http://www.businessworld.in/bw/tag/kwench+library

The third edition of the Businessworld Hottest Young Entrepreneurs contest will see 25 companies compete in two categories. Five winners will be awarded in category A, which involves companies that are 2-5 years old. Three winners will be awarded in category B, which involves companies that are less than two years old. The winners will be announced in the first week of April. Here is the shortlist of companies:

Category A
1. Himanshu Aggarwal and Varun Aggarwal, Aspiring Minds
2. Kannan Vishwanath, Anjaneya Lifecare
3. Pankaj Agarwal and Sushan Rungta, Clickindia Infomedia
4. Harpreet Grover and Vibhore Goyal, CoCubes
5. Lalit Mangal, Sumit Jain and Vikas Malpani, Commonfloor
6. Saloni Malhotra, Desicrew Solutions
7. Pulkit Gaur, Gridbot Technologies
8. Sunder Nookala, Krishnan Madhabushi, Mitesh Damania and Prashant John, Kwench Library
9. Anshuman Agrawal, Minimac Solutions
10. Shwetank Jain, P2Power Solutions
11. Anirban Roy and Romira Roy, SEED
12. Prasoon Gupta, Ankush Sharma and Abhishek Sharma, Techbuddy Consulting
13. Nupur Panjabi and Sumit Panjabi, The Hiring Tool
14. Anup Tapadia, TouchMagix Media
15. Varun Khurana, Sunil Goyal and Lomesh Dutta, Wirkle Technologies

Category B
1. Pavan Kumar Thatha and Rakesh Kumar Thatha, ArrayShield Technologies
2. Adhvith Dhuddu, AliveNow
3. Nishant Parashar and Arati Parashar, Engage4More India
4. Abhishek Sinha and Abhinav Sinha, Eko
5. Ankit Mathur and Neha Juneja, Greenway Grameen Infra
6. Sharath Potharaju and Ravi Pratap, Mobstac
7. Lohit Sahu and Nithya N., Phyzok Learning Solutions
8. Bipul Kumar, Tatsam Sports
9. Sharad Singh and Vivek Singhal, Valuefy Consultants
10. Apporv Jain and Harsh Snehanshu, Witcraft Marketing

A screening panel consisting of investors from the country’s leading venture capitalist firms helped shortlist the 25 companies.

The panellists were: Anand Lunia, executive director and CFO, Seedfund; Ajay Hattangdi, managing director, SVB India Finance; Alok Mittal, managing director, Canaan Partners India; Indus Khaitan, partner, Morpheus Venture Partners; Prashanth Prakash, partner, Accel Partners; Rahul Chowdhri, vice-president, Helion Venture Partners; Suvir Sujan, co-founder, Nexus Venture Partners; Samir Kumar, managing director, Inventus Capital Partners; Sateesh Andra, venture partner, DFJ India; Sudheer Kuppam, managing director, Intel Capital (Asia Pacific); Satish Kataria, managing director, Springboard Ventures.

(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 07-03-2011)

Jarokha (November Issue) and the Quiz!

Last day for entries to the Jarokha quiz. Send in your answers today!

Download the mag at http://www.kwench.in/images/stories/Jarokha_Nov2010.pdf

‘kwench announces Business Summaries

We know that busy executives everywhere have a hard time keeping up with reading. Even we at ‘kwench have been known to nod off while reading our favourite books. (Some tell me they nod off all the time while reading Second Degree, but I guess that’s got nothing to do with lack of time)

So now, ‘kwench offers Business Summaries as an offering. The summaries are short concise snapshots of the crux of the book – very useful when you are stretched for time, but really want to know what is in the latest business best seller out there or even if you want to know what’s in the book before investing time in reading the whole book. Also the summaries are available in multiple formats (PDF, MP3, PDA/Blackberry compatible versions among others)

To know more drop a mail to customer.service@kwench.in

-Prashant.

Seasons Greetings

Bengaluru Ahoy!

 

Bengaluru Ahoy!

