Street signs have sure become an agent of being aware of what is new and rising in your everyday life. Name a day when you are out driving and you do not devote a single second to seeing the huge street sign boards around,  even if you intend not to, your body is like auto ingrained to impart attention to just about everything around you, and street signs, if designed well get more than a fair share of attention.

Be it business, consumer durable, campaign or real estate – any department that comes up with a street sign that screams of a change is sure remembered till long after. Remember now – have you never noticed the change of banner around the corner of the street? If you have not, you sure are lying or just don’t remember the time when you did notice.

Anyhow, what this observation means for a company is that people will notice the street sign you use. What else? If it is a great street sign, which colourful and well designed, or at least unusual, your street sign will help create and almost eye popping attention of consumers driving a huge lot of them to you for your product or your services.

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You must thus use a good street sign design agency or service. One that has devoted designers to meet the need of your design, making it creative yet subtle but unique enough to stand out and grab the attention. It should not just stand out but be able to endure weather changes and be a clear depiction of your business, something that is very unique to your business and no one else.

Certain tips you may want to consider to ensure that your business has only the best street sign for it, nothing less are:

  1. The street sign should not have too many words one ought to read. The message should be short, simple and sweet. One that reaches out to your target audience. Remember that while driving by a customer cannot read paragraphs of information, maybe only a few words and they drive further. The few words you have must be simple for your reader to understand and clear for your customer to figure out even if he is at an angle that does not accommodate the view of the sign very well. So let your words be powerful, engaging and memorable. Less here is more.
  2. Keep making an additional effort to keep your sign engaging people. Adding holly and lights during Christmas, or plain changing the colour scheme often may do the trick. You may as well plan on a series of signs which you change every alternate month as a continuation of the old. This keeps your customer involved and wait for more too. So those little changes do not go unnoticed.
  3. There is no alternative to being creative. The customer has access to millions of signs. You do not want yours to be one of them. Be sure to make your sign creative and make it stand out. A little humour or sarcasm can take you a long way too. Lights and imagery are another way to garner attention.
  4. The sign should be unique to your business, nothing which associates it with other enterprises as such. It should form a personal connect with your customer.
  5. Decide whether the sign is timeless and permanent or is there for a short period. Is it an advertorial of sorts? Does it need to be transported or would it be reused. All these decisions will help determine the flexibility of your design better too.
  6. This said, customize your design well and make sure that the position of your signs is not too concealed. Let it be where there is not too much already. The process is easy and be sure that it is effective too. So get your street signs designed today! Tomorrow may be too late.

In case you are interested in getting Street Signs developed for your business, you can contact signs in Edmonton

Image Credit – todaysinnovativewoman

Building on the creative energy that Startup Weekend 2014 brought to the city, global leader in online payments, PayPal, announced today that it will host Startup Weekend in Chennai for the second consecutive year at the PayPal India Technology Center, Chennai from June 5 – 7, 2015.

PayPal

What is Startup Weekend ?

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event where aspiring entrepreneurs come together to form teams, build products and try to develop viable startup ideas. The global grass-roots movement, which promotes creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, is the largest community of entrepreneurs in the world, with over 1,800 events organized in 120 countries in 2014.

At Startup Weekend, participants get to meet, brainstorm and form groups based on their interests. They will also have the chance to work with mentors from technology and business fields, as well as angel investors to discuss and get insights on coding, designing, business model creation and market validation to help their idea development. At the end of the weekend, the teams will present their final plans to a panel of expert judges from across the industry.

Speaking about the event, Anupam Pahuja, General Manager, Technology, PayPal Asia Pacific said

We are thrilled to be hosting Startup Weekend in India for a second time. Through such events, we hope to be able to create a community for technology and startup enthusiasts to come together and collaborate on great ideas. As a leader in online payments and one of the world’s largest startups, we hope that the technology mentorship PayPal can provide will help enable and drive innovation within the technology ecosystem in India.

Details about Startup Weekend Chennai

Startup Weekend Chennai will focus on solving challenges in the financial technology space, encompassing areas related to credit, payments, security, asset management, currencies, etc.

How to register for Startup Weekend Chennai

The contest is open to developers, designers, product managers, marketers and startup enthusiasts – anyone with a creative idea and the desire to learn. Interested applicants can register for this year’s Startup Weekend at the following link. The registration closes at 12 P.M on June 4, 2015.

