eLagaan makes attending TiECON 2012 affordable - Save $450

eLagaan makes TieCON 2012 affordable by providing $450 worth of coupons (that's upto 75% of cost) ticket prices. Here is what we have to offer:

1. [Increased] $150 OFF 2-day or  $70 OFF Ticket prices 1-day Conference and Exhibit Pass. To learn more about events and pricing visit  http://www.tiecon.org/ 
2. $100 voucher for advertising your business on Google Adwords, when you signup for a Google Adwords account. Learn more about google adwords at http://adwords.google.com/ . Voucher valid for limited time. 
3. $100 Voucher for eLagaan Business Services. Valid for any of the business service that you take from eLagaan. Learn more about eLagaan at http://elagaan.com . Voucher valid for 1 year, voucher applied towards eLagaan fees and can not be applied towards legal or govt payments or personal services. Complete voucher amount be used in one use.
4. $100 Voucher for advertising your business on BayAreaDesi. To learn about BayAreaDesi visit http://bayareadesi.com Voucher valid for 1 year. Complete voucher amount to be used in one use

Total of $450 saving - $150 Off tickets + $100 Google adwords + $100 eLagaan + $100 BayAreaDesi

To get the discount & vouchers all you to do is send us an email at support@elagaan.com ! There is no purchase necessary or any kind of hooks/strings. However we can only give these vouchers to very limited number of people, so hurry up !

And while you are there, do visit our booth at TiECON !


Reasons to attend TiECON 2012:

Networking. Meet thousands of fellow entrepreneurs. Exchange ideas, find a co-founder, build your team. Many companies are formed at this conference.

Learning. Over 100 speakers sharing their knowledge to help you succeed. They range from iconic companies (e.g., Google, Facebook) to serial entrepreneurs, top investors and industry analysts.

Mentoring. Chance to meet face-to-face with luminaries for a mentoring session.

Innovation Expo. Showcase of innovative startups.

TiE50 Awards. Prestigious award given to the 50 most enterprising startups every year.

eLagaan sponsors Indus Heritage Day @ ICC, Milpitas, CA

eLagaan is happy to be a sponsor of the event Indus Heritage Day to be held at India Community Center in Milpitas, California.

Indus heritage day is a great initiative by three organizations ICC, PACC & 1947 Partition Archive. Its going to be a great event, so hope to see you there.

Event details:

Event Date:  Sunday, April 29, 2012 - 10:00am

Event Location:  India Community Center

10:00 AM (Come early for Breakfast!)
-Activities-
Indus seal, jewelry, hat making, ancient photo booth, Mohenjodaro walk-through, Indus inspired Henna art and more!

11:30 AM
-Film-
In Search of Meluhha: The Untold Story of Indus Civilization by emerging Pakistani film maker, Saqib Mausoof

12:00 PM
-Keynote-
"Ancient Cities of the Indus Civilization," by leading archeologist, Dr. Jonathan M. Kenoyer

1:00 PM
-Performance-
Indus regional folk Dance and Music by Xpressions dance company.

Visit http://www.indiacc.org/indus_heritage_day for more details of the events.

About The 1947 Partition Archive:

The 1947 Partition Archive is a grassroots, non-political, 100% volunteer run effort to document and preserve eye-witness accounts from ALL communities affected by the partition of British India, for future generations.

We are global citizens coming together to document the world's largest human displacement. Join us.

While we are late, as Partition occurred 64+ years ago, we are not too late. There are still those who hold vivid and important memories of the chaos that unfolded during Partition, the pre-Partition life and culture and the post-Partition changes/loss of a way of life. We are a people powered project that collects, archives and immortalizes these stories. Contact us to share your stories or to join hands with us in preserving memories before they are forever lost.

