The corporate world has a well-maintained reputation all across the globe, and it has been that way for quite some time. It includes values, systems, norms, habits, traditions, symbols and vision. It has significantly established the way members of groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. Also, while keeping said standards it also sustains the cohesiveness, team's morale and the alignment towards their goals, which is an integral part of being in an organization.
This culture creates situations and corresponding responses, drives  performance at regular intervals and melds the outlook in the external world. Organizational culture plays a vital role in running a corporation and may sometimes be the sole reason for one to join an organization. Well, this culture also stimulates compromise, and rivalry. Although, this could very well be the reason for an individual to grow efficiently in the corporate world, but in some situations it does elicit politics, manipulation and exclusion.

On the contrary, a start-up has its own diversified culture, with factors like perks, modernization and flexibility, which makes it an environment that is easy to adapt to. Of course, given this current trend  that has been set by early startups, one does seem to imagine this as the right set-up or a good match in terms of acclimatizing and enjoying work while learning. Let's discuss these factors one by one. Perks are the benefits awarded for a certain type of employment and well, we all want the best perks, don't we? It's great to be at the receiving end of these (even if they don't compare with Google's) especially considering that they're free! It's also very tempting when it has sizeable variety. Some enterprises even allow their members to bring pets to work, some allow having alcoholic beverages, some even allow smoking at the work place and some even allow mid-day naps. Secondly, modernization of appearance or behavior, such as offices with bean bags, arm-chair-beds, cozy sofas, and the lack of a dress code, allowing for uber comfort. And finally, flexibility or the ability to adjust readily to different conditions, such as flexible working hours, offs and of course, the much relished, undefined breaks. This, to me, is the most prominent incentive I can ever avail from my work place and I'm sure, people out there working for a start-up see this as a very important factor, the one which really shows how understanding and empathetic this culture can get. Now, all this defines startup culture as a whole; a place where you can have fun, sufficient wealth and delectation. The question here is, what culture is more favorable to your interest?

It's also important to see your workplace, however chilled out, as a place to develop yourself as a skilled individual, which is success-oriented and where you can conduct the desired business with an aim to empower the future you. This freedom, these facilities and fair compensation for one's efforts, should be the motivation for one to take up responsibilities and conduct business well, instead of working because one is obliged to. 

Do not remain stagnant because it's easy, instead, be innovative because growth is hard.


- Himanshu Singh Rathor
www.hiringmonk.com

Being a part of 4 budding start-ups (Including one of my own) I realized there were good number of similarities amidst running a start-up and being in a relationship.

*Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions; you have all the right to differ. Also, its male oriented. (Ladies you might want to differ even more)

So coming back to the point of departure, let me give you a quick jest, of why am I writing this blog. Over the span of few years I've met and dated a few women, some beautiful, some witty and many of them were super blonde (they looked pretty though). Last year, towards the end of May I started HiringMonk (a unique recruitment firm for start-ups and SMEs across India), whilst focusing on functioning the company, there were considerable correlations between the women I dated and the firm I was running. I have listed them all in pointers to have a better go at it!

The Adventurous thoughts of getting into one:-

A phase in life where you are all excited about this particular girl/concept. That you are ready to do whatever it takes to make sure it happens. You travel distances, you meet new people, take suggestions from friends, make all the wondrous plans of how it will be after you get into it. Let everyone know how beautiful/awesome she/it is. That, nothing in the world would matter more than this. The only thought that goes all day is to get it started as soon as possible.

Common symptoms; *No hunger *No sleep *Planning all the time *Waiting for some revert.

The pleasure of starting one:-

I bet no entrepreneur (specifically startupreneur) would have a second thought to this. Once you get along with your start-up/girlfriend, you want run around everywhere and broadcast your affair to all the peers and friends. There are social media updates about the new affair (start-up/relationship). You start uploading pictures and statuses of how awesome your start-up/relationship is. You are busy getting it official. You always have an answer to, “What’s up with you bro?” It looks like, your life is all set, and there could never be anything better than this. An awesome girlfriend, an awe-inspiring start-up, what does one want more in life?

