About |

Started by budding entrepreneurs and college students, Hungry N Foolish aims to be a one-stop portal covering social media, technology, mobile, and startups in India. Apart from profiling startups and breaking tech news, we also write on tips for budding Indian entrepreneurs. And if you are someone keen to learn and stay updated, you will find Hungry N Foolish helpful.

Our motto

To empower the people of India to utilize Social Media and the Internet to create a better society to live in.

The Hungry N Foolish Code of Ethics

We report on companies and individuals without bias. Wherever needed, we quote the source of the news. Also, as part of the ethical guidelines, we do not accept gifts, freebies or travel expenses from sources or subjects.

The Team

Abhineet Kumar
Abhineet Kumar is the founder of The Noob Diary, which strives to fulfill the dearth of good Indian blogs on the scene targeting a global audience. A student of Business Administration, he is passionate about entrepreneurship and blogging. Apart from blogging, Abhineet is involved in various college startups. They’d be listed here soon.
Abhineet urges you to do your bit in making this world a better place to live in, in your own small ways. Catch him on Twitter @abhineetsays

Ankit Kumar
Ankit is Co-founder of HungryNfoolish. A student of Software Engineering. He is a passionate writer who loves writing about anything and everything related to Technology. Ankit aims to be at the top in every field he is involved in.Catch him on Twitter @techpil

Kshitij Agrawal
A student, blogger, tech freak, music lover. Loves to travel and explore new and exciting places. An entrepreneur by heart, he enjoys working on challenging projects. You will generally find him doing nothing but hanging out with friends. Follow him @kshitijagrwl

Nishant Garg Currently pursuing Engineering in Information Technology from IIIT-A, Nishant loves spending time reading novels and is currently working on his maiden work as a novellist. He’s an avid blogger and a programming enthusiast. He firmly believes in protecting the environment which is mortifying at an alarming rate. A staunch Roger federer fan and a movie buff, he has tried his hand at everything he can lay them on. Wishes to make it BIG in life which acording to him is too short to do everything that he wants to.

Read his personal musings on jack & spades

Follow his tweets on @nishant0garg

Sana Khan
Sana is the co-founder of The Noob Diary and loves connecting with her friends on Facebook. Currently she’s focussed on blogging and some entrepreneurial ventures of her own. A student of Banasthali University, she plans to use her MBA education to do good for the poor and the downtrodden by opening up an NGO/Social Enterprise of her own.
Stalk her on Twitter @khansana

Why Apple iPhone is Still Lagging in the Indian SmartPhone Market |

A budget iPhone! Too good to be true? Well, the rumour mill has been predicting something similar for quite some time and going by recent reports on how iPhone market hasn’t really picked up in India as yet, it sure would not come as a surprise if we see Apple announcing the same sooner than later.

A Bloomberg report says:

Smartphone shipments in India are slated to rise by 70% by 2015. Considering this, if we go by the report suggesting that Apple ships fewer handsets to India, the world’s second-largest mobile-phone market, than it does to Norway, is alarming indeed.

Going by Bloomberg’s numbers, Apple sure has to do a lot of stuff and act fast in order to level with the likes of Nokia, Samsung and Blackberry in the Indian market.

But iPhones have been touted as the most promising technology developed recently. With its revolutionary iOS, high quality video calling web browsing features and easy synchronisation abilities, does it’s slow growth in the Indian market sure come as a surprise to you?

Also, if Apple lowers the price, then it will have to scrap some of the promising features. Is lowering the price the only option Apple has for surging ahead in the booming Indian mobile market?

Here we discuss some fronts in India on which Apple needs to do more work. Actually, the issues with the popularity and sales of iPhones in Asia in general are much the same:

