Veeble: Web- Hosting, Without Costing too much

Veeble or the ‘one who weaves’ is set to take the online world by storm thanks to the quality web-hosting service that they provide and that too at affordable pricing. A well thought out plan that was nurtured initially with a meagre pocket-money has risen to a level where they now sell their own Virtual Private Servers.

What really caught our attention was something that Ajin Baby, Chief Operating Officer at Veeble Softech Pvt. Ltd., said in the interview that we were lucky enough to conduct-

‘When we started, we were in college. It is a time when one has the freedom to fail.’

To those who think that it is too early to spread their wings and fly, to those who can’t imagine currency notes crinkling in their pockets at an age when torn jeans make style statements, here is something that we would like to say- It’s never too early when you have the desire to be at a place where few else plan to reach!

What follows is some of the interesting excerpts from the interview with Ajin Baby.

What inspired you to start Veeble?

“Urge to provide quality web hosting service for an affordable price.” When we started off Veeble, there were quite a lot of hosting providers around the globe. Some of them focused just on web hosting while some also had allied services. Many of them were established 5 to 10 years back and already had a good reputation and following in the industry. But still, we found something lacking. Quality service and affordability were hard to find by together.

Against all the odds, we decided to give it a try. We were confident to make a mark in the industry. It wasn’t an impulsive decision, rather a well thought out plan. We were clear from the beginning itself on how our services and growth would be planned.

How did you take your first step towards Veeble? Did you receive any funding from angel investors?

We started with a very low investment – savings from our monthly pocket money. We leased a single server and then sub-leased it. Pretty soon we started buying big servers and with the help of various virtualization techniques, we started selling our own Virtual Private Servers.

Ajin Baby

How long did it take to put together Veeble?

Veeble had its unofficial birth in 2009, while we were in college. Starting-up in college was a wise decision when we look back. We had the liberty to try out any idea that came to our mind without having to think much about the consequences. We had the freedom to fail. We registered as a Private Limited company in December 2011.

What is the hardest part about your job?

As we have customers from all time zones, an active 24 hours support team is a must. The knowledge of the support team members is also important. Getting knowledgeable tech executives who can work in shifts is tough for a startup, especially when everyone expects industry standard salary, which a startup might not always be able to provide.

To ensure the knowledge of the tech support team we have a three month training program coupled with the well drafted induction program. All our tech support executives are cPanel certified and have undergone a formal training on Linux.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

“Know which advices to take and which to discard”. Being a startup and also belonging to the Generation Y, advice comes in plenty. It all comes down to understanding which advices to take and blend with your goal and which ones to discard. Though it sounds easy, it isn’t. It sort of reminds us of the dialogue from the movie Prince of Persia-sands of time – “ A wise king heeds the advice of his counsel but at the end listens to his heart”. Somewhat similar is what we do in a startup.

What are your plans for promoting Veeble? Also, do you have any tie-ups?

Our primary focus is to promote Veeble through our affiliates and partners. Most of our promotions are done by Word Of Mouth from our clients/affiliates, which itself helps add a lot of value to our brand name. As such, we haven’t got into a full scale promotional activity. But we do have plans to go forward with it after our next stage of development.

Do you have any new features in the pipeline?

We plan to focus more on our development wing. Hosting division of Veeble has become self-sustainable and is growing good. But to add value, one has to venture into product development and that’s exactly what we’re looking forward to.

We are trying to bring everything that a website owner would need under one roof- from domain registration to server administration. We already are working on building a common dashboard for the user to handle all of his website related activity from one common platform.

Who would you say is your biggest competitor?

We don’t like to think small. GoDaddy, Hostgator amongst others. Competition has always been stiff in our domain. However, the market opportunities are huge and we focus to tap the most from it.

A piece of advice that you would like to give to young entrepreneurs would be-

Product ideas aren’t made by wanting to make a product. Just look around, identify a problem and then find a solution. It’s true to say “Dream big and start small”. Focus on building your product for a small market first and then scale higher rather than trying to begin off at a high scale initially.

