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.