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Its (finally?) great to see a startup which is actually taking itself seriously, have built a compelling product that can easily compete globally on an even playing field, and is (finally?!) looking beyond portals and Adsense and quick cash fixes.

Simplicant.com is a product of Confiz Solutions lets you create a professional job board + applicant management backend to your website, quickly and easily.

Even though this product team has just been making this for the past half a year or so, the product is already showing a lot more maturity and depth of knowledge about HR compared to Brightspyre and Rozee combined.

Some of the features I thought were very relevant was a communications system whereby you can coordinate with applicants and the history of discussions get archived right next to the applicant so that you can tell exactly why you hired someone down the road. Also great is a team todo system which links to applicants and resumes. Incredibly important to help SME HR teams pipeline their hiring activity. On top of this, they let you easily add a professional looking company job board to complement your site (this is similar to Rozee’s feature but I prefer the Simplicant UI). Take a look at the CDF Job Board on Simplicant as an example.

The clear value proposition of this to SMEs is the time and cost they would save to set this up themselves. Our original CDF job page took a few days of effort for the backend testing system and even now it has its kinks and is a chore to maintain. With simplicant I get something I would like to use, can get going in 5-mins, and they get to maintain it for me.

But still, rather than charging for the board and application itself, I would have been sold and wowed if they gave away the app for free and charged premium for job ad distributions and tests much like Rozee etc. If I they had such features, I’d choose simplicant easily over the existing players just because they are focused on making me look good in front of candidates and I’ve long argued that that is the way forward in job board companies.

Overall, I think this is a great product, executed on a beautiful interface - and even though its a young team I’m impressed by their professionalism and enthusiasm.

Good job guys and I think a lot of people from this blog as well will find your product useful.

While our local job-board vendors keep exclaiming how they are innovating by creating white-labeled copies of their existing products (both Brightspyre and Rozee btw), Bayt.com actually ends up doing something remarkable.

They’re holding the world’s first "virtual job fair" - a second-life-esque affair where each participating company will be given a virtual booth to showcase their company at. Attendees will be able have live video conversations with company reps at their booths, all connected via VoIP feeds.

This is what being remarkable is about - taking some big risks that get people (like me) want to talk about the service. The talk creates hype which eventually can make events like these exciting and successful.

Very cool - if any of you are participating in this pls do share your experience.

[Via the StartupArabia blog]

More details at Social Bridges.

Our previous coverage of the startup here.

Come to think of it, no matter how ‘planned’ Islamabad seems to be, it really isn’t that easy to navigate around in. The only good thing about this city is that it has signboards everywhere, so you know where you are at least. In order to alleviate problems, some companies decided to take it upon themselves to setup a digital map of the city. Naqsha.net was one of the pioneers in this field with a map offering using Adobe SVG viewer. Their data was quite accurate, upto 90% accurate according to some people i know, yet it was their reliance on the Adobe software which made it very hard to use.

No longer are we, the citizens of this fine city, limited by the clunky adobe software! Naqsha has taken their map offerings to the next level by integrating it with Google Maps! I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the overlays they’ve created for the google maps api is very professional and extremely useful. They go down to a maximum zoom level of 1000 ft, which is close enough to give you street numbers in all sectors.

The routing function is also available, even though i wasn’t able to utilize it properly. However, for what i needed, an address in I8/2, it quite possibly saved me not only 10-15 minutes of being lost and burning fuel, but also a considerable amount of frustration! Definitely something people on the road could use! they’ve also got quite a few other cities online as well and are not just limited to Islamabad.

Haris and Zigron’s team made a very bold and risky move to create a "fun product" PingMyCompany.com, where people can leave anonymous good or bad comments about companies.

Very very risky - people abroad would welcome the idea and respond positively but local companies are likely to miss the joke and try to put some pressure on Zigron.

To be fair - there is likely to be a lot of libel; defamation concerns surrounding this site - right now atleast it seems to be just too easy to go out and pretend to be 50 people who hate a company.

But still - risky marketing also has a good chance of paying off — I have a feeling Zigron’s about to become the talk of the town, for one way or another.

Interesting move Haris! Let’s see how this plays out - whats your thoughts on it? Would you like to see your firm on this?

When you talk about how best to run a software business, we tend to hear one line again and again.

“Build a product! There’s no future in custom development anymore!”