Why should you attend Startup Weekend

Participants will have the opportunity to interact with technology leaders from PayPal, including Anupam Pahuja, General Manager, Technology, PayPal Asia Pacific, as well as renowned industry experts such as Deepak Krishnan, Associate Vice President of Growth, FreeCharge.in & Ashwini Asokan, CEO and Co-founder, Mad Street Den & Mad Street Labs, and Ramanan RV, CoFounder at Juspay.in who will be mentors and conduct workshops during the event.

The top three teams who will be crowned at the end of the 54-hours will have a chance to enter the Start Tank Incubation Challenge organized by PayPal, which provides early-stage startups a world-class incubation space and access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists.

In 2014, the Startup Weekend witnessed participation from over 100 startup enthusiasts, well-established CEOs, and a network of angel investors.

About Startup Weekend

Startup Weekend is a global movement to promote entrepreneurship, which takes place in over 550 cities. Many existing companies have also raised angel funding as well as gone onto accelerators like The Morpheus, 500 Startups, Y Combinator, Microsoft Accelerator etc. They are supported in their efforts by Google for Entrepreneurs, NASSCOM500 Startups.

In the past 3 years, 500+ startups have started & 15,000+ entrepreneurs have been inspired. Teams have even started to generate revenue during the 54 hour event & others have even gone on to raise funds from Business Angels or Venture Capitalists.

Akosha, a messaging platform for all consumer-to-business interactions, announced that Sequoia is leading a new Rs.100 crore Series B round. This new round of financing will be used to hire over 200 software engineers and product managers to build out the platform & fund the exponential growth of Akosha’s new mobile app for connecting users and businesses.

Akosha

Akosha was founded on the insight that the quality and channels of consumer’s interactions with businesses are broken and outdated. Akosha handles 30,000+ consumer inquiries every day over the web, telephone and its Android chat app. Akosha monetizes these inquiries by providing Akosha’s enterprise software OneDirect to brands.

Brands are able to leverage Akosha’s software to have a fast and personalized interactions with their consumers. Over 130 large brands use Akosha’s OneDirect platform to respond to consumer inquiries every week. Around 30 of these enterprises have become paying customers who subscribe to a premium version of the OneDirect Enterprise Suite. Kotak Mahindra Bank, Voltas, Aircel, Snapdeal, Micromax and Makemytrip are some of the leading brands currently using Akosha OneDirect enterprise solutions.

140,000 users have downloaded Akosha’s new android app in just 4 months with an average rating of 4.5. Consumers use the Akosha app for product discovery, pricing information, discounts, customer service, booking appointments, travel research and so on. Currently, the app supports more than 18,000 chat sessions per day and have been growing 20-25% week-on-week.

Akosha_Android_App_Screen

Over the last year, the company has grown its employee base from 180 to well over 300 and recently opened a technology and product office in Bangalore. Building on this momentum, Akosha will use the additional financing to continue to expand its software engineering teams, accelerate product development, and invest in growing its user base. Akosha’s expects to add 400-500 people to its team this year.

Akosha was co-founded by Ankur Singla, a National Law School, Bangalore graduate who was deeply moved by the poor quality of customer service in India.

Quote from Ankur Singla, Chief Executive Officer, Akosha

We started 4 years ago to help consumers with post purchase issues. With the growth of mobile, we aim at building a messaging platform for all interactions between consumers and businesses including discovery, buying, appointments and customer service.

We hope to be doing 100,000 customer interactions/day within 3 months. But I think we’re just getting started. We are confident that in the near future, Akosha chat will be a competitive customer service differentiator for businesses

Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors said:

We have always believed in the thesis that consumers need a better way to interact with businesses. We are inspired by Ankur’s vision for becoming a single destination on the smartphone for users to interact with hundreds of businesses and online services.

We are delighted to lead our third round of investment in Akosha, starting with a $200,000 seed investment in 2011.

About Akosha

Akosha is a horizontal platform for all consumers to business interactions. Customers can connect with any businesses using an Akosha mobile app, dedicated customer care helpline and website.

Akosha has received over 40,00,000 consumer queries across sectors, including telecom, consumer appliances, ecommerce, mobile, banking and insurance in 2014. The company has 350+ employees and 3 offices in India.

On the B2B side, Akosha OneDirect is a social CRM platform that helps brands in managing their customer experience across all online channels.

Online on-demand delivery Run to Deliver announced the release of it’s android app, India’s first app that provides the fastest  On demand & pick up drop services.  Users can call Run to Deliver for pick-up and delivery of anything & everything within the city. For instance, if you run out of groceries or want food from your favourite restaurant which doesn’t deliver in your area, Run to Deliver can deliver it at the given address.

