Tag Archives: POCC

POCC Meeting: SEO; web scalability; SUN startup essentials, 13 Dec

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What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together with a 3-point agenda. 1. Search Engine Optimization, 2. Web scalability, 3. SUN startup essentials program

When: Saturday, 13th December, 4pm – 7pm

Where: SICSR, Model Colony. Here is the map.

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone – no registration required

Details:

4pm – 5pm: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Dimakh Sahasrabuddhe, Dimakh Consultants

In the last POCC meeting (Pain Points of Pune Startups), people wanted to know how to do SEO for their websites, and the consensus that emerged was that you should either do SEO yourself, or at least have a good understanding of SEO before you outsource it to a consultant. As to who would be a good consultant for SEO, someone suggested that we should simply do a google search on “SEO Pune” – whoever claims to be good in this area should be the first hit. We tried that and the first Pune company that showed up was Dimakh Consultants. We’ve invited CEO Dimakh Sahasrabuddhe to give members an overview of SEO.

Dimakh Consultants is a Pune-based web consulting company with a decade long specialization in web designing, application development, hosting, networking, SEO & SEM. To date, Dimakh has managed the set-up and delivery of 5 Internet Service providers all over India. He manages more than 20 servers placed all over the world and hosts more than 1600 websites in India, US, Europe and far east. He regularly conducts workshops on SEO and SEM around the country.

5pm – 6pm: Overview of Web scalability by Sun Microsystems; and overview of Sun’s Startup Essentials Program

Representatives from Sun Microsystems will give a presentation on scalability of websites – something they are in a unique position to understand since Sun’s servers and Sun’s MySQL database form the key elements of the stack for some of the biggest websites in the world. Specifically, they’ll talk about: Web Application & Performance Considerations, Web2.0 toolkit – An overview, Sun Systems for Web Applications, Getting Best out of MySQL on Solaris.

After that, Sun will give an overview of their Startup Essentials program. This is a program designed by Sun for startups. Get industry-leading servers starting under $750. Storage up to 70% off, installed and configured under 5 minutes. Access to their network of investors. Your choice of OS (Solaris, Linux or Windows). Open Source and discounted enterprise-class software. Free technical advice and training, discounted partner hosting, and discounted storage. Anyone can apply, and you get access to all the above if you are selected.

6pm – 7pm: General Networking

Mingle. Ask follow up questions to Dimakh, or the Sun folks. Try to recruit trespassers. Brag about your startup’s achievements. Ask people if they know any angel investors. Show people how to open a beer bottle in 10 different ways. Live-twitter all the exciting developments as the meeting progresses. Play housie. (Actually that is not part of the plan, but if SocialWebFactory shows up, who knows what will happen.) Maybe even watch a movie.

Message to Pune Startups

Nominate yourself for proto.in. See Santosh’s blog post to know why you should do this, and how it will help you.

Message to Everyone

This weekend is going to be a rather active weekend (again) for tech activities. Check the PuneTech calendar for details.

Problems faced by Pune startups, and suggested solutions

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Together, we can solve our problems faster than alone
Together, we can solve our problems faster than alone

The Pune OpenCoffee Club (POCC) had a meeting a few weeks ago to discuss the various pain points faced by Pune Startups, and to see what solutions or workarounds people had come up with. POCC member Mandar Vaze has captured the main points of the discussion for the benefit of those who were unable to attend. In places where my notes had additional info that’s missing from Mandar’s notes, I have taken the liberty of interspersing my points – those are in italics.

I joined the meeting slighly late. When I arrived there were about 50+ people seating in a circle, and few more people occupying seats on the sofa behind. Topic planned for the meeting was “Startups – pain points”.

