We are working on an Online Education startup called 100 Marks, 100 Marks aims to radically changed education in India, by socializing Entrance preparation and eventually K-12 education in India.

At the outset we are working on making AIEEE and IIT JEE Preparation online which will be available for free, to start with we have  a preparation tracker where each student gets a dashboard where she can track her preparation, a student can get access to customized study plans, Chapter Tests and Material made available for free to students.

The goal from the outset with Return of the King, says Kim, was to turn it into a perennial business. The “X” for Two Towers was “play the movie,” but Return of the King was “live the movie.” The development was brought in-house. Fan feedback was incorporated. The game was done in 16 languages for X-Box, Playstation2, GameBoy Advance, Nintendo GameCube, and the PC.

India is really catching up with the e-commerce now a days, and it is obviously one of the brightest opportunities one can pursue in this country. But yes though there are many e-commerce companies sprouting these days the industry still remains nascent mainly because of bad consumer experience.

I came across this site,Ezee-shop.com which seems to be pursuing this opportunity, and surprisingly this is an e-commerce company for groceries,yes you heard it right, this a site where one can order groceries online.Ezee-shop not only let’s you order your groceries online, they also deliver your order with no additional transport cost but  The service is still limited to Noida and Indirapuram.

Apart from getting grocery store online,one thing that is good on the site is that they have Cash on Delivery option, now if they get the consumer experience right there’s a good chance that they have a fair chance to strike gold in this niche.

Indian Angel Network Incubator has initiated a series of workshops for entrepreneurs across different cities to educate aspiring entrepreneurs and start-ups on challenges faced by them and help them in tackling these challenges better.

The next workshop in the series is
What Do Angels Look for in Start-Ups Today?

About the Speaker

Kanwal Rekhi a serial Entrepreneur, Angel Investor & Venture Capitalist is the Managing Partner in Inventus Capital, an early stage V C fund. He has invested in over 60 start-ups. including Exodus Communications, Apptivity, Zietnet, PlaceWare, HealthAtoA NexTag Ambit Design, Versata, Instantis and Sierra-Atlantic.Kanwal is also the founder of TiE.

Kanwal was awarded the 2010 Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri Award for Distinguished Service in April 2010 by California Institute of Integral Studies. He was named Entrepreneur of the Year in 1987 by the Arthur-Young/Venture magazine. He was named to the Board of Advisors to the President of Michigan Tech and in 1997 was honoured with a doctorate in Business and Engineering.

“International Patenting Strategies ” is the next workshop on the series of worskshop’s by IAN.

Speakers are:
Arjun Bala, Managing Partner Meta Yage IP Strategy Consulting

Arjun Bala is a registered patent agent in India since 2004. He specializes in counselling technology startup companies on integrating IP issues into their business plans and strategies and leveraging patents as assets and for competitive advantage. Previous to founding Meta Yage, he established India Operations for a US patent law firm where he worked for silicon valley based startup companies and VCs, as well as MNC companies with R&D centers in Bangalore. He has been trained by leading US patent attorneys on US patent prosecution and patent due diligence for Venture Capital Investment. He holds an Integrated MSc in Chemistry from IIT Bombay, and a diploma in IP Law from IES, Bombay.

Mohammad Rahman,Registered patent attorney and Principal, Rahman LLC
Mohammed Rahman is a principal in the US patent law firm Rahman LLC based in Washington DC and he is a registered patent attorney. He earned a Bachelors of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 1995. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Villanova University School of Law in 1999 while simultaneously earning a Masters in Business Administration from Villanova University’s College of Commerce and Finance in 1999, where he was named to the Beta Gamma Sigma national honor society. Mr. Rahman is a member of the Maryland State Bar, and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

To register Email: workshops@indianangelnetwork.com or Call: +91-11-4075 5716 / +91 8800814256 for more details

What wisdom does Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, pass to the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders? The importance of impact, and the necessity for that impact to be scalable. Plan for your operations to entice change with a decreasing marginal cost, and for new ventures to grow legs and utility beyond the one-to-one user experience. Company vision, products, and the individual all have their own metric of scale. In this clip, Sandberg introduces these ideas and their application.

reproduced from http://rodinhood.com

So, I’ve seen my share of consultants, business advisors, strategy thinkers, brand architects, vision pilots and every other ‘pretender’ of the business world roll through my doors. I’ve endured, suffered and sometimes even gone into convulsions while listening to their endless volley of garbage.

Once a guy in a serious black Armani asked me – ‘So- what’s your vision statement?’

‘To make Money,’ I said.

