Morpheus Venture Partners whose ‘Y-Combinator Model’ was covered by us sometime back has now announced a fresh set of 7 startups that are being funded/mentored by them. Earlier Morpheus Ventures already had the following 4 startups in its portfolio:
- www.instablogs.com – Raised Series A
- www.commonfloor.com – Raised Series A
- www.moblf.com – Recently launched a few mobile 2.0 products
- www.foodathome.in – Profitable
Now it has added 7 startups under its portfolio which belong to varied domains; Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending, Social Content Sharing, SaaS, VOIP, Startup hiring, online identity verification and Health 2.0.
There is no word on how much money (if any) is being pumped into these startups by Morpheus. As per my interaction with Sameer and Nandini the founders of Morpheus at Proto they take about 3-8% in Startups for mentoring and they had mentioned that they may even raise funds for their venture firm soon.
The following are the profiles of the startups that have been added:
1. Call Graph (www.callgraph.in) –
Call Graph is a service to record, track, monitor, share and transcribe your calls. It is designed for distributed teams who use services such as Skype for their meetings, conference calls etc and for individuals who use such VoIP services for interviews, taking lessons etc. Currently, Call Graph provides a recording client for Skype for free along with 1 GB of storage space and 1 sample transcript.
2. Crederity (www.crederity.com) –
Crederity is a new service that applies sophisticated technologies and programs to helping people and businesses easily establish trust on the Internet. As the web’s first guaranteed trust builder, Crederity enables people and businesses to certify their own integrity and that of others. Crederity has developed proprietary fact verification technologies enabling people to verify identity and credentials including background, education, and employment history.
3. Deskaway (www.deskaway.com)
DeskAway “simplifies teamwork”. DeskAway is a subscription-based online team and project collaboration service that enables small businesses & teams to organize, manage & track their work online. With the growing number of small businesses/ distributed teams, increased broadband penetration, and 24×7 mobile work culture, DeskAway is rightly poised to give teams an accurate view of how their projects are doing and help eliminate common problems that occur when multiple people are collaborating: email spam, multiple file versions, lost files, task accountability issues, lack of clarity & work transparency.
4. Dhanax (www.dhanax.com)
dhanaX stands for exchange of dhana or wealth, works with the vision to connect people from different economic backgrounds and thus create wealth for them. dhanaX (www.dhanax.com ) is an online/offline people-to-people lending platform that lets Indians to lend and borrow money from fellow Indians. dhanaX leverages the power of technology to bring together people from diverse backgrounds but have a common goal to create wealth and help each other. Started by a high caliber team to develop a “people driven financial organization”, dhanaX is rapidly growing to capture USD 91billion Indian micro-credit market.
5. Fachak (www.fachak.com)
Fachak is a concept that will redefine Social Content Sharing. A platform where you can share any form of content from a document to a video. Fachak is in its pre-release stage right now.
6. LifeMojo (www.lifemojo.com)
LifeMojo’s focus is on creating a platform for delivery of preventive health care services and partner with renowned health experts for their consultation. For health care service providers, LifeMojo has a hosted CRM (Software as a Service or SaaS). The company already has Dr. Shikha Sharma, renowned weight management and health expert, as a customer for this offering and is in talks with several other individual health care experts and organizations. For people looking to live a fitter / healthier life, LifeMojo is a one-stop shop for expert consultation and fitness products. LifeMojo (www.lifemojo.com) would be available for public use in early October. LifeMojo is accessible on the Web and mobile using GPRS/SMS with the first-of-its kind LifeMojo mobile tracker.
7. SutraHR (www.sutrahr.com / www.sutrajobs.com)
Sutra HR is a full services People Consulting firm which has a unique partnering model with Digital, Mobile and Internet startups and entrepreneurial companies in India, to find retain assess and train talent to take them to the next level and beyond. Based on the Success of its offline services, Sutra HR is launching SutraJobs.com an endeavour designed specifically for startups and Emerging companies in the new age media space who are venture funded or are too cash-strapped to afford the services of a consultant to find the right talent.
