Kompas Invested in Urbanesia, Becomes a Major Shareholder

Selina Limman, the CEO of Urbanesia.com (Right)

Early this week Kompas, Indonesia’s biggest national newspaper, invested in Urbanesia [1]. The signs were really there as Edi Taslim, the vice director of Kompas.com, attended Jakarta Ventures Night 2012 held by East Ventures [2] to deliver a keynote.

This investment by Kompas could prove to be vital as they are looking to expand to hyperlocal news. We spoke with Selina Limman, the CEO of Urbanesia.com, to find out more about this:

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1. Is this an acquisition? Is Kompas getting a majority share here?

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KCM (Kompas Cyber Media) sees a lot of potential in Urbanesia in terms of user base (youth and lifestyle focus) and business model. In addition the nature of the product in terms of basic function and content is complimentary to what KCM have now. They are looking to invest a lot in terms of resources, therefore they [sought out] more stakes in Urbanesia. It’s not an acquisition because the management team still has a big interest in Urbanesia. What they see is not merely the product but the team behind it, and they want to keep the soul of Urbanesia.

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2. What do you expect after this investment from Kompas? What will 2012 be like for Urbanesia?

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We expect to grow more users, expand to other cities and monetize. The result of Urbanesia’s search widget placement proved that Kompas is the right strategic partner for Urbanesia. We get very good traffic from Kompas users. The average page/visit of visit from the search widget is 50, even for new visits. A Kompasianer wrote a very warming and supportive blog post about Urbanesia, after i presented at Kompasianival. Before this he only knew Urbanesia as a website that popped [up] once in a while on google search result. The post comments showed how other Kompasianers have been benefited a lot from Urbanesia.

We are also excited about expanding through Kompas Gramedia network’s local office across Indonesia. They own local newspapers in 30+ cities in Indonesia. Kompas.com has been working on hyperlocal sites, and they focus more on neighborhood news. We could use the Urbanesia API to create a directory feature on these local news sites.

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3. Can you share some recent stats or milestones for Urbanesia?

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• Unique visits per month: 370,000
• Duration per visit: 11 minutes
• Registered users: 30,000
• Pageviews per month: 1700,000

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4. You said on the Urbanesia blog that you will finally monetize this year , how specifically?

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KCM is very innovative in creating new revenues, and they’re very supportive towards Urbanesia’s business model because they have the same vision as us. Edi Taslim himself has lots of monetizing ideas to be implemented on Urbanesia. In terms of monetization, we are planning to launch a premium business profile in March and Urbanesia Coupon shortly after. Meanwhile the Kompas.com ad sales team can’t wait to sell Urbanesia display ads because we have pretty good targeted traffic, with brand value.

Aiming to launch features that will help monetize Urbanesia (such as Premium Business Profile, Urbanesia Coupon, Mobile Apps, and Urbanesia v2.0) it’s a wise move for both Kompas and Urbanesia to maximize theirs strength and hopefully eliminate weaknesses. Congratulations to Urbanesia and Kompas from the PO team!

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1. Through its subsidiary PT Kompas Cyber Media, the holding company for Kompas.com.  ↩
2. Disclosure: Joshua Kevin is an Associate for East Ventures. East Ventures is an investor pf PO.  ↩

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“What Golf has taught me about Entrepreneurship” and more discussions at Pluggd.in Forum

Pluggd.in forum is a high engagement community site that is serving as a platform for entrepreneurs to connect with each other and benefit from each others’ insights/knowledge.

Here are the latest discussions on the forum:

What Golf has taught me about Entrepreneurship

My love of golf developed during my teenage years. Playing golf with my dad and brothers was always a great bonding session for the four of us. Over the years, golf has actually helped me learn a lot about myself and entrepreneurship as well…….
It’s easy to start something with a bang, but can you finish it?
In the golfing circles, I have always been known as a good striker, I can hit the ball a hell of a long way straight down the fairway. Sure it makes getting to the green easier, but once your there, you still have to finish.
Entrepreneurship is the same way. Putting requires focus and patience. Building a business is the same way, losing focus and getting impatient is the fastest route to a 4 putt.

search volume for keywords

I would like to know search volume (relative or absolute) for certain keywords on google. Can you please point me to some sources which can help me in this regard?

