Indian Startup Price-Hunt Is Helping Indian Consumers Shop The Best Price

A new Indian startup called Price-Hunt is hoping to become the go-to destination for Indian consumers to find the best price on products. Once most consumers have found the product they are looking for, the next thing they do is shop by price. Obviously if you’re comparing apples to apples, like for instance a specific laptop model by a specific manufacturer, the final decision is going to be price.

Price-Hunt offers price based search results on anything from consumer electronics to the latest fashions.

“But search at price-hunt.com is not limited by categories and one can find anything here that is available at online stores. Its main aim is to make Indian consumers aware of price variation for products in India and make it possible for him/her to save money through price comparison,” Anupam Khurana, the startup,s co-founder told us an in interview.

Check out the rest of the interview below.

What is your startup called?

Price-Hunt

What does your company do?

Price-Hunt.com is a real time price search engine which searches and delivers the best prices across various online stores in India. Price-Hunt showcases wide product range from various categories like Consumer Electronic goods, Mobiles, Digital cameras, LCD TVs, home appliances, clothing and apparels, shoes, watches, jewellery and much more. But search at price-hunt.com is not limited by categories and one can find anything here that is available at online stores. Its main aim is to make Indian Consumers aware of price variation for products in India and make it possible for him/her to save money through price comparison.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Price-Hunt.com is founded by Anupam Khurana and Palka Khurana.

Anupam Khurana is B.E. (Mechanical) from Delhi College of Engineering with 10 years experience in software and business development.

Palka Khurana is B.E.(Instrumentation) from Delhi Institute of technology with 8 years experience in Marketing and sales management.

Where are you based?

We are based in Gurgaon (Haryana), India.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Our target consumer is online shoppers of all age groups. With online shopping gaining popularity day by day, Price-Hunt was launched with a vision to simplify and enhance online shopping. It revolves about the idea of presenting a one stop search for all online shopping. We We hope to meet our goals and targets soon.

What problem do you solve?

Price-Hunt.com is an online price search engine with real time search as a distinguishing feature. Price search is not limited to any product and current coverage is stores in India. Price-Hunt.com also features current deals and offers for a single click experience. It will change the way people buy products online. One will not have to go to and store individually to check prices and buy products. the one point access to all shopping needs online will be price-hunt.com.

Why now?

Online shopping is gaining momentum and has bright future prospects with an increasing number of people opting to do shopping from the convenience of their home or office. Once keen to shop online, the traditional way is to browse each of the various online stores and order the product from the stores offering the best price (of course with a name and reputation for being good). This takes a lot of time defeating the purpose of time saving in online shopping and one still might miss a store offering a better price and end up buying the product at a higher price. Thus we came up with an idea of providing one click search for all stores so that the shopper finds the best price/deal immediately comparing offerings from the different stores for the product searched. This led us to the idea to develop price-hunt.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

The company uses generic search engine route to get visitors to the site. We also use social media to provide personalized deals to consumers. Price-hunt.com has an average visitor count of about 900 and we are building up on that. We have just started and will go a long way.

What are your next milestones?

Mobile version of the site is under development. It will be an adaptation of the desktop version to the mobile with reduced features. We also plan an andriod application for the mobile users in very near future. We also plan to launch the Android application of the site very soon.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

https://www.facebook.com/PriceHuntIndia

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/price-hunt

http://www.linkedin.com/company/price-hunt-com

Indian Startup 500 Hours, Giving Away 500 Development Hours To Worthy Startups [interview]

Vishesh Duggar and Shreya Tiwara are both Indian natives and both attended college at Northeastern University in Boston. After finishing college both Duggar and Tiwara returned to Pune India where they immediately got their hands dirty in the budding startup community out there.

Now, Duggar who graduated with an MS in Computer Science, and Tiwari, who graduated with an MS in Electrical Engineering, are anxiously looking forward to giving away their services. Duggar was also a CTO with a MassChallenge company.