(please note the above profiles are provided by Morpheus and are NOT reviewed by WATBlog. Would love to know what our readers think about these startups. We shall publish the best user submitted review here on WATBlog 
)
I’ve been using DeskAway for over 8 months now and i can tell you that their product has grown by leaps and bounds. Since they presented at Proto early this year – they have added new functionalities every month. Everything from email integration to alerts to process management to task replication to advanced analytics to a social media presence that’s likeable… You’re right, there is no money invested in these startups. MVP is a mentoring model. I know DeskAway founder pretty well and he has told me that they are not needing the money right now. What the partnership holds is access to strategic assets in terms of a few international distribution deals that they want to work out. I dont know what is a good price to pay in terms of equity for the same – but im sure they know what they are doing..
On another note. Anyone else tried DeskAway? Or any other project management tool like the overpriced Basecamp etc? I’ve noticed too few indian companies are driving processes to the T. So they dont feel the need to use PM tools. If anyone has case studies of how they manage efficiency otherwise – would love to know.
Spot on analysis by Aditya. I agree – DeskAway surely has surged big time. I’ve been following them closely. They’ve been featured on quite a few big international blogs, they’re active on social media (Facebook, Get Satisfaction and Twitter particularly – they also have a decent blog going) – and product – wise also theres been tremendous growth. I’ve been using DA only for 4 months but the augmentations have been quite fantastic.
I had a word with Sahil Parikh this morning (DA founder) – he said that this has been going on for a while (the planning). No money has been received – its only equity for a host of things such as marketing and product expertise. According to him MVP isn’t the kind of company that is a boardroom ‘expert’. They want to get their hands dirty and spent time with DeskAway. He said that the guys from MVP would be spending something like 1 week in Mumbai with them. So its not ‘mentoring’ just for the name to raise money (to be honest i dont think DA needs it) – so according to him he sees them as an extension to the family and an addition to the ‘team’. The expertise will help them build and also hopefully shortlist certain strategic alliances that they’ve been pursuing that will make them big internationally.. He also spoke about things like organic growth and how VC money forces you to grow unorganically and in a manner that can often lead to a breakdown in structure.. and the like.
This is probably something that WAT would like to do in the future (or wanted to do it at one stage) – but i think the kind of deal that DA has undertaken is probably what WAT wouldn’t have undertaken, right?
Quite interesting in terms of ideology – i think it makes for an interesting WATShow featuring 2 companies – DA & WAT and the approaches towards funding and the like and the key strengths that the 2 look 2 bolster up. In any case i found the DA perspective pretty interesting – makes for a good show nevertheless. Since im this side i can do it
– would be fun to do it!
Rajiv, waiting to here your (candid) thoughts on this ‘mentoring’ model. I remember you mentioned something to me at the Jan Proto with respect to this model vis a vis the likes of Alok Kejriwal etc.
@Aditya – Nice analysis. Will Need to give Deskaway a try now.. Have never been able to plug into any project management software till date due to many reasons.. Maybe a mental block.
@Harshil – “the kind of deal that DA has undertaken is probably what WAT wouldn’t have undertaken, right?” – Can’t Comment Harshil on this one. But can surely say that we are open to everything and will probably jump into any kind of deal if its exciting enough!
Exciting = Longterm + Aligned with our vision.
With regards to the mentoring only model – From a mentor point of view one needs to be careful of how many eggs one holds in its basket coz the more the eggs the less warmth you can give them for them to hatch. I would ideally look at not more than 5 companies in a year to mentor.
From a Startup point of view – Try asking some hard questions on your business model.. if thats still blur then you surely need a mentor and shud be willing to shell out equity. If thats decently figured out and what you are struggling is with execution then you need to do two things – Hire experience core execution team (which could be cash + equity/cash/equity only depending upon whom you are hiring and what is you cash flow status) and Surround yourself with advisors (This could be your dad, uncle, professor or ex boss who has operations experience)
Hope that answers your queries
Thanks Aditya, Harshil & Rajiv.
@Rajeev I agree with your “egg” analogy – this was obviously raised when we were talking to MVP.
I am looking forward to the good times ahead.
I wonder how are http://www.dhanax.com folks going to account for defaulting loans.
Dear Harshal,
All the loans on dhanaX are guaranteed by the NGOs who take these loans on behalf of the borrowers. So, there is no risk of default for the lender.
Thanks
Siva
I’ve invested in Dhanax 5 months back. It’s good to see the returns every month without fail. That too at better rate of interests in a safer and consistent way when compared to the other market policies. The site is continually evolving in user friendly perspective. Apart from big returns, safe principle and not depending on market fluctuations the underlying satisfaction that I got is I’m helping someone in need with my extra money.
good to see incubators helping entrepreneurs …