Seems like a good example of the proverb- ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’

Here’s wishing the Team of Veeble success and of course may you keep weaving dreams of many and in the process, may the weavers prosper!

Good luck!

http://startoholics.in/2013/09/veeble-web-hosting-without-costing-much/

Flixstreet- Best Street for Bollywood Fans

The weekend is creeping in yet again. Did a much awaited Bollywood movie release this week? Planning to book tickets and to go watch it for sure with not to forget –a tub of popcorn and coke! Why? What is it in there that makes you leave every other thing in the world, spend your money and time to sit and watch three hours of your life roll away like the credit lines towards the end of the movie? Oh, did someone just tell me to shut up?

For all those die-hard fans of Bollywood, here is an encyclopaedia so that the next time you seem to be at a loss of content to brag about your Bollywood Gyaan, you can just look up to Flixstreet.in which is an easy way to search everything about movies.

Flixstreet gives one the opportunity to discover all about Bollywood movies, that one will love (and hate too- by chance at least!) and add to your watch list. Here one can share movie ratings, reviews and recommendations for the movies that one has watched and even follow what their friends are watching and the movies they’ve enjoyed and recommended.

Sounds interesting? Here’s a sneak peek into Flixstreet’s journey, thanks to their team whom we got to interact with.

Becoming Self-Sufficient- Literally!

Flixstreet was created and is maintained by a small group of movie lovers who grew up on the 90’s Bollywood flicks (yes, those were the days!). To them, movies are still their first passion.

It was when the movie Housefull 2 released. Arindam and Tithee (Arindam’s wife) were reading the critics’ reviews and almost all of them had rubbished the movie. But their friends on Facebook and Twitter were raving about the movie. They went ahead and watched the movie and quite liked it. That was when they thought that social recommendations were a big and relatively correct factor when it came to deciding which movie to watch and the same was missing then for Indian movies in the online space. To make the whole story short, they started Flixstreet to solve their own problem!

They did a quick survey of about 200 people to validate some of their hypotheses and quickly followed it up with a blog called ‘Matinee Masala’ that tested a few more. The response that they got was encouraging enough for them to start building a web product around that very concept. They launched an MVP in about two- three months (in early December 2012 with about 2-3 months of effort) and started collecting feedback from the early users. A couple of Arindam’s business school friends invested a seed amount at the beginning.

Life isn’t as Rosy as the Big Screen

If one thinks about it as an enjoyable and awesome ‘job’, to them I would like to remind that this team is currently spread across two time zones, so you can very well imagine their situation. Just when dusk sets in at one corner of the world, the other corner of the world awakes to a new day, to look for another new movie!

Reaching Out

Currently they are focusing on quite a few channels both online and offline for promoting Flixstreet. Social, email marketing and SEO are their prime focus areas when it comes to advertising. They are also planning to launch an Android app hopefully by this year end. They are also adding some cool new features around the concept of ‘movies made social’.

When we asked them about their competitors, in terms of traffic, they responded that since most users start with a search on Google, any website that appears ahead of them in the search-rank becomes their competitor. In terms of product, there are a few start-ups in the Movie space with a different approach that they would like to keep an eye out for.

Best advice that Team Flixstreet received- “Never forget your early users because they believed in your product when no one else did.”

Do we hear the pulsating vivid rise in your motivation? Well, this was Flixstreet for you.

They had a little message for all budding entrepreneurs. In order to not sound domineering, this is what they said- “From the little experience that we have got, the one advice we would like to give is to start building out the product you have in mind. Having a prototype that gets you the feedback you need to validate your hypotheses and also helps to get the talent you are looking for to grow your team.”

Sometimes the love for Bollywood can lead to great things like these. So the next time you find yourself crooning to the tune of one of the latest numbers, don’t hold back yourself. Let the music flow; let it break the redundancy of your mind that tells you that maybe there are better things to do in life because sometimes the better things can wait, for your heart desires something else! Go with your heart.

