In this video, Sanjay Anandaram (Venture Partner – Seed Fund and Advisor Ojas Ventures) talks about 5 things to keep in mind while starting up.

We loved this quote from Sanjay – ” If the chemistry (between the core team) is not right, the arithmetic will never work out.” and ” Apart from your own self, who else loves your idea ? “. Watch this one for more on 5 things you want to know about starting up.

Sanjay Anandaram is a Venture Partner with Seed Fund.He has spent over 2 decades as an IT industry executive, an entrepreneur, a VC, an advisor to early stage funds, start up mentor and teacher. He’s a founding partner of JumpStartUp, an early stage VC fund set up to invest in technology and technology enabled businesses that leveraged India. He brings significant international experience involving new business creation and business development in India, US, Asia, Middle-East and Africa.

Prior to founding JumpStartUp, Sanjay founded Neta Inc., a venture capital backed Silicon Valley software startup that was acquired by Infoseek (Disney). In 1999, Sanjay returned to India and founded VentureKatalyst, India’s first online publication aimed at entrepreneurs. Before Neta, Sanjay spent many years with Wipro (NYSE:WIT) in their Global R&D and spear headed several new business development initiatives in India and the US.

Tired of listening to people’s advice on starting up ? ….Watch this video…..as its time to go out and experience

Jaya Jha  is an entrepreneur, techie, author and speaker. She has done her B. Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur and MBA in Marketing & Strategy from IIM Lucknow. She has worked as a Product Manager at a start-up and Google. She co-founded Pothi.com, one India’s first POD backed publishing platform, and actively runs it.

Watch this interesting video where Jaya  shares her opinion about the information overload, we (as entrepreneurs) experience in terms of the advice we get from people on starting up ,what to do and what not to, to fit the bill of an entrepreneur.

About Pothi.com, Summary town

Founders: Jaya Jha & Abhaya Agarwal
Founded in: Pothi.com -February 2008, Summary Town – June 2012
Headquarters: Bangalore
Industry: Consumer Publishing

In this video Binny Mathews (Co-founder – Dezyre.com) talks about the benefits of online skill development and its impact.

DeZyre.com is an Online Academy that provides job relevant skill Certification courses through the internet. Expert faculty from industry, teach students through a case study based hands-on methodology and provides quality, convenience and value for money to students.

About DeZyre:

Founder : Binny Mathews & Omair Aasim
Founded in : Nov 2011
Location : Chennai
Industry : E-Learning

In this Video Siddharta Govindaraj talks about 5 ways to improve user engagement for web-apps/web-startups

1. Measure the engagement
2.Eliminate humps for new users
3.Figure out a good getting started process
4.Set up an email drip marketing campaign
5.Engagement by poping up context sensitive messages inside the app.

Siddharta Govindaraj Is the founder of Silver Stripe Software ( a startup based in Chennai, India. Silver Stripe Software specialises in software that eases the pain in making software deliveries and builds Agile Project Management Tool For Lean, Nimble Teams) and Siddhartha has also been the Co-founder of the Chennai Open Coffee Club since August 2007.

About Silver Stripe Software :

Founder : Siddharta Govindaraj
Founded in: 2007
Location : Chennai
Industry : Computer Software

Zopnow.com is an online hypermarket for daily household needs. They are currently operating in South Bangalore and doing a very good job of delivering groceries on time at doorstep with an an excellent customer service.

In this interview B.K.Birla ( Founder – Zopnow.com ) talks about his startup journey so far and shares some key insights in to the online grocery market in India.We loved this quote from B.K.Birla ” In a start up people join people, people don’t join the company”

More in this video about :
1.the very early days of starting Zopnow
2.the key learnings as the CTO at asklaila, which were taken over to Zopnow
3.on choosing the co-founder (Mukesh Singh, ex-CTO Makemytrip.com),
4.on how not to be obsessed with competition and instead be obsessed with customers
5.on getting the 1st paying customer
6.And on how to make the entire back-end management more efficient being an e-commerce business.

About Zopnow :

Founders : B.K.Birla & Mukesh Singh
Founded in : Sept 2011
Location : Bangalore
Industry : Online Retail

In this video Mukund Mohan talks about :

1. When and How does an entrepreneur accept that s/he has failed ?
2. How is a failed entrepreneur perceived by the startup community and family in general?
3. And about starting up, failing and more importantly learning ?