He almost puked his breakfast out and looked at me as if I had gone to a Michelin starred restaurant and ordered a Big Mac.

I gave up on these ignorant people long time back and thought of sharing my interpretation of STRATEGY that has worked well!

Expanded are a few of my favorite themes:

S – Simplicity

In all our Companies, we strive to infuse simplicity in everything we do. It may be defining the business ‘in games2win we make online games’; to the kind of products we are attempting to build; to the job expectations of the employees; and especially in business communication with the outside world.

I see no sense in complicated ‘mission statements’ and vision documents and brand tag lines, etc, etc. They serve nothing but consume precious management time and at worst even confuse the business teams.

On this point, I am reminded of a favorite story of mine. Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He simply said, “Because it is there.”

Imagine if George Mallory had hired a $700 per hour horn rimmed vision consultant at this conference to speak on his behalf.  That dude would have rambled ‘Mountains have defied the human spirit and it’s overcoming their scale that creates the everlasting impact of the glory of mankind in the realm of human achievement………… and hence my client has decided to rise up to this challenge into this bold………..’. And George please pay me $700.

A – Analytics

Do you measure everything that moves?

We measure everything (except how many times people visit the washrooms).

We know that a lavender background will work better for a teen girl vs. a pink background which works for a tween girl. In a banner, we know where to place the ‘play now’ button (left aligned or right aligned). If we are promoting banners for dress up games, the models should wear Goth or Wedding costumes. When kids come to our virtual worlds, we know that the US kids will spend on their 11^th visit but the child from Croatia will need to visit 27 times before her parent takes out her credit card.

Analytics can be magic genie in your business if you instill the discipline and the science of measuring everything and then breaking your head reviewing cold columnar data every day.

It’s this review of captured data that’s most painful and that people skip so easily.

Zynga – the business house of Cityville and Farmville, is looked upon by investors as an Analytics Company more than a games business. They know each and every variable in their business and how they can be affected. That’s how they can make money despite spending sometimes 1 million dollars a day on Facebook ads to acquire users!

Measure, measure, measure everything. I say even how often you use the restroom. And then analyze, analyze, analyze ( ps – maybe u will realize that a latte makes u go 3 minutes sooner than an Americano).

E – Economics

It’s important to take a step back and sometimes just reflect on the ‘economics’ of the business.

Consider the concept of pricing. I remember mentoring an entrepreneur who was on the brink of starting to charge his customers (for financial information), was benchmarking his introduction prices to ‘what seemed’ affordable. When I asked him if that made him profitable, he had no clue! There was this hurry to get into pricing and hence there was less thought to the overall ‘economics’ of the business.

Let me explain how we think of iPhone games.

The chart shows that Free games can be more lucrative than Paid games!

So honestly, if you are not sure of a real Angry Birds on your hands, you may be better off trying to make simpler, ads supported games for iTunes’ customers who will reward you almost like they would if you had made a just about successful charged game, and that too with lower risks!

Long story short – keep Strategy as a measurable verb and not a haiku poem.

Boy Genius Report exclusive says that RIM is seriously considering a feature that will allow BlackBerry devices to run Android apps, as BGR states that RIM is considering dalvik virtual machine for the same as it is the same Virtual machine used by Android and if that happens it would allow RIM’s PlayBook and other QNX devices to run just about any application built for the Android platform.

Marketing Vox pointed that In one scenario, Google and RIM might agree to provide official support to Android apps on RIM’s OS, and would feature the Android market, Google’s Gmail and other apps, BGR said.

What is in it for you?

If you are a android app developer , it is a great news for you as the consolidation of these platforms will just drastically increase the market reach and thus more $$.

Gartner predicts that with a boost by the surge in the Google android market, worldwide mobile application store revenues are set to triple to $15.1 billion this year.

We estimate that Apple’s App Store drove close to nine application downloads out of 10 in 2010 and will remain the single best-selling store … through 2014, although to a lesser extent, as other stores manage to gain momentum,” analyst Carolina Milanesi said.

Gartner breaks down the forecast into advertising revenues and paid downloads and the same is shown in chart, apparently paid downloads and other direct purchases make up the majority of the expected revenues, but mobile advertising is expected to grow nicely over time into a multi-billion dollar market.

Having started Box.net in his college dorm room, CEO Aaron Levie has learned some valuable lessons. In this clip, Levie elaborates on five lessons: 1) Do something that was not possible three years ago, 2) Do something you are extremely passionate about, 3) Don’t compromise, 4) If you feel comfortable, you’re probably not doing it right, and 5) Don’t write your obituary too early.