CoCubes- A hiring platform

Harpeet Grover and Vibhore Goyal didn’t exactly start on the best terms when they met as roommates at IIT Mumbai. “He got the better bed so things were a little frosty,” says Grover, who graduated in 2005. Matters improved, though, and the duo have gone on to start a venture that has become India’s largest student engagement and campus hiring platform. A casual conversation with a placement officer made Grover realise that there was no formal platform for campus recruitment and with over 30,000 colleges in India, companies, too, find campus hiring a daunting task. So, with an initial investment of Rs.2 lakh, he and Goyal launched CoCubes in 2007.

Based out of Gurgaon, the word CoCubes derives its origin from the first two letters of three words — connecting colleges (and) companies. The company currently has around 2,500 colleges on its network who pay an annual fee, and plans to increase it to 7,000 colleges over the next year. Over 400 companies hire students through CoCubes: some 10,000 students have been placed through them and 800,000 students are currently registered on the platform. The company hopes to clock $4 million (₹22 crore) this year, driven by the increase of colleges in the network.  

Alma Mater- T-shirts, hoodies, caps, mugs and bumper stickers

Like all good ideas, this one, too, was born in a bar. In late 2009, Bishop Cotton’s Bengaluru-based alumni Varun Agarwal and Rohan Malhotra were mercilessly ribbed by the former’s cousin for being not hip enough to have a school branded T-shirt. A few drinks and some brainstorming lead the 22-year-olds to the idea of getting the T-shirts made for themselves. Sales to other Bishop Cotton alumni followed. And then, through word of mouth, others started approaching them to do the same for their schools.

And Alma Mater was born. Agarwal and Malhotra invested Rs.1 lakh each and started a website to manage the front-end and take orders. Today, they have a turnover of Rs.2 crore and 800 schools and colleges as clients across India, including the likes of Bishop Cotton Bengaluru, several IITs and IIMs. Products include T-shirts, hoodies, caps, mugs and bumper stickers.

“We have two business models now. One, where we take official permission from a school or college for its merchandise and second, where anyone can approach us to have stuff made for his class, batch, group or anything he has affinity with,” says Agarwal. Now, the duo is expecting to get funds from Indian Angels Network, he adds. This will be used to scale and grow the business further.

Innoz- A Q&A search engine platform

Innoz started as an engineering college project where four friends developed a Q&A search engine that responds to queries over text message. The service targets feature phone users who do not have access to the web. With Rs.1 crore from angel investors, Deepak Ravindran, Abhinav Sree, Ashwin Nath and Mohammed Hisamuddin converted the project into a business and dropped out of college. “We thought if Mark Zuckerberg could do it, so can we,” says Ravindran.

Innoz started as an engineering college project where four friends developed a Q&A search engine that responds to queries over text message. The service targets feature phone users who do not have access to the web. With Rs.1 crore from angel investors, Deepak Ravindran, Abhinav Sree, Ashwin Nath and Mohammed Hisamuddin converted the project into a business and dropped out of college. “We thought if Mark Zuckerberg could do it, so can we,” says Ravindran.

Innoz started as an engineering college project where four friends developed a Q&A search engine that responds to queries over text message. The service targets feature phone users who do not have access to the web. With Rs.1 crore from angel investors, Deepak Ravindran, Abhinav Sree, Ashwin Nath and Mohammed Hisamuddin converted the project into a business and dropped out of college. “We thought if Mark Zuckerberg could do it, so can we,” says Ravindran.

In March 2011, the firm signed its first agreement, with Airtel, to provide the service, now called 55444. Other telcom majors followed in the next year. Innoz provides its services to almost 10 million users and gets more than 3 million queries a day; each query costs Rs.1, which is shared between Innoz and the operator. The company has also set up an app store where you can use an app through the SMS platform. There are 200-300 app developers and 400 apps currently. A third of queries are through apps currently. With all major telcos as its clients and increasing use of the store, Innoz is hoping to clock revenues of ₹20 crore in FY13.