Mukund Mohan (Currently founder of Heymaya.com, a virtual admin assistant) is a serial entrepreneur and have founded & sold companies in the Internet and Mobile domains.He has also invested in the seed stage at 7 startups in India (over 3 years) and 27 in Silicon Valley (over 10 years) and has sold BuzzGain (Do it Yourself PR software company) to Meltwater in Jan of 2010. As an entrepreneur,he started and had successful exits with 3 companies before BuzzGain.

About:

Founder : Mukund Mohan
Read his Blog at : Best engaging communities
Based in : Bangalore

Carkhana is an e-Commerce platform for the automotive industry managed by a team of auto enthusiasts based out of Delhi and Bangalore.

In this video Harneet Singh ( Co-founder- Carkhana.com) talks about his bootstrapped endeavor of selling Auto accessories online and how the team is working towards making it the first choice for customers ( Vs Traditional auto showroom/garages), on scaling up, challenges, surprises in the journey and lot more.

About Carkhana.com :

Founders : Runal Dahiwade & Harneet Singh
Founded in: 2011
Location : Delhi
Industry : e-commerce

Whether you are an early stage start-up trying to acquire new customers or a large enterprise looking to expand into new territories, your success lies in the ability to find, nurture & qualify sales leads. Building an effective sales prospecting function is key to growing your business.

In this talk Praveen Majathi talks all about selling for startups and How can a startup Sell to Large Companies & handle enterprise sales?
“Sales is not about getting a Yes from a customer, it’s about converting a No to a Yes from a customer.”

Sunohre Technologies provides lead generation solutions that help companies identify and target new customers.

About Sunhore :

Founder : Praveen Majathi
Founded in : August 2011
Location : Bangalore
Industry : Business Services

In this video :

Samir talks about the 5 things every entrepreneur should know

1. Why am I embarking on this entrepreneurial journey ?
2. Venture Capital Funding is not equivalent to success – 95-96% of successful businesses dont raise money from VCs
Things VCs look for in a startup for investing :

• Large markets
• Fast Growing
• Not a me too
• Not too crowded market
• An exit that is visible for the VC.

3. You cannot build a company for an exit (exits happen).
4. Importance of the team.
5. Failure is the part of the entrepreneurial journey.

Samir is currently the Managing Director of Inventus Advisory Service. He has been an early-stage venture investor in India since 2001. Prior to co-founding Inventus, Samir led the India venture investing team for Acer Technology Ventures, where he made early-stage investments in the technology space.Samir earned his B.Tech from IIT-Bombay in 1984 and an MBA from IIM, Bangalore in 1986, where he was awarded the Best All-Round Outgoing student.

About : Inventus Capital Partners

Operational since : 1993
Portfolio Companies : Redbus, Telibrahma, Dhingana, Vivu, Sokrati, Sierra Atlantic
Location : Bangalore

In this video Ram shares his entrepreneurial journey, talks about how to get your first sales, importance of mentors, How the driver’s training program “Pawan Ko Kahin Dekha Kya” is getting viral among drivers and companies like Tata Motors, EasyCab, Ola Cabs etc, and how he is building the pipeline to train thousands in the Travel,Tourism and Hospitality industry.

GlobalTHEN‘s mission is to provide scalable, effective and inexpensive learning experiences for workforce in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry by harnessing the power of technology and interactive multimedia.”Pawan Ko Kahin Dekha Kya?” their first project is an engaging, one-of-a-kind training program for chauffeurs that will transform the way they think and work. Products in the pipeline are titled “Well Done Shruti” and “Radhika Rocks”, (working titles) andwill focus on selling skills and customer service for the TTH industry.

Backed by Angel investors like Deep Kalra (Makemytrip); Philip Wolf (PhoCusWright), Mr. Rajiv Vij (CarzonRent), Peter Harbison (Center for Asia Pacific Aviation); Cameron Jones, Vice President Commercial, SilverRail Technologies; Olivier Jager(Forwardkeys) Mr. Alok Mittal,(Canaan India)

About GlobalTHEN :

Founder : Ram Badrinathan
Founded in: 2011
Location : Mumbai
Industry : E-Learning

P.S : A shout out to Swati Maheshwari for helping with this one.