TLabs, a mentorship-driven accelerator program developed by Times Internet Limited (TIL), which was launched a year back, has so far inducted 7 startups in to its eco-system. At this point of time, TLabs has opened applications for its 3^rd Batch of startups and is targeting to mentor 40 startups by end 2013.

India Digital Review caught up with Abhishek Gupta, Head of Accelerator, TLabs and his entire team of startups to understand how the tech startup ecosystem in India is shaping up and what are TLabs’ developing this very ecosystem.

On the Criteria of being a TLabs mentored startup:

There are three things that we look into a startup. First is the Team. The team should have three key parts that comprise of a champion salesman, a great developer and an awesome designer. These are very necessary for an internet or a mobile startup. I must mention that we don’t generally take a single founder startup.

Second, we take a keen look at the how big is the market size of the product is. The bigger the market size, it becomes easier for us to invest as the expected RoI is bigger.

Third, we also look at the idea that the team has been working on. Now there is a difference in how we approach the idea. Firstly, we only look at technology, internet and mobile ideas. Secondly, we are heavily focused on technology. Thirdly, a huge plus point is given to the idea that is synergistic to Times Internet’s existing businesses, because that would help us in distributing the product more efficiently. In fact, 3 out of our 7 startups have already synced their products into TIL’s properties. For example KaraokeGarage is already building an app on Gaana.com, whereas Virality and DataWeave are being used for Indiatimes Shopping.

On Investment Philosophy:

Our philosophy is very simple. We invest Rs 10 lakh fixed in every startup, it may change over a period of time, but will remain same for the 3rd Batch. We have funded SAAS, ecommerce, music and ad network businesses so far. As long as we find value and RoI, we will continue to fund.

On Period of conducting Batches:

We do 2 batches a year, one in February and one in August and we end every batch with a Demo Day. We have concluded both batches for 2012 and applications are opened for the first batch of 2013.

On Category trends in Startups:

Most applications that we get are in ecommerce and social networks. We focus on Tech and SAAS based products. The primary thing that we look at is that the product should be solving a pain point of a customer, in whatever category they are in.

On competition among accelerators:

Abhishek Gupta said that competition is great for the eco-system. India has traditionally been a market where either angels would invest or any institutional investor would put a large sum of money. Companies that started out had very little access to small rounds of money. This get solved by the accelerators, since the interest is building, it is indeed good for a business eco-system. Some people say that there will be saturation soon as there are only 1000 or so startups, but I don’t believe that. I think only the tip of the iceberg has been touched by accelerators in India so far.

On the number of startups in the ecosystem:

It is still small, but the eco-system is growing very fast. For example, when I started my company in 2005, I would meet the same 5 participating startups in each community event I attended. Now there are at least 20 to 25 community events that take place and the number of participating startups is huge. Even at our end, our application numbers are growing fast. We started with 140 applications in Batch 1 and 170 applications in Batch 2. For Batch 3 we have just opened up applications and without any effort, we already have 60 applications with us. The number of startups has grown hugely in the last two to three years. There are more entrepreneurs who believe in their ideas and are ready to take risk by leaving their well paid jobs.

For budding entrepreneurs:

It’s more psychological than anything else. Right now the world is very different and capital access is easy. If you have the right team and you believe in your idea, then you should go ahead and do that. What we tell our entrepreneurs is that they have to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), experiment the product and solve the customer pain-point. Post that, it is all about intelligent execution.

Our program is divided into three parts where we first help in building the product, second we help them devise their market strategy and third is we help them get funded. That said, the key is in bootstrapping and making a profitable business from day one.

On Plans:

We are not running for numbers. We are not a fund and hence there is no hurry to show RoIs. But our idea is to induct 40 quality startups next year.

The Mentees:

IDR also spoke to some of the startups and their teams to get a feel of how it is to be a TLabs backed digital mentee in India.

