Sagar Jain, Founder

Tell us something about EK DO DHAI

“Good design makes good business”

EK DO DHAI brings a fresh and unique perspective to the daily use products and focuses on providing alternative creative lifestyles with aesthetic sensibilities with uber cool attitude. EK DO DHAI celebrates life and adds a fun element to the usual products.

What made you come up with the name ‘EK DO DHAI’?

“Sara sheher mujhe EK DO DHAI ke naam se janta hain”

It is inspired from the unique move of Knight in the game of chess unlike others which has nonlinear jumping moves. Also it’s short, easy to recall and we use them daily – dhai kilo aloo lena, 1 litre doodh etc. We are ready to explore new stuff and are keen to produce kickass products.

What is your design philosophy while creating products?

EK DO DHAI believes that humour is present all around us, but often gets overlooked in the day to day saga of life. People are so busy and occupied that they overlook the everyday humour on the streets. That is why we call EK DO DHAI is OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, and FOR THE PEOPLE. Bollywood melodrama amuses us a lot too.

Which artist inspires you the most?

I personally like Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo.

What are you most excited about at the moment?

I am excited for looking forth the customer’s reaction on our new crazy products. We are launching our website on Independence Day. Working on new products is always a good experience.

We are participating in COMIC CON Banglore (12 – 14 sept 2014) and Comic Con Hyderabad 2014 too after a very successful event at COMIC CON DELHI

How do you manage designing?

Passion in work is our motto. We brainstorm new ideas, conceptualise them and evolve them to kick ass products. Our interns help us giving fresh perspective and thinking new ideas. We have collaborated with few graphic and product designers from different design colleges. We are looking for more young passionate people with great ideas .

Making them available to people and making them smile looking at these products, is all that we work for.

We make sure that the products are not only showpieces but a utility product. EK DO DHAI is trying to create its niche in Home Décor and Lifestyle Products

Has your product got the feedback and growth you expected since launch?

The response is really positive. People really like EK DO DHAI products. We got a good response from the crazy crowd on comic con in Delhi this year. The most famous products among the people are tea time cups, DRUNK GD SHOT GLASSES,TALLI TALK BEER MUG, MARDANA BOXER and TEA TIME CUPS.

Who is your target audience?

“ek ek ko chun chunke marunga…chun chun ke”

Mainly, the young India is our target (16 to 40 years). It may include students, professionals, bachelors, newly married, young parents, people who are shifting places, party animals, basically everyone who looks out for fun can look for the products by EK DO DHAI.

What is the biggest hurdle you are facing?

As a start-up, it’s difficult to manage all the departments with limited manpower. Logistics is major hurdle. Its costs a lot of ship products safely and fast.

Have you had any failures and what did you learn from them?

Designs that don’t work teaches a lot. It helps to understand and know the customers better with every failure we face.

What one piece of advice would you give too soon to be start up founders?

Initially everything is tiring and frustrating and somethings don’t work out. But believing in yourself, keeping faith, learning from mistakes and patience do pay off!

The post EK DO DHAI – Make A Good Move! appeared first on .

Satyendra Gupta is the founder of Printasia.in. With the target to reach the Asian level, he and his team of three designers, two SEO digital expert, content writers and operation manager, have been putting efforts for almost two years to bring the company to the current level.

Here is the word from the man itself:

How did the idea of Printasia strike you?

I started with an advertising agency and my friends from different creative fields usually complain about inefficiency of available printing companies. According to them, the companies were not able to understand the exact need of the clients and usually crossed deadline, thus, this flaw gave birth to Printasia.

Satyendra Gupta

What is the biggest hurdle you have faced or are still facing?

Who doesn’t have difficulties in life? I feel they are stepping stones to success. Definitely I would say, difficulties mastered are opportunities won. Every start-up faces difficulties, so did we!  But our organised management and in depth research for two years, made us overcome all problems in a very systematic way.

But one thing that we faced really bad was the lack of customer’s cooperation and understanding for e-commerce of customised products due to lack of e-commerce awareness in the society. People have to be taught how to edit their own cards and place an order online. Thus, it usually prolonged a situation from the customer’s end.