Both founders of 500 Hours have experience in startups dating back over the last 4 years. Now they are looking for 3 startups that are worthy of getting their services for free.

In a program they are calling an “accelerator”. 500 hours will take applications and then they will determine the top three startups. The top startup will receive 400 hours in services, the second place startup will receive 90 hours of development time and the third startup will receive 10 hours of development time.

While many believe that access to capital is the number one thing holding startups back, Druggar and Tiwari feel that without capital or good technical resources startups can’t build out their products.

“We’ve been working with startups for the last 4 years and the biggest problem that We’ve come across is the lack of funding to build something that they can use to get funded or attract customers. We will reduce the cost of building the MVP to close to zero and provide tech mentorship to startups, giving them a better shot at succeeding.” Druggar said in an interview with nibletz.com. He continued, “After 2 years of reaching out to more than 160 startups and talking to close to 50 of them the biggest challenge we’ve come across has been a startup’s ability to fund developing their minimum viable product and this accelerator program is the answer to that.”

When we followed up with 500 Hours Druggar explained that they aren’t looking for an equity position in the three startups and are doing this just to help launch good startups. They also hope that it’s successful and they can hold the program annually.

Check out the rest of our interview with 500 Hours below.

What is your startup, what does it do?

500Hrs is a new development accelerator we launched at CauseCode Technologies. We give upto 500Hrs of development time to top three startups who apply to our program. 400, 90 and 10 respectively. We recover some of our cost of evaluating the applications and development time from the application fee and sponsors.

But the larger goal is to accelerate high impact startups that have a strong web/mobile component. And this program will catalyze a startup competing at other seed fund based accelerators.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Vishesh Duggar, MS Computer Science from Northeastern University, Boston. Has been involved with the startup community for the last 4.5 years. Currenlty the acting CTO of AltruHelp and CEO CauseCode Technologies. He has a strong technical background but also has a lot of experience with business development, marketing, hiring and more.

Shreya Tiwari, MS Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston. Experienced engineer with an inkling towards marketing and strategy. Currently, Senior Product & Marketing Manager at CauseCode Technologies.

Where are you based?

We are based out of Pune, India, but the program will be open to startups all over the world

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

There is small startup community here with punetech.com and punestartups.org. There is definitely significant growth being seen across India in the startup community for the past 3 years. We are hoping to add some fuel to it through this program as well.

What problem does your startup solve?

We’ve been working with startups for the last 4 years and the biggest problem that We’ve come across is the lack of funding to build something that they can use to get funded or attract customers. We will reduce the cost of building the MVP to close to zero and provide tech mentorship to startups, giving them a better shot at succeeding.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

After 2 years of reaching out to more than 160 startups and talking to close to 50 of them the biggest challenge we’ve come across has been a startup’s ability to fund developing their minimum viable product and this accelerator program is the answer to that.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We have helped AltruHelp, ClothesCritics, CheersMeUp and CalBill with building their MVP and beyond
Designed and chalked out the 500Hrs program
We have a landing page with a CRM integration to capture interest by other startups
Marketing plan to reach out to various startup community entities across the globe to validate the program

What are your next milestones

Getting the word out there by starting a conversation with Nibletz, NextBigWhat, TheNextWeb, TechCrunch, Forbes, YourStory.in, StartupDigest and friends in PR
Getting intent to apply from 50 startups
Reaching out to other accelerators for mentorship
Seeking a few community volunteers to judge and mentor startups
Developing feature set to accept application fee and application
Starting to accept application
Closing applications
Judging
Starting development on the startups

Who are your mentors and role models?

Our role model is Steve Jobs and we constantly try to make things as simple and beautiful as we can. We are very inspired by MassChallenge, StartupWeekend, 500Startups, TechStars and AngelList

During my(Vishesh) work with MassChallenge I was fortunate to make a lot of connections within the startup community in and around Boston. Some of my friends that I seek advice from are Mark Shiffer, Ex CTO MassChallenge, Stefan Baytarian, Founder ClothesCritics, my father Vijay Duggar who has been a successful entrepreneur for the last 25 years.