• The price : The first and foremost and probably the most obvious reason for iPhones lower success rate in Asia and in India to be specific is it’s cost ceiling. As a developing nation, the majority of the population still can’t afford to pay $750 for the 16Gb iPhone.
• Competition: The smartphone user base in India still prefers a BlackBerry, Nokia and an Android over an iPhone. These companies provide similar features as an iPhone at nearly a fraction of its price.
  • RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger : BBM has a dominance over the Indian app market with its excellent marketing and performance since its launch in 2008. The messenger works with majorly all operators in India and provides instant messaging on networks with speeds incomparable to those provided in the US. People who want to buy a smartphone prefer BB simply because their friends have one too and choosing the same would offer better connectivity through the messenger.
  • Android OS : Being open-source offering easy app integration and installation features, inclusion of Flash and a better notification system than iPhone and of course being cheaper, Android smartphones provide a stiff competition to the Apple product.
• Poor Networks : India has recently started the third generation networks. The networks are yet to provide the services fast enough for an iPhone to function properly and to it’s full capability. Majority of iPhone apps and functionality relies on wi-fi which is yet to fully kick start in the Indian networks. 2G services are simply incapable of providing an experience that an iPhone promises to offer.
• Poor Marketing : People in the country know more about Samsung Galaxy Tab than they know about the iPad. The other companies seem to have spent a lot of money on advertising and marketing in India. Apple, on the other hand has not done any kind of marketing. I agree that people have started identifying Apple products, but I am not too sure if they realise what value it has when compared to a BlackBerry, Nokia or a Samsung product. For many of them it is something expensive with the same features as an Android phone.

Also, Apple does not sell its products through private retailers – thus deterring many buyers. One should notice that quite a number of rich Indians are in small towns where Apple products are not sold. And, since Indians cannot buy Apple products online as well – the only way to buy an iPhone is to go to a Reliance Digital store (which might not have what you need) or a Tata Croma store in a metro. A few private stores have started selling Apple products (again in metros), but they remain few in number. A better distribution channel will surely dish out brighter fortunes for the Cupertino-based giant.

Considering the above stated issues, if Apple does come up with something like a budget iPhone on 5th October (proposed date for the launch of iPhone 5) or in the near future, it will definitely be an event which will change the current Smartphone market on its head.

The thing to watch out for here would be how Apple would go about achieving this without compromising with the quality and performance that it boasts of. Reducing some specifications or features could be one way of approaching this. However nothing can be said as yet since no official announcement has been made by Apple, until then, speculations would continue.

If Apple comes comes out with something to cater to the Indian market it shouldn’t forget the youth. Microsoft, to lure the college students attention recently came out with an app development competition and another video-making contest. Apple could come out with similar campaigns as well. Plus, the Apple social media team needs to work the hard way in India. Facebook and Twitter are turning out to be marketers’ battlegrounds in India as in other nations, and Apple needs to concentrate here – the Indian public till now has not interacted much with Apple on social media

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Pharmacy Chain Medplus Launches MedplusBeauty.com, for Beauty andPersonal Care Products |

Sooner or later all the offline retailers will have a full-fledged online business i.e. an e-commerce store. The latest company to foray into e-commerce is the pharmacy chain MedPlus with MedplusBeauty.com, an online portal for beauty and personal care products. It already has more than a 1000 stores across the country which will surely help in the supply chain management of the products

MedplusBeauty Virtual Studio

It indeed is a virtual studio where the customer can upload one’s image and then try out various products and their reformed look after using them. People may try this out and can be a very handy feature for the company, helping it have its own distinct identity from other online beauty product retailers.

Get Home Delivery or Else Pickup From a Nearby MedPlus Store

Yes, that’s another advantage of having so many outlets in different cities. MedplusBeauty offers home delivery (on the same day in most metros) or you can pickup your order from a nearby MedPlus store as well.

Our View

Being an offline retailer, and that too a biggie in the field is going to help Medplus’ e-commerce venture scale fast. The money invested into all of this is also less as they do not have to worry about warehousing or supply chain management. Many offline retailers should be following suit soon, especially when it comes to home products where big online players havent yet established a foothold.

Abhineet Kumar is the co-founder of Hungry N Foolish. A student of Business Administration, he is passionate about entrepreneurship and blogging. Abhineet urges you to do your bit in making this world a better place to live in, in your own small ways. Catch him on Twitter @abhineetsays.

Why IAN had to redo its funding strategy? |

The Indian Angel Network, which is a major angel investor in the Indian startup scene, has decided to modify its funding strategy by lowering the minimum amount it invests in startups from Rs 2-3 Crore to Rs 75 Lakh.

IAN used to invest somewhere around Rs 5 Crore (preferably 2-3 Crore) in upcoming startups, and now has reduced the amount stating that there are a lot of firms which need lesser amounts as seed investment. It said:

Indian Angel Network has therefore re cast its strategy for funding and mentoring early stage start ups in mobile, Internet space and proposes to fund around Rs 75 lakh each for the first about two dozen start ups.