Initial round of introductions


Internet connectivity :

  • BSNL seems to be the best in terms of stability
  • BSNL’s Business plans for internet not cost effective
  • Several startups use multiple Home connection plans – Is it legal to do this?
  • Someone mentioned that for the team of 15, 40GB/month plan is sufficient
  • (Another suggestion was to take a limited bandwidth BSNL connection in the office, and then do heavy downloads at home using your personal unlimited bandwidth connection.
  • If you are using multiple connections (possibly from different ISPs) to ensure stability, then free, open source software is available that can seamlessly allow you to multiplex between these two connections. -navin)

Dealing with Power cuts :

  • Laptops work best to avoid worrying about power cuts.
  • If you need to use Desktop, LCD better than CRT (low power usage -less load on UPS/inverter)
  • With laptops, team can work from home, in case extended power cuts

    • Assuming team mates stay in different area than office
    • When team grows, this may not scale – possible security issues
  • Suggest using 9-cell battery
  • Have common pool of spare charged batteries around to extend the battery life even further
  • Spare batteries cost around Rs. 3000 as against UPS for Rs. 5000
  • UPS/Inverter :
    • Anjali (I think) mentioned that 4.8 KVA inverter costs about Rs 48000
    • She also suggested that multiple smaller UPS better than single bigger one of higher capacity – avoid single point of failure.
    • Someone asked to post reliable vendor for UPS/Inverter

Incubation Space :

  • IT Park / Incubation centers were suggested as a solution where you don’t need to deal with any of these hassles. They take care of power, internet, and other facilities issues that you don’t want to worry about. Pune IT Park and Connaught Place were the two possibilities suggested. This entire section written by Navin with inputs from Amit since after actually visiting Pune IT Park and Connaught Place and clarifying many of the misconceptions people at the POCC meeting had about these places
  • At Pune IT Park the cost in the region of approximately 5500 per month, per person – and this includes the internet connection. (Someone at the meeting had indicated a cost of 8000 – which is incorrect.)
  • Facilities include shared reception, printer and fax machines, gym, swimming pool, 24×7 security, shared parking, internet connection for smaller (e.g. 4-person setup), free coffee/tea, (paid) cafeteria.
  • Someone mentioned that you can stay there for only 2 years after which you have to leave. This is not true.
  • Capacity of up to 20 seats is available currently (Someone mentioned that there is a long waiting list – that appears to be no longer true.)
  • Connaught place near Bund Garden has offices for rent – but their rates suggest that they are not targeting startups, but are probably geared towards senior executives of MNCs. Our rough calculations indicated that the cost would be in excess of 30,000 per month for two people.
  • Another possibility suggested by a few people was to convince some friend of yours who owns a company to give you a couple of seats to work on your startup. We’ve heard of a number of people going this route.

How to share experiences?

  • Several people seem to get stuck at same issues – How can we address this?
  • Wiki doesn’t work
  • (For many startup issues, especially those related to partnership / proprietorship / private limited, registrations, and other legal issues, Vikas Kumar, CTO of BrainVisa pointed out that he knows many of the answers, based on his own experiences, but doesn’t have the time to put the information on a wiki, or even to respond to questions on a mailing list. However, if someone were to call him up on the phone, he would be happy to help them out. -navin)
  • “Ask Pune Tech” was started as one possible solution for this problem.

Student internships

  • People wanted to know whether it is possible to successfully use students from local colleges to do useful work for the startup, either as part of a paid internship or as part of their final year project.
  • Many people have had bad experiences. Some had good experiences too. People had good experiences with the following colleges: COEP, PICT, MIT, SICSR.
  • Sahil, who is a student at SICSR, suggested that we should use the SICSR R&D cell, which has enthusiastic students who would be happy to work on such stuff. Just drop into SICSR and visit the R&D cell.

Other topics discussed

  • Anthony talked about Startup Hive – How resources can be shared. (Basic idea is for a bunch of startups to take space near each other, possibly in the same complex, and this would lead to a lot of synergies, energies and other goodness. -navin.)
  • There was a discussion about SEO/SEM – several people were of the opinion, that it is better to learn yourself than out source. (With this in mind, we are trying to organize a lecture on SEO from an expert for this month’s POCC meeting. An announcement will be made in a few days. -navin)
  • Shushrut mentioned about IBM SMB website. Similarly there is ICICI SME website. (These sites have lots of resources for startups. Check them out for answers to common questions. Another suggestion was ammas.com -navin)

Presentations :