About ICC:

The India Community Center was conceived as a place where every generation of the Indian Diaspora could find comfort in various facets of their culture, preserve and practice unique traditions and celebrate festivals and social milestones in a welcoming environment. It was also designed to be a center where people of other cultures can explore and experience Indian traditions and values.

eLagaan featured on ET-Now TV (Starting UP by Sudhir Syal)

eLagaan was recently featured in Starting UP series by ET-Now hosted by talented Sudhir Syal.

The special segment covered the hot topic of "Startup Tax" which is currently heavily discussed among the startup circle.

Here is the clipping from the show:

To see the commentary by eLagaan skip over to 4:05min on the video.

About ET Now TV's Starting UP:

Starting Up captures the spirit of the Indian Start-up Community - it features the different elements of the startup ecosystem and profiles the journey of the most innovative Indian startups. To learn about Startup Up visit http://www.facebook.com/StartingUponETNOW

To learn about Economic Times (ET-NOW's parent org) visit http://economictimes.indiatimes.com

About Sudhir Syal:


Sudhir Syal is a qualified Computer Science Engineer, so qualified that he hasn’t written (thankfully) or been made to write a single line of code in his last 4 years.His career than saw him take him a linearly un-linear route with him dabbling in Finance, Technology till finally making his way to the hallowed (cold) studios of ET NOW, where he is today the Editor and Co-Anchor of the Starting Up show on ET NOW. You can reach him at http://www.sudhirsyal.com/

Some more Snapshots from the show:

eLagaan exhibits at Foothill College, Los Altos, Califronia

It was a beautiful day here in Los Altos, CA at the Foothill College. eLagaan team had a fun time exhibiting its capabilities and meeting up with folks from the college. Thanks for inviting us.

Before the start of the event !

eLagaan is the Official partner of Asha for education event- Stanford University

eLagaan is proud to be the official online partner for the Asha For Education - Stanford University chapter (well known as asha-stanford) upcoming event this week.

So here is the deal, in USA holi is celebrated, not just for a day but for weeks, with various organizations organizing the event at various dates. Having said that Asha Stanford holds the biggest Holi event in the entire county. This year they are expecting 10,000 people to show up to play Holi, what Fun! They do an awesome job, and we are humbled to be one of their partners. 

Here is the details of the Asha Stanford Holi:

April 7th and April 8th, 11 am - 3 pm, Sandhill Fields, Stanford

Different experience! 2 days full of fun! Deserving cause!

Yes, you can get all that at one event! Asha Stanford brings you the best way to start off Spring 2012 Holi, the biggest communal celebration of the eponymous Indian festival in the Bay Area! 

Holi is all about celebrating the colors and vitality of spring, with family and friends and we figure about 5500 lbs of food-grade colors and tons of water should be enough to get you started with the celebrations! Your first time at Holi? Make sure you read below on how Holi works! Come join us in this day long party, and help us raise funds for education projects for disadvantaged children! 

No alcohol is allowed at the event. For details about he event visit http://www.ashanet.org/stanford/events/holi2012/

About Asha For Education:

Asha for Education is a non-profit organization dedicated to the support of basic education in India. Asha, which means hope in many Indian dialects, was founded at the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 and has since grown to over 66 chapters scattered throughout the United States, Europe, East Asia and India. Each of these chapters raises funds to support various education-related projects in India. 

Asha Stanford was founded in the fall of 1992 by a group of students who understood the importance of education and the need to provide such opportunities for the underprivileged. Today, the chapter draws members from a diverse group of students from Stanford University as well as Bay Area professionals. The aim of the group is to mobilize the Bay Area community to collectively support and provide financial assistance to grass-roots educational movements in India. Members of Asha Stanford attempt to maintain a close personal involvement with the organizations and projects which are funded. To maximize the effectiveness of our efforts, the group selects diverse projects. Asha Stanford works closely with other Asha chapters to ensure quality support is provided to educational efforts in India. Visit http://www.ashanet.org/ for details

About Stanford University:

Located between San Francisco and San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University is recognized as one of the world's leading research and teaching institutions.