Flixstreet, hats off to your counterattack to insufficiency!

http://startoholics.in/2013/09/flixstreet-best-street-bollywood-fans/

Likewyss- Connecting You To Your Type!

At a time when people are busy adding friends on their social networks just to add on to the already large friend list, here was a person who dared to think differently. ‘Why do I need to be friends with someone whom I was studying with someday, somewhere or am working with, when we so painfully can’t think of being friends in real life? It is just for the sake of him/her being there that he/she is there.’

If you are one of those people who think that way, then there is nothing wrong with it. In fact it’s your view so it definitely is priceless!

In a corner of the world, that very idea was set to make waves. The brainchild of Gokul Nath Sridhar and his friends at BITS Pilani, Inu or Likewyss (as it is presently called) is a platform where it connects you to the things you love as well as to the other awesome people who share your views on those things. Team Startoholics caught up with Gokul , Founder and CEO of Likewyss to find out more about its offerings and uniqueness.

Have a look at a quick introduction to Likewyss.

If you are one of those people who love to know about startups; you follow someone pertaining to that area on Twitter, like Paul Graham. But then, Graham’s tweets don’t necessarily have to be only about startups. So the signal-noise ratio when it comes to news channels is quite low. Therefore, they are trying to shift the focus of news we get on our browser to our interests, rather than a bunch of people’s.

There was a trend in their campus back in 2011 where people took playful jibes at each other by creating fake profiles for them on Facebook. Unfortunately, he became a victim of this prank. And the one created for him was particularly demeaning and humiliating. That was when the seed for Likewyss was sown in his mind. He thought, ‘People whom we know are not necessarily our friends but people whom we don’t know, could be.’

So he set about designing a platform that connected like-minded people with the help of a few juniors. On June 24th, 2012, Inu was officially launched; about a year after the initial idea was conceived. Sometime later they found out that they had made a lot of mistakes , technically and otherwise, and it took them quite a while to find the product-market fit. With Likewyss, they believe to be  one step closer to the solution than they were with Inu.

Here are tidbits from the interview with Gokul.

How is Likewyss different from the other portals?

Likewyss can be construed as a social news platform that aggregates content primarily based on your interests, instead of people you follow. There are a few other platforms that do interest-based content aggregation wherein you choose a few topics and content from magazines that are presented to you. Here’s the thing – we believe news sharing is done most effectively via a micro blogging model, and that the greatest content generators are you, the people, not magazines. And as far as the social networking capabilities of Likewyss are concerned, other social networks go by the model ‘People Bond People’. We think ‘News Bonds People’.

How has the response been from the customers?

Since the days of Inu, we have enjoyed immense love and support of people all over India and the press. Inu was covered by prestigious newspapers such as The Hindu, The Times of India, etc. and we hit 1,000 users within 10 days of our initial launch. Although we restricted signups beyond a certain point as we struggled to scale with Inu, I can say that our customer base grew pretty well and the love we received was an overwhelming and a humbling experience for me.

As far as Likewyss is concerned, we launched a beta campaign in the first week of June and since then over 3,000 people have signed up requesting for invites. My only regret now is that we have missed a few deadlines with respect to launching of the site, but thankfully the problem is being resolved right now, and you can hope to see Likewyss opened to the public very soon.

Gokul Nath Sridhar

What challenges have you faced in your entrepreneurial journey? What has been the toughest decision you have had to make lately, if any?

Gaining trust and support from family is an ordeal that every Indian entrepreneur is subjected to. Although my parents are pretty cool, they were worried that I might be throwing away a secured life in exchange for the freedom  to chase my dreams.

Money is fungible, so I never worried much about how Inu (or Likewyss) was going to raise funds. Thankfully, we are angel-backed now.

For me, the toughest thing has been firing people. I’ve fired a few guys and no matter how stone-hearted you try to be, it’s gut wrenching and difficult. When you work in a startup as a team, inadvertently you begin to trust your comrades a lot and when someone is not performing, someone whom you trust, someone who is a close friend, firing him/her becomes very difficult. Startups have this rule — ‘Be slow to hire and quick to fire’. I hate that because that decision hurts me a lot.

