Navaneeth Krishnan, Founder, Netcarnation

The superglue of the social commerce market

Making the complicated world of e-commerce and internet social networking simple was the mantra with which Navaneeth Krishnan, a BTech graduate and six years’ veteran in product development, laid foundation of his maiden entrepreneurial venture Netcarnation – a social commerce platform.

“Netcarnation (http://www.netcarnation.com ) is a social networking commerce platform that enables any social network user to become a seller and leverage the power of their social networks to promote and sell their products”, says Krishnan. In his opinion what differentiates the team from the cluttered world of internet start-ups is the core focus on providing a simple and better user experience.

Netcarnation supports a wide array of ecommerce platforms like Ebay, Etsy, Amazon etc and most of the popular social networks in the world including Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and Ning. That is the reason why Krishnan compares Netcarnation to, “a glue which acts as a seamless cohesion between the ecommerce world and the social networking world.”

Started in 2008 with aid from angel investors, the biggest challenge that the Netcarnation team faced was to develop a product in a virgin market like the social commerce market, says the budding entrepreneur. “The social commerce market is still in its infancy stage and people are yet to comprehend the benefits that can be derived from social commerce”, he adds.

Krishnan feels that being in Bangalore is quite different from being in the Silicon Valley. The reason he gave for this to YourStory was that the IT industry in Bangalore is rather service-oriented and does not have an environment which fosters product development in the IT space. This was also a challenge that the young entrepreneur faced while starting on his own.

Netcarnation currently benefits thousands of sellers and aims to target about 2.5 million users by 2011. This entrepreneurial venture has an innovative and unique revenue model. It offers a subscription based premium service to the customers. This according to Krishnan is a first-of-it’s-kind initiative.

The current year for the company, was primarily spent on understanding the needs of the customers and building incremental innovation to the product line to address those needs. For the coming year, Krishnan wants to focus on increasing his team size, which currently is five, to build new capabilities and have an aggressive marketing drive.

Krishnan told YourStory that passion for Netcarnation is what keeps him going. Netcarnation is the only IT Company to win an award at IIM Bangalore’s Venture Validation contest. It was also nominated for the OnMedia Top 100 list of top emerging technology companies around the world. He asserts that his company still has a long way to go before he could be satisfied with what they have achieved.

However, for now, the young entrepreneur has no regrets for any mistakes that he committed in his maiden venture. On a rather philosophical note he quips, “It does not matter how many mistakes you make, but what lessons you learn from them. A large part of entrepreneurship is about being able to learn from your own mistakes and then move forward.” He enjoys challenges and considers them an important part of an entrepreneur’s life. Our budding entrepreneur has never felt the need to return to a 9 to 5 job. His passion for Netcarnation is never diminishing. His only advice to all aspiring entrepreneurs is, “Persistence pays! Never lose sight of your goals.”

Yourstory.in wishes Navaneeth Krishnan and his team at Netcarnation all the best and success in the years to come.