Small & medium business owners can customize the service & use it for pick-up and delivery of their items at a very nominal cost.  All this can be done with the help of the app which shows options which is easy to use and responsive. The feature can be used to save time and money for anything you want within the city.

R2D Infographic

In addition to the fastest pick-up and delivery, the application offers feature to track packages till it gets delivered. Less time consuming and affordable way to get work done, this app is free with the smooth interface following android best design practices. User’s need to enter the following

  • To enter your pick up and drop destination
  • Choose what you want to order
  • Select the needed spot
  • Point to point package tracking service

Run2Deliver

Run to deliver has a team of highly qualified technicians and staff. It has active members all across Delhi/NCR region that help us to connect easily, assuring time delivery.

Mr. Mohit Jain, an entrepreneur and the founder of Run to Deliver started the service keeping in mind that a lot of people have to spend extra hours and money only to get items from another part of the city. At this age where time is everything, you really don’t have to spend a lot on travelling or paying the other delivery services which costs a lot and only deliver a handful of items. We at Run to Deliver, are “committed to deliver you anything anywhere and any-time within the city”

Run to deliver for Android can be downloaded from here

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Furnishing your new home, or getting your clothes and shoes a heavenly abode such as a wardrobe can be a pain point! Urban Ladder has aimed at addressing this very issue with the launch of Urban Ladder’s wardrobes.

Urban Ladder, India’s leading online furniture & décor company is now set to redefine the modular wardrobe segment with a simple 3 step process: A,B, C: Ask for consultation, Build on the app and Convenient Installation.

Urban ladder’s launch of modular wardrobes enables its customers to build their customized wardrobes with the ease of access to their wardrobe consultants and specialist paired with wardrobe configurator app, Urban Storage!

It’s as easy as selecting a suitable time for the consultant to visit your home, once at your home the wardrobe specialists will use the Urban Storage app to take you through Urban Ladder’s designs and help configure the right internal partitions for your space, and storage requirements.

Urban Ladder offers a choice of swing or sliding doors, PLPB or Plywood based carcasses, multiple internal configurations based on understanding of customers’ needs and fully customized lofts. You will also get a sense of what our finishes look and feel like with the help of the swatches that the consultants carry. You can configure the design and other intricate details with over 1000 configuration options on the wardrobe configurator app.

Best of materials, hardware and expert care all at a click of a button.

More details about the Urban Ladder’s Modular Wardrobes can be found here

Note : Free wardrobe consultation available for Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Delhi customers [will be extended to more cities soon].

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SAP SE announced the launch of the SAP HANA Cloud Platform for the Internet of Things [IoT], expanding its comprehensive portfolio of IoT solutions to help customers connect the core of their business to the edge of the network, gain operational efficiencies and drive the creation of new revenue models, products and services. SAP continues to broaden its reach by collaborating with Siemens and Intel to make it easier for customers to adopt and manage IoT solutions.

These collaborations add to a strong partner ecosystem SAP has developed including recent announcements with Jasper, Accenture & T-Systems

“SAP is helping customers re-imagine their business with the most comprehensive portfolio of Internet of Things solutions from core business operations to the edge of the network,” said Steve Lucas, president, Platform Solutions, SAP. “With the launch of SAP HANA Cloud Platform for the Internet of Things, our customers and partners now have the ability to connect anything to any app or business process in their company and business network. This will achieve operational excellence and deliver new customer experiences, products and services.”

SAP Unveils End-to-End Platform for the Internet of Things

SAP HANA Cloud Platform for the IoT provides the infrastructure to enable businesses to securely tap into a network of millions of connected devices. Building on its existing data and application services, which include predictive analytics, telematics, geo-location and more, the newly launched IoT services from SAP plan to enable the device cloud for faster delivery of IoT business value: device management, IoT messaging & IoT application enablement including data modelling. IoT services from SAP plan to support the cost-efficient and quick development, deployment and operation of SAP solutions for IoT. Private cloud deployments intend to enable SAP customers to run their own device cloud or to operate a device cloud for their customers.

SAP offers a portfolio of IoT applications such as the SAP Connected Assets solution, including the cloud edition of the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution, and SAP Connected Logistics software, among others that leverage SAP HANA Cloud Platform for the IoT.

