PAPAM - indian e-greeting site

Looking at this years startup profiles, this site caught my attention for two reasons:

1. The name was very unique though in Indian context Papam means a "Sin".

2. In today's world of SMS's and e-greetings this one was a bold move to enable someone to send out a paper greeting card something which people have kind of forgotten and have replaced with e-greetings and SMS's.

Papam is truly an interesting idea given the fact that many of us have stopped using the paper greetings giving way to technology due to sheer convenience. Papam provides an interesting and convenient way for consumers to create, personalize and send paper greeting cards to anyone in the world. Business model appears to be straightforward - earn money by selling greeting cards and other gift items like flower, paper wall hangings, paper jewelery, personalized T-Shirts, Mugs etc.

There is a great opportunity for papam to tie-up with various existing e-gifting sites who lack the printed greeting cards and expand its business without spending too much on customer acquisition. Overall its a site worth trying to express your feelings to someone you love and care! Click here to access the site.

Online Photo Printing in India - Picsquare

Picsquare, a brain child of two young IITians, Manish and Kartik is one of the leading online photo printing web sites in India. Founded in December 2005, the web site offers online photo management and photo based gift creation services to Indian consumers. Though the online photo printing concept is not new but is definitely a fresh concept for rapidly growing internet savvy Indian consumer market. Though the real target market is the millions of NRI's staying abroad but I think there is a big potential for catering to domestic market needs. PicSquare works on a very simple philosophy - Allow the users to upload and manage photos free of cost, manage them using online albums or tags, and help them deliver prints or photo based products like Mugs, T-shirts, calendars etc to their door steps or to friends and family as gifts. The web site is very intuitive and easy to use. The web site allows you to import photos from your flickr or picassa accounts and store it with Picquare and order prints or other photo products. You can make payment online using credit cards or through internet banking. It also offers interesting promotional schemes like you get 10 free prints for every registered user that you refer plus free 10 prints on self registration. I have so far not tried its service but would definitely give it a try and will update this post with my experiences

Dilsebol.com - Online indian personalized gift shop

Dlisebol.com is the third Indian web site which I have come across which provides capability to design your personalized gift online. Going through the web site I did not find anything exclusive or different from myantra.com or pringoo.com. In fact, I find this web site as a toned down version of the earlier two that I reviewed in past. It allows you to created customized T-Shirts, Mugs, Mouse pads, Coasters, Poster and tiles. You can create your own designs and upload it to the online design gallery and earn a commission when someone buys it. However, I must admit that the web site is lacks in terms of usability and needs a major revamp to encourage users to stick to it. For example it is hard to look for a personalized product on the basis of category. It appears to display products in random from a database without any logic..! Overall I think it has to do a lot of work to come up to the standards of sites like myantra or pringoo.

Make money online - myntra.com

Alright, I never thought that i would end up getting a replica of pringoo so soon... it may be a wild coincidence but the fact is myntra is just another pringoo!! I do not think I have much to write here but would rather say that i can almost do everything what I could do at pringoo.com. I think it has a richer product portfolio which the users can customize and design. At myntra you have option to be a designer and create your own designs which can be put up for sale. You get a cool 10% on every product sold that uses your design.
Interestingly, myntra has a tie-up with ibibo which allows its users to import photos from his ibibo account and use it for building custom products. I must say this is a smart move from myntra on customer acquisition. I am sure in coming days we are going to witness real marketing innovations in building up business models around this space.

Make Money Online - Pringoo.com

Recently, I came across this very interesting web site called Pringoo which allows you to create your own design and get it printed on products like T-Shirt, Mugs, Soft Toys, coasters etc. The process is very simple - You select a product, upload your favorite photo, add some text and that's about it, you have created your first self-designed product!! Sitting at the comfort of your house you can get your first masterpiece delivered at your home by paying a nominal amount (Rs 199 - Rs 500)... I am sure you wouldn't mind paying that kind of amount for your first masterpiece :) Also, you can use this web site to create customized gifts for your loved ones and get it delivered on their doorsteps!

I find pringoo a very interesting concept especially from the perspective of someone who wants to build an online business sitting at home. If you are little bit creative, you can actually set up a free online store in no time. Everytime your design is being used by a customer in designing and buying a product you will earn a decent commission. The beauty of this model is that you do not need to invest a penny except for spending some time online which I am sure you anyways do :)
In addition there are a number of other features like Prngoo Club, forums and various other events which are being organized from time-to-time to give push to your creativity.