To the community of Collegekhabar.com

Dear all,

The journey of  CollegeKhabar so far happened to be successful only because of enormous support and contribution of the community, whether it was the All India Rankings initiative, or sharing information or anything else. We thank all our stake-holders for this support too far and look forward for continued enthusiasm. We laid out this portal with a vision of creating a collaborative platform “of the community, for the community, and by the community”, and we believe we have been successful in this. Now we are thinking to take this to all new level.

Yes, we are in process of unfolding the ‘CollegeKhabar V 2.0″

And we look forward to the contribution of the community for this too. Below is how you can contribute:

1. Features: If you want any specific feature to be added to the portal
2. Design: If you have any suggestions for the design, look and feel (feel free to add links of the relevant sites you like the most)

We’d appreciate if you can drop us detailed mail with your suggestions to me at naveen@collegekhabar.com (you can also contact me directly http://fb.com/naveenmeena)

The selected suggestion makers will get a chance to take the lead to execute his/her suggestion/s to see them live on the portal. A token of appreciation will be issued to the person.

Cheers!

Naveen Kumar Meena

Evangelist – College Khabar (A ThoughtLabs Initiative)

COLLEGEKHABAR WAS BORN ON AUGUST 23, 2009 and if it were a person it would be one year old baby. But companies are not people and so do Collegekhabar.com. It embodies the effort, ability, commitment and hard work of many individuals.

To the stakeholders of Collegekhabar.com

Dear Stakeholders*

Collegekhabar.com is an initiative from ‘ThoughtLabs’. It is an initiative to bring together students, colleges and prospective employers. At CollegeKhabar news related to placement activities, admission details, events and competitions in educational institutes across India is updated regularly. Collegekhabar.com has continuously witnessed high growth in visitor acquisition and currently occupying an important position in its segment. We feel proud to present before you our first annual report.

This report records the summary of performance.

Highlights: Operational

- Covered in print media with nearly half page articles (DNA, Dainik Bhaskar – leading Hindi daily and Eenadu – leading Telugu daily)

- Over 2 million page views (as verified by Google analytics)

- Growth rate is still more than 50% month on month (MoM) basis.

- 10000+ registered users for newsletters and feeds

- 2500+ articles/news/events/reviews posted

- 1800+ Campus partner/Khabari requests in 1 year

- More than 500 students applied for internship program.

- Media partnerships with 50+ institutes for various events and competitions including (IITs – Kanpur, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Bombay & Delhi, IMT Ghaziabad, School of Management, IIT Kanpur, NMIMS Mumbai, Symbiosis Pune, CEPT Ahmedabad, ITBHU, ISM Dhanbad   NITs – Jaipur, Jalandhar, Allahabad, Hamirpur, Warangal, BITS – Pilani, BIT Ranchi, Thapar University, VJTI Mumbai, IIIT Allahabad, and many more reputed institutes across country)

Highlights: Intangibles

- “College Khabar” becomes a unique keyword in Google within 3 months of launch. CollegeKhabar has been shown under ‘Google Trends’ – due to numerous searches in a day many times in 2009-10.

- Reviewed and appreciated by many startup communities including: Indianwebstartups.com, squamble.com, younoodle.com, Hotindianstartups.com, startupticker.com, gajeebo.com, startup-companies.com, bsherpas.com and many more.

-  Students started mentioning College Khabar in their blogs/feeds as very useful place for placement preparation/college news. (We are getting benefits of Viral marketing without any investment)

-  Collegekhabar team has been invited for seminars and workshops on Entreprenuership Management by leading institutions of the country.

Highlighted Achievement:

-  Listed in ‘Microsoft Bizspark’ program (among 240 startups from India in recent years)

- City winner and Zonal finalist of ‘WagonR Think Big Challenge’ and Regional finalist of “Vulture’s Nest”- Biggest B-Plan competition in Asia by IIT Bombay

-  Financially self-sustain portal within a year – trust of our customers has made this possible (and with fact that we still don’t use any type of POPUPs)

Finance:

Figures are not to be disclosed as advised (Yes! we are not going to be next Google or Apple, yet we had breakeven in last quarter. We are working on better revenue model)

Our Reach:

Reach of Collegekhabar.com is mainly restricted to India (95% of total visits) but website is also viewed in North America and Europe.