I, myself, have been guilty of recommending this course of action to quite a few people. Lately however, it got me thinking. Why is it that custom development is considered to be a track to failure, while product development is ruling the roost? Aren’t there quite a few product companies which are closing up as well, infact, even more quickly than custom development companies? A product is a risk. If you cannot find a large enough market for it, it doesn’t even justify its costs (ROI). Sometimes, you start out building a product with all the right market knowledge and even interested buyers, but by the time the first beta of the product rolls out, the market seems to have changed and your prospective leads have dried up. So many things can go wrong in the product area as well. So why?

The answer, it seems to me, comes from who you are targeting!

Read the rest …

A brand new startup Qeemat.com launched in Public Beta over the weekend, and they have a pretty promising idea that can grow into something very meaningful.

This is a community-powered service where people can fact-check market prices from each other. So lets say I’m buying a laptop from a store - I can ask the Qeemat.com community whether or not the price I am getting is fair, and maybe you could tell me if there’s a better price out there. Over time this could become an interesting reference site for prices.

Pretty original!

This is the type of service that uses the network effect - the more people in the community, the better it will be. So go quickly to their site and sign up and help build this community so that we can start helping each other out.

Now for the potential part - since they’re a new beta I’m sure they might have one or more of these things thought of, but here’s my initial thoughts:

Read the rest …

SHIFAA Pakistan (no relation to Shifa Intl Hospital) is a good example on how technology can assist the people of Pakistan with the most basic of requirements which are currently not adequately provided. They have created a portal through which the people can connect to medical facilities in Karachi, and are expanding into other major cities as well.

This portal brings together the citizens and professionals where they can communicate and exchange information related to them. It is not only a information resource for users but an effective management tool for health care professionals. One of the interesting parts of the site lets people register as blood donors and get notified via email in case there is a need for blood donations. Later they want to expand these services on a UAN number so that they are easily accessible.

Read the rest on Social Bridges…

I was mentioning to someone on dinner just the other day that there is a market for job-boards focused on H1-B jobs, and here we are with someone else already active with this idea.

Jobchowk.com is a job board for "students and H1-B visa holders" (emphasis mine). My guess is that they added this "holders" clause to avoid some further heat in an already controversial job board.

Companies in the U.S. cannot endorse job boards like this publically because of public-pressure to hire US citizens, but I think many departments would still want to hire H1-B holders. What’s likely to happen here is that "job placement" companies which act as proxies for those firms will advertise on jobchowk, and forward the candidates to appropriate positions - only the placement firm’s name appears publically.

For US companies that are open about hiring H1-B visa holders / seekers, this could become an interesting destination to look for jobs.

I’m not sure who the original creator of this job board is, or where he/she’s from.

One must make a habit to learn from whatever experience can be gained during the course of each day. My new employer requires employees to open accounts at the Faysal Bank (this one is located in Garden Town, Lahore). So I made my way there this morning to face customer service hell.

Here are five online business lessons I learned from my visit:

Their business is a privilege

Banks do not open a new account unless you can prove that you are socially acceptable and thus make available a reference who has an account with the same branch. It is just like getting into a club or emailing friends for invites to a particularly hot startup.

Faysal Bank Limited wanted me to deposit Rs. 5,000 in order to open my account. I had a check with me worth many times more than that, and my employer would be depositing a significant amount every month. But thats just not good enough for Faysal bank.

Do not charge for the privilege of gaining your customer’s/client’s business. I do not even prefer to get any more information than their email (for unique id) and password (for access to your system, only if necessary). Allow them to be comfortable, let them in to see what you have to offer. Offer reminders to add to their profile by showing how it will enhance their experience.

Show them the way

I new there was going to be trouble as soon as I became a ping pong ball between two bank employees who could not decide where I should go to get my account opened. I was new in the environment and it was annoying. All I needed was clear direction. If the bank had any sign pointing me to the right person, I would not have felt like leaving.

First time visitors to your online business feel exactly the same. They come with a mix of expectation and curiosity. If you can not show them how to do what they want to achieve in the first few, precious minutes of acquisition, they are going to walk straight out of there by clicking the back button.

Perform A/B, multivariate testing and engage sample of users in pre-launch surveys to see just how they react when the reach your home page. It is going to save you a lot of bad word of mouth later on. Also, do not over burden them with too much information. Introduce and establish your tips / help methodology early on and provide just enough information for them to be productive. Read the rest …