Common symptoms; *Still no sleep *Always day dreaming *Spending most of the time with or thinking of her (read as start-ups & girlfriends) *You love all bollywood romantics/silicon valley movies.

This all stays the same for at least the initial 21 days (behavioral habits). But wait, the real story is yet to unveil. 

The firsts of everything:

You cherish and enjoy all the firsts. The first client, the first kiss, the first payment, the first gift, the first hire and a lot of other firsts (if you know what I mean). Mind you, that happens for the 1st and last time only.

Common Symptoms: *You become very emotional for everything that’s happening around.

The reality sinks in:-

In a month or two you wonder this isn’t going according to what you really thought it should have been. They have their own tantrums bro! 

You give them time, they need more of it, you give them attention, and they still crib for more. You don’t have a life of your own anymore; all that goes in your head is how to keep her happy. You make sure that you do everything to take this engagement to another level altogether. In the process of giving time to them, your friends call up in regular intervals to let you know that you don’t have time for them anymore and that you’ve built up and "imaginary super ego” (which you aren’t aware of for miles).

Common Symptoms: *Forget your good old sleep *Always on the phone *Tensed

Peer Pressure (Tu kar kya raha hai?)

Your parents are on a roll, what are you doing? Don’t you think the previous one was better? (read as : the previous job/date). They are in-fact more concerned about your relationship than what you’re. Why is it so flashy? I don’t understand what are you doing? What culture/caste does it/she follow?

Aaargh! Too many questions and trust me they will come up time and again, even when you’ve tried answering them in all the possible ways and methods.

Common symptoms: *Don’t feel like sticking around at home *Gets irritated quickly

Competitors

You will never have a relationship/company without competitors. They make you go bonkerz. We all know the competitors in the startup world, but in the arena of your relationship there will be a lot of competitors disguised as best friends, Ex boyfriends, New friends, Colleagues, neighbors. Infact competitors and not only domestic they’re international too. And if you think you’re too lucky to not have one, don’t be happy, there’s one in the making!

Common Symptoms: *You start stalking/keeping check on contemporaries *Confused *You make up and breakup your mind quickly *On a spree to experiment new things

FTW

That crucial stage just before everything could be just alright, where you get all the weird thoughts possible. Did I make the right decision? What is this doesn’t work out?

There seems to be no proper response from either of it. You wonder if you should call off this relationship and move on. You reminisce of your good old past. A point where you are royally fed up and just want to let go off everything.

Common Symptoms: *You love to stay alone-no social activity * Always in your thoughts

The Rainbows and Sunshine

That phase where things start to settle down. They start understanding you and your efforts. It all pays off and how. You get recognition for what you’re doing and that of you’ve been doing from a very long time. Your parents/friends finally get that peace of mind. You feel loved and adored. Feeling words can’t define.

Common symptoms: *Happy *Confident *Hustler mode on

They say, all’s well that ends well, but that’s not the end to this story. Being in a relationship and running a startup is life filled with ups and downs. There will be highs, super highs and amazingly drastic lows. What matters is how strongly you hold on to your nerves after the hit and bounce back even stronger. After all what’s life without it, even the ECG machine shows a straight line when you’re dead.

Lessons learnt: 
*You cannot have a picture perfect life, you need to make the one you have picture perfect. 
*You cannot keep everyone happy at the same time. 
*There will be times when you’ll have to prioritize, choose wisely and once chosen don’t look back, keep moving. 
*Have your friends along, they’re your biggest motivator!

That’s all folks!


-Preetam Salian
www.hiringmonk.com

India witnesses a bunch of new ideas every single day. Many of them think, overthink and do next to nothing about it, whereas there's another race of humans who risk their lives, careers and sleepless nights for that "One dream".

In this article HiringMonk covers 17 such dreamers who made it happen.  This set of extraordinary beings believed that, "A baby shark, is still a friggin shark"

1. Housing.com

Led by Advitiya Sharma and other innate bunch of 11, leaving a mark of self- sufficiency and ‘taking matter in their own hand’. After having an inadequate and inimical experience of finding a place/accommodation in the busy streets of Mumbai, they thought ‘what the heck’, let’s resolve this and came up with Housing.com. Graduated from IIT-B, gave up all the remunerative job offerings only to alleviate problems which may simplify and make it easy for the people who’d face the same problem ahead.

