WHAT AND WHY??

In my previous article I have highlighted the importance of the Fashion Industry and E-Commerce. Today I will get in detail for what and why we need E-Commerce.

For any business to grow it must constantly reach new customers and communicate efficiently. If you have a physical storefront you’ve probably realized these two requirements for growth are not easily achieved.  Building an E-Commerce website allows a retail store to break-through the limitations a physical location gives, while increasing sales of its products.

E-Commerce is a term used for commercial transaction that takes place chastely through the internet. This transaction could be between a consumer and an online store, or even a trade to trade business transaction. 

No matter what is your corporate standard is, you should take a closer look at E-commerce as a way to build your business.E-Commerce provides an ability to purchase without any restraints. 

Businesses worldwide are racing to conquer the E-Comm technology. It have expanded over the last 10 years due to the increase the rate of consumers purchasing online.

For those small scale business providers or those who are passionate to build their own business and finds it difficult to set up a physical store may find it easier to Set up an online store with the help latest technology platforms for their start-ups. When implemented correctly, e-commerce website should have the following features:

1.  Large customer base

2.  Hassle free services

3.  Latest technology

4.  Always open 24* 365

5.  Shop on the go

6.  Free training

7.  Opportunity to connect

If you found this article worth reading then please step up and take time to build an E-Commerce platform for your business. It may not be as hard as you think it is, and it could have a huge positive impact on your business for years to come.

Funding roundup : A chill in startup funding

Conversations across startup ecosystems, from Bengaluru to Silicon Valley, are increasingly about the coming winter in startup funding. The chill seems to be here already, with a drastic fall in deal value week-on-week.

The number of deals in the second week of November stood at 16, with the value at $10.6 million. We are also revising our numbers for the first week of November with the addition of the fund raise done by food startup Yuvi Hospitality. The $15-million investment takes the total number of deals for the week of November 2 to 8 to 19 and overall value to $54.5 million.

But every single deal in the second week of November fell under the angel, seed or Series-A categories. This shows that early-stage investors are still quite optimistic—a sentiment that later-stage investors do not seem to share. This does not seem to be just year-end funding blues. Last year, Zomato had raised $60 million in November.

An appetite for food and foodtech

It is interesting to see that two food and foodtech companies have raised early-stage investment at a time when the news cycle has been dominated by the shut down of some foodtech startups and firings at many others. Chef’s Basket raised the biggest amount, at $6 million, in the week under review. It raised Series-A funding from venture capital firm SAIF Partners and existing angel investor Haresh Chawla, a Partner at India Value Fund Advisors. The three-year-old company offers ready-to-cook, multi-cuisine dishes that are retailed through hypermarkets and e-commerce sites.

Delight Foods, an e-commerce platform that curates mostly regional and unique food brands from across the country, was the other food company that raised funding.

Considering the fact that the week saw only early-stage deals, it is not surprising that only three companies crossed the $1-million funding mark. Apart from Chef’s Basket, skill training startup iStar Skill and beauty and wellness marketplace BigStylist raised funds.

M&As bring cheer

It is not all doom and gloom, however: four startups were acquired in the second week of the month. Three acquisitions—Shadow fax-Pickingo, Car Trade-CarWale and Indian Grahak-Dyscover—saw competitors merging. The Shadow fax-Pickingo deal was primarily an acquire, though according to reports, there was a cash component. This acquisition follows a reported falling through of funding by Zomato into Pickingo. Car Trade’s buyout of Car Wale has given an exit to the latter’s investor Axel Springer, which sold off its 91 percent stake in the company. Both platforms will operate independently. Kolkata-based online hyperlocal grocery delivert startup Indian Grahak acquired Jamshedpur-based hyperlocal marketplace Dyscover. JetSynthesys, the digital and technology subsidiary of JetLine Group of Companies, acquired online and offline fashion retailer Rudraksh. Rasika Wakalkar, founder of Rudraksh, will head the fashion vertical of JetSynthesys.

There have been rumblings and warnings of an imminent slowdown in funding for quite some time and now we are seeing deals, especially growth-stage ones, dry up. How bad is this funding winter going to be?

Why Funding is not a Parameter for Startup Success.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about startups: funding or customers?
A startup comes into the limelight after raising the first round of funding. Just talk to founders of a funded startup and they will tell you that funding just gave them extra leeway for proving their success. Success, however, is still far away.

A company can be successful only when its customers are happy. Your potential customers don’t care about the amount of funding you raised; they only care about their problems and how your product can heal their pain points.

Funding will solve one issue: you will have more fuel to run your company for a little longer period. You will have some more time to find more customers and make them happy. Ultimately, you will have to improve your cash flow and start making profits.