What are your plans for promoting Likewyss? Also, do you have any tie-ups?

Social media marketing and incentivising users to get their friends to signup remain our top choices for customer acquisition. There’s nothing more compelling for me to use a product than my close friend telling me it’s great and I should try it out.

Also, we are following the #1 rule for content-based startups to gain traction – we are making the content on Likewyss inherently shareable across major social media channels and we are working hard to make that experience as seamless as possible.

We do not have any strategic tie-ups at this point, but it is something that we will be looking into.

Who according to you is your biggest competitor?

I think our biggest competitors in the content-aggregation part are Zite, Vu News, etc. and in the social-media part, the behemoths obviously — Twitter, Facebook, Quora, etc.

Where do you see Likewyss in the next 5 years?

We want to think of ourselves as the future of news and media PERIOD.

We want you to wake up in the morning, and be served the news we think you should know, right on your dashboard on Likewyss.

What more do you wish to include to take Likewyss to the next level?

To speak about innovation, I think we are going to be focusing on mobile phones as I feel that is where the big bet lies for any web-based startup today. Additionally, we are big fans of location-based services and computing areas such as augmented reality.

What are you most excited about at this moment regarding Likewyss?

I’m very excited about the team and the technology behind likewise. We are hardcore Pythonistas, open-source enthusiasts and are willing to learn new things every day. I love this team and I love what we are building.

So here was an Indian who stood up against the odds that almost every Indian would face when beginning a new start-up. In a society where children somehow always remain just children, it is a challenge of a different kind to rise amongst one’s near and dear ones and show them that you have indeed grown up and can stand on your own feet.

Opposite poles attract they said. Guess it’s time for like poles to attract now!

We wish the Likewyss team all the best!

http://startoholics.in/2013/09/likewyss-connecting-type/

Earn While You Spend! Surprised? Read on…

I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist. 

- Tammy Faye Bakker

The husbands would like to disagree about it thanks to the increasing prices of everything, especially ‘women’s stuff’. Ah! Not being a female chauvinist but then wouldn’t all men like to agree on that part? But then maybe for once, they would have a reason to cheer!
“Let the lady shop while I can earn a few extra bucks. If nothing else, maybe it would pay the fuel charges that I waste when I have to drive her to that newly opened designer boutique at the end of the lane!”
That thought seems delightful! Doesn’t it? Here’s Cashkaro to the rescue. Before all the ladies out here start feeling left out and planning to stop reading this, rejoice because there is reason enough for you to continue your passion, your one-true love- Shopping.
By the way I came across women who detest shopping and would love to have someone else who does all the shopping for them. ( Does that make the men here drop their jaws? Well, I am serious and I am one of them too. No you may not try to pursue me.) Well jokes apart, we came across cashkaro.com and we were delighted. That’s when we thought of catching up with their team and we were lucky enough to have a tete a tete with Swati Bhargava, CEO & Cofounder of cashkaro.com.
How would you describe Cashkaro.com to a person who has just heard about it?

