Carwale Raises $7 Million From Sierra; Isn’t Looking At Another Round

It’s been over 7 months since we first heard about Carwale.com raising $7 million from Sierra Ventures, and almost six months since CEO Mohit Dubey first publicly disclosed the funding at a Startup Saturday, though he didn’t mention the investors then.

The money appears to have taken a long time coming, and Carwale has now announced that they’ve raised upto $7 million from Sierra Ventures, in a Series A round of funding. So the money’s in the bank now. Remember that Carwale had reportedly sold 30% stake to SeedFund, an early stage investor, and it is worth noting that Sierra Ventures is one of the investors in SeedFund; Dubey told MediaNama that SeedFund had introduced them to Sierra Ventures.

Have promoters sold out majority stake?
Industry sources put Carwale’s valuation at around Rs. 48 crores, and suggested that they’ve sold around 25-30% stake to Sierra. Dubey declined to confirm the valuation and how much stake they’ve sold, but said that this has been a fresh issue of capital. He also declined to comment on whether the promoters still hold a majority stake in the company, and refused to disclose Seedfunds current holding in Carwale.

On revenues, targets and leads:

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Lifeblob Receives $1 Million In Funding; Monetization? Growth In Userbase Critical

Seedfund has invested $1 million in Bangalore based Lifeblob reports Incubator.

Lifeblob was showcased at Proto.in in July, and though I’d missed the presentation, I did have a 45 minute conversation with one of the founders - Rakesh Rajan - about the service and how they intend to monetize it. To be honest, I wasn’t very convinced about the viability of the service and its use-case; obviously the investors must have had access to more information and plans. There does appear to be an exit route, though:

Lifeblob essentially aggregates a users life putting together a time-line via photos and blog posts. They’re also allowing users to receive user content from other sources like Flickr. Now what’s interesting is that updates are tagged and may be shared between users - for example, a bunch of friends who update their Lifeblob with details of their Udaipur trip can be connected via their timelines and updates, making it easier to go through the trip later. A public timeline for Udaipur can also reveal updates from tags from other users. Take a look at the timeline for Delhi. This is one element that I think they can monetize - in the form of user reviews, photos and inputs for travel, but for this, their interface will have to be made more reader friendly, as well as advertiser friendly. The interface, though it allows users to move across timelines easily, is not very reader friendly, and take a long time to load. A lot of people were raving about that interface at Proto, but I see it more as a hindrance to content discovery.

The other interesting element, which I discovered today while going through Lifeblob’s blog is trends. An exit could be available via companies that want to acquire user data for delivering advertising - given the kind of information, the connections, and the tags that users are sharing about themselves on Lifeblob. Imagine this integrated into Google’s already burgeoning database on users. For this, Lifeblob will have to achieve a fairly large userbase, and go beyond India - which I was told they’re already planning to do. For that, $1 million may not be sufficient.

From Proto.in: Mahesh Murthy’s Advice For Entrepreneurs; Left Handed Hockey Sticks

Some great tips from Mahesh Murthy of Seed Fund and Pinstorm, during his talk at Proto.

1. Spend as little as possible on advertising.
2. The only thing that builds your brand, with no advertising, is price. Price is unique - look at super premium products with super premium pricing. Competition is not as worried about companies that price their products cheaper, as they are about companies that price their product higher. Price is your first positioning weapon - and should not be based on your cost. No company has won the market by simply pricing a product cheaper.
3. Have great User Interface (Ed: later in the day, someone also mentioned that there aren’t enough UI experts in India)
4. Market your product - go to conferences and be a speaker (they get in free). Challenge speakers, and be seen as a thought leader
5. How to get media attention ( ed: I took that as - how to con journalists *grin*) - when you go to journalists, have data to back you up. Have a unique positioning, no matter how niche it is. Be the world expert in “left handed hockey sticks”. Position your product well, and back that up with data. They want to communicate new and interesting things to their audience, and how you position your product is important. (ed: very true)
6. Dont follow a trend: if you cant be 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the market - get out. Don’t follow a trend. Chances are, if you’ve read about a segment covered in a newspaper - it is probably too late already. You can almost never be successful by following a trend. In short - “The Trend Means The End”
7. Market Research is Crap: Every future expectation of market size is bullshit. You have to create a market, you’ll got to get feet on the ground.
8. Finding the right employees - if you’ve found someone who wants a raise to join your startup, that’s a clear indication that he’s not the right guy. You can’t hire a mercenary to fight your battles. It is your passion that will get people on board. Don’t go for the IITs, but get guys from small colleges, who have something to prove.

I also wanted to listen to Sanjay Anandram of Jumpstart Ventures, but had to leave early for our own Seminar and mixer. Hope the WiFi at Proto is up…will be there for the second half of day today.