Leland and Jane Stanford founded the University to "promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization." Stanford opened its doors in 1891, and more than a century later, it remains dedicated to finding solutions to the great challenges of the day and to preparing our students for leadership in today's complex world. Visit http://www.stanford.edu/ for details. 

eLagaan to sponsor an evening with Sramana Mitra (1M/1M) - hosted by OCC/BEMUG

eLagaan is happy to be a sponsor at the upcoming event with Sramana Mitra (1M/1M) for the upcoming event hosted by OCC, Bangalore & BEMUG.

The event is focused on "Do Customers Know What They Want?".

Here are the details of the event:
Date: 03 Apr 2012
Time: 06:30 PM - 09:00 PM (Followed by Networking over Dinner).
Venue: P.U. Quadrangle, Ground Floor, P.U. Building, Christ University, Hosur Road, Near Dairy Circle, Bangalore 560029 (Attention: No tobacco campus)
Parking: Within Christ Campus
Agenda / Proceedings:
- Welcome Note
- Entrepreneur Dysfunctions - Talk by Sramana Mitra
- Debate: "Do Customers Know What They Want?"

Sramana Mitra (1M/1M) & Team Vs Mukund Mohan (Jivity) & Team
Moderated by: Ravi Gururaj (Citrix)
-Vote of Thanks
-Followed with Networking over Dinner

Sramana Mitra has been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. Her fields of experience span from hard core technology disciplines like semiconductors to sophisticated consumer marketing industries including fashion and education.

As an entrepreneur CEO, Sramana founded 3 companies: Dais, Intarka and Uuma. Two of these were acquired, while the third received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren which the company did not accept.
As strategy consultant, Sramana has consulted with over 70 companies, including public companies like SAP, Cadence Design Systems, Webex, KLA-Tencor and Tessera among others. Her work has also included numerous startups and VCs, and she played Interim VP Marketing roles for seven such ventures. Sramana has a proven track-record in turn-arounds for both small private companies (Example: think3) and divisions of larger companies (Example: a $100 Million Business Unit of Cadence). She has also created major growth strategies through new market penetration, M&A, Industry Roll-ups, etc.

Sramana has a Masters degree in EECS from MIT and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Economics from Smith College. She is on the Board of the MIT Club of Northern California's Entrepreneurship Program (http://mitcnc.org/Entrepreneurship.htm).
Visit her site: Sramana Mitra on Strategy ( http://www.sramanamitra.com/ )

Why we moved from salesforce's desk.com to freshdesk

We recently moved eLagaan's support system from desk.com to Freshdesk. We just wanted to share our experience and reasoning of why we did this.

eLagaan was using Assitly which later became Salesforce's Desk.com. However we were not too happy with some of the missing features, but we were hopeful that the big daddy Salesforce.com will invest more money and we should have some of these obvious features.
But after waiting long enough, we started looking around for a better solution to enhance our user experience. We looked at many systems including revisiting desk.com, zendesk, OTRS, zoho & freshdesk.

desk.com has some good features. However some of the things that bothered us was:
1. Slow in feature releases
2. No way to allow customers to review their support request (past & new thru web)
3. Cost was high, add another agent and you pay $49/month

So why Freshdesk apart from the fact that they have a fresh design and a intuitive interface:
1. We needed a way for our customer to review and comment on their case. Freshdesk does an awesome job creating a login id for every case that opens
2. Price, we just loved the fact that first agent is free & any additional are $9/month. Hence overtime as we grow, our price is going to be manageable.
3. They seem to be adding features faster then anyone else. It shows they are hungry, and we will probably see more innovation from them in the future. In case of desk.com we saw the feature additions were more towards things like salesforce api etc, which are great features, but being a startup we needed more features locally then integration

Ofcourse there are few areas we would like Freshdesk to improve on (I don't think others have it either):
1. A way to open tickets via sms or notify people/agents via sms on updates
2. A good way to open case when called via phone (its not very complicated guys)
3. A way to subscribe users who open a case with us to a mailing list
4. Mobile support - don't need an app, but optimize it for mobile web

Overall we are very happy with Freshdesk for providing a great service for very reasonable price, thank you Freshdesk !