In India CollegeKhabar.com is browsed from nearly all major cities. Please refer attached map for reference as mentioning names of all cities is not possible. Areas with bigger circle have more visits than others.

Source: Google Analytics

Demographics:

Age: 18-25 years

Education: Graduate College (90% Engineering, 10% Management and others)

Gender: 70% male, 30% female (Approximate)

Household income: 4-8 LPA (Approx.)

Net savvy, open to online purchases/transactions

Source: Alexa.com

Highlighted Features:

1) Placement Papers, Group discussions and Interview experiences

2) Events, college fest, alumni news

3) College Comparison tool

4) Engineering College Ranking 2010

5) College admission news

6) New: Fresher Jobs /Career & admission counseling

7) Company reviews

Future Plans:

Collegekhabar.com is an initiative by ‘ThoughtLabs’ team. We are focused on customer acquisition through innovative and measurable services where our customer can realize full value of their investment. Most of revenue is from online advertisement and paid promotion. We will offer services such as managing online media campaign for higher education institutions, paid career/admission counseling and collaborative promotion plans for startups & online shops.

Our other product CampusBeats an Alumni Management Solution will going to be introduced within a month. Product beta testing has been completed and trials are proposed with 2 national level institutes. We are hoping that CampusBeats will give us enough momentum in motivation and earning to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth.

Summary:

With our current growth potential we expect an organic growth with a truly outstanding and committed group of people working for CollegeKhabar.com. We like to thank you for your continued support. Together, we look forward to doing our very best for you every day, everywhere and in every way.

_____________________________________________________

* includes students – undergraduates, post graduates and aspirants, college management, company officials, startup communities, any government authorities, friends, family or anyone else who have any major or minor stake in collegekhabar.com

Complete report is available at Rs 200 – delivery charges (not to be taken seriously!)

Note: Timing of this report is not in line with customary April month. We are publishing it on first anniversary of Collegekhabar.com

Disclaimer: This report is not supposed to be check/cross verify or scrutinized under GAAP or any other accounting principles by our dear friends (Specially- MBA Finance, CFAs, CAs or anyone interested in Finance) as we announced that we didn’t followed any rule of accounting and for them it is a piece of crap!

..

Yes, the IITs rule the engineering colleges, but who’s next? Where do top recruiters go first? Which have the better placements? The best academic environment? The best corporate relations? CollegeKhabar has conducted Engineering College Ranking Survey 2010

Most awaited result is out after doing so many mathematics/algorithm to give a scientific ranking.

Engineering College Ranking 2010

Best engineering colleges overall (National Ranking)

Best Engineering College by votes (National Ranking)

Top 20 Engineering Colleges

Best NITs

Top private colleges

Discuss here your views on this ranking.

—-

Few days back we got a email from Eenadu- ‘Largest circulating Telugu news daily’ regarding their interest in publishing Collegekhabar’s story. It was a pleasant surprise. We verified the email and responded their queries.

On 26th June, 2010 CK got first coverage in South Indian Telugu Daily and it resulted in highest visit in a single day ever on CollegeKhabar website. Surprising 30% of visits are from North America, show popularity of this news daily in American Continent.

For Complete Article in detail please visit – http://collegekhabar.com/images/eenadu.pdf

Our sincere thanks to ‘Eenadu Team’ for publishing good words about CollegeKhabar.

Disclaimer: No one in our team has still decoded what all is written about CK, we just contemplating good words. Can any one from readers help us!

WagonR along with The Times of India has presented, the ‘Think Big Challenge’. It was a first of its kind, contest wherein smart conventional Indians come forward to contest for “the title”.

CollegeKhabar too participated in the contest. We were the city winner and represented in Zonal Finals in Mumbai. CollegeKhabar was selected as finalist out of 1000+ entrepreneurs and startups.

For details read this post: Some Successes and lots of challenges ahead

Contest was later featured on CNBC TV18.

Hemant Jain on CNBC TV18

Last few days were pretty busy for CollegeKhabar team. We were continuously testing an new features for the CK website. In same series after hard work of 1 month we are able to devise an algorithm and statistical method to ‘rank Engineering Colleges’ across country.