After Mumbai, Pune and Delhi we are now starting off in Bengaluru!

Slightly over a year of operations, 50+ clients in three cities, several thousand users. Thank you to all those of you who helped us get where we are today. You inspire us to think bigger, better and faster!

To know more about our operations in Bengaluru, please get in touch with Krishnan at Krishnan.Madhabushi@kwench.in

 

Announcing Jarokha! – the ‘kwench Newsletter

The first issue of Jarokha, the monthly ‘kwench newsletter is out.

You can download it from the following URL: http://www.kwench.in/images/stories/Newsletter_Oct_2009.pdf

Have fun! Do post your comments, we would like to make this the ‘best-est’ newsletter in the world of books.

ET Now feature on IAN

Business channel ET Now did a feature on Indian Angel Network, who have invested in ‘kwench. We talked a bit about our experience in the evaluation stage and how it all came together.

Outlook Business: profile on /’kwench/

Outlook Business just ran a two page profile on us. We are on page 94 of the Issue dated August 22, 2009.

For some weird reason their online links don’t seem to have been updated yet. Go grab a copy! (Its the one with ROBOTICS as the cover story and a pretty cool looking robot staring back at you)

The online link is now available at http://business.outlookindia.com/newolb/article.aspx?261213

-Prashant

To Read or Not To Read

It’s yet another busy week and as you open up your calendar for the week you groan! Back to back meetings, proposals to be written, backlog of mails to be replied and then there is that book you borrowed from ‘kwench and it seems that you just can’t seem to find time to read it.

Yes, we hear this all the time and we empathise. When we setup ‘kwench, I had fantasies of sitting in a warehouse full of books and reading to my hearts content. But setting up a worldclass service and making sure that our members can read to their hearts content has seen me hardly getting time to sit down in our warehouse to read.

But I still make it a point to catch up on reading – primarily because I find it extremely therapeutic, time with myself and because reading has helped expand my horizons in so many ways, I was not about to give up now.

So here are some tips on squeezing in the time to be up to date on your reading.

1. Read (make the time): Seems like the most obvious thing to do, but then the question is how? You can start by looking for gaps in your schedule, times when you end up doing nothing much in particular. My favorite times to catch up on the a spy thriller or an asterix adventure are lunch hour and just before sleeping. The last thing I do before turning off the lights is try and finish a chapter of a book.

2. Read All kinds of Books: Don’t pigeon hole yourselves into reading one author or one genere. Experiment with all kinds of books, there is a wealth of information out there and you would be surprised how enjoyable a lot of it is. When you have had a busy day at office, stressful meetings and you are looking to unwind – try grabbing a Tintin comic. Taking the half hour to be a child again can really help put you in a much better mood. Try it!

3. Read Light, Ready Heavy: If I am starting to sound like your gym instructor, its because its good advice. Like weights for your muscles, you progress from the light to the heavy and alternate. Building on the point I made above of exploring the breadth of book generes, switch across book types depending on your mood, your schedule and the time you have. I would rather read an entertaining Archies Double Digest on a short hop flight than try to complete a chapter of Les’ Misreables. (For the record, the last flight I took lasted 40 minutes, and four of my co-passengers requested the comic from me. Only one of them was under thirty-five)

4: Read Interactively: Yes, it makes a lot of difference if you interact with the story and you involve others in the story. Reading out the story to your family or even giving them a gist of the book can really help you get new perspectives on the book and it will get you brownie points from them for spending quality time. Can you beat the feeling of your children proudly telling friends how their daddy and mommy regularly tell them wonderful stories of far away lands?

5: Read at your pace: Its not a race. It never was (except for exam prep) and is no fun that way. There will be people who read faster than you, there will be people who read slower than you, there will be people who read different things than you. Read for yourselves and enjoy the journey. Spend some effort, find a comfortable corner, get the lighting fixed, put on some music, and see if you can’t but help enjoy reading that book you got.

We would love to hear from you on how you make time to read your favorite book.

-Prashant