You are a mobile developer with an app on the store, serving thousands of people in different languages. But localizing the app — back and forth with your in-house translators every time you release a build — is a pain. Here is how to fix that, with a relatively undocumented yet open source software called GlotPress. Continue reading
Wondered where to start reading about Bitcoins? This reading list just assumes you’ve heard about the concept, want to learn about it in-depth, and are willing to invest the required amount of time at a fair pace. Continue reading
I think it was a Sunday, year 2005 – when I was in the third grade. My dad woke up my brother and me to share the news that a driver from India, for the first time, would be participating in a Formula 1 race and that the race was just about to start. Never having heard of F1 in particular before, the passion I grew for it just by my dad’s words and the race was surprisingly amazing. For weeks to come, we used to stick to our screens and watch the complete races, albeit not seeing the Indian driver winning, but the spectacle that was put up was just mesmerising. As the time passed and I progressed into higher classes, the time commitment reduced and I gradually stopped watching the races but the love didn’t die.
Fast forwarding to the 11th grade, when my first term exams had just ended, one day our Physics teacher came in and asked us if anyone was interested in participating in the F1 in Schools India competition – where we had to set up our own teams, design a miniature car for drag racing, setup pit booths and deliver presentations. Err… Continue reading
Discover I has come a long way since its inception in October last year, from hosting four competitions in slums and rural areas, collaborating with our own’s school social efforts in teaching girls from underprivileged families, organizing a summer camp with the help of an NGO school — impacting over 500 children with the help of over 100 volunteers! It has also been awarded the Best Awareness Campaign under the Youth Power competition conducted by the newspaper The Global Times and also received a mention in the national daily The Times of India. Similar initiatives have even been undertaken under different names in cities like Manipal (thanks bro!) and Mumbai (thanks internet friend!). I feel proud of being a part of such an organization. Continue reading
Today’s workshop was an unusual one — of course, it involved design! How should startups face the design challenge? How can the startups better identify and better engage with their customers? We had Ketna Hirji from The Innovation Tool Box to mentor our startups on how to go about the design process. Rather than just being lectured upon, the startups brainstormed on ideas and finally made a visual prototype and showcased them via elevator pitches.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
— Steve Jobs
Startups should question a customer to understand what he or she feels. Keep asking why, why, why to properly understand the customer and build an empathy map of the customer as to how he or she was feeling while answering the questions and arrive at a final statement like “Kate is a big coffee drinker who needs to make her own coffee quickly and wants the experience to be fun and seamless because she values her time.”
Next, brainstorm on the idea, keeping the following points in mind and follow the method in this video.
Vote on the ideas and build a visual prototype which gets the most votes!
Cross posted on the GSF blog. The GSF Accelerator is a 7-week program designed to foster innovation in India’s fast-growing digital economy. It aims to provide select, promising start-ups with unparalleled access to venture and business networks, personalized and intensive mentoring, and initial capital. Coaching is provided to each of the GSF startups by a mentor pool of over 200 cofounders and digital entrepreneurs from across the world. This article is a part of the series of the mentorship sessions held for the startups in the winter 2012 iteration of the accelerator.
What is the foremost reason for a startup failure? No, it’s not being unable to understand the market right. It is having high costs of customer acquisition. So how to acquire customers in a cost-effective way and what digital marketing strategies to use? This is the question that is asked by all the startups all over the world. We had Nikhil Rungta from Google, Bhawna Agarwal from Seventymm and Anurag Gupta from DGM to answer this question for us.
There are various channels of customer acquisition — they’re different for every kind of business like B2C non-ecommerce, B2C e-commerce, B2B and so on. Pick a method to acquire customers wisely — on the basis of what you’re trying to achieve. And it should give a steady graph in customer acquisition, not ups and downs. Don’t try all the techniques at one go.
Internet channels
Mobile
Mobile targeting involves low costs and can be used if you think you can target the appropriate audience.
Always remember that the target audience might not be the user. Target each audience with a different message. For example, while buying a car, an adult might be interested in fuel efficiency and specs, but children would be interested in the music system and other features that appeal to them.
Cross posted on the GSF blog. The GSF Accelerator is a 7-week program designed to foster innovation in India’s fast-growing digital economy. It aims to provide select, promising start-ups with unparalleled access to venture and business networks, personalized and intensive mentoring, and initial capital. Coaching is provided to each of the GSF startups by a mentor pool of over 200 cofounders and digital entrepreneurs from across the world. This article is a part of the series of the mentorship sessions held for the startups in the winter 2012 iteration of the accelerator.
