MobileMotion Technologies

The rapid proliferation of mobile devices to all corners of the world has compounded the need to service a class of devices that will be the primary Internet access device for many. It is with the purpose of serving this global market Sharat Potharaju and Ravi Pratap M started MobileMotion Technologies in June, 2009 in Bangalore, India.

MobileMotion''s mission is to make it possible for people to consume the Internet on any mobile device on the planet by accelerating the availability of mobile Internet content and delivering it to the widest possible audience.

The firm is now trying to accelerate the creation of mobile Internet content in a manner that reaches the widest possible audience and, through our products, make it possible to engage mobile users in ways that go beyond SMS and voice applications.

The two founders seeded the company from their own resources and then raised a round of angel capital in 2009 from IIT Madras batchmates and alumni. So far, they have invested about Rs 35 lakh in building the company.

Prior to founding MobileMotion Technologies, Sharat spent over 3 years doing investment banking at Merrill Lynch in New York, where he worked in both the Corporate Finance and Leveraged Finance groups. In this role, Sharat assisted clients in deriving customized solutions to the corporate finance issues they were facing. His work spanned a diverse set of industries, including but not limited to, financial services, healthcare, retail, technology, etc., and also included executing multi-billion dollar financing and merger and acquisition transactions.

He has a Masters in Engineering Management (MEM) from Duke University, and a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.

A compulsive technologist‚ with roots in the Linux/open source world, having contributed code and effort to open source projects such as GNOME,  Mono, and libcurl while at college and graduate school, Ravi Pratap is responsible for all technology strategy, product innovation, and engineering execution at MobStac.

Before founding MobStac, he spent 4 years at a technology startup, Hillcrest Labs, based in Washington D.C. Hillcrest Labs is where he learnt the ropes of running a start-up as he took on multiple roles in product engineering, customer program management, offshore strategy, and trade show marketing.

He has an M.S. in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis, and a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.

MobStac

MobStac is a software solution that allows users to convert their websites into a customised, mobile-friendly format. MobStac is available to users in three versions. The basic free version allows website publishers to give their site a mobile-friendly version. It also provides search engine optimisation, video support and integration with ad networks, among other features. The MobStac Pro, supports up to 250,000 page views, allows users to manage up to three sites on one account and supports custom ads. The third version for larger companies is  called MobStac Enterprise.

MobileMotion gained a few high-profile publishers such as The Hindu, The New York Times and The Guardian as part of its enterprise portfolio. The customer base spans 32 countries and, according to the company’s estimates, the end-user base would span 112 countries. 

Alma Mater- Remember your halcyon days

Want to recall the good old campus days? Well here is a good idea. Just wear a funky t-shirt, which has your schools name and logo on it. All you need to do is just book a swanky t-shirt from Alma Mater.

Alma Mater, a brilliant concept by ex-students of Bishop Cotton Boys School, designs campus merchandise, helps alumni to disclose the names of their schools on T-shirts.

Established in July 2009 by Varun Agarwal and Rohn Malhotra who initially just wanted a sweatshirt with their schools name on it, Alma Mater has since been successful in partnering with some of the most prominent institutions across the country to provide their present and former students with apparel and other memorabilia to help them remember the good old’ days.

Alma Mater aims to provide students and alumni of premier schools and colleges across India with a means of expressing their pride at being products of such reputed institutions.

By making the apparel available online, customers now have the opportunity to feel connected with their alma mater at just a click of a button in any city across the globe.

Initially, a Facebook community helped Alma Mater to reach out to its target audience. Today Alma Mater caters to alumni across India and abroad through their website www.almamaterstore.in. About 30000 to 40000 students have bought customized products from the company so far, 3000 to 4000 sales a month is the present average. So tell everybody about the pride moments you spent in college that matter for you. 

Salman Khan turns investor, picks up stake in Yatra.com

Bollywood actor Salman Khan has picked up less than 5percent stake in online travel portal Yatra.com.

Bollywood star Salman Khan has picked up a minority stake in the Gurgaon-based online travel portal Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd. As part of multi-layered deal, the actor will also been the brand ambassador of yatra.com. The portal will soon launch a marketing campaign, which will be featured by Salman Khan with a marketing budget in excess of Rs 30 crore.

Recently, Bollywood star Karisma Kapoor has invested in a leading Indian e-commerce store for baby and mother care products, Babyoye.com. Karisma has an undisclosed stake in Babyoye.com, which provides high-quality products and services all at the click of a button.

Launched in 2006, Yatra.com recently acquired event portal, BuzzinTown and is in the process of   consolidating operations in larger cities such as Mumbai and Delhi and entering smaller towns in India.