Freecharge copycats

Freecharge has defined a new business model – something that nobody in India ever tried. What’s interesting is a set of clones that the company has inspired. Is this the NEXT big thing?

Questions

Legal implications of working with a firm(MNC) and partnering in a start up?

What are the general/Legal implications of working with a firm(MNC) and partnering in a start up? How to tackle it?

Are you paying Service Tax on Adsense Income?

Many say consult a CA but not many CAs know abt Google Adsense (GA) program in India, making it tougher to get some guidance.So thought of asking here as people from various varied interests congregate here .

My question is -  ‘I earn more than 10lacs /annum through GA.Should I pay service tax (ST)?

Allotting fair stakes to founders if all of them are not equally involved in a startup

What is the best way to allot stakes to founders of a startup if all of them are not equally involved?
For example,
- Some of them are working full time and some of them still have their jobs and work part time.
- Some of them are ready to invest some money but some of them cannot invest any money.
We plan to keep stakes equal if it gets too complicated, but is there an easy way to allot stakes so that its fair to everyone involved?

Useful Resource

• The Startup Checklist
• Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors
• Amazon DynamoDB Looks Like A Game Changer

Frustration against ecomm companies

• And now fashionandyou.com : Ecommerce is not just online selling
• How not to do ecommerce like BigAdda
• Irrelevant Marketing by Yebhi on Facebook
• Fraud from eBay India

hack

• Youtube Lyrics Finder [Chrome Extension]

Most Active Participants

Sameer, Sagar , sameerparwani, HemanPatel.

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Got questions? Have insights to share? Wanna build invisible elements in Indian startup ecosystem?, participate in the forum – there are amazing people out there, sharing insights/helping others.

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Eco capitalism in India – Time to Light the Thinking Bulb?

There has been a lot of fuss created by all the environment enthusiasts about eco-friendly products. But (on the supply side) how often does one see a complete stack of eco-friendly products in a supermarket or a big shoppe. And (On demand side) how often does one see people using eco-friendly products over more conventional ones.

There are hundreds of SMEs and micro enterprises, both in formal and informal sector, which have been operating in eco-friendly products space for many years now. But none of them could reach a ‘Pan India’ scale or get the eye balls rolling to say the least. There may be couple of reasons,

- Most of the enterprises in informal sector suffer from lack of funds and support and absence of any viable platform to sell their products.

- In formal sector, there is a significant presence of non-profit organizations and public welfare groups. Many enterprises suffer from lack of quality products and business acumen. Others offer very mundane and limited array of products which are mostly sold at one off events.

- Those that make good quality and novel products tend to be oblivious to India market. Most of their products are priced at a very high premium and are targeted towards foreigners, NRIs or people at the upper part of pyramid.

- Some others, especially individual artists and micro enterprises leverage only e-commerce platforms (like www.shopo.in) to sell their products, thereby catering to a very small chunk of consumer population.

So it would be unfair to reason out that India is not ready for eco-friendly products adjudging that Indian consumers are very cost sensitive and environment agnostic. ‘Partial success’ of some companies proves that there is a market for eco-friendly products out there if one is able to find a niche. And if marketed and sold through suitable channels, there is a good possibility that people would pay a good price for the product.

This brings us to the essence of the discussion, what can be a likely solution which can not only enable enterprises achieve economies of scale but also help eco-capitalism kick-off.

Any likely solution should touch upon following points.

1. Collaboration: “Competition should be considered only if it is not feasible to collaborate”. There is a need for all the stakeholders involved i.e. commercial waste producers, enterprises, NGOs and informal sector to look for ways in which they can leverage each other and work in synergies rather than competing against each other.

2. Visibility among masses: The products need to be visible to a much larger audience than they are now, in order to achieve desired scale. It becomes all and more important to choose the go-to-market strategy very carefully.

3. Branding: In my view, leveraging an established brand rather than trying to create own brand, can be a better option to start with. Once the products are well entrenched in the market, it becomes a lot easier to create own brand.

4. Cost competitiveness: In order to achieve economies of scale, it is imperative to keep the premium on products well within buyers reach.