 

Why did IAN lower the funding amount?

• IAN says that there are many startups which require lower funding than Rs 2-3 Crore. So to accommodate their demands the minimum funding given out was lowered to Rs 75 Lakhs.
• Although its my guess but could be a possible reason – there are too many startups worth investing in the Indian sphere as of now. Now, IAN could have lowered the limit in order to have a chance of investing in each one of them before their fund dries up. I know it is totally baseless without any proof, but don’t you think it could be true?

Here is a list of IAN’s portfolio i.e. the companies in which the Indian Angel Network has invested in currently.

Here’s what IAN provides to entrepreneurs:

• Mentoring
• Help in growing the business
• Angel funding

The Indian Angel Network is India’s oldest angel investment firm. It was established in the year 2006, which is not too old in terms of years but in terms of the work done it has been the most fruitful period. This is possibly the best time for an Indian entrepreneur with a good number of angel and VC firms around.

Source

 Abhineet Kumar is the co-founder of Hungry N Foolish. A student of Business Administration, he is passionate about entrepreneurship and blogging. Abhineet urges you to do your bit in making this world a better place to live in, in your own small ways. Catch him on Twitter @abhineetsays.

BlackBerry Bold 9780 Review |

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 looks identical to its Bold 9700 predecessor, but features more memory and the new BlackBerry 6 OS. A refreshed home screen, various software enhancements and a better web browser are improvements.

Despite a small, 2.4in display, the Bold 9780′s screen is one of the best we’ve seen on a BlackBerry phone; it is bright and possesses good viewing angles. Like most BlackBerry smartphones, the Bold 9780 has a best-in-class physical keyboard that provides great tactility and is comfortable to type on for long periods.

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 is controlled mainly via an optical trackpad. It has no moving parts and you simply glide your finger across an almost flat surface. The speed of on-screen movement and scrolling using the trackpad takes a little getting used to, but it is responsive; its sensitivity can be changed in the settings menu.

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 runs BlackBerry 6 OS. The home screen looks attractive, and uses a very handy notifications bar that drops down when you select it. This shows all your notifications including e-mail, calendar, text messages, and social network updates. The BlackBerry OS 6 also integrates “Social Feeds,” aggregating feeds from Facebook, Twitter, RSS and BlackBerry Messenger among others.

The BlackBery Bold 9780 uses what RIM calls a “drawer” to store applications. Swiping across the screen will access different draws; all of your applications (main menu), your favourite apps (user definable), media, downloads from BlackBerry App World, and frequently used applications. Unfortunately, these drawers can’t be edited or modified, apart from choosing what to place in each one.

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 has an excellent universal search tool, and the handset offers a much better Web browsing experience than previous BlackBerry devices. Zooming in on a block of text automatically makes it fit to the width of the screen, and you can open new Web pages in tabs (then scroll through them using an excellent Cover Flow–like view). Panning around a page using the cursor and clicking links is still inferior compared to other handsets. There is also no Flash support.

Though many aspects of BlackBerry OS 6 have been improved we still feel it is best used with a touchscreen. For example, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 enables you to tap the notifications bar for notifications, the clock to set an alarm and the speaker to access sound profiles; all more intuitive than using the trackpad to scroll around the screen.

Being a BlackBerry device, e-mail support is as strong as ever. The BlackBerry Bold 9780 supports e-mail services through the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES). Microsoft Word and Excel documents can be edited and viewed thanks to the on-board Word To Go and Sheet To Go applications. In addition to 3G connectivity, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 has Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth capabilities.

The BlackBerry Bold 9780 provides access to BlackBerry App World, RIM’s third-party app store. It doesn’t boast the same number of apps as Apple’s App Store or Google’s Android Market, but paid apps can be purchased in Australia (using PayPal) and most of the popular apps (such as Facebook, Twitter, eBay and Windows Live Messenger) are available.

The Bold 9780 is also capable media player that features a refreshing interface, and the 5-megapixel camera also doubles as a video recorder. One real positive is the BlackBerry 9780′s battery life — it often lasted almost three days during testing, placing it far ahead of most of its rivals and making it a handy device for road warriors.

Google introduces ‘Search, plus Your World’ |

Team Google are constantly working out on ways to improve the ‘search experience’ for their users. In the past, they did so with several additions like +1, social search, among other things. Doing all this, they tried to bring the function more closer to the user.

