOS and Android devices. The platform allows publishers, amateur authors and artists to create interactive books and release them to app stores with one click. By abstracting away the hard coding bits, the platform breaks down the barrier-to-entry for aspiring authors or artists.

Playmoolah (Singapore)

PlayMoolah is the brainchild of Min Xuan, Audrey and Alam. The company provides a fun online platform for kids, aged 5 to 11, to save, manage, and earn an allowance. PlayMoolah leverages on game mechanics for behavior change, empowering children with the curiosity, knowledge, skills and tools needed for financial capability. Meanwhile, parents are equipped with a separate platform to monitor, reward, and engage with their child’s progress.

PriceArea.com (Indonesia)

PriceArea.com is search engine local online stores that seeks to connect shoppers with thousands of merchants. Think Google meets Amazon.com. PriceArea.com acts as an intermediary between online shoppers and retailers while providing value add services to ease the virtual shopping process, such as purchasing/retailing services, wishlist, store locator, merchant reviews, advertising platform and much more.

PT Phase Solusindo (Indonesia)

Phase Solusindo aims to create more exposure for merchants’ brands using a similar location-based system that other successful companies such as Foursquare and Gowalla are using. With Bouncity, is a location location-based gaming platform that allows users to go to places, complete challenges and get rewarded. The fun-oriented system may hit the right note with users in encouraging them to spend more time with brands that are on Bouncity.

PT Six Reps (Indonesia)

Lacking the motivation to stick with that exercise or diet regime? Get in shape with the help of SixReps, a social network site that aims to connect fitness, diet and exercise enthusiast. The site links up members with the same interest with the hopes of creating a supportive community of active lifestyle individuals

SoftSolvers (Malaysia)

Aiming to help Asian businesses tackle customer relationship issues, Soft Solvers Solutions’ Second CRM offers on-demand solutions to small companies which covers business operations like sales, marketing, customer support and project management. Small companies can choose to automate their businesses with the simple and cost-effective solutions offered by Second CRM.

Spatial Ideas (India)

Spatial Ideas aims to integrate information from online news sites and social media in order to built the ultimate marketing tool, LocoBuzz. This powerful map-based analytics and communications platform allows marketers to identify potential customers, spot trends and evaluate marketing campaigns. The unique selling point of Spatial Ideas over their competitors is their easy-to-use UI, which they believe appeals to users of such services.

Work Crowd (Malaysia)

WorkCrowd aims to help build and strengthen bonds among co-workers by being a social platform for the workplace. WorkCrowd seeks to incentivize the initiatives of co-workers in getting to know each other through unlocking badges. The platform can also assist the transition of new workers into the workplace by helping them familiarize themselves with the culture and facilitate knowledge transfer.

Startups That Didn’t Make The Top 11

From the Singapore Satellite: Identifii, LoveByte, Not A Basement Studio, Fezzl, Taxizu, Tiwdl Inc., Stylelogue

From the Malaysia Satelite: Feed George, FLOChip Sdn. Bhd, FanXT, CellKast Games Pte. Ltd., Posttude, MobileApps.com Pte. Ltd., Alphapod, Motif Channel.

From the Indonesia Satelite: Tasterous, PT. Sitoes Indonesia, NgaturDuit.com, PT. Rocktokom, Wooz.in, ThinkRooms, infolalulintas.com

From the Hong Kong Satelite: HomeTasty, Dimitli, Garbs Inc., Flipter, Makible, Scrambled Eggs Ltd., 213Stomperz

Congrats to all for pitching and all the best to the top 11! See you this June 16-17.

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Want a VIP ride to Echelon 2011? Get on Facebook right now!

Currently, we are in the midst of running a panel topic suggestions competition on our Facebook page. The main idea behind the competition is to get a feel of what our attendees think would add value to our current line-up of topics.

Here are a couple of interesting ideas submitted so far, but there’s a new twist to the contest:

“Failconf – those who failed and why”

“Lean is mean – how to make small seed funding work”

“Data mining, sentiment analysis or the monitoring of people’s behavior: how this is shaping the data revolution.”