Probably the best example for aforementioned points would be Terracycle, a US based company started in early 2000s which succeeded in achieving economies of scale through collaboration with the ecosystem. The company now operates in more than 15 countries and is expected to enter Chinese and Indian market by mid-2012.

There is a need to create a vicious circle of waste in the ecosystem, wherein people realize the value in waste and become a crucial part of the value chain; not only as consumers but also as resources, thereby beefing up company’s bottom as well as top line. It is only when people change their perception about waste, can there a larger change in the society be brought, and that is what any enterprise in eco-friendly space should be looking at.

[Guest article contributed by Ashutosh Garg.]

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Qihoo 360 Launches Pinterest-like Service

With the #1 online security software (user penetration hit 83.3%), second most-popular browser (user penetration peaked at 57% in last September), largest startup-page (hao360.cn, according to iResearch report) and more than 3 million users at hand, Qihoo360 could easily take the same approach as Tencent did with QQ – to capitalize on its huge user base to diversify businesses and revenue sources.

And it is doing so.

After launching two aggregate services indexing daily deals sites and luxury goods sites to tap into the ecommerce mania, the company just released its own Pinterest-like product lately, namely Woxihuan.com (我喜欢, or I like). Hats off to the innovative service over there in the Valley. A joke says, one of the many criteria taking into account when evaluating a Valley startup is, to see how many copycats it gives rise to in China. Apparently, Pinterest made it. We now have a dozen Chinese Pinterests, even Renren can’t wait to step its toe into the forefront.

Qihoo’s Woxihuan bears no difference to its other peers, you can ‘Pin’ (post) what you find interesting onto the site, and you can save all your Pins onto a certain, customized ‘board’ to organize all your stuff, say save all food-related pins onto a board called “gourmet” or whatever. The site also linked Sina Weibo and Renren, means you can sign in with either your Weibo or Renren account with no need to register as a 360 user to use the service.

If looking back, we could reveal an arguable fact that Qihoo360 rarely step into non-profitable, niche-market-oriented product territory, the company launched aggregate sites only because serving as a gateway is money-making; it powered up several open platforms just for the 3^rd apps, immense user base and the lucrative potential hidden in the interaction between them; it offered users with many free products, but mainly targeting everyday users rather than touting to just a small group of people. To me the new product is kinda off the track for the Beijing-based company.

But if we take this from another perspective, then it did make sense for Qihoo360 to push itself into the Pinterest spree here. The company owns the second largest browser in China, it can hands-down add a new feature for ‘Pinning’ stuff onto Woxihuan to streamline its use. Bear in mind that Pinterest is actually a profitable business because it can be turned into Meilishuo and Mogujie like social ecommerce service after minor amendments, just add in Taobao item links, like what j.renren.com has done. When will 360 make such change to Woxihuan, maybe soon, from what we have seen here, the service has no competitive edge in comparison to its rivals.

Related posts:

1. Energetic Entrepreneurs in China, Ed Tsai from DCM VC
2. Interview with Taiwan Start-Up Incubator, AppWorks Ventures
3. Tencent posts Q4 Revenue of 2.2bn yuan/USD$335m

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Looking For Japanese Tech Companies in Singapore? Check Out Crosscoop

Smack right in the center of Singapore at 80 Robinson Road, Crosscoop is a 8,000 square foot hotspot where you can find over 40 Japanese companies. The founder of Crosscoop, Motofumi Shoji, claims that 60 percent of Crosscoop Singapore’s companies are tech-related, including DeNA, Recruit, Mediba, Kenko, @Freaks, and GREE.

Crosscoop first originated in Japan, and Shoji explained that his Singapore office is — as he put it — “more high-class.” We have seen a sudden burst of Japanese companies flocking into the Southeast Asian market in recent months, most of them choosing Singapore as their base. So naturally, the companies who expand from Japan to Singapore are mostly heavyweight corporations. The offices have to suit their status.

Crosscoop Singapore has somewhat become one of the default landing grounds for new Japanese companies nested in Singapore. Mediba, DeNA [1], and GREE all started at Crosscoop in the last quarter. Speaking of GREE and DeNA, we can sense there’s a fun but awkward atmosphere in the office with the two rivals located in the same office space.

Besides these giants, Crosscoop also provides working stations for startups. A basic working space costs S$1,000 each month. Additional charges will be incurred if startups wish to have their own telephone lines and phone answering services. That’s still costly, but for an office located in the heart of Singapore, it is still kinda worth it!

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1. Although I understand that DeNA will soon relocate its office to Fusionopolis.  ↩

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eYantra Acquires Rewards Management Solution Startup Privilege Corner

eYantra has announced that it has acquired Privilege Corner for an undisclosed sum, we’ve learned today. India-based startup Privilege Corner provides online rewards management solutions through its platform for both employees and customers.

It is like a “gamification layer” for an online employee benefits system. For example, an employee who has done a great job can enjoy discounts that would help him save 15 percent of his annual salary. Alternatively, companies can also customize their reward program through their own points/benefit system.

Privilege Corner was founded in June 2010 by, Anshul Gupta, Nitin Mathur, Harsh Azad, and Umang Maheshwari. The startup previously raised US$200,000 from angels in December 2010. Privilege Corner’s clients include big brands like Adidas, Canon, Swatch, and Calvin Klein.

If you’re wondering what eYantra is, it is basically a “brand merchandising and corporate gifting” company. It isn’t exactly a tech company but it has a ton of companies’ data which it uses to promote Privilege Corner’s rewards management online solution.

eYantra raised private equity of $3.1 million in March 2008 from Ventureast and another $7.5 million in February 2010 from Argonaut. The Hyderabad-headquartered company has over 300 employees, with operating offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Pune.

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Alipay Enables ‘Red Envelope’ Gifting Via Social QR Codes For Chinese New Year

‘Red envelopes’ – or ‘red packets’ – are a long-standing fixture of Chinese New Year celebrations whereby money is gifted, usually from adults to young relatives. And now Alipay, China’s biggest online payment platform, is dragging the tradition into the 21st century by allowing people to create QR codes (as seen above) that can be scanned by the smartphone of another Alipay user which then wires the cash through the ether. Yes, it’s a virtual red envelope.

First, the hopeful recipient can go to Alipay’s special New Year promo page – see it here – and enter their account number, password, and then input an amount and a seasonal greeting. That generates the QR code. The potential cash transfer is limited to 2,000 RMB (US$317). These QR codes can then be shared anywhere, such as by email or on social networks like Sina’s or Tencent’s Weibo, in the hope that relatives, and perhaps even some friends, might whip out their phones and gift you some cold, hard RMB.

To do so, the giver just needs to fire up the Alipay app on their iPhone or Android handset and scan that funky black and white code. With the press of a button for confirmation, the virtual red envelope wings its way to the recipient.

I’ve noticed that the red envelope convention differs somewhat in various parts of China. In southern Guangdong province, all married folks are obliged to give these cash-stuffed packets to any unmarried relatives; while in many other areas, it’s only kids and cash-strapped university students who might receive them. But with most family members reunited for the upcoming festivities, and gifting between friends pretty uncommon, it remains to be seen how this QR system will be used.

Presumably, Alibaba has created this promo so that more cash will be spent on its own e-commerce sites – although of course the monetary gift can be used to buy items from any website or service that supports Alipay. The seasonal QR code bonanza runs until January 31st.

Going off an a bit of a tangent, if you need some seasonal entertainment, Angry Birds Seasons got a ‘year of the dragon’ update earlier today.

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7 Ultra Cool Student Projects on Lenovo’s DoNetwork [Student Startups]

Earlier this month, we talked about our theme of student startups and the initiative by Lenovo called DoNetwork. DoNetwork has been inviting ‘Doers’ and quite a few submissions have flown in in the three categories of “Classroom in a box”, “solution for traffic congestions”, and “invention of a new consumer project”.

“The Do Network from Lenovo is a platform for turning ideas into action. Every 90 days Do Network will introduce a new theme and will call for participation. You could win a Do machine or a $25,000 USD grant to help bring your idea to life.”

Here is our top picks from the submissions at DoNetwork, though not in any particular order:

PartiallySubmergedBridge: This is an innovative idea using Archimedes’ principle to design and construct bridges that are partially supported by the upthrust of the water underneath that. The idea is to have cable-stayed bridges, with the suspended part partially floating in the water. The bridge may have to have a part of it above water, allowing considerable height for ships to pass under that. The major advantage that could be achieved with this design is a reduction in cost, and an architectural marvel, and maybe permit construction of bridges across unimaginable spans of seas. There may be an extra cost involved in providing non-corrosive materials and coatings, and reinforcements to brace the kinetic energy of water, and maybe tides in certain cases, but longer spans means reduction in the total number of piers required, bringing down cost considerably.

TheUnstoppableUnstoppableMagneticWheel: The project page does not talk much about the applications of an unstoppable magnetic wheel created by means of four static bar magnets strategically placed around a four-pronged fan that has horse-shoe magnets on all its prongs, so that one side of the horse-shoe, say S-pole, is attracted by the N-pole of the static magnet and when it comes closer and the axis of the horse-shoe passes that of the static magnet, the N-pole of the horse shoe, which is now closer to the N-pole of the static magnet, is repelled. This wheel would need an initial push start, but once it maintains a kinetic equilibrium, it can perhaps run perpetually, providing a non-conventional source of cheap energy. Industry applications of this may have to be studied.

IndiaEngineered: This is a simple project, a kind of social network, aimed specifically at bringing students together from engineering colleges across the nation, and also with engineering alumni. India Engineered also aims at providing sharing of books and tutorials, online lectures, organizing contests and promoting tech fests, and providing answers to questions, a la Quora, only for engineers. While this type of model can easily go out of control with students trying to look out for other things besides engineering, but like every other social network, the success depends on the initial members that decide to become a part of it, and the lucrativeness and utility of the product, before it goes on to become viral and hugely popular.

Car-Com: This is an ambitious project aimed at reducing traffic congestion by making all vehicles on the road communicate with local and central servers. The idea is to use GPS to know the current position and speed of vehicles sharing the road on all the roads leading to the next traffic signal. Complex algorithms will then calculate the optimized timings for the red and green lights to allow minimum waiting time. While the number of calculations being done can easily reach astronomical levels in a metro city with hundreds of roads and thousands of vehicles, a real life implementation for this would mean all the vehicles on the road fitted with the GPS devices that send the location details to a configured set of servers in the vicinity, and also setting up those local servers that receive the data and sync up traffic lights. Nevertheless, it is an interesting idea, and can be put to other uses like finding parking slots, assisting in partial or complete auto-drive cars.

GravityAssistedMicroHydroelectricity: This project claims of a solution of providing hydroelectricity by lifting water from a large tank into two overhead tanks in tandem, and then letting water fall through turbines that would generate electricity.The overhead tanks will have siphons that would be raised by means of counterweights, thereby creating lesser pressure inside the tanks, forcing water to rise up by means of several smaller pipes with valves, ensuring very fast filling of the overhead tanks. The project’s files section provides detailed diagrams and there are quite some convincing animations that make you feel it may work. If successful, such eco-generators could be used in individual households or apartments as an alternative power source.

KeepSafeSafeDistance: This is a straightforward and simple though useful project that could bring down accidents on the road. The proposed system would consist of two indicators, one on the back of the car, meant for the car following it, and the other on the dashboard, for the driver of the car. The indicators would warn you if you are driving too close, within the breaking distance for the current relative speed at which you are driving. The safe distance may not be precise as it would depend on the road conditions and the quality of brakes, and the mass of the car, but can give you an approximate idea with some buffers added.

FriendsinFlights: This could well be an interesting application of social networking. As the name suggests, the application’s core would be an algorithm that puts like-minded people together and comes up with a seat allocation plan taking into account the passengers’ age, sex, likes, dislikes, profession, etc, or even the degree of separation between them Facebook, Google+ etc. The seat allocation would aim at coming up with an allotment which puts like minded people together or closer, in the hope that these passengers easily strike a chord and have a pleasant journey. Privacy concerns aside, this can be an interesting use for social networkers allowing airlines to use their public data and make the stranger next seat less so.

[Disclosure: DoNetwork is a sponsor/supporter of Pluggd.in’s student startup theme]

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