Author Archive
DesiCrew.in: Driving BPO jobs into Indian villages
It’s a global village, as was being told for more than a decade so far. The birth of the internet has resulted in death of the distance. But, still businesses in the IT field are happening mostly in metros and not in villages where 70% of the Indian population lives. Even though villages have educated youth, dearth of a non-agricultural career opportunity have been forcing them to relocate to the congested metro for a career. Back at the metro, their winning bread is cut almost less than a half due to whopping living costs.
All of us know of this fact, some of the people think of doing something to change and very a few might have really tried. Saloni Malhotra has been one of that few to make the change.
Saloni was working at a web-based ad agency in Delhi. Way back in 2005 she happened to attend “Rural Business Hubs Conference” at Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi. There she got to listen to a speech on “Rural Based Businesses” by Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala. The speech by Dr.Ashok and the presence of Saloni Malhotra there had definitely been a spark to ignite the engines at the right stroke.
Padmashri. Ashok Jhunjhunwala leads the TeNeT Group at IIT Madras which has incubated several technologies to develop Telecom and Banking products for Indian Urban and Rural markets. He chairs Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) at IIT Madras and is a member of Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Committee.
Just a month after getting inspired by Dr.Ashok’s talk and at an early age of 22, Saloni left her day job at Delhi to change things for good in the villages down South of Chennai in the year 2005. Being brought up in Delhi, Tamil language is a first time experience for her, but that hiccup had never hampered her entrepreneurial energy. She took the daunting task of travelling across different villages in Tamil Nadu to undertake small pilot projects for nearly 2 years.
Saloni’s vision to make educated rural Indians prosper with a job at the comfort of their native village saw the birth of “DesiCrew”. Started during Feb 2007 at the RTBI centre in IIT-Madras campus, DesiCrew Solutions Pvt Ltd, a decentralized BPO model provides competitive outsourcing solutions to clients, while thriving as a profit making social enterprise giving employment opportunities to the educated villagers.
DesiCrew trains the educated youth with the right set of skills to bring them in line with the needed requisites. The interesting part in this company is that they give ownership of activity to the crewmates, which make the team to enjoy their work and in fact prosper as a whole. Though their winning bread is smaller in size, it does not get bitten by too many living costs. Meanwhile, wealth is created by the community, which is again circulated within the community.
Now this 120 people strong company, running 6 village centres has a three stage recruitment process varying from project to skill requirements. Though their business still at a nascent stage is facing hardships such as power, bandwidth and client complaints, their continual positive performance is giving their stakeholders a confidence to make further business relations.
Stories like turning down overseas job and postponement of wedding by the girl’s parents in view of additional income are common. DesiCrew has not only given the first ever job of many to the women folk in the villages, but also empowered them both economically and socially.
With an annual turnover of Rs. 1.76 Crores, they dream to employ 1000 crewmates and expand to villages outside of TamilNadu.
At this outset, StartupStory had a few words with Padmashri. Ashok Jhunjhunwala without whose talk, this company would not have come into existence.
Startupstory: Very a few people are venturing into rural arena. What are the factors that you visualize as the reasons for this? How RTBI guides them to win over these bottlenecks?
Ashok Jhunjhunwala : Urban is where the amenities are; that is where the education, health care and livelihood is. Rural has little of these. No wonder few people venture. At RTBI, we emphasise that a democratic India is unviable if the rural-urban gap continues to increase; it is indeed a challenge, but a challenge worth taking up.
Startupstory: Our primary school education system is dearth of a subject on entrepreneurship. Will you opine for implementing entrepreneurship in the Indian school education? How you envisage as the right way to implement this.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala: In primary education, I would focus a bit more on skills. Also, the stories through which we learn has to incorporate entrepreneurship — not only that of big industrialists, but that of small entrepreneur.
Startupstory: A few words from you on DesiCrew. Of course, your talk has transformed an employee into an employer.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala: Well, DesiCrew is the beginning. The journey will end when we have a 25 seater BPO in every village of India.
Startupstory feels proud to interview DesiCrew, one of the pioneers in rural based businesses and take this opportunity to commend the brave attempt by Ms.Saloni at such an young age. We are sure that DesiCrew’s footprints are going to be the lighthouse for several Indian entreprenuers! May DesiCrew flags off the journey of more village BPOs to spruce up in our nation…
@Chennai: Module No 13, 1st Floor, IIT M Research Park, Behind Tidel Park, Taramani, Chennai-600 113 Phone: 044-65156669. @Mumbai: Trade Centre, Regus, 1st Floor, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra (E), Mumbai - 400 051. Phone: 022-40700889. @ Delhi: E-162 Kalkaji, New Delhi - 110 019 Phone: 011-26430470. FacebookEmail id: info@desicrew.in
CollegeKhabar.com: Enlightening students for a better career
For a student stepping into the final year of graduation, the big hunt for the next year is to plan and set the sail right for plunging into a good job. Out of the 17,000+ colleges in India, very a few lucky ones get to throw red carpet welcome for big companies to organize campus recruitments.
For the folks who succeeded in those campus interviews, the social talk around them praises of their intelligence, knowledge, luck, hard work et la,,. Sometimes this aura gets snuffed off once he/she gets the real experience as an employee in that company.
Before arriving at a college, for conducting campus recruitments, companies get to know enough about the college. But students who take part in the interviews would have hardly given enough thought to know about the company beforehand. Once selected, most of the students make a blind dive into their first job.
Is it a must for a student to know about the company beforehand?
“Yes. A prior focused and relevant information about the employer and the job profile, does equip the student to make their choice a better one” quips Hemant, Co-founder of CollegeKhabar.com, who himself had the real experience with his first employer as he did made a blind decision to join his first company.
