Rails Ho!
Sameer leading ApnaBill.com pitch at Proto.in
Check him out - isn’t he just too much into the presentation? 
Taking questions from the audience…
Finally the team together on stage - its so tough to get all 3 in one frame!!!
Sameer, me and Sandy
BTW - the ApnaBill.com Tee’s are ultra hot! I already have the next versions planned… 
Lately, there have been some issues with PayMate option at our payment gateway.
Hence we request our users to not to use PayMate on our payment gateway.
We are working with our payment gateway to resolve the issue at earliest.
NetBanking is working perfectly fine - Please feel free to write to us at support[at]apnabill.com for any queries you might have.
Sameer, Sandy and myself - with the Proto.in momento.
Picture courtesy Pravin from LifeBlob (one of the 15 finalist at Proto.in)
The atmosphere was electrifying at Proto4 - and the talks were doing everything to make the conference even more interesting!
The presenting startups didn’t got much time to attend the conference talks - we were quickly rushed for the rehersals which were to prepare us for the upcoming showcase on 2nd day of the event. Helping us all along was the great team of Proto - which made sure that we had everything we needed to be ready for those 6 minutes of showcase - a big thanks to the Proto Team.
A quick presentation from ApnaBill kicked off the rehearsals - we fumbled alot, were mixed up alot - and the feedback was all worth it. Just a quick work of advice - never go to a presentation unprepared. ANY preparation is better than NO preparation 
After the day of reharsals, we mutually decided that Sameer would head our pack onstage. He did a nice job with the presentation and I guess our point got communicated across to the audience pretty well.
ApnaBill.com Presentation
Sameer presenting ApnaBill.com to a hall packed of audience
ApnaBill.com team (Sameer in front (second from start), Me and Sandy)
Before the day ended, each startup demo’d their products on the stalls. Checking out the stalls were potential users and investors alike.
Me posing with ApnaBill.com (ghosh! that right click…)
Here are some goodblog articles which described the event pretty well.
Rishabh from Mutiny.in - Proto.in goes North
Amit Ranjan from Webyantra - Proto IV at New Delhi: Impressive show for startups, entrepreneurship & technology
Slideshare - A list of startups showcasing at Proto4, Proto4 pictures
* More pictures and videos to follow…
**Pictures courtesy Amit from Slideshare.
All the hard work of almost 9 months culminated with an invite from Proto.in to showcase ApnaBill.com at Proto.in’s July 08 event.
Proto.in is India’s premier event for startups. Going to be held in IIT Delhi on 18th and 19th July 08 - its one of the most promising events that a startup can begin with. With more than 30 participating investors and almost 20 media houses covering this event - this is something to be very proud about. The fact that more than 100 startups applied for July’s Proto.in edition and ApnaBill.com was amongst the 15 who got selected - makes it even more awesome.
I feel jubilient to announce that ApnaBill.com would be presenting itself (for full 6 minutes) in the startup showcase on the second day of Proto.in - to a hall packed with potential investors, future channel partners and our dear current/future users.
If you are attending Proto.in, make sure not to miss this!
Hurray!
I am feeling very proud and happy to announce that ApnaBill.com is amongst 15 startups which got selected from the 100 which applied for the magical 6 minutes of showcase at India’s premier startup event - Proto.in.
Proto.in is starting today at IIT Delhi - be there to watch us!
Dear customers,
The problem with our payment gateway has been sorted out and ApnaBill.com is back online with full force. All payment gateways (ICICI, UTI, HDFC and IDBI) are up and running smoothly.
We apologize for the inconvenience caused.
We are experiencing our first downtime.
Our payment gateway is facing some problems are are sorting it out. Meanwhile, all the access points to ApnaBill.com - login, Signup and the Try mode are disabled.
We are doing everything we can to help the payment gateway sort out the problem.
Expected downtime is another 24 hours.
28th June - updates
The payment gateway is still facing the same problem and are actively working to fix it. Expected downtime: 24 hours.
The current week is just halfway through, but it has already been one of the most eventful week for ApnaBill.com - some definite advances to the release. We’ll be launching the live pilot mode release in just days time.
More good news - we’ve expanded our network coverage from a handful of operators/cities to a pan India coverage.
We’ll be supporting 16 different prepaid vendors across 14 different geographical locations - I must say, that is a mighty list!
And to give you a small hint with what’s in the store, I present to you, bits and pieces from ApnaBill.com UI - all this and much more is just waiting to go live!
All the hard work that has gone into cross browser support…
A self-explanatory teaser on the front page
Another teaser
The prepaid coupon types we’ll be selling…
Secure transactions - hints on the UI
And of course, the ubiquitous help!
Please do signup for our Beta Release if you have not done so. The Beta Signup is still open.
Its been long since I last blogged - and I was kinda missing the blogging scene.
Days and nights are as usual - super hectic. At 4:45am, with “Summer of 69” running at full volume - work on ApnaBill.com is going on in full swing. Last week, we completed integrating our Payment Gateway and Coupons Manager modules into the developer codebase. This was the last blocker bug holding us back from a release. Effort now is targetted on consolidation.
After spending endless days and nights (and full weekends - upto 20 hours each weekend), seeing everything coming and working together as one cohesive and functional unit - is like watching a kid grow and graduate! Bits and pieces of code which were written as long back as 6 months ago are suddenly coming alive all together. Assumptions which were made back then, still hold good - I guess, a bit of future planning always helps.
But as wise men say - “The end is just the beginning!” - there’s still a ton of work left before we can go Live - though we are very seriously thinking of announcing the dates now. The project is expected to go into pilot testing mode anytime now.
Just before ending - a teaser as usual
Mobile operators we would be supporting across India.
& now …back to Summer of 69 and styling ApnaBill.com
PS: Saturday morning, The Chronilcles of Narnia is up at 10:40am at Gold Adlabs - and we have 4 tickets booked for just INR 200