And in this war of Freshdesk Vs Desk.com , Freshdesk has our business !

eLagaan to Sponsor Startup Weekend Delhi Education, India - Apr'2012

eLagaan is happy to be a sponsor company registration & other business services in the upcoming Startup Weekend Delhi Education to be held on April'13 - April'15 2012.

About Startup Weekend Delhi Education:

Startup Weekend Education is an innovative, non-profit, community-building event that brings together entrepreneurs of all backgrounds including software developers, designers, marketers and educators to build teams and credible businesses over an intense 54-hour weekend. Attendees have 60 seconds to make a pitch (optional), the pitches are whittled down and teams form around the top ideas. Next the teams proceed through a rapid roller-coaster of idea refinement fueled by expert coaching and customer validation. Finally, the weekend culminates with demonstrations of sustainable solutions to education problems in front of a panel of judges and potential investors. We tackle big problems like communication, access, cost, delivery methods and content availability all in the pursuit of making the act of teaching and learning more effective and accessible to all.

For more details visit http://delhiedu.startupweekend.org/

eLagaan to deliver a workshop at TiE, Bangalore on "Business Structure for Startups"

eLagaan will be delivering a workshop about "Business Structure For Startups" on March 21'2012 at TiE, Bangalore. Its a great workshop for entrepreneur's who are looking to start a company soon, or have have just started their business.

Short Introduction to the topic :

Entrepreneurs tend to overlook lots of factors and issues while setting up their new venture/ business. In today’s agile scenario, similar ignorance could be very expensive. Attend this workshop to know what it takes to structure your business and how a business structure impacts you in short term and long term.

Take aways from the workshop:

Strategic view of various legal and compliance issues related to doing business in India.

For more details please visit http://bangalore.tie.org/event/8/business-structure-startups .

Pricing (charged by TiE):

Member : Rs 550/-

Charter Member : Rs 550/-

Non-Member : Rs 1,000/-

Location

TiE Office

3rd Floor,'A' wing, Divyashree Chambers, Langford Road,

Shantinagar, Next to Karnataka Hockey Stadium

Bangalore 560025

India

To learn about TiE bangalore visit http://bangalore.tie.org/

Listen to eLagaan on Mera Sangeet's - Chai & Chat with Kanwal on NRI issues

NRI's, eLagaan team will be talking at the upcoming radio show at Mera Sangeet, Chai & Chat with Kanwal !

We will talk about various NRI related queries related to taxation, starting a business & much more. Some of the topics covered would be:

1. PAN Card - What is it, why you need it & how to get it

2. Digital signature

3. Form 15-CA / Form 15-CB for repatriating your money from India to your country

4. Starting a business in India for NRI & Foreigners

5. Basics of business structures

6. What does it take to run a business in India, licences, returns, taxes, payroll and many more

7. Import Export Licence

8. Tax returns for NRIs in India

The interview will be airing on Tuesday, March 20. The show timings would be:

US Times (Eastern Times) - 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM, 8:00 PM, 12:00 AM, 5 AM

US Times (Pacific Times) - 8:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 5:00 PM, 9:00 PM, 2 AM

India Times - 8:30 PM, 12:30 AM, 5:30 AM (Saturday), 9:30 AM, 2:30 PM (Sunday)

For more details please visit http://www.merasangeet.com/content/navin-kumarco-founder-vikash-r-headusa-operation-elagaancom-our-radio-show-chat-and-chai

About Mera Sangeet:

Mera Sangeet is 24 X 7 Bollywood music, live RJs news and more. Listen and feel the difference. Their RJ’s will delight you with engaging programs, interviews and talk shows, blogs, forums, Bollywood news and much. Find out more about them at http://www.merasangeet.com/

And to follow the work of the very dynamic Kanwal visit http://www.merasangeet.com/hindi/radio/rj/blog/kanwal