Dear Members,

It gives us immense pleasure in announcing that our community now has more than 500 members!  We would also like to take this opportunity to inform our members that we have more than 700 followers on Twitter and 500 plus fans of our Facebook Page.

Mr Miithil Shah was our 500th registered member and we offer him a warm welcome and congratulate him for being an important milestone in the early days of our exciting journey.

This is also an indication of the impressive growth rate recorded by TheIndianStartup in terms of new members.  We are not yet an year old and we have already been successful in attracting startups, vendors, journalists as well as those individuals who are just keen on observing the Indian startup scene.

We hope to reach 1000 members in half the time it has taken for us to reach 500.  For this to happen, we need you to become our evangelists and encourage your connections to join us.  We’ve made this process easier by enabling you to send out invites to your friends from within Theindianstartup.com and we hope you will make use of this option.

We also need you to participate actively on our community by contributing posts, submitting links and creating groups!

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and make our community the ‘Facebook’ for Indian Startups!

Firstly, we would like to thank you for your unwavering support for making TheIndianStartup.com (TIS) a community to reckon with in the Indian startup scene. Within a span of few months, we have grown substantially with minimal advertising efforts.

To ensure increase our promotional activities, we are planning  to launch press releases about TIS & our various initiatives such as the Startup Showcase, Startup Interviews, Links & Best Places to work.  We have already started tapping online press release services to promote our community. You can view them here and here.

However, to propagate our venture to a wider audience, we need to have presence in print media such as widely read business dailies & magazines as well as in broadcast media. Therefore we request all our members to help us in this endeavor by directing us to the right point of contact in these media. This will be a win win advantage for all of us as wider exposure for TIS would mean higher level of awareness about our members among prospects and better chances of lead generation as well!

Kindly send your contacts to sham.srinivas@theindianstartup.com or call me @ 9819310939

We eagerly look forward to your response and thank you for your continued support!

The showcase already has a few listings so feel free to browse around.  The image below the front page where 125×125px images of the product/service will show.

On clicking these image visitors will be taken to the products detail page as shown in the image below.

As you can see from the detail page image, vendors can add a larger image of their product etc, product description, contact details, and link to their website. The details pages also include a form for clients to submit reviews/testimonials for the vendor.

Apart from the showcase front end, the product/services will also be rotated on the frontpage of Theindianstartup.com as seen below:

Here are some reasons how we expect the Startup Showcase to add value to our community:

Advantages for vendors:

1) Lead generation: Products and services in the showcase will be rotated on the frontpage of theindianstartup.com and will also feature randomly across the community.  On clicking the ads, visitors would be taken to the detail page as shown in the second image.

2) Better visibility: We are planning to associate ourselves with an optimal number of vendors to focus on granting them advertising estates for a longer time.

3) Customer base: Since we are already a congregation of startups which is growing substantially, vendors can be assured of a target audience with whom they can not only interact but also generate business.  Deserving vendors can also gain credibility through the ratings and testimonials features on their detail pages.

Advantages for clients:

1) Credible vendors: We are making sure that the firms listing themselves are trustworthy and serious about working with startups.  Ratings and testimonials will also be available to help you decide if the product/service is right for you.

2) Useful products: As a startup ourselves, we understand the plethora of difficulties in getting a product or a service which is designed keeping our needs in mind and isn’t just a modified rendering of what is sold to big companies.

3) One stop shop: We will showcase vendors providing all kinds of professional services so that all your requirements ranging from marketing to HR to legal are taken care of!

Vendors should also note that, as a launch promotion, the price of participation is very attractive at the moment and we have already started signing up participants.  We will also showcase interesting products and services in an upcoming post!  So what are you waiting for?  Contact us at support (at) theindianstartup.com or submit a product for review.

We would love the community’s’ feedback and look forward to your response. We will be adding features to the showcase on a regular basis so let us know if there is any particular functionality that you would like to see.  Lastly, do spread the word about the Startup Showcase amongst your favourite vendors so that they can benfit from this opportunity!

• Creating and implementing strategies to increase member participation
• Creating content for the site news blog, newsletters, Facebook & Twitter profiles
• Generating exposure for the community (advertising, tie ups, press releases etc.)
• Interacting with members both within the community and through other mediums
• Brainstorming & product development for planned features

You must have great verbal and written communication skills, an interest in entrepreneurship, the ability to work remotely without supervision and meet deadlines.  Previous experience in blogging, social media engagement, inbound marketing and graphic design is a plus. Depending on your previous experience and your time commitment, we may provide a stipend. To apply, please send your resume, a short note of why you want this opportunity as well as links (or attachments) showcasing prior relevent experience to kunal.jain (at) theindianstartup.com

We request all our existing members to let fellow entrepreneurs know about Theindianstartup.com so that we can get even more entrepreneurs, vendors, and investors involved with our community.

Expect to see some great posts from Sham and he might be in touch with you soon to get your opinion on how we can take this community to the next level.

Please visit the mashup page and follow the instructions to add markers for the best places in your city where you like to work and have meetings when you are not in office. These might be cafes, libraries, restaurants, hotel lobbies or any other location that works for you. Places that are free to use are best!

Also, we would love your feedback so please let us know how we can make this better.

Please note that with the launch of the new core blog, we will actively discourage new blogs being created solely for the purpose of posting an article as an announcement about your startup for the following reasons:

• We want to reduce blogs that are solely self promotional without adding value to the community.
• The promotion opportunities provided by posting a single article on a new blog are limited.  We will actively promote the articles on the press releases and announcements blog amongst journalists and bloggers and so posting an article there would provide the highest PR value
• According to our terms and conditions, we may delete blogs that have fewer than 5 posts and have not seen activity for over 3 months as these blogs add clutter to our directory and take up resources that can be better used by our regular contributors.

Therefore, please consider contributing your articles & press releases to the announcements blog instead of creating a new blog for them.

Watch a walkthrough below:

The front page now has a new feed box that is a mashup of feeds from the following entrepreneur’s blogs:

• Onstartups.com
• Eric Ries’ Startup Blog
• Tim Berry’s Blog
  
• The Four Hour Work Week Blog
• Seth Godin’s Blog
• Kevin Kelly’s Blog
  
• Guy Kawasaki’s Blog
• Wil Schroter’s Entrepreneur Blog

We will continue to improve this section both design and contentwise.  These blogs are just the few that are followed regularly by me.  More will be added to this mashup with your recommendations.  If there any blog that you think deserves to be added to this list, please leave the url in the comments below.
If anyone is interested subscribing to this feed mashup, click here.