Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Internet community/networking sites in India

This week I got a chance to look into the community sites that are making in-roads in Indian e-space . I was amazed to see the number of sites that have evolved over a period of time. See for yourself ...

1. desimartini.com - your place to connect with other cool guys and girls
2. bumpedinto.com
3. goyaar.com
4. apnacircle.com
5. ibibo.com
6. hareepa.com
7. indyarocks.com
8. imom.in
9. bigadda.com
10. minglebox.com
11. toostep.om
12. instablogs.com
13. thebig.tv
14. injoos.com
15. desiji.com
16. dekhona.com
17. xbhp.com and more.....!!

However, the Indian space is still dominated by orkut.com !! I will be capturing more about the community sites in India in coming weeks !

Monday, November 10, 2008

Tata group and NEN (National Entreprenuerial Network) have announced the TATA NEN hottest startup awards to promote Indian startups in various sectors like agribusiness, consulting, education, IT, manufacturing etc. The awards are based on nominations made by people at hotteststartups.in. The awards will be announced after December 22nd. So far around 588 nominations have been recieved across various categories. Bangalore tops the list with maximum number of startups followed by Mumbai and Delhi. Nearly, 70% of the startups have been started by individuals with their personal savings. To review the list of nominated startups visit hotteststartups.in !

Sunday, November 9, 2008

MoCoLife - free SMS broadcasting solution from indiatimes !


Mocolife, is the latest value added services from Times Internet Ltd. It is powered by indiatimes 58888 which is the first premier SMS brand code in Indian mobile solutions space. Mocolife provides free SMS messaging service to Indian consumers. You can now do bulk SMS broadcast in India, subscribe for content, set up reminder services to remind you of important days through free SMS, gift a ringtone to your loved ones. In addition you can use short codes to define your number on MoCo Life which your friends, business associates, customers can use to send SMSs. For example if you are running a restaurant, you can define your Moco identity by a Moco keyword called "FOO". Your customers can then send SMS Moco FOO at 58888 in case your number is busy. Your customer will get an auto response that you will call him later while you get a SMS with your customer's number. Though this concept is similar to the missed call alerts that most of the mobile operators provide, but I see this concept evolving in future to transform into an individuals text based mobile identity! a concept similar to your email id. This has the potential to transform the way we brand products, services, people, places over mobile! For example instead of remembering a restaurant's mobile number I may send a short SMS to FOO and reserve space! While this is a free service for consumers but most of us will not know that when we register for this service we are explicitly signing up for receiving advertisements from the advertisers of Times Internet Ltd. This clause is mentioned at the bottom of the "User Agreement" option available on the registration page, which would be rarely seen by an average user !! A smart tactical move which is not in the best interest of we - the consumers! On the whole, I would still like to appreciate the initiative which may open up new avenues of increasing consumer reach for businesses. For people like me who are not good at remembering birthdays and anniversaries, this is definitely a great service. Give it a try here!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

ngpay - The mobile shopping mall

ngpay is a smart mobile shopping mall which enables you to to make purchases and payments related to host of services. You can use ngpay services to buy air and railway tickets, cinema bookings, bank transactions, books and gifts etc. It has tied up with a number of leading players in the Travel, Entertainment, Banking and Services sector. The service is free to use. All it requires you to download the ngpay application from its web site on your mobile handset. You need to provide your mobile number on the ngpay website which in turn will send you the link in an SMS response. It pretty much acts like a tradition e-commerce web site. You can select a product or service that you want to purchase. The application walks you step-by-step through each product purchase process. Once you are on the payment screen it will ask you for payment options. You can choose to pay through credit card or debit card or even pay using ITZ cash cards. You get confirmation of your transaction over SMS and email. Overall I found the application convenient and easy to use! This is a great initiative towards using your mobile handset as a payment instrument. You can see a demo here !