What’s the new twist? We are upping the stakes. The winner now gets The Full Echelon Experience. That means two passes to our Day Zero Dinner, a strictly invite-only event where you will get to rub shoulders with all the speakers, sponsors and friends of e27. It’s an open bar plus some really great food. On top of that, if the winner is a foreign delegate, we will throw in two nights’ stay at our preferred hostel, G4 Station, which has WiFi and an excellent location off Orchard Road. Hang out with other conference goers who’ll be staying there too.

How does this competition work? Just submit your ideas as comments to this status and get your friends to “Like” them. The suggestion with the most “Likes” will be declared our winner.

So, what are you waiting for? Write your ideas in the comments and get your friends to send you on your way. Submissions close at 2359 hours (GMT +08:00) on Saturday, 28 May.

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DeNA(Mobage) Founder Tomoko Namba To Step Down CEO, COO Isao Moriyasu To Take Presidency

DeNA has just announced [J] that the board had decided to replace the head of the company after planned ordinary general meeting of shareholders on June 25th.

[Update] DeNA issued English release, too. I did not need to translate them. Thank you for a comment, Tomo.

Tomoko Namba, who founded DeNA in March 1999 and led the company for over decade, is going to leave the president/CEO because of taking care of family member, but stays on the board.

COO Isao Moriyasu, who drove the DeNA's primary business Mobage since its early stage, will be the president and social media division director. No "CEO" title is used on the release.

Moriyasu's photo from

DeNA's recruiting page

Namba owns 14.84% of the company stocks, the head of shareholders. Moriyasu owns 347,739 stocks according to the release, which is about 0.2%. They are also to change some executive titles, like moving up CFO to chairman, renaming CTO with the matched Japanese words(Saikoh Gijyutsu Sekininsha). As a result of them, all CXO titles will disappear from their executives.

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Collide: Powering the China Cloud with HTC Sense

Ray Yam, Head of HTC China, showed how HTC is using the cloud to maximize user experience for people and their mobile phones. It has built in many cool features into HTC Sense, that well, just makes sense.

A quick snapshot of some of the features offered by HTC Sense:
- Organizing data around people, instead of time
- Being able to remember where your mobile pictures were taken on a map, using the phone’s GPS
- If you lose your phone, you can locate it using GPS like Apple’s MobileMe
- If you lose your phone and have lost hope of recovering it, you can remotely upload your information to the cloud and then wipe your data so no one can access your private information

Already launched, HTC Sense offers unlimited storage to the cloud and wants to make it easy for people to be mobile.

Related posts:

1. TechNode Presents Collide, Powering the China Cloud Conference, May 25th
2. Live Blog: Collide – Powering the China Cloud
3. Cloud Nine for China’s Cloud Computing?

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Meet The Founders Of Butter Factory And Sample Store – 27 May

Dynamic individuals such as the founders of popular club The Butter Factory, Sample Store and Master Franchise (Singapore) of Marble Slab Creamery will gather to share their stories on entrepreneurship – discover the challenges they faced and gain insights into how they turned their business ideas into success stories. As a part of The Entrepreneur’s Challenge 2011, Ngee Ann Alumni (NAA) and DBS invite youths to come to “Be Your Own Boss: Hear The Voice of Success” seminar.

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About The Speakers

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Celeste Chong, Co-Founder of Butter Factory (read our Interview with Celeste Chong)

Li Li Hui, Master Franchise of Marble Slab Creamery and MaggieMoo’s Ice Cream and Treatery in Singapore

Elfaine Tan, Co-Founder of The Sample Store

Willin Low, Chef of Wild Rocket Relish Burger Bench and Bar

Gillian Tan, Director of Munkysuperstar Pictures and clicknetwork.tv

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Event Details

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When: Friday 27th May 2011
Time: 2PM-5PM
Where: *Scape Warehouse, 2 Orchard Link, *Scape, SG 237978 (Map)
Cost: Free

How can you participate at this seminar? Register here.

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Twittamentary Singapore Beta Screening

Twitter is not just a tool to broadcast but is one that connects people globally. Twittamentary is a documentary that explores how lives meet and affect one another on the fast growing micro-blogging phenomena that is Twitter. Directed by Singaporean filmmaker and entrepreneur Tan Siok Siok, Twittamentary will be presented in a special beta screening next Monday. This screening is part of the final round of beta screenings in Asia, Europe and the USA before a premiere later in the year. Siok Siok will attend the screening and share her insights on the making of the film.