Details are posted as below:

Why engineering colleges ranking?

Consider this:

1. For college-entering students to decide the best option available.
2. For colleges to know what they need to improve and where they stand in the pecking order.
3. For recruiters and human resource managers to decide the college they would visit for campus interviews and negotiates pay packages.
4. For students and alumni, for whom it is a matter of pride.

What is new in this ranking?

This question is constantly raised even by CollegeKhabar team that what new we are adding to these surveys as compare to those done by big market research firms and magazines. This survey will be focused on most important aspect (our secondary research shows that students put placements in engineering colleges a way ahead than faculty – student ratio, infrastructure, intellectual capital etc.) a student seek in one college - Placements.Importance is also given on industrial relations, opportunity to work on good projects and quality of faculty members.

Coverage in this blog: Anubhav n Vichar

Quality of an institute can be judge by the perception of the students who are studying there or by opinions of Alumni. We tried to link this with this ranking. Recent Outlook survey put emphasis on perception of HR managers across industries we are trying to look in perception of students about these institutes.

How this will work?

Entire ranking process will be divided in two phases. First phase

Phase 1: Opinion Poll – Popular choice

During this phase a survey will be run on CK giving opportunity to students to themselves rank the various institutes. Later these results will be analyzed based on pre decided algorithm which give authenticity to the survey and will be revealed later.

Any attempt to rig the rankings may face action by way of disqualification of their college.

Phase 2: Detailed analysis

Focus group interviews, industry expert opinion and analysis of Placement records of the listed institutes. This will be done by giving appropriate weightage to different parameters where Placements will be larger chunk of the pie.

More details are posted on link: http://www.collegekhabar.com/ranking-2010.php

Hope this ranking would satisfy the need and demand of sound, fool-proof, students’ side based Ranking.

From past few days we were reviewing services (read: information) provided by Collegekhabar.com to visitors. Team thought that we need to introduce new services in order to gain confidence and improve visibility among more students as a part of our core strategy. Things are getting standstill (no breakthroughs) and user participation is not picking up with same rate as we expected. Everyone was in favor of generating new ideas and implements them to prove ourselves truly innovative (are we? please comment)

Brainstorming is the most recognized buzz-word associated with idea generation. Our management friends can understand it very well and will appreciate how confusing it is. We too decided to have a brainstorming session (on conference calls, as team is dispersed across cities). There were few ideas came in entire exercise. Not even a single idea is radical (read: out of box) but adding to what can be done more with given resources.

Devendra was in favor of doing more marketing gimmicks and Hemant (technology obsessed) was looking for technological improvements (interface design and coding) to increase user interest. Naveen and Suruchi were constantly in favor of introducing more services. Few ideas shortlisted for worth consideration were: Rankings of engineering colleges on basis on public poll (how? is still a question), weekly magazine (downloadable), Fresher Jobs (in progress), quizzes and optimizing social media more effectively for marketing purpose.

We invite your comments and suggestions in related to these ideas which can help CK to grow organically. We would happy to have any new idea from your side as you can best suggest what readers are looking in CollegeKhabar. Hope some ideas pour in and we will be able to ‘co-create’ CollegeKhabar as best online community for students in higher education.

New year 2010 started with some great news for CK. As expected our new server was working fine and website was up 24*7 but the best news came from WagonR smart idea contest where we won city final (Jaipur) after competing with hundreds of ideas and invited for zonal finals in Mumbai. Most important thing for us was that we didn’t won because not only of public votes but of “idea” only. Hemant (Co-founder, CollegeKhabar) went for investment pitch joined by Naveen for Q&A session. Entire event was a great learning for us. Venture Capitalists (VCs) & Indian Angel Network at event suggest as very valuable input for entire idea and support to develop much stronger B-plan. Entire contest was covered by CNBC TV18

College Khabar too selected for Regional finals of “Vulture’s Nest”- Biggest B-Plan competition in Asia by IIT Bombay. CK was also online media partner for the event. We didn’t qualify for finals but got our lessons for improvements.

