The Action in the online startup scene is getting hotter day by day with newer startups being launched every week. Its no surprise then that we bumped into quite a few interesting startups at Proto.in as well in Chennai on 18th & 19th but we will blog about the Proto experience a little later. So watch this space for Proto specials.

So while we were at proto focussing on proto startups some interesting startups were launched during the week which weren’t showcasing at proto.

Here is a low down of some of those interesting startups and what they do..

We shall start with Sabsebolo.com A startup backed by Sabeer Bhatia (A man who needs no introduction in india)

Sabsebolo.com - Sabsebolo is a free conferencing tool that allows 10 people to conference together for free. One needs to register a conference on the website and then call into a number with the conference code that you want to log onto.

Sabeer Bhatia in an article said “Through SabseBolo.com, we are targeting small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurs. But anyone can use this facility. It is absolutely free.”. Even though Sabeer says that its targetted to the SME’s the site itself gives out the positioning that its targetted more towards the youth with a bunch of youngsters talking on their phones in the headers image of the site. A deliberate move or a case of confused positioning? We are not sure.

Indiankanoon.com - You could call this site the Google of Indian Laws. Though unlike google the information is stored within the pages of indiakanoon. So its kind of a directory of indian law with a search oriented hompage. Saw this site on pluggd and gave it a spin. Its very impressive to me the average non law oriented user. I have practically no knowledge of laws and sections that they come under so whether or not indiankanoon is comprehensive or not is a difficult question to answer for someone as unqualified as me. But one thing is for sure this is an untapped verticle and form whatever data i saw it was very very impressive. A great effort by whoever is behind the effort. Just one thing the UI could be more slick though.

Uniguru.com - UniGuru can be classified as a study abroad site for students. Its modelled in the form of a social network where students can have their own profile, my buddies i.e. your friends, my album i.e. your pics and my messages. So its structured as a site which looks at both students aspiring to go abroad from india to study and also at those already studying abroad. A similar such site is bharatstudent which has got flak for spamming users.

Uniguru does a pretty decent job with the UI and communicating the sites benefits to its users and obviously there is a pretty strong market there when it comes to knowing about courses abroad and foriegn universities trying to lure indian students so on the does look like a strong business case for this kind of a network.

Flipkart.com - Books were one of the few items in the US that actually created a dotcom powerhouse in amazon.com. But sadly nothing of that sort was seen in India. Perhaps a case of books not being on the priority agenda of the internet user in India and also there being a low penetration in India. But now with the internet coming back to life with lots of users thronging social networks and other web 2.0 sites another book ecommerce site may surprise one. Is there still a market there to sell books online you may ask?

Well there is no right or wrong answer but the truth certainly is that there is no amazon in India. At best there is a rediff books which was launched last year. Flipkart makes and attempt to change all that by launching a pretty decent site. Flipkart is simple ecommerce site which makes searching books aa breeze. But as an earlier discussion that i was having with an investor told me flipkart’s success is entirely dependant on how many books that can bring to their online portfolio. On the whole a nice start but success depends on how much digital inventory they can build up.

Postalz.com - Email greetings and wishes have been around since email itself has been around and thats nothing new. But what if we took that concept a little more back in time and forgot that there was email! Well at that time there were letters and ofcourse Postcards! Postcards were a unique way of expressing yourself. Here is a startup that has gone back in time and added it to today’s technology. So Postalz.com is all about sending, embedding and sharing online postcards. And whats more it lets you create your own postcards as well. It lets you embed postcards on all the popular social networks like facebook orkut etc.

A very interesting startup which surely will catch on steam as postcards will surely catch on among the youth especially with the wide distribution network available through the embedding option. Currently one cannot quite see a business model in this but then internet was always about garnering users and figuring the business model later. So all in good time i guess. Good start nonetheless.

Whereismyboss.com - Whereismyboss isn’t a online boss tracker tool! I know.. Sometimes internet domain names can be misleading. Infact this site is aiming to be the webex of online recruitment i.e. it allows job seekers to be interviewed live by employers online on video. Besides for this unique feature it does have regular run of the mill job seeker and employer features as well.

On the whole it may be quite a tedious task as bandwidth levels in India are still not upto the mark. But it does seem like a need based tool for overseas employers who are looking at hiring on site in India or planning on hiring people for foreign locations. In that context this site could have an international appeal.

Quite a long startup update this turned out to be! Phew.. Looks like startups will be one hot sector thats growing so fast thats it difficult to report all the developments in one post. Do look out for our Proto specials which would have a lot of dope for tech startups.

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