In most industries like manufacturing or software it is easy to observe and measure the quality of the product or the end result, which clearly indicates the quality of manufacturing processes involved in creating that product. Thus, through tests & observations of the product, it is easy to control the quality of background processes because every attribute of the finished product has a corresponding manufacturing process. However in case of a college, where the objective is to churn out high quality people (students), it is difficult to map the attributes of a student to his or her "manufacturing" processes.

Although the Home page and FAQs section of iBranch.in contain a lot of information on Intra College Portals, still I felt like sharing my personal view on their need in colleges. Let me start by defining an intra college portal… It is a web based portal dedicated to a college, used by its students, teachers, & administration to collaborate among them. It allows them to share day-to-day notices & announcements, do day-to-day interaction, and share knowledge through Internet efficiently, without letting unauthorized outsiders see it.

How we got transformed from a software product company to a web services company was described in the part 2 of this series. That transformation however was merely technological. It brought about its own set of marketing challenges, of which the first was market positioning. It took us quite a few brainstorming sessions and sales pitches before we finally decided to position iBranch.in as ‘Intra College Portal Service’. This straightforward positioning proved the most effective as compared to generic and industry accepted terms like ‘Web Enterprise Portal’ etc. It also helped us in creating our own niche.

After the positioning got stabilized, the next task we had to take up was indeed herculean – motivating the teachers & Students to *Adopt* iBranch for their day-to-day intra college collaboration. By early 2008 we had managed to convince 8 colleges in Bhopal to subscribe to our service. It was obvious that the usage of our service in these colleges would define the future of iBranch.in. We virtually...

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Well let me first clarify that I am not into ‘Story’ telling business. It seems that the keyword ‘story’ has taken prime spot on my blog. Anyways.. whatever it is, its for GOOD! Amidst my own story-telling campaign, we just got featured on the entrepreneurship & startups portal YourStory.in.

Click here to see the coverage.

Hearty thanks to YourStory team for giving us the space & spotlight!

PS: My next blog is supposed to be ‘Story of iBranch – part 3of3’… Jesus Christ!! Got to find a synonym of ‘that word’ :D

In part one of this story I narrated how we started off with the product model and managed to get our first customer for our software product called “Informer”, and how we had to dump the whole thing. In part two I’ll tell you how we managed to convert our proposition into a web service. Honestly speaking, during those days I sometimes used to feel like Robinson Crusoe :D

Well, it didn’t take much time for the Gyan to dawn upon us that its got to be a web based service. After all if the clients need 24x7 access to the software and they can’t maintain the server at their end, SaaS is the obvious way out. It was Dec 2006 and our to-do list was pretty clear – get a server, a good broadband connection, a ups, register a website name.. and we are done! But unfortunately that needed money (how unfair).

Call it serendipity or the benefit of marketing ‘Informer’, we received a call from the office of the then vice-chancellor of technical univ of MP, Prof. P.B.Sharma, to work upon his pet project...

 Hey whats up! Although I was supposed to continue with writing the story of iBranch, but before that I need to share an exciting update at our end! iBranch.in got a chance to partner with IIM Indore for their entrepreneurship workshop on ‘Business Ideas and Opportunity Evaluation’ which was conducted yesterday, 25th October 2009.

 

I had been thinking real hard as to what should be my first article on our official blog, and talking about a brief history of our service ‘iBranch.in’ seemed like the best idea. That’s because nostalgia is always handy in all entrepreneurs’ minds and I am no exception :). Alright, now the story...

Back in early 2006, the iBranch service wasn’t even remotely similar to what it is today. It neither was a ‘service’ nor was it called ‘iBranch’. It was a software product called ‘Informer’.

Hello people :) Finally we have got our company blog up... and let me tell you thats no mean achievement! Well, although it adds to our multitasking challenge I assure you that this would be a happening place.