Bandhan.com – Search engine for searching bride/groom

  • Main problem they are trying to address is how to market their product
  • They (bandhan.com) wish to “play nice” with established players like Bharat Matrimony and shaadi.com by not offering syndicated search to other sites

The Tossed Salad – Lifestyle magazine

  • Problem they are trying to solve – How to market
  • Several suggestions about finding niche, rather than being generic
  • Amit suggested looking at seekingalpha.com and punekar.in

After these presentations, there was Startup Cinema – “The office space”

About the Author – Mandar Vaze

Mandar Vaze is Linux Enthusiast since 1997, using linux at home on and off. He was associated with Twin Cities LUG in US, and PLUG after returning back to India. After working in corporate environment for 13 years, he has recently quit his job at Avaya. He plans to have his own business some day, but currently looking to be associated with some Pune based start-up as a consultant. He thinks Pune Tech is cool 🙂

Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting: Pune startup’s pain points

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What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together. Solving the pain points of Pune’s startups

When: Saturday, 22nd November, 4pm – 7pm

Where: SICSR, Model Colony. Here is the map.

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone – no registration required

Details:

The

Are you a Pune startup struggling with issues that you shouldn’t need to struggle with? Electricity. Access to good service providers: CA, STPI registration, Website design, hosting? Difficulty with hiring? Need an SEO expert, but no idea who is realiable/worth it? Looking for someone to help you with facilities/furniture? Looking for Masters/PhD in mathematics/statistics to consult and don’t know where to look? Its very likely that your peers have faced the same problems and some have found solutions the hard way. Let’s discuss in a group and look for specific suggestions from those who’ve been there, done that. We’ll try to moderate the discussion aggressively to ensure relevance, and prevent tangents and rambling, or pointless bitching. We’ll try to collect and tabulate the most useful answers and post them on the web for the benefit of others. If you are unable to attend the meeting, but do have a question that you would like to raise, you can email them to me (navin@punetech.com) and I’ll try to get them asked/answered.

Also, if you are a Pune startup and would like to demo your product to or present it to the community at this get-together, please get in touch with us.

The Pune OpenCoffee Club meets on the third Saturday of every month from 4 to 7 pm at SICSR. (This time, we moved it to the 4th Saturday due to a phantom conflict with Barcamp Pune.) In addition, there is Startup Cinema – information about with you can find on the POCC mailing list. Often, there are also other ad hoc meetings organized by members of POCC. See the PuneTech calendar for a comprehensive list of all upcoming tech events in Pune.

Liveblogging POCC’s Startup Speed Date – Meet Pune’s startups

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I’m liveblogging the Pune OpenCoffee Club‘s “Startup Speed Date” meetup. This is a meeting to get to know a bunch of Pune startups in a short amount of time. Here is a list of the startups here, with a short introduction.

Pringoo – personalized products. Go to their website, create your own T-shirt, using your own images or text. Or a mug, or mousepad, or keychain. Print it and have it delivered to your home. You can order even a single T-shirt, at reasonable rates.

Sokrati – a product for search engine marketing and optimization. Targeted towards SMBs. $1million revenues so far this year. Moved to Pune from Seattle last month.

Kaboodle – Social network for shopping. Each person can upload information about things they’ve bought, or want to buy. Can check the same info for friends and others. If you can’t decide what to buy, you can create a poll that your friends vote in. You can create a style statement by putting together an interesting assortment of products that would go well together. Clientele is mostly young women. One of the top sites in the US.

VirtuaResearch – SaaS for equity research. A web-based platform for getting equity research. The provide the website, they also provide the actual equity analysis. In addition, they allow free-lancers to add their own research, which others can use. Sort of a social network for equity analysis.

Lipikaar – Be able to input text in 17 Indian languages, anywhere – website, desktop software. Blog, gmail, etc. Unique, patented, key entry method, different from all other competitors, especially easy-to-use for people who do not know any English.

Hover.in – in-text, customized, content and ad-delivery platform. Widgets to insert in your blog which can automatically add content from various websites (e.g. wikipedia) or third-party ad network.

