KGPian-Quaterly Newsletter for The IIT Kharagpur Alumni

KGPian Innovations

Ajitesh Shukla (B.Tech./1999/Energy Engg.) along with few other friends started their Web 2.0 startup FunPiper.com (http://www.funpiper.com) around a month back and it has been catching up fast with the Indian Youth. “KGPian” editorial team congratulates him for his new venture. Following is an excerpt from an interview with him:

Ajitesh Shukla (B.Tech./1999/Energy Engg.)

KGPian : How did you come up with the idea?

Ajitesh Shukla : I had been working in startups all through out since I left IIT KGP. My first startup venture was IITian.com way back in the year 2000 (funded $100,000). After the last startup Cendura Software that I was working in, and that was bought by Computer Associates, I decided to pursue my idea of FunPiper.com. FunPiper.com, initially started as a portal to provide a place for users to let others know about all the fun they had in the weekend or planning for coming weekends. Ideas kept evolving and our vision got clear with time. As most of the fun happens on weekends when we get two days holidays (29% of our life), we chose to pursue this idea to make a fun-based weekend portal.
FunPiper.com is envisioned to be the weekend portal such that people start their weekend on FunPiper.com. We have chosen to innovate weekend planning in twitter style. As "How was your weekend?" forms the most heard question in any gallery conversation on Mondays in every office around the world. We wanted to take up this question on FunPiper.com and entice users to post about "How was their weekend?" With our coming up feature of "Planner", users would also be answering yet another question, "What are you doing this weekend?" by creating weekend plans and sharing it with their friends and everybody out there.

I have always been fascinated by the story of Pied Piper of Hamelin. As users share their fun with everybody and in a way do their bits to spread the fun, I chose the name FunPiper.

KGPian : Tell us something about the planning part.

Ajitesh Shukla : As per our plan, we are working aggressively on engineering front to come up with value-added features on FunPiper.com. We are creating more channels for user interaction with FunPiper.com such as Mobile integration, and IVR (Integrated Voice Response). We have also started taking marketing intiatives to promote our portal in blogosphere. Very soon, we are planning to go for raising funds from various VCs in the country.

KGPian : What were your Growth sustaining strategies?

Ajitesh Shukla : We have strategies laid out on engineering, sales & marketing and team building front to grow at a faster rate. As soon as we get funds, we are planning to increase the team size for enhancing the portal development. We shall also be going for promoting our portal in media very soon.

KGPian : Are there any Collaboration Synergy etc.?

Ajitesh Shukla : We have plans of entering into key partnerships with vendors in various fun categories such as movies, music, TV etc. There are in all 30 fun categories on FunPiper.com. As time go by, and we build up our user base and traffic, we shall be entering into partnerships with various portals, vendors to provide great weekend services to our users.

KGPian : Is there any separate offer for the fellow Kgpians?

Ajitesh Shukla : We have plans for expansion very soon. I am not sure, if we would be taking any freshers currently but as we go along, and if have to hire freshers, I would always have an eye for IIT Kgpians.

KGPian : Anything else do you want to tell the new entrepreneurs?

Ajitesh Shukla : I and my team firmly believe in 5 mantras and they are Focus, Commitment, Strategy, Skill, and Speed. And, collective passion (of the team) is the key driver. If a person is thinking of starting his own company, he/she must check out his preparedness for starting up. Idea is only one thing. The most important thing is execution which could even make a B-grade idea click in no time.

Send your greetings to Ajitesh at ajitesh.shukla@funpiper.com