Now, through an official blog post, Google has introduced – Search, plus Your World feature to its users. With this, Google confirms that they are looking at integrating their primary function – Search, with their social site, Google+. Result? A more personalized, more relevant stream of search links. Simply put, the next time you try to make a search query on Google, you will notice that the search stream will include a lot of posts, content in general from the people you know, and have shared with on Google+, instead of public posts. The personalized content on the results page will be visible to the user alone, thus leaving no room for safety hazards.

In this latest update to its search function, Google has rolled out 3 features: Personal Results, Profiles in Search and People and Pages. Personal Results will see Google, like mentioned above deliver more personalized results, in the form of text, images, among others making it more meaningful to the user and not just any random collection of links. Via Profiles in Search, users will be able to locate their contacts, or those whom they would like to follow right from their search page. With introducing People and Pages feature, Google will throw in people profiles and Google+ pages during searches that match to the user’s area of interest.

Briefly describing the latest from Google, the post states,

“We named our company after the mathematical number googol as an aspiration toward indexing the countless answers on webpages, but that’s only part of the picture. The other part is people, and that’s what Search plus Your World is all about.”

Users can choose to view personalized content on their search pages, or continue to have their searches in the same way as they always did by managing their preferences on a prominent new toggle on the upper right hand side of the results. Google will begin rolling out Search, plus Your World in a few days from now, and it will be available to those who’re signed in and are searching https://www.google.com in English.

Faster than Chrome, Maxthon Browser now Available in Indian Languages |

The amazing Maxthon Browser is very simple to use and very reliable when it comes to crashes. Maxthon is famous for its super speed browsing which they have maintained through out their journey of making a better browser.Maxthon being such amazing browser, never tried to advertise or promote their product via ads or reviews in the Internet.

First look of Maxthon Browser in Hindi only on HungryNFoolish

 Beijing based Maxthon, a browser that claims to be 200% faster than Chrome is now available in Hindi and Bengali language for Indian users (download link).

  Maxthon 3 comes with a browser engine that draws web pages 200%   faster than Google Chrome and offers useful free cloud services like   storing bookmark/notes, screen grabs etc.

New Maxthon  Browser Features :

•  Maxthon Passport login which allows you to login from any part of   the world to sync your settings.
• An Inbuilt URL Alias features which automatically displays the typed URL which saves your time and energy.
• Inbuilt Calender to organize your daily schedules and meetings.
• Multiple sessions at a single time, Best for gamers where you can login with different accounts in same browser.
• Multi Search which combines all search engines at one place.
• Drag and Drop commands to search a URL or words and open them directly in web search via address bar.
• Cool mouse gestures where you can make shapes with your mouse and trigger commands.
• Group feature which allows you to add pages onto favorites with a new folder.
• Full page zoom in and zoom out feature which is really amazing to try.
• In built Mute icon which allows you to shut noise web pages and ads.

Maxthon Browser Tools :

•  Download sniffer which automatically detects all the images, videos, audio of a webpage to download them  directly.
• Pop-up video tool which offers you to open and watch a video in a separate window or download it later.
• External tool which gives you instant access to your favorite program where you can add, delete and sort them accordingly.
• Get a clear knowledge of what you are browsing with the new status bar.
• Split screen to split the browser into two different windows side by side.
• Amazing screen shot tool which can capture a screenshot instantly and allow you to edit it your own way.

Maxthon Browser Safety and Security :

• With amazing private browsing feature you can leave no tracks to your browsed history.
• Ad hunter block unwanted blocks and advertisements. You can edit to hide any elements in a page.

Apart from these features, now you can get the Maxthon Browser in    Portable version with in-built theme changer and customized avatars  and skins. You can completely customize your user interface in  Maxthon. The Maxthon Portable

 Browser is available in 23 different languages and the new in-built Spell  checker offers many international languages.

Maxthon Portable Browser which was released recently with 3.2.2 as its current version. Many people have already downloaded the Maxthon portable browser and started using in their USB drives and other portable devices(download Maxthon Portable) so what’s about you ?

An IT student from CEM,Kolaghat. A Blogger, little bit of Web Developer, and a future Software Engineer. Love to spend time on social networking sites. Inspired by a single person who rules the tech world for many years with a single english letter ‘ i ‘.