ThinkingSpace – ActiveCiti.com a service for managing events, invites. EventAZoo.com a service for creating webpages for college festivals.

Chroma Systems – Image analysis software as well as hardware.

Alabot – Wants your computer / mobile phone to understand you when you talk to it. Natural language processing. For example, be able to send an sms for buying some train tickets without having to learn any specific command formats.

Markonix – Help startups with marketing their products in the US and elsewhere.

IndicTrans – A non-commercial group aim at building ‘social capital’ through making the communication and networking feasible and affordable among the people knowing indian languages. This we believe is a primary requirement for a democratic regeneration of our society as also a condition for harmonious globalisation.

laxmiroad.in – Provides you with an ability to shop online at Laxmi Road shops (for example Chitale!) and get delivery within 24 hours.

startupforstartups – Helping a wannabe entrepreneur build the first prototype of their startup without having to spend a lot, or build a team, or even quit your current job. See PuneTech interview with the founder.

Wissen Technologies Hukum Mere Aka is a learning program sitting in a instant messenger window that can talk to you and understand your commands, and get you data from its database based on your queries.

POCC Meetup Reminder – Meet Pune Entrepreneurs on 18th Oct

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What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together. Startup speed date. Get to know a lot Pune startups/entrepreneurs in a short time.

When: Saturday, 18th October, 4pm – 7pm

Where: SICSR, Model Colony. Here is the map.

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone, but RSVP unmesh at gmail dot com

Details:

The idea is for POCC members to get to know the city-entrepreneurs better and on the flip side, the entrepreneurs get to practice their elevator-pitch, field biting questions, and maybe find that one person they sorely need on their team. Please note that this is not a hiring event so please leave those resumes behind.

Here’s the format of a Startup-speed-date:
1. All the startups will first give a brief introduction.
2. Startups will occupy tables
3. Folks would get to do a sit-down with the startup for a max of 5 (? tbd) minutes
4. At end of the 5 min round the folks move on to the next table
5. this process continues till all in the room have gotten a chance to meet the ones manning the tables
6. At the end of the event you have a chance to win prizes (no iPods – all startups here) by guessing the startup from quiz questions.

Entrepreneurs signed up so far

1. ThinkingSpace Technologies – http://thinkingspace.in
2. Chroma Systems Pvt Ltd. – http://www.chromasystems.com/
3. Lipikaar – Express yourself in Language – http://www.lipikaar.com/
4. pringOO – express your Individuality – http://www.pringOO.com
5. Shop Online at Laxmi Road – http://www.laxmiroad.in
6. http://www.justmeans.com – News, Jobs, and Networks for people who create change
7. Pay for Performance SEM Solution – http://www.Sokrati.com
8. A Wissen Systems initiative – http://startupforstartups.com/
9. Kaboodle – Social Shopping Network – http://www.kaboodle.com
10. Information Engine (Search Startup) called “42” – http://42.dnsdojo.com/wiki42/42_video.html
11. AI for information access on mobile – http://www.alabot.com/
12. Sales/Marketing services for SME’s – http://www.markonix.com
13. Contextual widgets for your website/blog – http://hover.in
14. Prasanna Walimbe – http://www.virtuaresearch.com/ SaaS for equity research.
15. Parth Pandya – http://www.wissentechnologies.biz Provider of software solutions

…and the list is growing.

If you are an entrepreneur then you should sign up, because letting the community know what you are upto is always a good thing. Just send an email to unmesh at gmail dot com. If you are interested in the startup ecosystem in Pune, you should be there.

The Pune OpenCoffee Club meets on the third Saturday of every month from 4 to 7 pm at SICSR. Often, there are also other ad hoc meetings organized by members of POCC. See the PuneTech calendar for a comprehensive list of all upcoming tech events in Pune.

POCC Meeting on 18th October

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POCC will be meeting next on Saturday, 18th October at the SICSR, 7th floor.

Startup Speed Date will help you rapidly get to know other Pune OpenCoffee Club entrepreneurs, advisors, techies and everyone else.