Has Printasia received the right kind of feedback that you expected?

Yes, we have received a positive feedback from all our clients. I feel, digital marketing is an added advantage to our profession.

One thing that makes you feel great about Printasia.

Though there are lot of things that make me feel good about this company, one thing that I personally like is, we were never in a haste to launch the website. The website is designed after a long term of research and explorations. A special care was taken to keep it out of the box, unlike other existing online printing companies. The idea was to reach the masses, thus, all possible categories were listed down and worked upon.

Where do you see Printasia in next five years?

Our target is to soon reach other countries of Asia as well, so I see Printasia as a leading online printing company of the world in next few years.

Who is your inspiration?

Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Group always inspired me. He is a true hero to all young entrepreneurs. His story really taught me functionality of life.

How important is the role of social media for any start-up?

Social media plays a crucial role for the development of any young start-up. I would say “reach” and “awareness” are the two aspects which social media works out well. Definitely, social media is a compulsory tool for the progress and promotion.

Do you have any tie ups?

Yes we are working on with European hospitality e- Commerce Company.

Any advice you wish to give to the readers or young entrepreneurs?

India is a growing company and there is a big scope for online start-ups. Just work on the right direction and watch your company grow.

These words from Satyendra Gupta really make us feel that in order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure! Thus work hard on an organised planning and nothing in this world can let you down.

The post Looking for an online printing company? Try Printasia! appeared first on .

Give your hundred percent, if your idea works then perfect, if it doesn’t, then it is just not the time.

Deliverwith.me is a platform where air passengers can use their empty luggage space to carry packages from e-merchants to shoppers. The team of four gems cropped up the idea of deliverwith.me. We certainly had a great time covering them. Here are some words of wisdom for you…

The backstage Coverage

Rashid

Rashid and his wife were having a child, and so started shopping for baby products. Baby products are a bit above expensive in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which led Rashid to online baby product shops. He found an array of good products but there was another problem; shipping time would take weeks. Of course they bought baby products, both locally and online but this incident made Rashid think critically over the existing shipping process. Why does shipping have to take so long when there are thousands of people flying everyday across the globe with empty or spare luggage space? Can’t all of us use this space as an opportunity to carry products for people around the globe? This pondering led to the inception of deliverwith.me

Rashid shared this idea with Baha who immediately came on board. They needed a programming and developing wiz. The search led Baha to Bombay, India, where she met Anand.

In Almaty, Rashid approached his friend Dauren, a finance expert and thus the team of co-founders was finally formed.

It’s Simple!

Visit www.deliverwith.me and sign up through your Facebook account. All you have to do is post your trip details on the web platform, choose the size of the package you can carry (small, medium, large), and leave your contact details. Deliverwith.me executives will meet you at the airport, show you the package (open box) seal it in front, and hand it over to you. As you check in, the deliverwith.me team will receive you at the destination airport and you hand the package over to them back and they take the guarantee to deliver the package to the shopper at his/her home.

What makes it different?

According to the team, the platform is the podium of shared economy, the magic ingredient in today’s fast growing world- both population and cost wise. Only the aspect is different. The aspect of online shopping, and crowd-source delivery, the experience, the interaction is just like Airbnb– but the aspect and experience is different.

There are similar P2P (peer to peer) delivery systems, but then there comes out the issue of trust, security and abuse. Deliverwith.me works on B2P (business to people, B2C). In other words, a much needed alternative logistics for e-commerce businesses. Cheaper shipping rates for e-merchants, next day delivery for the shoppers, and an array of rewards for the travelers who carry the packages.

Hurdles in the journey

The biggest hurdle that the team faced is inertia; the resistance to change. The majority still prefers the way things are going. But change is the only constant, whether they prefer it or not. And innovation, creativity and technology play significant roles towards change.

Networking is another hardest part of the job. A small start up with a revolutionary idea still needs networking. In a country such as India, it is the hardest part which needs to be fixed at the earliest.

A big mistake that they made, is the lack of communication between the team but they have learnt a big deal from it. Everyone on the team has to be on the same page, in spite of differences.