Remember that funding is borrowed money and you have to return it to your investors (multiple times of what you have raised). Your investors expect more than market returns because they put money in your company at the riskiest time. You know that banks do not lend money to startups even at 20-25 percent interest rates.

If your company bank balance is going low and you failed to become profitable, then either you have to shut down your venture or raise another round of funding. If you raise another round of funding, then you will return the money of your previous investors, but now you will be obliged to pay a bigger cheque to your current investors.

If you failed to raise money and shut down your startup, then no VC will give you money for your next startup. No one is going to trust you again and it will be a rough journey for your next initiative. Once you’ve accepted funding, you will always be on the marathon of raising money until you become profitable.

Leadership Leads To Success With Team, Patientce etc;

What, then, do you need in order to become profitable? Lots of happy customers who are willing to pay for your solution.
So when and how can funding help you?

When you figure out how to find customers and make them happy. A big bag of money can help you extend what you are doing. You can hire a couple more developers to fix the bugs, a bigger sales team, bigger budget on marketing and ability to provide quick customer support.

You can do more with everything. But, beware; if you are already making mistakes, chasing wrong customers, hiring wrong team members, doing wrong marketing, then you may do more wrong with more money.

The money will not help you set the right direction; it will just propel you with more force in whatever direction you want to go.

Funding can help you go from 100 customers to 1,000, if you know where to pump investors’ money. If you have not found your initial customers yet, or are still wondering how to make them happy with your solution, then funding is not going to solve your issues.

You probably need a mentor at this stage or a right mix of the team that can execute the plan.

Disclaimer : Following article come from YourStory

Remember these four lessons if you are planning a start-up

Everyone's betting big on India's start-up culture. And we do have young entrepreneurs mushrooming across the country. Some become names to reckon (read Snapdeal and Flipkart, Housing.com) with while others fade away with time. While ideation, execution and sustainability are the basic mantras for a start-up, it is the nitty-gritty involved in these stages of a new company, which makes a start-up a roaring success.

"In the complex world of entrepreneurship, it is difficult to avoid operational and strategic missteps. But the real reason a large number of entrepreneurs feel dispirited is the feeling that their enterprise has gone the wrong way. Whether it is the product/market fitment, scalability, or other managerial issues, one should not give up before all the key elements have been tried and tested," said Utkarsh Joshi, Principal at the HR Fund.

BI India lists down the basic factors that come into play when one thinks of starting a new venture.

Founding and management team

People are the biggest asset of any company. And when the company is new, the right kind of leadership is extremely essential. "Many experts believe that two people in the founding team are considered ideal as with increasing number of founders, the company's value is shared accordingly. However, what is really important to be mentioned is that more than the number, it is critical for the founder of the company to carefully choose the right mix of co- founders with him/her who bring in the right expertise and culture to the table. Founders need to realize their strengths and weakness," said Joshi.

This is also true for the management team that is at the core of any business. Right people with the right kind of expertise and experience can either make or break any start-up. The

"A well-informed management team is considered good on strategy's and would be able to minimize the risks at various aspects of business. It not only starts with putting together a right product but also validating its usability at several instances (before and during development) for necessary checks and balances and thereafter right planning to enter the market. The management also owns the responsibility for scheduling the above aspect for rightful gains," said Joshi.

Besides, a good management team plays a pivotal role in the kind of talent the company ultimately gets, thus penning down the fate of the start-up.

Valuation and funding

Valuation of a company is very important at every stage of its life cycle. It is this valuation that gives confidence to investors to fund a certain start-up. Every year, several start-ups that receive seed funding at the time of inception, fail to raise funding at later stages. This happens because the valuation of the start-up has dropped significantly for investors to bet their money on it. But there have been times when a company, whose valuation had dropped, manages to gain more after taking corrective steps, thus attracting the investors' attention once again.

"Companies progress and fail at various stages of funding, reflecting on their valuations. Though it varies from one industry to another, increase in valuation is an important milestone to be worthy for next round of funding. However, it is also required to mention the risks of blowing up the valuation too much, which leads to a potential investor/VC shying away at times and making it difficult to go for the future round of funding," he explained.

But how do we measure a company's valuation? Well, it's simple! The company's ability to make inroads in a certain market, handle business risks tactfully while expanding successfully add up the numbers.

"Proven ways to lower the cost of operations and customer acquisition speaks loud of a profitable business. Such a business is scalable and needs further funding to speed up the growth or expand. Though it is possible many times to raise money at lower valuations too, but running out of cash does not include signs of a progressive company. Conserving and spending money judiciously is the art that is learnt on the go," averred Joshi.

