Adepto Raises $300K USD From Blume Ventures And Rajiv Dadlani Group

Mumbai based Adepto has raised $300,000 in its first round of funding from Blume Ventures And Rajiv Dadlani Group.

Founded by two ex-Googlers, Kiran Kumar and Prem Pillai, Adepto Solutions is a product-focused social media application development company. Their flagship product Trol.ly is pitched as the ‘Default Social Commerce Solution’ to the online retailers, helping them improve sales via social networks. Once integrated with an online retailer’s website, Trol.ly works as a completely automated Social Commerce solution.

We earlier profiled Trol.ly on Pluggd.in and the company is also working on products in the travel, media and entertainment verticals.

Like we said earlier, it’s always fun to see Google hiring on Facebook and Googlers building products on Facebook – a sure sign that social media has changed the way marketers look at brand engagement.

What’s your take?

Also, take a look at how top brands use social media.

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A Look At Unique Characteristics Of Group Buying Sites [Why Is It Different?]

What makes Group Buying Business a unique business? Deals or discount coupons have been in existence for quite some time but the concept got phenomenal success when companies like Groupon married social with deals.

The combination of social and deals is relatively new and has many unique qualities.  Here are few of them.
1) Sales driven business
Most consumer internet business tends to be product driven. Primary driver for traffic and consumer adoption for most internet business is the product. Marketing and Sales takes a secondary role. But group buying business is not a product driven business. The product itself is very simple that just provides a listing of deals and has few viral elements built into it. The main business driver is sales. Groupon has been successful because of sales ability to source great deals with local businesses and build excellent relationships.

2) Low switching cost
I often use example of Facebook and Google to explain switching cost. Switching cost of Facebook is very high. It is very difficult for someone to create a similar social network and compete with Facebook. Even if someone creates a much better product than Facebook, it will be very hard to make people switch to it because all their friends and contacts would be on Facebook and it would take a long time to make them all switch to new product. A social networking product without having friends using it is useless. Therefore, switching cost of Facebook is very high. On the other hand, switching cost of Google is low. If someone comes up with a better search algorithm than Google then I won’t think twice before switching to new search site. Same is the case with group buying businesses. Switching cost is low because I don’t care which group buying site I use as long as I get a good deal.

3) Low entry barrier
I believe group buying space will be highly competitive with low margins for all players. The reason I say that is because barrier to entry is very low. Technology behind business is simple and easy to reproduce. Business is local in nature, as you have to create sales relationship in each geography that you want to operate in. Even if you create great sales relationship in an area, it cannot be replicated in other areas. You have to work from scratch to create new relationships in different geographies as you expand business. Therefore, barrier to entry is low and it is easy for new players to get in the business by focusing on specific geographies.

4) Good for businesses where customer acquisition cost is high
Group buying sites are very good for businesses where cost of acquiring a customer is very high. It provides an alternate channel to reach out to a large customer base and make them an attractive offer.

5) Good for perishable inventory business
A business has perishable inventory if the produce has to be used within certain timeline. Think about hotels or a spa. If there is an empty room in a hotel or a free slot in spa, it’s a wasted resource. It can’t be used at any other times. Variable cost of serving an additional customer is very low in such situations and the revenue generated by serving the additional customer almost directly contributes into profit margin. Group buying business is excellent for such business because they can manage the yield by putting an attractive offers to fill-up slots during dry periods.

It is yet to be seen how group buying landscape evolves but these unique qualities of the business makes it a very interesting space to observe over next few years. What are your thoughts?

[Guest article written by Rajat Garg/Reproduced from his blog]

Recommended Read: Business Model 101: What’s the deal with the Group Buying sites in India?

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OS X Freeware of the Day: Masq iChat Group Chat Program

Looking to find some friendly Mac users to chat it up with using your iChat accounts? Miss the old days of AOL chat rooms where you could have flame wars until 3 in the morning? Then you might enjoy Masq, which is a new program that allows you to utilize your iChat account to participate in group chats with other Mac users. Masq requires you to register a separate Masq account, but the chatting is actually done through your iChat account, so people will know you by that identity.

Installing Masq is a cinch. Just drag to your preferred location and check out the documentation if you're into that sort of thing.

Once you've gone through the Masq sign-up process to get your Masq account, you can login to the program. Again, this account will be different than your iChat account.

Now that you're logged in, you can see the main chat interface. You'll automatically be included in the default chat room and there may be others available when you log on. The list of chatrooms should grow as more users log on to the service.

Inside the program, you can set some basic profile information so that others can know a little more about you. Examples include location, gender, birthday, etc.

Go here to download Masq for free.