Rat Racers around

All courier companies and airlines are their competitors hence making it all the way more difficult to be the best.

Best way of gaining clients?

According to the team, outreaching, networking and a little bit of luck is required to connect to people. Since their launch, the response received by deliverwith.me is overwhelming, but in phrases and gushes. All that matters is growth. Hence, though slow, but sure!

The whole concept is about innovating, optimizing and connecting. The wish to introduce and include pick-up points at various locations in the cities, and crowd-source the last mile delivery too are the ingenious propagations of the company to make their startup stand out from the crowd.

Working Methodology

They haven’t received any fundings as of yet, so the business is self-managed along with the help of some friends. They are in the phase of Social Media marketing and people who travel the most are often active on social media. They believe a lot of startup events across major cities are also amazing platforms to network. Hence, the team is trying its best to make sure they take part in such significant events.

Everybody is connected, universally speaking. In this space of living, sharing, interacting, learning, change, and innovation, are all conducive to growth. This is the inspiration which beholds the company’s motive together.

Wishing the team the very best of luck! Do check out Deliverwith.me and share your opinions on the startup with us.

The post Now Add Some Zeal To Your Shopping With Deliverwith.me appeared first on .

It was a great time covering Story Truck with kind cooperation of Mr. Mohan Rao, CEO and Co-founder, who told us more about his unique initiative.

Tell us a bit about your background and the path that ultimately led you towards Story Truck.

A multitude of things led me to realize that there was an opportunity in this space before I started Story Truck. I saw the difference between grandparents and grandkids that live apart. They live far away, meet once or twice a year and don’t have anything common to talk on the phone. As a result, the conversation doesn’t last long and the grandparents yearn to meet their grandchildren. I wanted to bridge this gap and hence StoryTrcuk 1.0 was born. In 1.0 you could record a story and share it with anyone. After running it for about a year or so, I realized that there was a bigger pain point than the one I was addressing. It was the lack of libraries in India. I wanted to do something about it and redesigned Story Truck to address this market.

There were two markets I was trying to address. First and foremost, I was trying to make Indian language books available to all the NRIs and secondly making books available to every child in India. In order to put our limited resources to the best possible use and stay completely focused, I started off with the NRI market. We have more than 200 books today in many Indian languages. We are constantly adding new books and will be doubling this count in the next two months. 

How long did it take to put together Story Truck?

It took us about a year to get Story Truck 2.0 to where it is today. About 6-8 months were spent in development and app approval stages.

Has it got the feedback and growth you expected since launch?

It has received a very positive feedback from the community. One of the common feedbacks I get is that there is no such app that gives you access to a large collection of Indian language books like Story truck. We are laser focused on quality from every angle. We have carefully selected our content and voice over artists. We spent sufficient time designing our app to be simple yet appealing to the eye. We are far from where we want to be but with each passing day, we are hopeful that we’ll get there.

Who do you see as your target audience?

Our target audience is any Indian parent whose children are under the age of 10. Although we only have an iPad version, which limits our target audience, we are working on a web version and an Android version of the app.

How do you differentiate from your competitors?

Competition is intense but we differentiate on three key pillars – Safety, Convenience and Selection. We want our parents to feel safe when their kids use Story Truck. In order to make them feel safe, we don’t believe in the advertising model where you can get free books and the app displays a hundred ads. We don’t want you to go hunting for books in the app store and download one-book-per-app kind of apps only to realize that it was not worth your time. Thirdly, we believe that our customers are interested in a large selection of books and that parents are willing to pay if you offer them high quality content at a reasonable price.

Where do you see Story Truck after 5 years?

I would like to see it as the one-stop shop for all Indian language books but we have to consider the challenges that face us.

What is the biggest hurdle you have faced or are still facing?

I think our biggest hurdle like most other startups is customer acquisition. This is one of the biggest hurdles for any startup because we are dealing with a finite amount of resources and are competing for the user’s attention in a crowded market.

Where do you think is the future of eBooks?

