Many people around are already into starting up on their own - fresh with new ideas, unmatchable energy and all pumped up to bring in the next big thing. But what does it really take to start up? Do you have it in you? Is this a wise and well thought off decision? How do decide all that. How do you know that the decision you have made is for the right reasons?

A very interesting and thorough flowchart that should help you streamline your decision making process.

For weeks now, all major finance portals have been full of articles on Groupon, how it has been losing out on market share to Living Social and other upcoming daily deals providers and how the investors are losing their sleep over the turn of events. The much awaited Groupon IPO was being delayed, and there were rumors that it may even be cancelled owing to the dismal performance by the daily deal pioneer. But amidst all speculations and negativities around Andrew Mason, the CEO of Groupon, he still managed to finally pull off the IPO that has been marked as the biggest the tech industry has ever seen since Google’s. So what does it mean for Groupon? And more importantly, what does it mean for the people who are buying in the stocks?

Well, first of all Groupon would be relieved to have dodged the bankruptcy with the sheer volume of cash the IPO has brought back home. If the results of the third quarter are to be looked at, Groupon owed $505-million to various parties, including the $463-million short-term obligations to the merchants for whom they had sold the coupons at half-prices. And to pay off these bills, Groupon had a meager $243-million cash at hand – less than half of the money it owes in the market. The IPO has brought back close to $700-million to the company, and the company is free to use these newly-acquired sudden resources the way it pleases them. It should be noted that Groupon, somehow, was able to price its IPO at $20 per share, above the 16-18 range.

The stock started trading at $20 per share, and in the initial frenzy it roze to a level of $31, which was lost as soon as it was gained. Since then, we are still waiting for the stock prices to get back to that level, and so are the poor bastards who bought the shares at $31. The way it seems, the chances of them making money in near future is as bright as India winning the Football World Cup. The shares are currently trading around $26 per share, but I don’t see people lining up to buy the shares anymore, and those who are already stuck in – they will be running wild to dispose theirs the first chance they get. The question is – how profitable, if at all, is that going to be?

Note: I think it is worth to be mentioned that we are talking about the same company that had seen a phenomenol rise when it was incepted in late 2008. Since its launch in Nov'08, Groupon's employee base increased to close to 400 in less than 20 months - the same time in which it rose from being a idea executed to a $1-billion plus valuation start-up. In the entire history of internet, such a phenomenol rise of a web-startup's valuation was second only to youtube's which took 1 quarter less to reach the $1-billion sweet spot. It was at this time when investors were all over Groupon and everyone wanted a slice of the pie for himself. In less than a year and half, the confidence as well as the acceleration crumbled; and when it did - well, it was not a very pretty sight. (Groupon started witnessing a serious fall in market share around July 2011, and losing most of it to up and coming competitor - LivingSocial) Such a magnificent rise, and an equally show-worthy fall - reminds you of anyone? (MySpace - are you listening?)

 

After Flipkart, its Infibeam’s turn to launch its very own in-house courier/delivery service - Infibeam Logistics. Infibeam, one of the prominent online retailers, has just launched its last-mile delivery channel for products customers are placing orders for online. The service seems to be just a soft-release/pilot test right now, with operations restricted to Delhi-NCR region, but it seems that the company is seriously looking into this particular aspect of logistics. They are trying to widen the last-mile delivery network by hiring more delivery agents, and there are plans to expand to other cities in India starting with major hubs like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

The service will be catering to both aspects of last-mile physical support – delivery as well as payment collection from users who had opted for the Cash-on-Delivery option. Flipkart had introduced the in-house service some time back, and it has been really good for them – both for logistics, as well as creating a buzz given the uniformed delivery agents. The ads that you see in Delhi metro, on Airport and in movie theatres is also circling around this theme.

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It’s a digital world, where everything ranging from intelligence to love is found online. So the growth online advertising spend has been seeing globally shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. US, which has been leading the online-advertising-spend market has been seeing a growth rate of more than 20% year-on-year and it does not seem likely to see a slump in the chart anytime soon. If analysts are to be believed, and I think they are correct, total online ad spend by 2015 will be hovering close to the $50-billion mark. So, with time at hand, and nothing better to do, I decided to read up on how the world of online-advertising is slithering its way to the $50-billion line.