MusicFellas:

Musicfellas is a social, indie music discovery platform where users can have meaningful interactions around the music they love. Speaking to India Digital Review, Mayank Jain, Co-Founder/CEO, MusicFellas.com, described themselves music fans for as long as they can remember. “And throughout this time, we've discovered so many new artists who have enriched our lives with their music. And through Musicfellas, we want to help you discover these new artists with friends. We want to share with you the experiences that have brought so much happiness in our lives. We are here to help you discover new music, have conversations and easily support the artists. The artists get 70% of whatever you pay to buy their music. We hope that you enjoy Musicfellas as much as we enjoyed making it.”

Long term vision of the company is to give users the best music experience and help them discover new artists easily. “Also, we want to give something back to the music community which has enriched our lives with good music. So, we would constantly try to find out ways in which we can help  the artists as well as building a successful business,” added Jain.

The founding team consists of people who are passionate about music who have got together to give the best listening experience possible. The site has now been opened to everyone on 29th November 2012.

Recollecting on the TLabs experience, Jain said, “I met Abhishek from TLabs by chance at the Google for Entrepreneurs event in Delhi, where we were invited to showcase our startup. He liked our product and vision and after a few skype calls, we decided that TLabs would be really helpful in the execution strategy. And that is exactly how it has been. They have helped us align our vision and we are more focused now. There are some great in house mentors and regular visits from external mentors always helps in getting a different perspective.”

Viraliti:

Viraliti is the adwords for Pinterest and it is the first and only pay per click ad network on Pinterest. Anikendra Das Choudhury, Co-founder, Viraliti, said, “Viraliti connects advertisers with Pinterest users, giving them a route to monetize pins while giving brands an opportunity for more exposure. We are in private beta mode now and publishers can come and request an invite. Then we evaluate the publisher before approving. For being evaluated as a Viraliti publisher, the publisher needs to have at least 1000 followers on Pinterest. Most of our customers are from US and many publishers are also from US, Brazil and Spain. We also have a partnership with Komli Media in India currently, but first we want to evaluate Viraliti for customers and then launch it in public.”

Spelling out the objective and the long term vision of the company, Anikendra Das Choudhury mentioned that Pinterest was having a hockey stick growth and then the idea of creating an ad network for this. “We applied to TLabs and Abhishek invited us over. But we just had an idea and not the product. Overnight we developed a proto-type and presented to them and they liked the idea. Our mission is to become the sole advertising solutions provider for Pinterest because we feel that Pinterest is the next big thing in the social network market.”

Commenting on the value that TLabs have brought to Viraliti, Choudhury said that the most valueable part is the connections that they have made in the three and half months of operations. He also adds that meeting quality investors and mentors was also a great value add for Viraliti so far.

KaraokeGarage:

KaraokeGarage.com is an online social singing game where users can sing to their favourite song with the help of lyrics and original pitch reference of the song. Shankar Mahesh, Co-Founder, KaraokeGarage, stated that they started this as a mobile app created at the Android Hackathon. “We created this in one night and got good eyeballs. We built it on web and we demoed this to TLabs and thus got incubated.”

Recollecting on the TLabs experience, Mahesh said there have been a lot of changes to the strategy post incubation. “Initially we wanted to take the content licensing route, but we pivoted and now we are getting our content from YouTube and that has been helpful to us in building the product better.”

Long term vision of the company, according to Mahesh, is to be a music learning application present across all digital platforms.

HuntShire:

HuntShire enables companies to perform virtual walk-ins. Companies are allowed to create hunts online to attract candidates from all locations. As a part of the hunt, there is an online assessment that is designed based on HuntShire’s propriety hunt methodology which tests the candidates on the skills defined by the job description.

Gaurav Gat, Co-founder, HuntShire describes this as an online job fair for companies willing to reach eligible candidates and claims to save more than 70% time and cost for the companies. It is based on the online treasure hunt of model. The product is running and the company has a few paying customers too. They charge recruiters on per test basis.

Long term vision of the company is to help in recruiting the right candidate and help in growth of a company.