The financial crisis has deep implications for Startups even though it may seem unlikely.Read the survival guide and decide for yourself if you need to take those steps 

Rajesh Jain outlined the first part in a pathway to creating an innovative plan in the mobile data space. Here is the second part.

Rajesh believes that there is no better market than India for launching the new paradigm and the next platform.

Rajesh Jain is placing bets on digital devices (mobiles and PCs) and their increasing use, and that they’ll help reinvent the Indian political scene.

I’ll be rooting for him to win.

From Web Strategy by Jeremiah:

I’m mainly looking for briefings from companies that are ready for prime time. They are established, have a solid product, and are ready for adoption by Fortune 5000 enterprise companies. These companies don’t have time to deal with a startup that may not last the test of time, or have weak infrastructure. As a result, often established companies may have significant funding, or a revenue stream and thereby are able to afford a few thousand dollars a month for PR services. Having PR services is one indicator that a startup is beyond the garage (but not always)

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Vijay Anand, Curator, Proto.in asks, “If we make better companies, and if we are darn better in hard work, and are more than well aided in terms of talent and capacity, whats it going to take us to the global spotlight?”

And he has the answer too. “ I think its going to take the support of the community as a whole to make that happen.”

The Economist profiles Sridhar Vembu who, they feel, can take a shot a shot at becoming software’s Michael Dell.

In the mid-1990s, though, venture capitalists gave Mr Vembu the cold shoulder when he shopped around a business plan for software that helped to manage telecoms networks.

This rejection, says Mr Vembu, led him to do the right thing: be frugal and stay independent. When they set up the firm in 1996 he and his five co-founders had to use their own money. Having no cash to waste—unlike so many others in those giddy times—they based AdventNet in Pleasanton, an hour’s drive east of Silicon Valley and much cheaper. Even today it has only a dozen employees there; the rest are in Chennai. Such penny-pinching allowed the company to survive when the telecoms bubble burst in 2001.

With no outside investors, AdventNet could switch to a different business. Venture capitalists would probably have killed off a few of the 18 web-based applications that AdventNet has since come up with under the Zoho name. Several are essentially interchangeable with services that are already offered by Google, the online giant, and will be by Microsoft, its main competitor.

Yet Zoho is no mere clone of Google’s applications. It is the most comprehensive suite of web-based programmes for small businesses, including even services to keep track of a firm’s employees and its customers.

Read more about why Vembu is a dangerous player

Here are some brands that had no launch at all: Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Harry Potter, Google, William Morris, The DaVinci Code, Wikipedia, Snapple, Geico, Linux, Firefox and yes, Microsoft. (All got plenty of PR, but after the launch, sometimes a lot later).

Great publicity is a treasured gift. But it’s hardly necessary, and the search for it is often a significant distraction. Full post by Seth Godin

The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad’s center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship started recently. The center is part of IIIT-H initiatives to combine research and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship with highest quality education. The center was set up to imbibe creative, strategic, managerial and transformation thinking amongst students.

SETU software systems became the first company to be incubated & housed inhouse in IIIT-H, with the base technology offered from the CEO, Prasad Pingali’s PhD work at the institute’s LTRC lab. The co-founder of this company is Prof. Vasudeva Varma, who is also the chief scientist in the company. SETU Software system is a product & services company operating in the area of Indian Language search & information extraction.

As part of their academic partnership within 2 months of setting up the innovation center, SUN Microsystems extended support to the Institute by giving servers and software platforms. The Institute received financial support to projects from Governmental scheme DSIR’s TePP and DIT’s initiates for entrepreneurship development.

“More often than not success will take longer in coming than you think. There will be times when at the end of the month there will not be enough money to pay the office rent and employee salaries… There will be years on end when you will be financially the worst off person in your batch from business school… So before making the jump ask yourself a question – will I love doing this for the rest of my life even if I am not financially successful?” Sanjeev Bikhchandani adds.

Read the full article here