For more details visit the forums,
http://tinyurl.com/49q927

Please RSVP by getting in touch with Unmesh at gmail dot com;

Startup Speed Dating, from WebYantra
http://tinyurl.com/3goaem

“…….the principle is roughly the same as the SpeedDating concept. The startup founders are seated on one side and the candidates get to say hello and have a quick conversation to talk about what the background of the founder is, why he started the company and what sort of person he is looking for, while asking questions to the candidate about the reason to join a startup and what his/her passions are and a few minutes later the same process continues with the next founder. Within an hour, you would have met/spoken to most of the startups, and by the end of the day would know whom to get in touch with for your first/next startup/job….“.

Subscribe to our always buzzing Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/punestartups/

How (and why) to bootstrap your own startup

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I am liveblogging the Pune OpenCoffee Club saturday meetup, where we are discussing how to bootstrap your startup. We have invited three speakers who have experience with both bootstrapping a startup and VC funding: Anand Soman, Tarun Malaviya,  and Shridhar Shukla.  The following is a quick-n-dirty capture of some of the discussion that happened.

This is not intended to be a well thought out, well structured article – hopefully that will happen after a few days, when hopefully someone blogs about this event.

Update: The hope has come true. Here are two other blog posts on that event: A post by Santosh (or maybe Anjali) of Bookeazy, and one by Rishi from Thinking Space Technologies (ActiveCiti and EventAZoo)

Getting funded vs. bootstrapping your own startup:

Anand: Take funding when you want to do something that you cannot do without funds. This can be VC funds, or any other source of funds. But make sure that the goals of the financer are the same as your goals, otherwise you’ll get into trouble.

Tarun: Most of you will not get funded. Officially there are 45 million businesses in India. Unofficially, 85% of 350 million people are in the unorganized sector – so they are businesspeople.

I don’t want to be a mom-and-pop show in a corner. I want to be a big business. But remember Reliance is a bootstrapped company. Finance is a good thing at a certain time, not always. I’ve seen too many people fixated on getting funded. It is better to be fixated on running your business well – keeping customers happy.

Shridhar: You get funding only if you’ve proved that you have a viable business. Which means that you have to bootstrap until you reach that point. So you need to figure out how to do this in any case.

What are the disadvantages of VC funding?

Tarun: You have to build a bridge across a river. You need a million dollars. You get funds for only 50k. What do you do? Fold the business? That’s what a financial investor will suggest. An entrepreneur will do anything to keep the business running. Buy boats to get across. Run a boating service. Change tactics to make some progress.

VCs insist on big returns. Leave you with no choice.

Q: If someone wants to build a lifestyle business, then you don’t need VC funding. But if you want to build a product, there are many people across the world with the same idea. If they are funded and you are not, then you are at a major disadvantate.

Lifestyle business = this is a lifestyle choice for the founders. They are doing this just because they enjoy doing this, and they are making a little money. They are not interested in giving a huge exit to their investors.

Don’t worry about lifestyle or not. Focus on building value for customers. As long as you can do that, and create significant value, you will do fine, and you will attract investors. If the value created is not significant, you’ll find out soon enough, and you’ll change your strategy.

There is a major trade-off involved here. You must believe in yourself. But not to such an extent that you are blind to realities and are not listening to anybody at all. So you need to balance this – believing in yourself vs. listening to feedback. That is difficult.

So why take VC funding?

Tarun: Family businesses get ruined by all the informal/unprofessional structure. VC funding is a great way of getting a professional corporate structure that is necessary for success.

VCs have wisdom, if you select wisely. They open doors to contacts. They are advisors. Some of them can be given a stake without being given money. So that is important.

Every VC that I’ve talked to has helped me in some way. So even if you don’t take funding, take advice from them. Go through the process.

Anand: VCs are not the only source. Many other sources.
One good source is raising money from your first customer. Win-win situation. He invests because he can direct you to build a product he wants. This is good because the understands your product and understands the business requirements. And he is happier giving you a contract because he actually has control over you 9since he funded you).

Bootstrapping your product through services.