Currently equipped with the two rounds of angel funding, these guys have amazed the big domains like 99acers and Magicbricks. Stating ‘data verification’ as their core business, we see them expanding abundantly in the ahead future and one may never know what this ‘foundation period’ may cause them to become, WATCHOUT!

2. Holidify

Holidify came into existence from an avid travelers of IIT-B namely Kovid Kapoor, Rohit Shroff, and Prateek Chauhan, who got exhausted at one point of time after not finding the desired findings of their particular travel place, also which helped them realize the shortcomings in the travel industry; the ones who doesn't focus on unpopular places and the places which aren't very well known yet occupied with natural beauty and  gave rise to Holidify.com. A very challenging start for these lads worked out a little late as they didn't want to compromise on the quality, rendering a slow start perhaps, although the site is very user friendly and makes it so easy for one to explore the profound scenic beauty India has to offer, refined map interfaces and powerful filters, makes you plan your vacation like never before.

Not funded yet but we see Holidify reaching great heights of success.

P.S. Please visit Holidify.com

3. Autowale.in


Janardan is the founder of Autowale.com, who graduated from IIT-Kanpur also has keen interest in solving traffic issues since his engineering days. After working for quite some time in corporate industry, he finally came up with Autowale.in during Common wealth games in Delhi, where he was quite successful. Currently established only in Pune, Autowale is planning to expand in other cities soon.

It has raised no funding yet, but won’t be surprised if they get funded soon.

4. Gaana.com

Gaana.com was founded by Mayank, Guarav and Shubhranshu in 2012, and has recently acquired musicfellas.com, which in turn gave them 700 indie music artist across the globe. During last decade, online music streaming has gained more attention in India. Its needless to say sites like these will definitely produce more traffic soon.

With its android and iOS application refurbished recently, Gaana.com is definitely going to thrive!

5. Fusioncharts


Founded by Pallav Nadhani, at the age of 17 is now a multimillion dollar company and has more than 21,000 customers across 118 countries. It started with a thought of creating a better charting solutions and came this far within last 10 years. It still has a team of a mere 65 members but has sizable amount of clients, including the giants likes of Facebook, Apple, Nokia and Microsoft. They have come a long way  and undoubtedly foresee a substantial market in upcoming years.

6. Exotel

Exotel excels itself in the Telecom and IT industry, and was founded by Shivakumar, Ishwar, Sridharan, Sid Ramesh and Vijay in the year 2011. Exotel gives a brief solution to the businesses for the management of the calls, SMS with the use of innovating technologies. It has raised great number of customers in the last year and looks quite promising to expand their customer list all across India.

Raised with 2.5 Cr Series A funding from Mumbai Angels & Blume Ventures in 2012, Exotels believes in tackling problems which are usually faced by businesses and helping them to run their business over voice and SMS, eventually optimizing man-power requirement.

7. Voicetree (My Operator)


MyOperator was started on service model for couple of SME customers and soon we started exploring possibilities as making it a product for the Indian market. We started slow, understanding real pain points for businesses upgrading our product from time to time and acquiring customers. MyOperator is serving 'call management requirements' in India for businesses in real-estate, IT, food and hospitality, e-commerce and education. While their operations are still confined to India, the company's founder Ankit Jain says they will go global by the end of this year. The idea of MyOperator is to provide not just a virtual PBX or a tollfree number but to create a complete call management system.

8. Flat.to

Founded by Gaurav Munjal, from Jaipur who did his graduation at NMIMS,Mumbai. A thought from his graduation days to do something for the students and young professionals, for whom the ‘relocation’ is a knotty term and does include variety of problems w.r.t to location, money and partners turned into Flat.to and since then its focusing on simplifying the ease for students for staying close to their campus or work related area.

Raised with an undisclosed amount of angel funding in 2013, Flat.to looks for a prominent establishment in different metro cities across India. The team of 8 members might expand in its size ahead, so if you’re a student or working professional go signup and fill their form and find yourself a satisfied solution(possibly the final one).

