Out of 112 applicants from India ranging from age 19 to age 35, DeskAway has been chosen in the 30 finalists for the Business World Young Entrepreneurs Awards for 2010.

These 30 young start-ups and their founders will now be evaluated by a separate six-member jury comprising prominent entrepreneurs, investors and other experts. Five winners will be chosen by the jury and announced later.

Excited!

The Foundation of Youth Social Entrepreneurship (FYSE) offers a Paragon Fellowship for 100 entrepreneurs from Asia. The profile of the Paragon 100 fellows includes young entrepreneurs and social changemakers of up to 30 years of age who are an inspiration to other young people.

Paragon 100 members are young people who dared to stride out by setting up their own business, social enterprise, NGO or sustainable project. They have overcome challenges by realizing their vision and believing in themselves.

Amongst the top 100 for 2009 is DeskAway’s founder Sahil Parikh!

What is also really cheering is that 48 of the top entrepreneurs are from India! Wow, India is proving itself to be one of the top countries in entrepreneurship! Check out the top 100.

Will keep you updated about the activities happening within the fellowship.

Last Friday, we had a small talk @ the DeskAway HQ about certain tools related to web app security.

Afterwards we watched a video by Dave McClure on Startup metrics and measurability. If you are a startup or have a web app then you should check this video out.

Start-up Metrics that Matter by Dave McClure from Carsonified on Vimeo.

I went around asking a few of the startups I work with about DeskAway & how they use it. I was mainly interested in finding out:

•    What are the features that they use most on DeskAway
•    How do they motivate their teams in using DeskAway regularly
•    What is it about DeskAway that they like the most

I spoke with three startup guys who manage their teams and partners on DeskAway. Sameer Guglani, Founding Partner, MVP: A typical early-adopter and influencer, motivates teams he works with to use new tools, and is quick with his feedback. Rizwan Iqbal, co-founder, Sutra Services Pvt. Ltd: A tech geek, who is a part of a company who evaluates various tools before closing on one and ensures that the team uses them. Pankaj, an entrepreneur who is working on a startup in the space of customer experience and feedback (in stealth mode): He is someone who uses tools and mechanisms only when he sees a direct value to his business.

Here is what I found, some of which can be tips to Owners / Team Leads on DeskAway.

Most Used Features on DeskAway:

Tasks and Task Lists. At its basic level managing a project is all about organizing one’s tasks and task lists. All of them found DeskAway’s interface to managing, assigning and handling tasks to be very easy. Some of these users and their teams use task list for managing not only things related to specific projects, but also have their own personal task lists and optimize their time by managing all that they do on DeskAway.

Getting your team to use DeskAway regularly:

All the users I spoke to were using DeskAway quite regularly to manage their work and interact with their teams. A few techniques they have employed and have worked for them are:

•    Getting all work related communication onto DeskAway. Using the tasks, milestones, notifications, notes and file-sharing on DeskAway only and keeping away from emails & phone. This works well, shares one of the users, especially when dealing with remote teammates, as this is the most efficient way of collaborating.
•    “If I see them (a task) on DeskAway, they aren’t done yet” is what one of the users shared. Their technique is that any task assigned to them has to be dealt with on DeskAway, this ensures that all of them check back on things assigned to them on DeskAway and act on it there.
•    Making it a part of the process, building usage of DeskAway as part of the various things teams do. Identifying the advantages of getting onto DeskAway and educating the teams about it.

Though, all of them do think that once the teammates see the advantages of getting on to DeskAway, there has been no looking back.

The best thing about DeskAway:

•    The UI is very simple and easy to understand
•    The navigation flow is very good, it does not need an extra effort to learn things
•    DeskAway team keep adding to the already extensive feature set, which makes it all the more interesting to use the tool. To quote a user, “ It’s like you think of something (feature) and a few weeks later, its already there on DeskAway”

All these teams believe that DeskAway has made managing their teams and projects easy and more efficient. One of the teams owes it to DeskAway, as it became easy for them to get into a structure through DeskAway, which was missing earlier.