Intel and SAP Join Forces to Enable IoT End-to-End for Customers

SAP & Intel are collaborating to simplify, secure and scale the IoT for the enterprise. Intel provides a blueprint for industry-leading, interoperable IoT solutions. SAP is taking the complementary SAP HANA platform in conjunction with the Intel blueprint to simplify IoT end-to-end deployments for enterprises.

The first step in the collaboration is a joint proof of concept [POC] to integrate the Intel IoT Gateway with the SAP cloud.

Zopper, India’s leading hyper-local mobile marketplace, has recently unveiled its fully operational office in Bengaluru. The underlying motive behind this strategic move is to bolster its technological prowess, by recruiting talent in vital areas of operations and technology. With the city famed for its IT talent, the company aims to invest in the same to scale the growth ladder through rapid improvement in its technological foundation.

Zopper

Neeraj Jain, Co-founder & CEO, Zopper commented

With the hyper local mobile marketplace trending, thanks to the increasing proliferation of smartphones in the country, we realize that in order to leverage this opportunity, we must strengthen our services in terms of technology.

Our vital presence in Bengaluru gives us access to head-hunt and hire across the cream of talent in terms of IT. This will help us architect a seamless and solid infrastructure for Zopper’s fast expanding network in the country.

The company aims to activate expansion on an accelerated pace pan India and is taking definite steps to successfully execute its plan on the back of steady technological progress.

About Zopper

Zopper is India’s largest hyper local mobile marketplace featuring over 5,00,000 offline retailers. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Surjendu Kulia & Neeraj Jain, Zopper taps on the benefits of shopping at a retail store and marries them with the convenience of shopping via mobile phones.

Users can buy from the comfort of their homes/offices and get the product instantly from their nearby trusted stores. It is backed by investors such as Tiger Global, Blume Ventures & Nirvana Ventures Advisor’s, the company has raised over US$ 6.5 million in venture funding.

[Image Credit – Zopper]

Introducing the concept of showcasing ones’ own style and trends to the like minded people across the vertical, Dilbole.com, a unique style shopping platform, has been launched, bringing a whole new experience online.

DilBole aims to be a product bookmarking tool to showcase and discover style to the online community. It a platform for both men and women that offers a variety of category to choose from i.e., apparel, lingerie, accessories, gadgets, footwear, jewelry, cosmetics, furniture, home decor etc.

One can choose the products from over 25,000+ online shopping sites including Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra etc.

DilBole

The portal allows users to browse or flip through products from the other portals, create his/her own style & trend , showcase it to others and get the credit as a STYLIST!

  • Dilbole allows users to create a wish-list & categorize them into different mood attires like party wear, formals, casuals, beachwear etc. Users can then showcase their wish-list and can get the credit.
  • Users can also save the products they like from online stores, add the product using the chrome extension or using a link. On an mobile they can directly share product to Dilbole App from other shopping apps like Flipkart, Myntra etc.

Talking on the same, Khaleel Pasha, the founder of DilBole.com said

Dilbole.com aims to bring out the stylist within the person to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and smart buys. Style is just not the periphery of any gender. I would like to invite both Men and Women to join the “Stylocase” wagon with our portal and app.

They can now make their own style statement with the collections and can showcase it the way they like to share with others. We have tried to create a me-time for our users who love shopping

In a short span of time, since its launch Dilbole.com has succeeded in attracting and engaging people and won huge accolades. It guarantees loads of fun, fashion and style for fashion junkies and shopaholics at Dilbole.

DilBole.com is the right place to discover people, products and brands based on the style they are looking for. Fashion bloggers, stylists, fashionistas and proud shopaholics are part of the core. With an ever-increasing database of 1,80,000+ products, 25000+ online stores and over 10,000 brands, this is the right place for shopaholics to come to!

It is available both in web portal and mobile application for android can be downloaded from here.

About the founders of DilBole.com

  • Khaleel Pasha is a master in computers science from NIT Warangal. Worked for around a decade in eRetail industry with eCom biggies like Amazon, target, mothercare and marksandspencer. He had many stints of starting up before all in eCom domain. Backed with his experience he has very deep insight into the eCommerce and social shopping space.
  • Hemakiran is a masters in computer science from BITS Pilani. Bitten by the entrepreneurship bug he joined Khaleel to change the way India shops. Before this he was with Broadcom. Experience with bootstrapped start-ups made Kiran a package of diverse skill-sets. He takes care of design and marketing aspects of Dilbole.

Do give DilBole.com a spin & share your experience 🙂