Shridhar: Do services. Charge high. Don’t worry about good quality work. Do boring work because it doesn’t take up too much of your time (so you have time to work on your product). Don’t have qualms about doing this. Even when you do your product, keep the structure in place for keeping the flow of money from services. Money from any source is good. Don’t give up on that.

Another possibility for bootstrapping is to moonlight. Work somewhere. Have a day job. Work at night. Don’t create pressure on your own savings or your friends savings. Many businesses got started that way. Many people are worried about being fast, and first to market. That is not so important. But be ethical. Don’t do your current employer in

Anand: 14 of the top 15 companies in the world were started by part-timers.

Tarun:
Q: Why do you want to do product?
A: Exponential returns. Build once, and sell many times. Product encapsulates a service. You can bootstrap this. Sell your product as a service to the first few customers. Or maybe, start by selling your expertise.

Shridhar:
Don’t tell your customer that you are going to build a product in the space that you are doing a project in. Be smart. Don’t sign a contract that gives away your IP.

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Correction – POCC meeting is on 13th September

Miscellaneous,

Yesterday, due to a cut-n-paste error, I managed to transport the Pune OpenCoffee Club Saturday Meetup on “How to bootstrap your startup” into the past, and did not catch the error until email had gone out to the 260+ subscribers of PuneTech’s RSS/Email feeds. 

The meeting is on this Saturday, September 13th, at the usual time and place (i.e. 4pm to 7pm at SICSR). For more details, see the original (now corrected) post.

To keep track of all interesting tech events happening in Pune, check out the common events calendar over at upcoming.org. And please contribute to it.

POCC Meetup – How to bootstrap your startup

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What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together. Discussion on “How to bootstrap your startup”, followed by presentation / demo by ActiveCiti, and general networking

When: Saturday, 13 September, 4pm – 7pm

Where: SICSR, Model Colony. Here is the map.

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone, but you must register at http://www.activeciti.com/public/display_event.aspx?id=150878bd-cc32-102b-a8dc-e4e2bf193de6

Details:

Agenda:
4pm-5pm: Discussion: How to Bootstrap your startup
5pm-6pm: Startup Spotlight: ThinkingSpace Technologies (ActiveCiti & EventAZoo)
6pm-7pm: General Networking

Bootstrapping your startup:
We will talk about the pros and cons of bootstrapping vs. venture funding a startup. Tips and techniques on how to bootstrap. We have invited three successful Pune-based entrepreneurs who have gone through this and will guide the discussion and share their experience. The panelists have over 50 years of combined experience and about 8 startup avatars. Details of the invited panelists are given below.

Startup Spotlight:
Pune-based startup ThinkingSpace Technologies will talk about their two products, ActiveCiti (which is already up and running) and EventAZoo (which is in a pre-launch phase). They will be looking for feedback, suggestions, collaborators, etc. In addition, they will also share some experiences they had regarding copyright (somebody copied their entire product), which should be instructive for other startups.

About the invited panelists:
Anand Soman, founder of Infinishare Technologies, after having two successful startups in the past, one of which was bootstrapped, and the other one was VC-funded. His current startup is again bootstrapped.

Tarun Malaviya, CEO of Mithi, has also seen both sides of the issue, initially having presided over a successful bootstrapped phase of Mithi, and then a later VC-funded re-incarnation.

Shridhar Shukla, founder and MD of GSLab, and has used a services business to successfully bootstrap their products business.

See the PuneTech calendar for a comprehensive list of all upcoming tech events in Pune

SeedFund.in wants to meet Pune entrepreneurs

External Visitors, ,

Anand Lunia, Executive Director & CFO, Seedfund is visiting Pune this week, and is interested in meeting Pune entrepreneurs in one-on-one meetings. If you fit that description, you can send him an email at anand AT NOSPAM seedfund dot in.

Seedfund believes in investing small amounts (1 crore to 5 crore) in early stage startups and they are mainly interested in the following sectors: internet or media or mobile or telecom or retail or consumer-facing plays, and also for things that aren’t yet “sectors”.

This message brought to you by the Pune OpenCoffee Club, which you should join if you are a Pune entrepreneur, or you are interested in the Pune startup ecosystem.

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