Vakow! has been nominated for the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards. And needless to say, we are very excited!

The TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards are India’s first ever public choice awards for start-ups. It’s like Indian Idol for startups where you can vote for us and help us win.

Voting for us is simple, just sms HOT 254 to 56767 and voila! we are on the road to startup glory. You can also vote online by visiting this link and clicking on the Vote button.

In phase I, public votes and expert reviews will decide the 30 shortlisted companies, which will be announced on November 6. Phase II will comprise on-ground and online campaigning by the 30 shortlisted startups where the public will vote for the Top 5 Winners who will be declared on December 23, 2008.

Now while you send those SMS votes and show us some love, we will go and work on our thank-you speeches.

Exciting (but old) News: Rediff invests in Vakow!

Now I can go about writing essays on what it means to Rediff (what’s with stock rise and all ;))and what we bring to the table and things like that, but for now, let’s just see what it means to us (anyway it’s much more interesting):

It means: Salaries! OMFG! We had almost forgotten what that means…no kidding! But now things shall resume to normal and self-respect shall ensue.

It means: We can have an office. We always wanted to have an office - nothing fancy - just a small cosy office with a really pretty secretary and a beer-loaded fridge.

It means: We can hire people. There’s no denying the fact that there is certain charm in a two people team working their asses off and kicking some real butt , but now we’ve really gotten bored arguing with each other and could do with some fresh brains around here.

It means: We can Just Buy it. e.g. When we need to make the website faster and we’re sick and tired of optimizing and optimizing and optimizing a bit more, I can shrug my shoulders, tilt my head and tell amitu, very matter of factly, “JUST GET ME MORE MACHINES!”.

And, we’ll have more visibility in terms of users, advertisers and partners which could only be useful and whenever we need good advice we know who to call.

That’s pretty much it I guess. Otherwise, life goes on. We’ll continue to operate in our style and do things that fancy us in ways that we find interesting.

Most importantly, all this money doesn’t change us a bit. We still love very much!

We almost forgot to tell you about this.

If you have not already bought the December issue of i.t. mag we should tell you that they have published a huge article on your favorite startup (thank you!). It’s called Vakow! - the SMS Store and it’s written by Nilesh Kakade.

And, in case, you’re not planning to purchase the whole magazine (we understand), you can always download the article from here.