9. Thrillophilia


Thrillophilia, a 3 year old travel startup founded by Chitra Gurnani and Abhishek Daga. It has a bunch  of outdoor department with people who mainly travel to places and curate the local experiences, and also keep a check on quality and the services of the vendor, helping them to put their listings online. It’s a very dynamic nature of work which has been acquired on their site. Serving to 2200 customer monthly and 50,000 travelers with 1500 travel options and has 500+ corporate customers, they seem to set the bar high in years to come ahead.

Recently bagged $200,000 in a round, led by Hyderabad Angels, Thrillophilia is the big next thing in the Travel Industry giving various set of options to the widening range of places, which travelers loves the most!

10 GOQiilife

GOQiilife was founded by Vishal Gondal, and came up with the idea when Vishal was with his trainer, and the gadget GOQiilife was born. It’s a very useful gadget to those who takes fitness very seriously.

Recently GOQiilife has partnered with Snapdeal for its fitness band to be available for Inidan Online customers. Must check out this wrist band for its optimized used in fitness.

11. Redquanta


Redquanta is mystery shopping start-up from Mumbai, and was founded by Pankaj Guglani in 2010, since then there is no looking back for Mr.Guglani. So basically, Redquanta pays you to eat, shop and watch movies, in return the shopper has to give its honest feedback or opinion to help retailers to serve better and all this without paying any penny!! Isnt that awesome!? Well, believe or not at Redquanta this all seems to happen in a realistic way.

Currently funded with an estimate of $1 million, Redquanta does seem to set more shoppers in the market for their honest feedbacks instead them paying cash! What an idea sirji!.

12. Zepo.in

Founded by Nitin Purswani, Zepo.in is quite a riveting idea for online stores. You can open your own online store within 5 minutes, there are more than 200 e-commerce companies who have used Zepo as their platform. Stating ‘simplicity and ease of use’ as their key characteristics and what sets them apart. It has evidently become a fine class of platform for anyone who wants to open an online store. Doesn’t it sound so easy, I mean 5 minutes and you have it all figured what exactly your online store would look like. Not to mention the dynamic amount of designs available to customize your online store. It’s a real treat!

Also raised an undisclosed amount of funding, Zepo is a real solution for all those who seek to open their own online store. HIT THEM UP at Zepo.in

13. 18th Parallel


18th Parallel is a Pune-based start-up and was co-founded by Nishith, Hardik and Samir in 2011, the whole idea is to develop a middleware object that can readily convert any android device into a micro-console without any sort of optimization from game developers. 18th Parallel has its Cannoball software which would integrate with android device and then can use their own controllers to play games on their smart phones.

18th parallel has received the undisclosed amount of funding, and is determined to urge the gamers to turn their smart phones into game consoles for a great gaming experience.

14. WearFin (Fin Ring)

Fin Ring is a ring you can wear and control your smart devices through gesture interface, turning your palm into a magical one, managing all your desired commands and control your daily used gadget! Sounds way to cool right?

Well, it also has Bluetooth connectivity through which you can connect all your smart devices to your palm, and palm has all the control, what a world we’re living in!

Developed by Rohildev, from kerala, it’s a waterproof and durable material able to manage 3 devices at a time. It’s price is 7,500 INR for now, which may come down in future. So make sure you have a look at this epic controller, and turn your palm into a magical one.

15. TaxiPixi

Kajal dubey is the founder of this great free App(Android/iOS) which is available on Google Play store. Must say, What an App! Great UI, with so much simplicity has become one of our favorite app lately. All you gotta do is..


Install>Fill Pickup Address>Fill Destination>Fill Pickup Time>Select Cab>Fill Info.


And thats it! In no time, you got yourself a cab.

Technology hails! It is India’s first ever multi-operator cab booking app, which seriously worth a download, and especially if it’s for FREE! It also has 3 options in cab (Economy, Sedan, MUV).

It also raised an undisclosed funding from Celkon Mobiles. It’s going to be great as they might add Auto rickshaw booking service in future. Taxipixi is going places, as it already has its services in Malaysia, other countries might add in recent time soon. 