Choosing right investors 

Every new entrepreneur needs guidance and the right investor provides exactly that. An investor with the requisite background, industry expertise or specialization in business ventures offers advice, inputs and guidance based on their experience with various companies they work with. Or they could be because they were successful entrepreneurs themselves.

"In addition to money, proper hand-holding and guidance should be something that every entrepreneur should look for. It is important to differentiate between the ones who seem to know enough about the project/industry to cast an opinion but not substantial to help manage a situation," asserts Joshi.

Besides, when prominent people from the industry associate themselves with a start-up, not just the valuation of the company but also its business grows by leaps and bounds. And then, there's no stopping!

Customer acquisition

This one is tricky but then when has running a company been a cakewalk! The cost of acquiring a customer should be low. With digital media penetrating the businesses aggressively, reaching out to the right customer is not a big deal. Try content marketing or word of mouth if it works for you but remember the bottom line is—cost of customer acquisition should be lesser than the lifetime value of the customer.

"Judging the market right in terms of need for the product, its usefulness, timing, market size, and pricing leads to consistent and successful customer acquisition, as these are all cohesive factors.

"Rather than various marketing gimmicks - a well-defined process that leads to scalable ways to acquire the customers and thereafter monetize them at a higher level than the cost of acquisition is the solution. PR also plays an important role in the same. A press coverage is about positioning from the company's point of view and perception from the reader's point of view. However, it is important to see how much does the coverage talks about the progress made in the business. Startups need to judiciously manage and mention the press coverage while fundraising, evangelizing among others," said Joshi.

Citation from Business Insider : http://goo.gl/8LRfxh

This is how IBM is helping start-ups reach cloud nine!

Flipkart's Big Billion Day Sale is approaching and people are waiting with bated breath to see whether it would be a roaring success or a doomsday sale like its previous stunt last year. One of the main reasons why it failed like most databases do is lack of adequate storage of data. 

Likewise, if we think about the Smart Cities project, there would be large scale application of IoT (Internet of Things). The big question is where can we store such massive bulk of data securely? 

The solution is on cloud, literally. Cloud is upending the industry. Large enterprises, midsized companies to even start ups are moving toward a scalable infrastructure that is optimized and responsive to help them meet new business demands. Cloud models also help businesses to work smarter through more flexible and cost-effective access to technology and information. 

"Now we live in a generation where if start-ups need to start new applications, by default their option is cloud. It provides a quick solution to get the infrastructure up and running," said Radhesh Kanumury, Country Manager, Global Entrepreneur Programme, IBM India/South Asia. 

How IBM is helping start-ups reach cloud nine 

1. IBM's cloud platform offers solutions to cater to the needs of SMBs, start-ups and developers which constitute a huge portion of the cloud market. As per a report from Evans Data Corp, India is slated to have the largest developer community in the world by year 2019. The report further goes on to state that the number of developers is expected to grow to 26.4M by 2016 and the percentage of developers expected to develop in the cloud will grow by 44% to 12.5M by 2019. 

2. As enterprises increase the adoption of cloud based consumption of IT, they will have a need for an integrated and secure view of IT across on premise, off premise infrastructures and applications. IBM helps customers create this hybrid environment. 

"It gives startups the freedom that they need to quickly build applications. One can develop applications faster than before, even develop 4-5 builds (transition from prototype to product) per week," said Srinath Ranga, founder of Opteamize Cloud Solutions Pvt Ltd, an IBM Business Partner offers Cloud and SaaS solutions focused on accelerating the student recruitment processes. 

3. In pursuit of creating the best suite of solution for customers, IBM invested $7 billion in building a high value cloud portfolio. With a strong portfolio at every level of cloud- SoftLayer at the infrastructure level and Bluemix, the platform-as-a-service, IBM serves Indian enterprises with the solutions, depending on varied business requirements. 

4. Apart from providing cloud infrastructure, IBM also provides hands-on training to the start-ups to get the maximum out of cloud. This is also followed by technical assistance when and where needed, which is done in real time through cloud. 

5. Though bandwidth and expensive hardware would be the two main challenges, but the government is on its way to provide cheap bandwidth to even the remotest of the villages in India. As per bandwidth is concerned, the best use of cloud is one can store data offline on cloud and when connectivity is there one can send the data to the database. 

How start-ups are reaching out to cloud 

1. Start-ups, related to medical services, are taking to cloud to store medical data of their customers. With the smart wearables available, start-ups are taking to them too. A Bombay start-up is developing a device to detect heart attacks and send help on an immediate basis. 