What are some of the advantages/disadvantages growing your startup outside of Silicon Valley.

“Everything is possible, nothings is easy. Lots of ‘Frictions’. – World Startup Report India

It is definitely harder to bootstrap from here in India. Poor infrastructure, raw startup community, hard to find entrepreneurial hires and not enough startup oriented events are a few challenges.

But it also results into a lot less competition and tons of opportunities.

What’s next for your startup?

Getting our story out there and attracting startups, judges, mentors and sponsors.

Where can people find out more?

500Hrs.com, @causecode, @500Hrs, 500Hrs@causecode.com

That was 500 Hours, looking for 500startups, check out these stories?

CES 2013 Preview: Indian Startup Emo2 To Launch Large Touch Screen OS

An Indian startup called Emo2, or Emotional Squared Technologies is set to launch what looks to be a great operating system and large multi user touch screen tablet. The device itself is 42″ and allows multi user input at the same time.

The 42″ touch screen surface is great for hotel lobbies, operating rooms, electronic casino gaming, retail environments and collaborative work spaces. The underlying operating system is designed to support the hardware without any hiccups, lag or delay, making for a pleasing user experience no matter what the application.

The company based in Chennai India, has been working on the technology since 2010 under the leadership of CEO and cofounder Mir Abid Hussain.

Emo2 is venture backed with an early stage investment from Indian firm Blume Ventures. Although the exact funding has not been reported Blume Ventures specialized in angel, and seed investments between $50k and $250k. Rajan Anandan, Zafar Baig and other angels also contributed to Emo2’s angel funding.

To date emo2’s technology has already been deployed in a coffee shop chain with 30 locations.

Although they weren’t specific early on, Emo2 has officially announced that they will launch Tuesday when the International CES show opens in Las Vegas. Before returning back to India they will be showing off their technology in Silicon Valley and New York the weeks immediately following CES.

After CES but before SXSW you can come to the biggest startup conference in the U.S. everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Indian Startup: EduBuzzer Makes It Simple For Schools To Communicate With Students & Parents

Although the fundamentals of communication are often taught in schools, sometimes schools, colleges and universities have the hardest time communicating with students and even parents. That’s the problem that Indian startup EduBuzzer is fixing with their simple and easy to use application.

EdBuzzer makes it easy for any school teacher, or administrator at any level of education to communicate quickly with one set of students, a single student or the entire student body. EdBuzzer makes it easy to send out assignments, grades, and even newsletters without the cumbersome nature of bulk and mass emails.

The startup based in Chandigarh India, prides itself on absolute simplicity. They want busy teachers and even secretaries to be able to help communicate important messages at anytime.

EduBuzzer is actually a product from educational startup Chalkpad which bills themselves as “Educational Technology Specialists”.

We got to talk with Abhiraj Malhorta a trailblazer at Chalkpad and one of the co-founders of EduBuzzer. Check out the interview below.

Indian Startup: Resumonk Makes Resumes A Cinch Interview

The most important piece of sales material in anyones arsenal is their resume. Resumes have evolved over the years. First there were typed resumes on fine parchment. Next was the rapid reprinting of resumes via the xerox machine in the copy room. Desktop publishing made resumes look very pretty but formatting could be a real pain in the ass.

Then in came the jobs site and the multiple types of resume files that every job hunter needed. Some job hunters needed to take a class just to learn how to do the proper type of resume file.

The resume has been a pain point that many startups have tried to solve, including Resumonk a startup based in New Delhi.

Resumonk is a DIY platform to build your resume. The company promises that they’ve got the technology, formatting and conversion down pat. All you need to know is your job history and have a decent grasp of the english language.

We got a chance to talk with Resumonk in the interview below: