Alex Parish, a musician from London with the band Years Of Rice And Salt, wrote in a few days ago to introduce a new startup — Tastebuds.fm. Parish and fellow band member Julian Keenaghan have set up a match-making portal that aims to get single people to connect based on common or complementary tastes in music. I checked out the site and found that a couple of people from Bangalore and Lucknow have already signed up. Parish says the website has notched over 2,000 profiles, mostly in the UK, US and South America. For revenues, once they hit critical mass, they plan to follow the freemium model and charge premium members a small fee for enhanced functionality. Wow! an online startup that is thinking of a revenue channel other than advertising! Pity it’s not Indian.
Since we are on the subject of match-making, also take a look at Youpid, a Mumbai-based matrimonial portal, that has been around since mid 2008. I happened to come across them at Startup Saturday last month. Founded by Ruchika Abbi, the portal leverages social networks for match-making. I have not checked out how it works but if you do, let me know what you think about this ‘smarter’ matrimony portal.
Some help for startups and small companies looking for assistance with recruiment. Sutralite, a recruitment services startup in Mumbai (founded in January 2001) offers a low-cost solution. They claim 100-plus customers so far.
Signure Technologies, a London and Pune-based product innovation startup has improved the ticketing feature for its online event management portal Ayojak. It has a nice interface. Try it and write in with your feedback.
Finally, if you are a discount junkie, go look for deals on SaleDekho. This is a pre-shopping website from Delhi-based Firki Web, founded by Pankaj Garg. It provides information on discount sales across product categories in eight cities. It has three revenue channels. One, retailers pay a fee for customized packages on the website. Two, advertising on the website. Three, content sharing fees from other media such as radio and outdoor media. All of this is currently in the “negotiation” phase.
thats a nice one