The publishing industry is going through a tremendous change. The way we consume content is going to change radically in the next five years. Whether through Story Truck or via other apps, most of us are going to be reading books on digital devices. I don’t see a demise of paper very soon but we’ll be dealing with multiple media. We may choose to read a paper book when we are at home but use our e-reader when we are travelling. Today’s generation may get so comfortable with digital medium that they may never miss paper books when they grow up!

Anything else you wish to convey to the readers via this interview?

I would like to encourage all the entrepreneurs out there to take the plunge and go after their interest! If you are afraid of falling, you wouldn’t have learned to walk, let alone run.

Thanks Mohan! Do visit Story Truck and bring your children closer to classic Indian tales and stories.

The post Miss The Old Grandma Tales? Now Connect To Story Truck For An Enjoyable Learning Experience appeared first on .

Piyush Grover and Piyush Pandey (co-founders) have come up with a great idea of The Decent Planet, a social network for making new friends within an environment that is free from obscenity, fake profiles, trolls and spammers. This makes it extremely conducive for intellectually stimulating and thought provoking discussions.

“It was the need to have a decent place where interactions will be positive, healthy, engaging, enlightening and yes funny, but never indecent. We could not find it, so we created it.”

Startoholics connected itself to Piyush Grover who shared with us his entrepreneurial journey and road to success. Here are the words from the man itself:

The Beginning of Decent Planet

Both of us, Engineers & MBAs who feel strongly about entrepreneurship and equally suck at spelling that word correctly. 

We’ve known each other for more than 8 years and always wanted to get into the entrepreneurship mode, but we didn’t know when and how.

So, one fine day, we were out having dinner and talking about how the internet has become a playground for fake profiles, spammers & trolls. The discussion continued till hours, and by that time, we had concurred to launch a platform that addresses these key issues.

Having realized the seriousness of this problem, and how (in a broader sense) it impedes the flow of intellectually stimulating discussions, and the fact that we couldn’t find a solution anywhere, we thought of coming up with a solution. 

We’re pursuing this as this affects a significant number of people (read everybody). And solving this problem can bring in a cultural improvement (culture of decency) on the internet and its impact could be humongous and in all kinds of sectors from social networking to dating, matrimony, employment filters, real- estate(renting houses).

Functional aspect

The registration works unlike any other social networking website, it’s not open for all, and decency is a mandatory prerequisite.

Someone who wishes to be a part of The Decent Planet, needs to fill the sign-up form which has some basic questions and some not-so-basic questions.

1st step: While studying their form, we try to gauge the thought process and the applicant’s interest level about this concept.   

2nd step: We check their online presence to see if there’s any tendency or history of indecency.

There’s always a pattern which makes it easier to recognize the potential trouble-makers.

Having said that, we’re working on making the sign-up process extremely authentic but at the same time hassle-free for the users.

So, we’re working on an algorithm to automate the 2nd step of checking their online presence, we’ve named it ‘Decency Quotient’. It will also serve as an automated control mechanism and as an alternative to manual selection.

It’s the environment that makes it unique

Let me start by writing, The Decent Planet is not competing with the likes (no pun intended) of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ because none of them cater to the social networking space where people can make new friends. 

Some of the websites in this space are: Badoo (our biggest competitor), Fropper, Stepout.

What differentiates us is the fact that we rely predominantly on a pro-active approach of not letting potential trouble-makers to pass through the entry barrier. None of our competitors use this approach, giving a free-run to trolls, spammers, obscenity lovers and fake profiles.

Despite culture being a non-quantifiable term, we consider it to be paramount. Hence, we’re trying to build a culture of decency, initially by applying a manual filtration process, which will eventually run in parallel to core users acting as recruiters, and finally ‘Decency Quotient’ merging with the existing setup.

Obstacles on the way

We’re sort of budget-strapped and that has been a major challenge in terms of our marketing activities. But, we’re looking at interesting and inexpensive ways to promote our venture. We went around the city meeting people & also sent e-mails to those who’re making great contributions, we gave them certificates (not that we’re any kind of an authority but as a gesture to appreciate their courage & efforts). We located them at Teach for India Campaigns, Blood Donation Drives, various NGOs. 