Search engines, something that will always be attributed to the accelerant to online-advertising continues to be the major source, and companies more-than-ever are showing interest in getting their ads featured on the search results page of major search engines like Google and Yahoo! Banner ads as well, despite being marked ‘soon-to-be-dead’ by analysts, continue to grow strong – and major ad networks are attributing to a significant share of the total ad-impressions served. What is noteworthy here is the dominance of Video advertising as the fastest growing format.

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Among the start-ups I have been following, there is one that is worthy of its name - InMobi, a mobile advertising platform - something that started back in 2007 as a SMS based localised shopping deals and ads. Finally realizing the potential of mobile phone applications and the penetration of handheld devices in our lives, they went ahead to become a platform that provides a bridge between mobile-app publishers and advertisers. But this, here, today is not about InMobi. It is about an interesting article I read by Shamanth Rao (Head of Campaign Management, APAC regions at InMobi) - on how you and I are paying for every Akash tablet the government is selling around.

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Well, I have never hidden my admiration of the businessman behind the actor SRK, and with his latest movie - Ra.one - he has taken the businessman in him to a whole new level. In a world still pretty much dominated by the analogue norms, where the presence of digital protocols are limited to the launch of website for each of the movies, and some social media promotion, SRK has taken the game up a few notches by the first real integration of the digital space into the movie industry.

SRK's media firm, Red Chillies Entertainment, recently entered into an agreement with Indiagames to roll out a social game - Ra.one | Genesis - to promote the upcoming superhero movie.

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Had the Kindle Fire not been for $199, it may have been facing a lot of criticism right now – after all it lacks quite some features that as a user I would have expected it to come with. It has no camera, no microphone, and the biggest shortcoming – no 3G capabilities. But at the price-point Amazon has offered it for, it is still a pumped up tablet high on steroids and that too at $300 less a price as the cheapest iPad2. It is the package that will make a difference – as evident from the numbers just discovered. The Kindle Fire has been pre-ordered at an average rate of 50,000 per day; taking the number of pre-orders up to quarter-million in the last five days.

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The world was eagerly waiting for Apple to showcase iPhone5 on its product launch on Tuesday. (The reason why I keep Apple as the protagonist here, and not the new CEO Tim Cook, is fairly simple – Let’s face it, he is no Steve Jobs!) And then there was no iPhone5. Well, while most people would have been surprised at this ‘unlikely’ turn of events, it did not come much as a shock. It was certainly an unexpected outcome, but what else would you expect out of the guy who till few weeks back used to be in-charge of clearing the inventories at Apple. Not a mundane task, I agree; but then it is nowhere close to what a CEO is expected to do – meet up to the expectations of your consumers, and then do some more.

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As much as I hate accepting this, Sean Parker became a known name in India after the movie Social Network had been released; but even today, the face most people associate with the name is not of Sparker himself, but of Justin Timberlake. Depressing, I must say! The guy who gave us free music downloads, and possibly led to the rise of a plethora of music sharing portals deserves more respect and acclaim than that.

Why this post? Because of all the entrepreneurs you have seen around, Sean Parker is one who can be described by one and one word only - Enigma! Hated by some VCs who see him as an unknown variable, totally unpredictable; and loved by many others because of the simple fact that VCs love 'big' ideas, and Parker is someone who has them in plenty. As LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman says - "Sean Parker is a big-ass visionary".

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I've said this before, and I'll say this again - Amazon is on Fire! But I never realized that they literally were riding 'on Fire'. The world's largest online retailer unveiled its much talked about under-$200 tablet earlier this week - Kindle Fire. A device that has a screen size small enough (7-inch display) for it to fit comfortably in your hands, and at a price tag less than half of Apple's cheapest iPad ($499), it is clear that Amazon has Apple in Fire's crosshairs.

Fire is more or less a bumped up version of the Kindle e-book reader, packed with features and runs on Android. The way I see it, Amazon will be able to leverage its dominance in the e-commerce space to ramp up the sale of Fire, and give a real challenge to the iPad with its attractive price tag, and feature-rich product.

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