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Event Details

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When: Monday 30th May 2011
Time: 7pm
Where: 56A Arab St, Singapore 199753

Register here.

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ideas2IP Connects Inventors And Investors

Launched by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) two days ago, ideas2IP is an online innovation platform where individual inventors can submit their ideas and investors can help distil promising ones into a form that has commercial potential because ideas, like crude oil, may contain impurities in its raw form.

In this “crude oil” refining process, there are few steps for inventors to get involved:
- Discover: Learn how it works, what makes a good idea, trivia, wacky inventions, and inspiring stories.
- Discuss: Register to participate in the forum and join in the buzz.
- Distil: Upgrade membership account to inventor for access or register through invention society to submit idea. IPOS staffs then will check whether there are similar products or services in the market. If the idea is a genuinely groundbreaking and offers commercial promise, IPOS will then try to matchmake the inventor with an investor.
- Showcase: Publish proven concept to attract other investors and technology adopters.

The key step is in the Distil process. Here’s an abstract of the FAQ that we thought should be highlighted:

How does Distil work?

Distil is the place where your ideas will be held while the system tries to match your ideas to an investor. Only the title, description and any existing IP rights related to the idea can be viewed by the investors. When an investor is interested to find out more about your idea, they may request for more information about the idea or your contact details.. You will be notified by email if there is such a request. You can then decide whether to send more information to the investor….Further discussions may be taken off the platform at the discretion of users and investors.

Does submitting my idea to the platform mean it’s registered with IPOS?

No, submission of ideas through ideas2IP.sg is an independent process from applications to have your IPs registered with IPOS. For more information on filing your intellectual property with IPOS, please refer to IPOS’ website.

Will my identity be disclosed?

Identity of users who submit ideas for appraisal will be kept confidential on the platform. Your identity will only be made known to the investor of your own accord, typically when further discussions are carried out e.g. signing confidentiality agreement prior to sharing further information about your idea.

Is my idea protected on the platform?

Ideas when saved on the platform, are in encrypted form which cannot be read by anyone other than the owner of the idea, who needs to log in with user id and password. If it is submitted for quick appraisal, only selected fields will be available for view by the investors. If more information is shared with others, members are encouraged to have non-disclosure agreements in place to protect their own interest.

So far, IPOS has signed up one interested investor: Invention Capital, it invests in technology companies that belong to certain specific areas. IPOS is also in talks with other potential investors specialising in other areas.

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Micromax launches Android Based Bling-2, Packs Its Own App Store

Micromax has launched Bling 2, the successor of its super successful Bling phone.

Micromax Bling2

Bling-2 comes in a white leather carry case enclosed with a compact mirror and special pouch to keep your lip gloss, making it easier to retouch your make -up anytime.  The phone also comes with interactive apps (i.e. packaged) like MiRoamer- Mobile radio, Saavn- Music on Demand, Mosho- Mobile shopping, Mundu Live TV (1 month free trial) and Whatsapp- a messenger that works across platforms.

Most importantly, Micromax has also embedded its own app store in the device.

With a display of 7.1 cm, and a capacitive screen, Bling2 provides features such as surfing the net, texting, sharing pictures, music, videos and more. The Bling2 also offers a Mi-Fi pocket wireless internet feature, making it personal wireless broadband connection. The phone works on both 2G and 3G networks with GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) and WCDMA (2100 MHz) technology. The phone comes with 3.0 MP cameras and the lens is framed in Swaroski Zirconia. The memory of the phone is expandable up to 32GB with micro SD card. The phone comes with 3.5 mm universal jack and Bluetooth connectivity. It also comes with an integrated GPS system.

The price of Micromax Bling 2 mobile is only Rs. 8,999/, which makes it quite affordable.

Overall, a good phone to go after. And like we said earlier, Micromax will lead the cheap Android device in India and will introduce the OS to a whole new audience and eat Symbian’s market share.

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