The journey thus far..

The idea for a blog emerged when Sumit and I were thrashing out ideas for our startup. We figured that it would be interesting to document the entire experience. Steve Poland is doing something like this for his startup. So we thought – well – why not us? At the very least we could look back at it some years down the line and have a hearty laugh. At the most, it would provide some kind of perspective to would be entrepreneurs in India, on what they can expect when creating their own web startup. For without doubt, a web startup in India faces its own unique challenges – given the nature of the Indian economy, the limited penetration of the internet and well the many foibles that characterise the indian way of life.

Before I begin, there’s something that you simply must know. While Sumit and I have studies in the same school, La Martiniere, Calcutta, we haven’t met since. I got to know of what he was doing through a mutual friend,  and jumped right in. Its been an interesting journey thus far, collaborating across the globe - with me in Singapore and him in LA. It has its own challenges ( thats a story for another day), but we are both in India for the moment, so we plan to meet up. I am looking forward to our first face to face idea thrashing session.I am sure its going to be a lot more productive than phone and IM conversations.

That aside, what exactly are we doing – what exactly is our company all about? Well its a social network – .and before you say not another one – we promise you (cliched as it may sound) this one is different!

Of the existing social networks used by most Indians – Orkut beng the most prominent-there are none that I would like to use - for a number of reasons (not sure competitor bashing is the best way to start off my blog. Yes, I am a massive Facebook fan. However its just a bit too Americanized eh? What about having something more desi? Something that really reflects the Indian way of life?

Besides, Facebook started off as an online year book for Harvard students  and then spread to other colleges, finally opening itself to the rest of the world recently. Its popularity was because, it created a trusted community of university students since they could be authenticated by their university email addresses. How does one do that in India? Sure, the IIT’s, IIM’s etc. have hosted email servers for their students – but how many others? Given these constraints, how does one build such a community? We think we have the answer – sharing it in public, I doubt would be the most prudent thing to do. But for a moment just think about this - how comfortable would you be being part of a community where you knew no one? There in we hope lies the solution..

If you think we are creating another Facebook, well no.. that isnt the idea. We want our site to be open to everyone – students as well as the working communitu. Essentially we are trying to create an online platform for pre existing offline communities. While you figure that one out, we would love some help from you guys on a pretty basic problem thats been troubling us for some time now.. a name for our site( its not like we arent creative. But every domain name imaginable is taken!) So if you guys have an name that you think might fit what we are trying to do, and more importantly IS AVAILABLE – let us know! For those of you who are knew to this – Betterwhois is probably the best resource I have found so far for checking availability of domain names.

‘rb’