Since we intend to promote a culture of decency through our social network and the fact that a lot of the people we met were also tech savvy youngsters, this turned out to be a good marketing campaign.

A hard nut to crack

When you have a 9 to 5 job, you know when to switch ON and OFF. But when you’re working on your own startup, there’s no OFF. Not even while you’re asleep. So, it’s pretty hard to balance the life outside your work, especially in the initial phase of your start-up.

One Startup Mistake

We’ve made a lot of mistakes; one of them would have to be – taking too much time to launch the website. The key is to get to your target user base as early as possible, then get their feedback and iterate accordingly. There’s nothing better than positive word-of-mouth to get users.

New features in the pipeline

We intend to integrate ‘Gravity’ which will be a clean, non-intrusive, curated dating application which will take into account Decency Quotient while addressing the problem of approaching the potential ‘SO’ (significant other).

Also planning to bring in an online debate platform, 3rd party apps & social gaming, astronomy themed design, ‘The Best Of The Internet’ (feed of the best content floating on the internet where users can also subscribe to sub-categories such as The Best Of Technology, The Best Of Nature, The Best Of Business, The Best Of Entertainment etc.) and a mobile app. The feedback that we’ve got from the early users has been very encouraging and has met our expectations. It keeps us motivated.

A Million Dollar Advice

Perseverance (with positive attitude) will be THE key to your venture’s success. Most of the ‘overnight successes’ took years to be called that. There will always be people telling you what’s wrong with your startup; be open minded and take their feedback to use it to your advantage. Always be willing to learn (from anyone.)

The post For Decents, By Decents, of Decents- A Decent Social Networking Site appeared first on .

Dekh.com runs a free community called Dekh Community to engage with each other under the affiliate marketing umbrella and learn and discuss the latest trends in the field of affiliate marketing.

It has been founded by Ritoban Chakrabarti, who has spent over 5 years in the field of affiliate marketing and has trained more than 27000 affiliates globally.

About The Founder

Ritoban Chakrabarti founded MarkAce in 2010 and has been the key person behind all Dekh projects. He had the idea for Dekh in 2011 and wanted to change how affiliate marketing is done and perceived in the world.

Being an internet addict, he worked in a home office for nine months where he launched digital courses on how to build marketing.

In his career, Ritoban has been an affiliate and a merchant and has now started his journey to create an affiliate network in India. With e-commerce doing well in the country, affiliate marketing is set to play a big role when it comes to spending marketing dollars. Just to give you an idea, close to 40% of Amazon’s sales are through the efforts of affiliate marketers.

Startoholics connected with Ritoban who spoke to us about the evolution of affiliate marketing industry and the impact it could make on top lines of e-commerce players in the country. He also mentioned his own journey from being an affiliate to starting up a network.

The Eureka Moment

After being in affiliate marketing for more than 5 years, Ritoban was looking forth for a platform to connect merchants and affiliates. He realized the society is crying and demanding for the same, especially in country like India, where e-commerce is growing up as a concept.

Though Dekh started up a year back, it would not be justified to say that it has completed a year, as it took amalgamation of a lot more years to put Dekh forward.

From the very launch, Dekh has received a good response. Improvisation is a long going process.  With time, programs to connect merchants to affiliates were launched resulting in a good feedback.

The startup provided good information on websites, linking itself to social networking sites like Facebook, twitter etc. for promotional purposes. Indoor marketing and info graphics also worked for the same.

Amazon hosting services, different technologies integrated with social networks make various merchants and affiliates aware about Dekh.

Due to previous contacts and past experiences, Ritoban didn’t suffer much of obstacles in the path and Dekh proved to be a smooth ongoing process.

Ritoban’s piece of advice to new players – “Look towards the sun and the shadows will follow you.”

He is also of the opinion that young starters shouldn’t pick early as one needs to devote time and patience. Rightly said, slow and steady wins the race!

Do visit Dekh.com and share your views about this startup with us.

The post Expand Your Vision of Affiliate Marketing with Dekh.com appeared first on .