Well here we are working even harder on a weeked bringing you the second part of Saturday Startups that covers the latest startups that are buzzing on the Indian Scene! This part has 4 startups out of which 3 are in the Saas (Software as a Service) and Collaboration space and 1 is in what we blogged about earlier called the microblogging space.
So let the startups roll..
Sales17 – An inspired product in the same space as the now world famous Salesforce.com which works as an effective online CRM service evangelizing the Saas (Software as a Service) space. Currently Sales17 is in alpha mode and hence its free! One can test the online demo of Sales17 to get a feel of the online crm and salesforce management features. As its in alpha the feature set is still to evolve from a basic set. Even the UI can do a bit of jazzing up with better graphs and drag and drop features. As per this review the founders would like to position Sales17 as the cheaper option to Salesforce.
Saas market is set to boom in India and we have written about that before as well but the only drawback is the mental block of companies against a remotely hosted solution which is hindering the adoption of Saas. Also the distribution and sales costs of such a software is also high as though it may be online its still needs to be “sold” to clients one by one till word of mouth catches on.
Deskaway - Deskaway is online project management and collaboration tool promoted by Synage software an Indian company that primarily focuses on the design and development of web-based software. Deskaway is a very simple easy to use project management software. It has basecamp like features but allows 25 MB of free storage with the ability to invite 5 users and manage 3 projects at any given time. It also has contact import and management, blogging and event management tools as well.
The company has been covered in quite a few publications like PCQuest in September. One can also read the founders interview here where they talk about focussing on creative agencies as a target market for Deskaway.
Overall this looks like a fast and neat software though i feel most of this would be a top down approach i.e. such project management softwares would have to be implemented by the company rather than individual teams as if its left to individuals it may not really take off as Indian are not known to be self organised. But Deskaway is looking at targetting an International audience which though better adoptors are being lured by a bunch of project and contact management players.
Diffen – Have you ever wondered how Brian Lara Vs Sachin Tendulkar purely based on stats look like? Or lets say the difference between love Vs lust? Well then this next startup is just about to answer all these comparisons that are wandering in your mind. I bumped into Diffen.com that attempts at using a wiki (powered by wikimedia) and tries to answer all the This vs That questions that you have in mind. Incase you dont find an answer you add to the wiki by creating a page for that comparison.
I think if Diffen just focussed on user generated product comparisons it could be hitting a sweet yet unexplored spot in the online space. Yes there are online product comparison sites like compareindia.com and usre review site like mouthshut but something like a this Vs that scenario would fit really weel for electronic good which are primarily feature driven along with ofcourse othe products as well. Once such a community is built it could then be leveraged into facilitating ecommerce on the site.
chittR – Not too long we had blogged about microblogging and how impactful it is and we had also blogged about pownce the new startup by Kevin Rose of Digg fame. On the same lines an indian startup chittR.com has been launched which is heavily inspired by the success of twitter and pownce (man forget getting inspired by the idea they even make the names sound similar to international startups!).
chittR is a good product in terms of features and even though its heavily inspired by both twitter and pownce it does a good job of communicating the applications usability to an Indian audience. chittR currently does not support a widget like twitter does but i guess with time we can expect those features. On the whole it looks like a good effort though i think adoption would be a key concern considering the fact that twitter, pownce and the recently google acquired jaiku are already existing in the market.
Thats it! For this saturday! Hope you have a great weekend! 
Here’s a stite that may be helpful http://www.wrike.com/. I’m not sure if it can be categorised as a start up, it’s developed since 2006, but it looks pretty cool. I’ve even found some positive articles on it.http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/134816/project_management_lite_basecamp_and_wrike.html I’ll be using it for the following week and let you know how I’ll be doing.