Tag Archives: money

PuneTech’s “Monetization Plan” was an April Fools Day Prank

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Our article yesterday, about our “Sponsored Saturdays” and “Pay Per Tweet” monetization plan was an April Fools Day prank.

Actually, we were overwhelmed by the amount and intensity of the response generated by that article. In fact, we feel bad for having toyed with the feelings of all the people who actually got fooled by that article and brought such strong emotions and passion to the comments.

Sorry.

And hopefully, you’ll forgive us this moment of fun.

– – –

The post generated a huge number of comments. At the time of writing this article, there are 78 comments. There were three kinds of commentors on that post:

  • Those who left a comment pointing out that this was an April Fools Day prank. We held all those comments in moderation until this morning, to ensure that the fun did not end prematurely. So nobody saw those comments yesterday, while the debate raged on. They are now visible, but marked with a [***]. So when you read all those comments, remember that the comments marked with a [***] were not visible yesterday.
  • Those who realized that this is a prank, but decided to join the fun and leave fake comments. I should point out that this was not pre-planned by us. Of these commentors, only Arun and Amit Kumar knew about the prank beforehand – all others guessed and jumped into the fray on their own. You guys made this much more fun than we had imagined!
  • Those who did not realize that this is a prank, and either expressed their displeasure with the new policy, or defended our right to monetize in this way. To all of you: our sincere thanks for taking the time out to let your feelings be known. While this time it was just a prank, we do really hope that in the future you will let us know your feedback when tricky policy issues regarding PuneTech do crop up, as they sometimes do. Especially the ones who blasted us – we do need readers like that to keep us pointed in the correct direction. Thanks again.

– – –

In any case, you must read the comments. It will be an entertaining experience. As they say, iss meiN drama haiN, emotion haiN, comedy haiN, tragedy haiN. Just remember that all comments marked with a [***] were not visible yesterday.

Also, you do subscribe to the PuneTech comments feed (or comments-by-email), don’t you?

– – –

Even the PuneMirror got fooled. In this (unrelated) article they wrote about TechMarathi, they included the following line:

[PuneTech] was until recently a non-profit venture. They have just introduced a paid content section for one day of the week.

Oh well…

– – –

Vishwajeet left a comment with the best conspiracy theory explanation:

It seems you have taken an appropriate day for announcing this, if it does not goes well among the community than you can take it back as April fool’s day prank 🙂 way to go.

No. This was always an April Fools Day prank. Arun, Anup and Amit Kumar, the 3 fake “customers” whom we “quoted” in the article knew that this was a prank (because we had to take their permission to misuse their names in this way).

– – –

Titash asked this pertinent question:

Is monetisation a must for every human endeavor?

Although we argued with Titash yesterday while the game was being played, in reality, we do agree with Titash. Our answer is a resounding no. We have no intentions of monetizing PuneTech.

There was some discussion about sustainability of PuneTech, but here’s the point: It takes very little hard cash to keep PuneTech running. The only expenses we have are the domain name and hosting, both of which are cheap enough that we don’t mind paying from our own pockets.

The main “investment” in PuneTech is in terms of time – our own time, as well as the time of so many other members of the tech community in Pune who do things for the community. So, if we must worry about sustainability, we should think in terms of time and not money.

Money cannot buy the quality that Pune Tech needs. Passion is not for sale. Sure, we could use money to pay for getting PuneTech a decent, much needed, design. But that’s not really what PuneTech is about. Money won’t buy high quality content. Money couldn’t have bought this article by Dhananjay Nene, nor this article by Addepalli. You couldn’t have paid Abhijit Athavale to start PuneChips and TechMarathi certainly wont be able to afford all the volunteers who work on it.

Time is more than money! So please “sponsor” PuneTech by donating some of your time. Write an article.

– – –

13-year old UpaPilot commented:

Rs. 10k per post? Are you mad?

I think he was on to something there…

– – –

Asuph said:

And Navin, you’re taking this too far. Even fake ‘angry’ commentors!

No, we did not fake any angry commentors! The fake angry commentors were genuine. This is just another example of the community coming forward to help out. Isn’t UGC (user generated content) great?

– – –

The Discrete Log vs Indiscrete Log comments were just too funny! Hats off Shashikant and Dhananjay!

– – –

Still can’t decide whether Anil was fooled (exhibit 1, exhibit 2, exhibit 3) or not. But I guess this comment forces us to give him the benefit of doubt.