Swati Bhargava

Cashkaro is a Cashback and coupons website. We enable people to get maximum savings on anything they buy online, be it clothes, mobiles, books, travel or even mobile recharge. We work with 350+ top brands like Snapdeal, Myntra, Yatra, Dominos, Jabong etc.
If you go to any of these sites via Cashkaro and then shop, you get cash back on your purchase. Basically, the retailer pays us commission for every sale, and we give you cash back from this.
As an example, for going to, say Snapdeal via Cashkaro you can get 7.5% cash back on your purchase. Similarly you get Rs. 180 Cashback at Myntra, Rs. 282 at Jet Airways and so on. Even better, we give Cashback in addition to Coupons, ongoing Sales & discounts. The savings are amazing and one can save double at Cashkaro compared to all other coupon sites in India.
What was the motivation behind the idea of Cashkaro.com? How long did it take to put it together?
Cashback as a concept is very popular and successful in the West. Such websites are commonplace and widely used in the UK, US and Europe. With e-commerce booming big time in India, we thought why not bring this concept to India as well. We Indians love a bargain so we thought the response to Cashkaro will be good!
Before launching Cashkaro, we worked on its development and building partnerships for roughly six months and launched it in mid-April 2013. We are continuing to grow our retailer partner base and are now in fact being approached by many retailers themselves who want to get featured on Cashkaro.
What differentiates Cashkaro.com from the other portals?
What gives Cashkaro an edge over Coupon-only sites like Coupondunia is the added “cashback” element that a Cashkaro member can earn. While coupon-only sites provide coupons to their members, Cashkaro provides the same coupons too but with additional Cashback on top! This makes the savings from Cashkaro more than double compared to Coupon-only sites as new members can get both Cashback and coupons in one place. We believe that once you shop through Cashkaro you will never shop at a coupon site again. What sets Cashkaro apart is that we not only acknowledge positive feedback but also embrace negative feedback. We try our level best to convert these negativities and are always looking to deliver better.
How is the response from the customers?
The response from Cashkaro users has been phenomenal. Cashkaro members have already earned a lot of money and some frequent users have saved up to Rs. 15,000 too. Cashkaro’s  Facebook page boasts of over 2,50,000 fans. The comments, photos and interactions are also growing. We are currently expanding to other social media channels and are looking to make a mark soon throughout social media. Of course SEO, email marketing and other online initiatives are key pillars of our growth as well.

What challenges have you faced in your entrepreneurial journey? What has been the toughest decision you have had to make lately, if any?
I think the biggest challenge I have faced in my entrepreneurial journey has to be the challenge of finding the right people and putting together the perfect team.
For any business, and especially a start-up to succeed it is important to find a way to motivate everyone in the team and to instill the same passion in everyone that the founders have. We are really lucky that our team is absolutely awesome though.
The toughest decision I’ve had to make thus far has to be my decision to move to India. After spending 11 years in London, now that Cashkaro is doing well it is becoming increasingly important for me to be on the ground in India.
What are your plans for promoting Cashkaro.com? Also, do you have any tie-ups?
Cashkaro is a very social media friendly brand and this focus on social media is a key element of our growth strategy. We will continue promoting and building our Facebook channel and now we are also looking at various promotional partnerships. Of course, SEO, email marketing and other online initiatives are key pillars of our growth.
We are also looking to tie-up with large corporates and enable employees to save using Cashkaro. Cashkaro can help corporates save ‘big money’ and can also help employees by providing them benefits  from its offers and discounts.
Who would you say is your biggest competitor?
In the cashback space, our biggest competitor has to be Pennyful. While data for the same is not very easily available, I think do we have a larger online presence.
In the coupons space, Coupondunia is doing very well. They have been in the market longer than Cashkaro but of course our offering to members is better i.e. we give both Cashback and Coupons.
How do you see Cashkaro.com as in the next 5 years?
In the next 5 years, I see Cashkaro as India’s No.1 online destination for all kinds of discounts, offers, vouchers, etc. We are building towards this goal and are envisioning Cashkaro to maintain its market leader position over the next 5 years.

What more do you wish to include to take Cashkaro.com to the next level?
To take Cashkaro to the next level, we plan to tie-up with large corporates and also expand to other verticals too. Currently we are working with more than 350 online retailers and are contacted by more and more every day. We intend to take this number to a 1000 but are looking to do this in a streamlined and controlled manner so that we can bring value to each and every one of these 1000 partnerships. We are also looking at adding various other value added services for our members.
What are you most excited about at this moment regarding Cashkaro.com?
As of now what we are most excited about is the newly launched ‘restaurants’ discounts section’ for our Mumbai and Delhi audience. Saving on food is something I think every one of is looking for and soon we will have more partnerships in other cities of India too.
Cashkaro has a new e-mail marketing strategy which we are very keen to implement and play around with. We also have exciting contests and apps coming up for blogger, Facebook gaming apps too and more, so lots to look forward to! With all this excitement, Cashkaro is buzzing with enthusiasm and there is a lot of energy around each and every one of these projects.
Here’s wishing that your dream does come true soon! All the best to the team of Cashkaro.com.

http://startoholics.in/2013/09/earn-spend-surprised-read/

Window for Window – Shopping!