Salman Khan’s NGO- Being Human will also benefit from this association since Yatra.com will make a provision to enable its customers to contribute a token amount to Being Human every time a transaction takes place on the site. According to the reports, the company will also sell Being Human merchandise on its website.

Yatra is currently backed by a series of investors including Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Reliance ADA Group’s Reliance Venture Asset Management, Television 18 (TV18) Group, and Intel Capital. In April 2011, the company had raised  Rs 200 crores funding from Valiant Capital Management, Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital in order to expand its hotels and holidays business and make acquisitions. 

Startup Village: India’s first telecom incubator

Infosys co-founder and co-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan is chief mentor of the Telecom Innovation Hub.  

The country’s first Public Private Partnership (PPP) telecom business incubator – ‘Startup Village’ will come up in Kochi, Kerala in the second week of April with a projected investment of Rs 100 crore and the aim of nurturing over 1,000 student start-ups.

The Startup Village will provide a vibrant ecosystem for start-ups to create breakthrough technologies for the global telecommunications industry. The campus will have full 4G network, advanced telecom labs and also provide all services including legal, intellectual property, accounting, full furnished office space, video conference rooms and virtual office services that are required for a student to start a company even while in college.

The project is being set up by the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) under the DST, and the Kerala Government-run Technopark, in collaboration with MobME Wireless - a private firm which began as a student start-up and has grown to become one of India’s top 10 emerging companies.

Startup Village aims to incubate 1,000 product start ups over 10 years and start the search for a billion dollar company from a college campus by turn of this decade.  Infosys co-founder and co-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan is chief mentor of the Telecom Innovation Hub. 

One Click: Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com

Indeed, Richard L Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com starts promisingly, with its breezy narration of how Bezos learned from early mistakes, developing his site by trial and error, applying the best practices of old-world bricks and mortar shops to the mechanics and techniques of online

The story of Amazon.com and its founder is a fine introduction to the era of the dot-com boom that happens in late 90s. Indeed, Richard L Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the rise of Amazon.com starts promisingly, with its breezy narration of how Bezos learned from early mistakes, developing his site by trial and error, applying the best practices of old-world bricks and mortar shops to the mechanics and techniques of online.

Through his book Brandt provides a riveting account of a business success story, with Bezos obviously playing the lead role, his rise from computer nerd to world- changing entrepreneur. Brandt emphasises Amazon's focus on customer satisfaction and Bezos's obsessive micro-management.

The story begins by discussing the "1-Click" ordering method available on Amazon; its business model is deceptively simple: make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won't think twice. It can almost be summed up by the button on every page: "Buy now with one click."

In the summer of 1994, Mr. Bezos quit his job in New York as a vice president at the financial-services firm D.E. Shaw. He and his wife, MacKenzie, moved to Seattle to take advantage of the explosive growth of the Internet and to start Amazon. Most of 17 chapters are devoted to a rigorous examination of what happened after Bezos arrived in Seattle. 

Their first rental, a three-bedroom house in the suburb of Bellevue, cost $890 a month. Amazon was launched literally in a garage on July 16, 1995, just as masses of people started moving onto the Internet and before many competitors had created strong commercial sites. The company did its IPO in 1997, when it purchased its first giant warehouse. By 2000, it recorded annual losses of $1.4bn and was 'the biggest money loser on the internet', moving from 'internet poster child to internet whipping boy'. By 2010 it was worth more than $80bn, having launched the Kindle and pioneered cloud computing. The company's original name, Cadabra, was nixed after someone misheard it as "cadaver."

The company's customer service- which Bezos later called "the cornerstone of Amazon.com"-started with the founder himself answering emails. By 1999 it was manned by 500 representatives packed into cubicles and answering customers' questions.

Bezos always tried to improve the Amazon site. In June 2008, Amazon filed patent application titled "Movement recognition as input mechanism." Customers may soon be able to make purchases simply by nodding their heads at their computer, Kindle or cellphone. Industry wags have dubbed it the "1-Nod patent."

One Click is a 191-page book and short in stature, making it a quick read. While footnoted and indexed, it may not cover much new ground to those who have followed Amazon from the start.

Through detailed research and interviews with Amazon employees, competitors and observers, Richard Brandt has deciphered how Bezos thinks, what drives his actions and how he makes his business decisions. His success can be credited to his forward-looking insights and ruthless business sense.

Author Richard L. Brandt is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about Silicon Valley for more than two decades. He is well known in the technology community as a former correspondent for Business Week. He is also the author of ‘The Google Guys’ about the founders of Google. Richard lives in San Francisco.

 The book seeks to answer the question of how Bezos not only succeeded but has come to dominate - and fundamentally change -the book business and shopping itself.