– – –

You can all go back to work now. The …umm… “future of Pune will suffer” if you don’t!

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Introducing “Sponsored Saturdays” – paid articles on the PuneTech blog & twitter account

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(Update: This article was a PuneTech April Fools Prank. For a full apologyexplanation, see our article on 2 April.)

At PuneTech, one of the things that gives us pleasure is coming up with new ways in which this site can help the tech community in Pune. To quote Dhananjay Nene, we display a “willingness to experiment, learn and retry.” With this in mind, we are introducing a new feature that will help local small businesses, our readers, and us, all at the same time – Sponsored Posts on PuneTech – a win-win-win situation.

Of the 2 years we’ve been in existence, for 1-1/2 of them we’ve been refusing offers for paid advertisements and paid job postings on PuneTech because we don’t want to commercialize PuneTech. However, after receiving many impassioned pleas from small local startups, we have reached the conclusion that we have hit upon a major pain point, a desperate need that needs to be filled. Small startups cannot afford the normal PR and job posting channels and the future of Pune is suffering because of that. There is no good channel for small local companies to market themselves and get much needed visibility. Mainstream media is too big, too broad, and too expensive – and most importantly, generates very little long-term impact (or conversions).

After thinking over this problem for a long time, we have decided to allow commercial postings on PuneTech. We believe this is not really a reversal of our “not commercial” policy – is more of a social service.

With this in mind, we are introducing Sponsored Saturdays. Every Saturday, the PuneTech blog and front page will feature a paid article, which will either be a company profile written by the company itself, or a set of job postings by the company. The article will be clearly marked as a “Sponsored Post”. A flat price of Rs. 10,000 entitles a sponsor to post an article on the PuneTech blog on the next available Saturday slot. This will also be cross posted to twitter, the PuneTech linked-in group, and will go out in the PuneTech RSS Feed and to the e-mail subscribers. There will be no other posts on PuneTech for the next 48 hours – i.e. the sponsored post will stay on the front page until Monday morning. Single tweet postings may be purchased at Rs. 500 per tweet. We will consider special discounted rates for small and deserving companies who are not yet funded.

We are very pleased with the reactions we are getting from our early sponsors. Anup Tapadia, founder of of TouchMagix, who bought the first sponsored slot this Saturday, has high hopes from this program:

Through the normal channels, it is really difficult to find high quality programmers for the kind of cutting edge work we are doing in Pune. For example, a post on the standard job sites brings us hundreds of resumes, but not one of the candidates can answer basic computer science questions. Given the kind of readership PuneTech has, we are expecting to get some very good resumes.

Amit Kumar Singh, who plans on using this service to find customers for his software, says:

Finding the first few customers for a new product is the most difficult. And a sale to local customers will be much easier because the trust factor will be higher. All I’m expecting is 10 signups, and I’m sure word-of-mouth will take care of the rest.

Arun Prabhudesai of Trak.in commented:

All bloggers and mainstream media are doing this, either publicly or secretly. I don’t understand why you guys waited so long. But I’m glad you are finally doing it. Count me in.

For sponsoring a post, and for a copy of the detailed terms and conditions, please write to: sponsor@punetech.com. We do have some legal fine print, but the basic terms are these – the sponsored posts must be related to Pune, must be relevant to readers of PuneTech, and must adhere to the standards of quality of the rest of the PuneTech website. PuneTech reserves the right to refuse any sponsored post for any reason whatsoever, and the decision of the PuneTech editors if final.

We hope that many local companies take advantage of this opportunity.

Note: A majority of the PuneTech advisory board are in full support of our decision, and completely agree with us that this move will be welcomed by the tech community in Pune. In the interest of full transparency, we would like to disclose that two of our advisors who did not agree with this decision have resigned from the board. However, we are confident that after a few months of successfully running this program, we will be able to convince them to re-join.

We will continue to tweak and fine tune this program based on the response and feedback we receive. So please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks.


2nd April Update: As noted at the top, this article was an April Fools Day prank. To ensure that comments on this post did not give away the prank too early, all comments that mentioned “April Fools Day” were held in moderation until the end of the day. All these comments have now been approved, but we have prefixed these comments with a [***]. When reading the comments below, please note that all comments beginning with the [***] were not visible to anybody on 1st April.

Pune Incubator body ISBA launches Rs. 55cr venture capital fund

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The VC Circle blog has just posted information about a new venture capital fund launched by a Pune based association – Indian STEP and Business Incubators Association (ISBA). ISBA is an association of startup/business incubators, incubatee startups, and other people interested in this ecosystem.

