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Archive for the ‘iAccelerator 2009’ Category
Social Gaming startup, HashCube, breaks new ground at iAccelerator
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
Leveraging its success with fun educational puzzle games on Facebook, HashCube has become one of the most successful companies to launch games for the recently opened up social networks of MySpace, Orkut and Friendster. HashCube’s Sudoku application is now the most popular Sudoku app of MySpace’s 110 million monthly users.
With more than 300,000 monthly active users on Facebook, 3 million monthly page views, a stable of 8 games deployed on 4 different social networking and mobile platforms and significant revenue, HashCube has a proven track record of developing, deploying and monetizing educational casual games for the social and mobile platforms. They are one of the few startups which are doing more than copy pasting US stuff for India. Rather, more than 99% of their active users currently are non-Indians. With 5 more games planned, their success looks likely to continue well into the future.
HashCube, a start-up being supported under iAccelerator program at IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), aims to leverage the current craze amongst youth to use applications built on these platforms. Notably, iShoot application on iPhone by a developer in the US made around Rs 3 crore in one month. Scrabulous by India’s Agarwala brothers has been one of the most popular applications on Facebook.
“Having already raised their initial investment from the iAccelerator, the team would soon be looking at raising more innovative financing. Since economics of games are more like movies, revenue sharing deals align with financing games naturally. This takes a lot of the risk out of funding startups” says Freeman Murray (Founder of Upstart.in, a co-investor and part of Management Team at iAccelerator).
HashCube’s innovation extends beyond programming as they look to alternative industries for ideas on how to finance their expansion. Borrowing a trick from the movie industry they plan to sell ‘points’ in their upcoming games entitling investors to act like producers and to directly share in the revenue of the games Hashcube develops. This provides a much clearer path for investors to get a return on their money and allows HashCube to retain more control of their company, creating a ‘win-win’ for both parties.
“We got interested in supporting Hashcube as they were doing more than just ‘games’. They are able to quickly come up with simple, logical and mentally stimulating games like Sudoku, LooptheLoop and Dot Game which a regular internet user can play the same way he has been playing other games” Pranay Gupta, Joint CEO, CIIE (IIM Ahmedabad).
iAccelerator 2009, a Special focus on Entrepreneurs in Residence
Monday, March 23rd, 2009The Centre supported by UpStart.in, Nokia and Microsoft is organizing iAccelerator 2009, an intensive startup company assistance program geared towards first time technology entrepreneurs in India in the ICT domain.
iAccelerator works with brilliant first time entrepreneurs to establish well run, technically excellent, profitable technology companies in India. CIIE will use its experience in setting up companies, their business network and their money to ensure that companies working with them are well formed and have access to the people and information they need to be successful. iAccelerator will also invest up to Rs 5 Lakh in each company they work with. All participants are required to live and work from Ahmedabad for 4 months from May 1 through Sept 1. In addition to developing their products during this time, participants meet with industry veterans, learn new technologies, share what they are working on and have a great time.
Over time, CIIE has realized that the biggest problem that their incubatees face is that the promoters are tech people and find understanding and handling business aspects to be quite an effort. So, they have introduced the concept of Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR). These EIRs are people who want to be entrepreneurs, have basic understanding of technology but more importantly, have industry experience or managerial backgrounds. Not only do they come in early and help CIIE pick out the right startups, they also try and form a startup team by either joining in with a startup or finding the right people to work with for their business idea.
Amit, Premnath, Pankaj and Shivam will be studying the ICT space and generating interesting ideas and working towards creating an Innovative Enterprise in the segment of their interest.
Amit comes with over 13 years of working experience in the IT industry. He has worked with Fortune 50 Organisations and Startups alike. With iAccelerator, Amit wishes to fuel his Entrepreneurial passion and says, “I am looking forward to combine my abilities and experience with curious minds and make the entrepreneurship dream come true.”
“iAccelerator is a platform for young entrepreneurs to structure, build and implement innovations in next generation technological space” says Premnath – Selected to be an EIR. He did his MBA from FMS in Delhi and has almost 4 years of work experience. Currently, he is working with a Swedish Telecom Application Provider.
Pankaj – Selected to be an EIR. He is a Marketing and Business Development professional with over seven years of work experience. He has worked on and learned a great deal from several very interesting and diverse marketing assignments in Retail, Telecom and Healthcare sectors. His last assignment was with a diversified group in UAE as Head – Marketing & Business Development before he decided to take the entrepreneurial route.
He says, “EIR program made it easy for me to jump into the entrepreneurial bandwagon as it provides an ideal platform for budding entrepreneurs.”
“This is an amazing opportunity for non-resident professionals like me who are looking to come back to India an start a technology venture”, says Shivam. He studied computer engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and is currently working on WiMAX technology with Motorola. He is interested in innovation in the Indian Telecom sector and specifically in wireless broadband infrastructure.
He previously led a start-up venture in college that created interactive educational content for mobile platforms. The venture won a number of business plan competitions in the US, including the 2007 Chicago Sun Times Innovation Awards.
Freeman, the Founder – Director Upstart.in is excited to work with young entrepreneurs in India, creating the next generation of internet and mobile startups
He is a software engineer from Silicon Valley who has been a part of a number of tech startups in the USA and India, including one very successful one which he founded and sold to Excite@Home in 2000.
“We will handhold the teams which come in and help them get their business up and running. With help from faculty, alumni, our mentor network and industry support, we hope to help these startups transform the innovation landscape in India”, Pranay, Joint CEO. CIIE
iAccelerator 2009
Monday, March 23rd, 2009- by Aditi Gupta
We started this startup camp in 2008 and that was when I was recruited and gifted this awesome program. I totally loved the six months which went by in planning and executing the program, shortlisting the teams, ensuring time schedules were maintained, taking care of logistics and ending the program to perfection.
When we started iAccelerator, the focus was on information technology and mobile based innovations. Five teams were shortlisted on the basis of their ideas. Three were in the mobile domain and two in the web domain. It turned out to be a great mix of teams, good products and a complete program in itself. A monthly stipend of Rs 8,000 was provided to each team, which we considered sufficient for them to stay in Ahmedabad and work towards crystallizing their startups. Mentors were available to guide them from time to time. They were also able to interact with professors on-campus and meet other successful entrepreneurs from across the country. All this helped to keep their faith in their dreams and passions.
At the end of three months, one team – Voice Pitara – was offered incubation support after consultation with the executive committee. The team is doing well. Out of the remaining four, one has started up in Mumbai, another team is waiting to get out of college and the other two are fiddling around with their concepts.
One learning for us from this experience was that startups need angel investment to kickoff. Also, we realized that selecting teams only on the basis of concepts was too ambitious a target. Hence the failure at not being able to convert all five teams into companies in the first edition. Therefore, iAccelerator 2009 promises to a much better platform than the first edition.
To begin with, six teams in the mobile and web domains will be part of the program and each will be provided with Rs 5 lakh in angel capital, in lieu of convertible equity. We will also provide mentoring, consulting, access to the IIM network and entrepreneurs through the course of the program, and of course, a house for them to live in. The program will be in session for five months. Teams with excellent technology knowledge, working models of their concepts and some managerial experience will be given preference.
The last date for sending in applications is April 1 and details on the application process are available here.
We hope to convert all six teams into companies this season and, of course, have a lot of fun, learning and a good experience to share at the end of it.