Hidden away from their wives and inspired by the numerous Hollywood war movies this team wanted to name their project “XPG-29″ ( Pronounced: Xulu Papa Golf  Two Niner).
They felt nothing short of heroes about to save the world. They were just about to buy walkie-talkies, Ipads and Tabs for their office and stars for their shoulders, when their wives’ group busted their little lair. Walkie-talkies/ Tabs/ iPad orders were stashed out, code names were stripped off and their Xulu Papa Gold Two Niner became Purplista on 12/12/12.
So, what is Purplista?
It is a website that helps anyone looking for any product and also makes sure that they direct the person to the nearest place where they can get it. Purplista is the one-stop spot for people who want information which they always wished to get from their neighbourhood shopping destination. Instead of consumers having to go from shop to shop to know prices Purplista brings the shops to consumers. They have information regarding where you can find a product that you want somewhere near you to its prices and deals. Local shopping information now seems just a click away.
In their own words- “We aim to bring your store next door much closer to your living room or kitchen. You should never miss a hot deal or the best price going on in your neighbourhood while you still catch up on your favourite TV serial or spend some cherishable moments with your partner on a candle light dinner.”
Team Startoholics met up with team Purplista. Setting up a complete house seemed like a daunting task since they had to run around to buy different things from different shops. To add on to their woes, not every shop had what they would have liked to buy for their houses! That’s when the thought of Purplista struck them. If everything was in one place, and if they could know which shop to go to even before stepping out of the house, they could save a lot of time and not to mention fuel. Thus the idea for Purplista was born.
Story Behind the Christening of Purp‘list’a
On being asked why they zeroed down on the name Purplista, pat came the reply from Siddharth Srivastava- “Oh my wife loved it. That’s a part I dare not even question. Nonetheless, purple is a colour associated with shopping and retail very often. You can also create a list of items on the website, of the items you want to shop.”

Wheels of Motion
They have signed up retailers from all over the city. Whenever a user searches for a product, they get the information from 5 – 10 km radius of that user’s location and present it to that user. They can very well move the pointer on the map to check other places in the city too.  With just a single click one gets the availability of the product and it is sent by SMS too.
On being asked about their USP (Unique Selling Proposition), the team said, “We don’t think we have found anyone else offering offline prices the way we do.”
There certainly is a lot of curiosity about Purplista. Users who have used it find it not only interesting but also very convenient. Imagine getting to know about all the stores around you while you are in the comfort of your home on your couch. Now imagine it again with 41 degrees temperature out there in summer!
Deepening their Roots
As it’s a new service offering in India, they have to give simple basic education about how it all works before signing up retailers. This will have to be done till this concept gains further popularity. They said, “No one has ever refused its value till date so that’s what keeps us going.”
They did commit mistakes along the way. Thankfully, none were serious ones and they left no stones unturned to correct those.
They are sustaining their business with revenue streams such as subscription fees from their retailers.

The ‘Aha’ Moment!
The ear to ear smile they all had on day one when they started receiving their ‘Check Availability’ request remains memorable to them. They were more than happy that consumers were trying out their service sooner than they expected.
If it wasn’t for Purplista, they aren’t really sure of what they would have been doing. But they all were always sure that they wanted to start something ‘new’.   
Next on the Radar
They are planning to move into other segments too apart from consumer electronics.  They want to get into musical instruments, furniture and other products that people like to buy offline.
On requesting for a piece of advice for soon to-be start-up founders, they humbly said, “We ourselves have not yet reached a stage where we can advise others. So we will hold on this one for a few more years.”
This was the story of a team which started a website for ‘man’kind so that the ‘woman’kind doesn’t go any more crazy when they meet up with issues of making a house a home!

http://startoholics.in/2013/09/window-window-shopping/