16. Skyfi labs


Skyfi Labs was founded by Pavan Ponnaganti in 2010, with a hope to help under graduate engineers to get practical and hands-on training, ““Our mission is to equip Indian engineering graduates with the right combination of praxis and theory” said Pavan, whose a graduate form IIT-Kanpur. So far, it has trained over 25,000 students from more than 150 colleges, and it looks for more 1,000 new colleges to reach out and provide refined courses and offerings.

Funded by Chennai Angels recently, it hopes to scale far more rapidly than the current.

17. iDubba

Idubba was founded by Rabi and Anish, claims to be the next generation of television programming guide. Users create an account and rate TV programs, set alerts and share or recommend on various social sites, which in turn follows by the rewards earned by the users which can be redeemed of course. It also aims to target half a million users in next year or so. It’s an interactive site for the users pertaining to the television industry and would prove to gain more of them as they soon going to come out with their Smartphone applications.

Yet another one with undisclosed funding, they’re the potential ones.

We hope you enjoyed reading the 1st part of Killer Startups by HiringMonk, if you think we missed you, feel free to drop in a line in the comments section and we will review and cover the same in our next segment of "Killer Startups in India to Watchout for".


-Himanshu Singh Rathor

In today's entrepreneur world, a new era of Start-ups has been risen, where a real prominence of entrepreneurial spirit is induced. It would suffice to say that the norms of corporate world have been shaken and the distress caused by brain-numbing job work is waning. By far, we all must have heard so many things about entrepreneurship and enterprising. But what's the take of parentage on this jazzy accelerated industry? Let's see and figure out the pros and con of this renowned venture which involves both risks and rewards.

Entrepreneurship has resulted in several small enterprises and has revitalized into many mature and immature organizations, why self-employment has gained so much attention and why so many youngster seek to operate their network singularly. Maybe because it’s what over saturation does to the youngsters or maybe the need of innovation is not enforced whilst working for a big industry fail them to do so.

For a parent, as their individual work in a well grooved company, a well settled company which has been established for decades give them a sense of relief and pride to tell others about their children. It gives them a hope of secure future and full-fledged security for their individuals. But is it essential for parents to be so protective in terms of security which bounds their children and not let them take 'risks' to grow individually, or is it only about keeping the standards or legacy with respect to working in MNCs and big enterprises, which in turn only narrows down their skills to work in a group and not allow a rapid growth in the beginning of their career. Parents may think that their kids needs to deal with patience and grow gradually with time and find their niche but at the same time what if their ability of being master at what they know and handle best is been restricted. Many questions would be raised as time goes by, but in the end what matters is the decision and skills maintained by an individual are been sustained and implemented by them to achieve their goal. 

Well, there are some parents who do see the rewards as much as the perils of entrepreneurship, and take pride in letting their kids involved, I see that as a good sign (pros) according to parent's POV and appreciate their candor. Come to see the con's of the same, there are parent's who are protective of their kids and would definitely mind their kids to see in a small firm and would jeopardize on their right of choice and willingness to work with what they'd really like or see a great deal of gaining experience.

Many parents also think of a brand name, which is quite justified and would want their kids to switch later after sufficient learning of managing on their own, as time would have it; indeed they definitely would but what creates slight bit of difference here is the factor of being agile and riotous. Many youngsters and entrepreneurs think of 'this' factor of huge importance, which may sound confounding at times but definitely speaks volumes! In today's spry world it’s inevitable that time carries acme of significance and should be dealt accordingly.

On a different tangent, the masses that belong to the middle/lower-middle class section of the society are the most hesitant to let their kids risk out the constant paying jobs when compared to the stake of starting up a new venture with no definite future (read as perpetual monthly grabs). Moreover the peer pressure of “One man feeding 5 stomachs” eventually polishes off the dream.


Suffice to say that the current ongoings duly suggests that there is a desperate need to adapt the drastic changes applied in last decade in the corporate world. And although starting your own enterprise or organization is bit complex and life-altering but it comes along with a lot of responsibilities of protection, finance, taxes, management and most importantly “learning”. So it is justified for parents to be apprehensive and occupied with their kids entering into the pool of entrepreneurs but it also does satisfy their urge to become what they are good at and not let their dreams get shattered with the peril of insecurity.

What’s your take on it?



- Himanshu Singh Rathor