2. Cloud platforms are used by start-ups like LightMetrics to measure fuel efficiency of a vehicle, harsh braking and violation of traffic rules and hence manage the traffic on real time. 

3. Another start-up has taken to IBM solutions to monitor the energy usage of an electrical appliance. 

4. A Tamil Nadu based start-up have solved the problem faced by crab breeders where maintaining the pH level of the water is critical to the life of the breeds. As soon as the level increases, an alert is sent to the smartphone. 

5. Radhesh also said cloud can also help police to monitor riot prone areas. For example, if there are more than 10 people at a place where they shouldn't be, an alert is sent and necessary steps can be taken. 

Citation from Business Insider India : http://goo.gl/n23eMs

What six top accelerators want to hear from startups

It’s a rare opportunity for a startup to pitch in front of one accelerator, let alone six on the same day. Recently, representatives from 500 Startups, Alchemist, Startup Bootcamp, Seedcamp, Open Network Lab and Chinacclerator watched nearly 40 startups deliver two-minute pitches in Seoul.

After the pitches, all of the reps came up on stage to give the startups advice on how to improve their pitches. Here are their eight top recommendations:

One: Your goal is to get a meeting

The reason you’re making a pitch is to get a meeting, not to convince an accelerator or VC to make an investment on the spot. Meeting One will lead to Meeting Two, which will hopefully give way to Meeting Three. Don’t lay out your entire case. Make your strongest points and cover the details or secondary business models during your meetings.

Two: Talk about your team

What makes your team uniquely able to execute your idea? The team and your passion, more than anything else, separate you from competitors. You must demonstrate a personal attachment to wanting to solve the problem you’re tackling.Otherwise, the accelerators will assume you’ll give up when things get tough and your bank balance is sitting at zero.

Three: Don’t pretend you’re perfect

What do you need help on from an accelerator? If everything is perfect, you’ll be fine on your own. Don’t be afraid to demonstrate a need.

Four: Talk about specific plans for growth

How will you get your first 100 or 1,000 customers? It’s easy for startups to make up market projections or valuations. What’s harder is sitting down and coming up with a strategy or traction or early growth. Make sure to talk about how you will grow and be specific about the next milestones you plan to reach.

Five: Focus on what the accelerators don’t know

Most accelerators can guess at the total size of the market you’re trying to tap. If you’re pressed for time, you can skip over this in your pitch. The exception to this is if you’re taking on a niche or re-segmented market that’s harder to gauge.

Six: Talk about how well you understand your customers and market

This isn’t just about proving that you’ve done your homework. It’s about showing that your strategies match up with actual customers, not just hypothetical ones.

Seven: Tell a story and capture attention

Having thought through your problem and solution is great, but the way you present that problem and solution is just as important. The story needs to be simple enough that anyone can understand, but you need to include details that show you know what you’re talking about. Accelerators and VCs see lots of startup pitches. They only remember a few.

Eight: End your pitch with a strong call for action

This can be a specific ask from the accelerator or asking the audience to download your app for something in return. No matter what the call to action is, it should be aimed at making you more memorable.

Citation from Your Story : http://goo.gl/uT26pf

SEC APPROVES TWEETING BY STARTUPS TO TEST INVESTOR INTEREST

Trying to figure out how many investors might want to fund your small business? Go ahead and tweet about it.

Startups are now able to post a Twitter message about their stock or debt offering to gauge interest among potential investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said this week. The announcement continues the SEC’s trend of warming up to social media, which began two years ago when it approved the use of posts on Facebook and Twitter to communicate corporate announcements such as earnings.

“It’s a brave new world,” said Joe Wallin, a Seattle-based attorney who advises startups at Carney Badley Spellman. “The way securities have been distributed and sold has never involved a lot of media.”

The SEC’s latest endorsement of social media only applies to companies looking to raise as much as $50 million a year. New small-business fundraising rules were approved in March, which increased the limit for capital raised to $50 million from $5 million to enjoy the perk of fewer required disclosures. The changes were required under the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which deregulated fundraising rules for small businesses.

Firms that use Twitter to solicit investor interest must include a link to a required disclaimer that says the firm isn’t yet selling securities, the SEC said in this week’s announcement.

It’s not clear how many companies will take advantage of the higher fundraising cap. Fewer than 30 offerings were made from 2012 to 2014, when the limit was $5 million, according to the SEC.

The SEC said in April 2013 that companies could use Twitter or Facebook to make big announcements as long as investors were told in advance to look there. The SEC’s decision was prompted by Netflix Inc. Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings, who posted information about his company’s monthly viewers on his Facebook page rather than in an SEC filing.

 Citation from Bloomberg Business : http://goo.gl/GQbMnJ