Everything was going fine but suddenly “Murphy- strike” (Something that can go wrong will go wrong) in middle of December month. CK website was locked by our server provider even without sending a prior notification. Website as per our hosting provider using much bandwidth and server was not able to take the load. We were in mixed reaction- one: we are growing much faster than our expectations; second: this disturbance would definitely cause annoyance among visitors and we would be not available when we would be most required (Placement days!)

After many hassles we are up in 18 hours but server problem keep continuing. Now we found that most of time, server remain down and no one was able to access CK. Disappointment in team was growing like anything, we decide to move the server. Technical guys thought for a VDS (Virtual Dedicated Service) but it was not feasible that point of time. Technical team hosted CollegeKhabar on Hostgator; US hosting service (We want desi company but it didn’t work). Now we are up! 24*7

Dear Stakeholders*

CollegeKhabar is an initiative to bring together students, colleges and prospective employers. At CollegeKhabar news related to placement activities, admission details, events and competitions in educational institutes across India is updated regularly. We have recently completed first quarter (3 months) since launch on Aug 23^rd, 2009.

This report records the summary of performance.

Highlights: Tangibles

- Covered in print media with nearly half page articles (DNA & Dainik Bhaskar – leading Hindi daily)

- 250,000+ page views

- Growth rate is still more than 100% month on month (MoM) basis.

- 2000+ registered users for newsletters and feeds

- 600+ articles/news/events/reviews posted

- 400+ Khabari requests in 3 months

- Media partnership with 30+ institutes for various events and competitions including (IITs – Kanpur, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Bombay & Delhi, IMT Ghaziabad, School of Management, IIT Kanpur, NMIMS Mumbai, NITs – Jaipur, Jalandhar, Allahabad, Warangal, BITS – Pilani, BIT Ranchi, Thapar University, and many more)

Highlights: Intangibles

- “College Khabar” becomes a unique keyword in Google within 3 months.

- Reviewed and appreciated by many startup communities including: Indianwebstartups.com, squamble.com, younoodle.com, Hotindianstartups.com, startupticker.com, gajeebo.com, startup-companies.com, bsherpas.com and many more.

-  Students started mentioning College Khabar in their blogs/feeds as very useful place for placement preparation. (We are getting benefits of Viral marketing without investments)

Highlighted Achievement:

-  Listed in ‘Microsoft Bizspark’ program (among 240 startups from India in recent years)

Reach:

Reach of Collegekhabar.com is mainly restricted to India (95% of total visits) but website is also viewed in North America and Europe.

In India CollegeKhabar.com is browsed from nearly all major cities. Please refer attached map for reference as mentioning names of all cities is not possible. Areas with bigger circle have more visits than others.

Disclaimer: Map is not a true picture of National Geographical Area (Distorted) of India. (If you want to sue anyone for this mischief, sue Google as we are just using their service: Google Analytics – most comprehensive tool to analyse visitors – Our ” helplessness” )

Future Plans:

Any venture requires at least working capital to remain engaged. Currently we are able to generate revenue to take care of operating expenses which excludes hosting, designing and payment part.  We are not looking on bottom lines but definitely focusing on expansion, increase in reach and improved services. We are working for better visitor experience, convenience in surfing the website as well as searching desired content and few surprises!

Future plan also includes extension of services offline. Primarily this will have partnerships with small institutions and colleges to collaborate for mutual benefits (details can’t be disclosed because of obvious reasons).

Summary:

With our current growth potential we expect an organic growth with a truly outstanding and committed group of people working for CollegeKhabar.com. We like to thank you for your continued support. Together, we look forward to doing our very best for you every day, everywhere and in every way.

_____________________________________________________

* includes students – undergraduates, post graduates and aspirants, college management, company officials, startup communities, any government personnel, friends, family or anyone else who have any minor stake in collegekhabar.com

Complete report is available at Rs 200 – delivery charges (not to be taken seriously!)

Disclaimer: This report is not supposed to be check/cross verify or scrutinized under GAAP or any other accounting principles by our friends (Specially- MBA Finance, CFAs, CAs or anyone interested in Finance) as we announced that we didn’t followed any rule of accounting and for them it is a piece of crap!

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