I'm attending "Startup Saturday" Bangalore chapter on Oct 8th.

The next session of Startup Saturday Bangalore will be held on 8th Oct. I am attending this session, are you?

The main topic of this session will be "Term Sheets", a often neglected but important topic. Term sheets are an essential element of the fundraising process and they contain a lot of details which if not properly understood could cost an entrepreneur lots of value and cause problems downstream. This talk will walk through pre-money, post-money, capitalization tables, exclusivity, options pool carve outs, liquidation preferences, founder vesting, anti-dilution protection and many other terms.

Event Date : 8th October 2011
Event Venue : Room No. 301,Central Block,Christ College, Bangalore
Register for the Event at : http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/event.php?eid=161

If you are planning to attend this "Startup Saturday" in bangalore then let me know. Leave your message as comment to this post or mail me, my id is [email protected]. Lets meet up. It would be great to discuss ideas and blogging experiences over a cup of coffee. :)

Read more... :)

Facebook Now Has Over 800 Million Active Users

It has been announced that the world’s most popular social networking service has reached over 800 million active users.

The 800 million figure isn’t just the total number of signups, these are 800 million active users: users who have logged in to Facebook at least once during the past 30 days. Now that’s a big, big achievement for FaceBook!

Read more: http://blog.dreamstarts.in/facebook-now-has-over-800-million-active-users/

Read more... :)

InMobi Raises $200 Million

Bangalore based mobile ad network company inMobi has raised $200 million in funding from Japan’s Softbank which would come in two Tranches one of $100 millon in September 2011 and the other $100 million in April of 2012. Including this huge money, InMobi has raised $215 million till date.

InMobi was founded in India in 2007 where it become the dominate ad network across the Asia Pacific Region. The company launched in the U.S. and Europe in early 2010. InMobi helps advertisers and developers serve up mobile ads, a fast-growing industry that has been fueled by the rise of consumer cellphones and multimedia-rich smartphones like Apple’s iPhone, android’s phones.

Everyone is just talking about this huge funding (probably this is the largest venture funding of year-11) but there is no news about the valuation or the current revenue of InMobi. How InMobi raised such a large funding? On What basis they got it? There would be only 2 possibilities behind InMobi’s $200 million funding.

1. InMobi would have shown a valuation of at least $ 2 billion in front of investors. Mobile ad marketing is growing but still it is a small market. According to a eMarketer “Mobile advertising is still a fairly small market. The total spend for such advertising is projected to hit $1.1 billion in the U.S. this year. That spend will hit $2.5 billion in 2014, the researcher estimates.” We should note that InMobi has big competitors like Google and Apple and these 2 companies hold the control on majority of smart phones (Andriod phones and IPhone). Would not this $2 billion valuation fairly big figure for InMobi.
2. So the 2nd thing that would have possible is, InMobi must be generating at least $20 million revenue so it got funding of 10 times of it's current revenue. This can be possible, because InMobi has good market capture in Asia Pecific and they are growing rapidly in latin American and in European market.

It really doesn’t matter how they pitched inmobi’s future in front of investors or how much of revenue they are generating currently. The thing that does matter, this company is doing extremely very well, growing rapidly and giving a good competition to the players like Google, Apple in the field of Mobile Ad networks. This funding will definitely help InMobi in its expansion. It might possible that they make their head count double or tipple. This means, InMobi will be opening many jobs for we Indian.

Indian Startups are going through a golden time currently. They are doing extremely well (FilpKart, Myntra, YeBhi, RedBus, SnapDeal, inkfruit, HomeShop18, SMSGupShup, JustDial and many more) and giving a good fight to American’s giants. Flipkart, InMobi, Redbus, SMSGupshup and JustDial are already in the list of 20 Hot International Startups You Need To Watch by Business Insider.

GeekOnNet congrats InMobi for its funding.

Company: InMobi

Head Quarter : Bangalore, India

Founder and CEO : Naveen Tewari

Funding: $215 million

Read more... :)

1st Commercial skydiving in India by Tushky.com

Tushky.com, Mumbai’s No. 1 site for unique activities, tours and getaways; brings to you all, a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience the 1st commercial Skydiving camp in India!

Watch the video to know the people behind this piece of history.

Led by a team of celebrated and seasoned Skydivers in Asia who are registered USPA (United States Parachute Association) coaches!

Feel the rush as emotions like excitement, nervousness, fear and freedom collide, when you are about to do a free fall from the edge of a plane at a height of 4500 ft. Fly like a bird, float like a cloud and hear the wind whistle as you descend towards the ground at a speed of 200km/hr. The Ariel view of the landscape below, guarantees an amazing yet a surreal experience.

Be a part of this exciting, enthralling, once-in-a-lifetime experience on the 24 September, in the beautiful state of Madhya Pradesh.

Only 30 Seats! Book now!

Tushky.com

Read more... :)

SMS GupShup Raised $10 Million in series E funding

Mumbai-based social networking site, based around SMS and bulk messaging, SMS GupShup, has raised $10 million from Tenaya Capital. Including this, SMS GupShup has raised $47 million till date. Money is raised at the valuation of 1,000 crore though company is targeting a revenue of 100 crore by the end of FY-12, ie. valuation is more than 10 times of its current revenue. Majority of revenue comes from GupShup’s bulk messaging system.

SMS GupShup, owned by Webaroo (an offline search engine company), was incorporated in 2007 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and incubated at IIT Bombay’s SINE(Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship). GupShup connects 50 miilion users, 5 million user generated communities and 25,000 small businesses via Mobile and SMS.

Company: SMS GupShup
Website: http://www.smsgupshup.com
Location: Mumbai (IIT-Bombay)
Started in : 2007
Funding till date: $47 Million
CEO: Beerud Sheth
Ref: http://blog.dreamstarts.in/sms-gupshup-raised-10-million-in-series-e-funding/

Read more... :)