The fund will focus on sector-agnostic investments in companies with no proven track record.

Arihant Group, a company engaged in steel manufacturing in Pune, has contributed a major chunk to this fund while the other investor in the fund is Mumbai-based Adventa Infratructure Pvt Ltd.

[…]

The fund looks at an average investment of Rs 2.5 crore, and expects equity stake somewhere between 5% and 30% in investee companie

The ISBA was set up in 2004 and aims to promote business incubation activities in the country through exchange of information, sharing of experience, and other networking assistance among Indian Business Incubators, Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Parks (STEPs) and other related organizations engaged in the promotion of start-up enterprises.

These are the planned activities of ISBA:

» Provide advice on finding out the requirements and conditions for starting an incubator, creating business plan, recruiting incubator managers, and incubator development issues;
» Maintain and update a data base containing the contact information of business incubation experts;
» Lobby for Indian incubators at national and international levels;
» To organize workshops, conferences, seminars, or training services;
» Publish a newsletter;
» To organize media conferences and other activities to create awareness about the incubator programme and get public participation;

For more information about ISBA, see it’s website.

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TiE Pune Seminar: To sell or not to sell – 24th Feb

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TiE LogoWhat: TiE Pune Seminar on whether or not to sell your company, by Girish Godbole, CEO and Founder, CEO ally, Inc.
When: 24th Feb, 6pm
Where: Renu Electronics, Baner Road (Near Lexus Furniture)
Registration and Fees: Free for TiE Members, Rs. 250 for others, mail namita.shibad [at] gmail [dot] com to register.

Details:
To most of us, our companies are our own, forever. We never think of selling them. Why should we sell our own creations? What good can come out of it? But in the West companies are sold off on a regular basis. There must be some benefit from that? Given that we are in the midst of a challenging global recession that most of us will witness only once in our lifetime, does selling out make sense? The events that will unfold in the next few quarters will result in the widespread destruction of value – for companies, investors, management and employees, and will span industry verticals, geographies and sectors.

So would this be the right time to sell your company? How can you best position your company for a potential acquisition? Should you get a strategic investment into your company? Why is mid-market M&A still active? How can you best prepare your company for a strategic exit? The seminar will address these questions and walk you through all steps of a typical M&A deal from the point of view of a small to mid-sized technology company.

This workshop will be by Girish Godbole, Founder and CEO of CEO ally, Inc. (www.ceoally.com), a boutique M&A and business advisory firm based in the U.S. Girish brings hands-on experience as a serial entrepreneur and executive who has built, operated and sold businesses successfully.

The workshop will address the following questions in detail:

  1. Should you sell your company? Why? When?
  2. Why do buyers buy?
  3. How can you best position your company to sell?
  4. What do buyers read into financials?
  5. What is a fair valuation?
  6. How does this all work? Can you do it alone?
  7. How will an acquisition affect your work life?

This seminar is free for TiE members. Non members will be charged Rs250/- payable by cash or cheque at the venue. The event will be held on Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009, 6.00pm, at Renu Electronics, Survey no 2/6 Baner Road, (lane next to Lexus Furniture. It is 250 metres after Hotel Mahabaleshwar going towards Mumbai) Pune 411045. Kindly email Namita at namita.shibad[at]gmail[dot]com to confirm your attendance.

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FREEconomics: The economics of free stuff

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GNUnify 09 LogoLast week, SICSR (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research) hosted GNUnify, a conference on open source technologies, which attracted hundreds of students and other open source enthusiasts. Shirish has written a couple of posts on his blog about the talks he attended – read those to get a flavor of GNUnify (day 1, day 2). Usually, the presentations and discussions revolve mostly around the technology, but I decided to talk about not the technology, but about the economics of open source in particular, and free stuff in general.

If so much stuff is being given away for free, how is it sustainable? Programmers need to eat, even if they are immersed in the ideology of the free software movement. Businesses who give away free services exist for making money. So it is instructive to follow the money trail and look at who is paying for the free stuff, who is making money and how. As more of the business world is pushed towards free (whether they want to or not), it is important to understand the various fine points of the economics and sustainability of this situation.

I’ve embedded my presentation below. If you are not able to see it, you can download the PDF.

FREEconomics: The economics of Free Stuff

View more presentations from Navin Kabra. (tags: open free)

If you can’t see the slideshow above, click here to view it online, or download the PDF

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