Devendra’s passion in cyber space drove him to design his own website even while studying 11th standard. But after graduating in Metallurgical Engineering, he got placed in a company dealing with metals. His passion and career got a conflict of sorts and he realized the confusion that had mixed in his chemistry. He vouches that every aspirant should get to know of the job profile before heading for the interview.
Actually, information about the employers is hardly available on the public domain. Getting to know of the job profile before sitting for the interview is not so heard of by the students in India. Out of real life experience and with a dream to make students make their career choice a better one; Devendra and Hemant along with their friend Naveen had spruced up with CollegeKhabar.com. Those chats during their weekends and intrinsic discussions over the cup of coffee had given them enough steam to pep up their engines for their first ever entrepreneurial journey with an investment of Rs.70,000 in August 2009.
College Khabar as of now focuses on Engineering and Management institutes by providing news about placements happening across various campuses in India, apart from updates on rankings of colleges, prospects available for aspirants at different companies, etc.,
The first bottleneck in their business was the handicap to channelize the information of placements happening across the institutes in India. Then, they went on to identify Campus Partners popularly called Khabaris in each of the institutes to provide updates on placements taking place in their respective institutes. To make more out of it, rewards and benefits find their way to those Khabaris who make the more hay.
Reckoning with a 2000 registered users and 2Lac views a month, College Khabar aims to make its presence in top 100 engineering & 50 management institutes by this year. Now 25+ institutes are on their book across India from NITs to IITs.
Though they are very young and yet to make their risky plunge into a successful revenue model, their hungriness to guide the student fraternity in making their career decision a wiser one is to be adorned. Startupstory.in wishes them the very best.
CollegeKhabar.com204, Raison Armour,
IndiraPuram, Ghaziabad Uttarpradesh 201014 Contact: 9717891507 (Hemant), 9871903633 (Devendra) Email id info@collegekhabar.com
Blog, FaceBook, Twitter:
eFarm.in: Innovating the Indian Agri Supply Chain
“In a regular employment at an IT company, you get the money and glory, but the real human connection outside your cubicle is absent” tells Venkat, the 36 year old social entrepreneur from Chennai. He had worked at different IT companies for more than a decade; had a top branded resume; got paid of fat salary month after month; but an empty feeling was haunting him of not serving the purpose of his life. Though he was eager to skip off and turn to social work, the need to balance financial needs, career ambitions and inner craving kept nagging for a solution.
“Why not become a social entrepreneur by myself?” This question made Venky to start “Matchbox Solutions”, an organization to channelize the collective energy of people and bring constructive change to the social and economic environment.
Venkata Subramanian started eFarm – an Agriculture Supply Chain business in Jan 2008
Having completed B.Arch from IIT Kharagpur in the year 1995 Donnie Darko film Magnifique, Le video , the IT wave made him to get pushed into an IT career through campus placement. After a decade long stints at various IT companies, he quit his high paying job as a Program Manager with a leading Indian IT firm, to start off his own social enterprise “Matchbox Solutions” in June 2007. With his parents from media background, his Dad retired from All India Radio and Mom from Doordarshan, Venky’s futuristic view got its nod rather liberally. Though there were little tirades popping up at home then and there, the global recession snuffed them off, a relief for Venky!
Srivalli with experience in leading MNCs and having run two start-ups and fund raising NGOs joined Venky to shoulder operations, administration, etc., and finally became his life partner too. She is now the Co-founder & CEO of eFarm.
In India, agriculture and education are usually stamped as if they should be taken care by the government or by an NGO. A professionally driven organized agricultural supply chain is non-existent in India. Driven by the inspiration of “An average Indian farmer”, Venky plunged in to connect people through creative use of technology and establish a profitable social enterprise. The first match stick to come out of the Matchbox in Jan 2008 is a ‘Mumbai dabaawallah’ style business named “eFarm” which strives to solve the logistics/distribution/marketing challenges plaguing the agricultural supply chain business.
Customers who wish to seek fresh agri produce at a reasonable price are the main target users of eFarm, apart from food & hospitality providers, institutional buyers and exporters. They now have 500+ clients and “Word of Mouth” is the marketing strategy working best for him. He makes revenue out of 5 to 10% margins on the transactions made and hopes to reach Rs.2 Crore turnover in the next 2 years.
This Chennai based self funded venture now seeking out first round external funding is pepping up for an organic growth to other metros. Now a team of ten is taking care of the supply chain from agriculture to retailing. To avoid pitfalls and keep newbie errors at bay, their small focus group which comprises of key stakeholders of eFarm come together every month to validate the progress and ideas. Venky is on the path to form a trust / NGO to better coordinate the activities of SHG members.
Unlearning all those years of corporate ‘wisdom’ is a pain point for Venky who had taken a business which for him is anew. He needs to work at grass root level and have a constant eye on market trend, price swings and supply sources; Both farmers and end retailers want to quit their trade for better options owing to high risks and poor remunerations. Finding and motivating people to stick to this trade is an uphill task. To win over these challenges they are imparting training programs for the farmers on how to run a business, basic economics of a trade, etc., to make them more professional in their dealings. Venky does not prefer expecting the common folk to flock to a computer based solution, but vouches for the simplest of technologies to solve the needs of even the layman. His business has given him the lesson of not to approach the poor as if ‘I am trying to help you’ and he thumps that they are competent enough to figure out for their survival.
On brand building, he tells to Startupstory that “One’s service and value should speak for itself; my satisfied customer is my best salesman”. Promotion is happening through mobile vans, blogs and online discussion groups. Models like micro finance, self help groups and government agri agencies helps eFarm to reach wider audience.
Since agriculture is highly dependent on the environment, unforeseen situations are bound to adversely impact this business. Fact is that nearly 70% of India is directly dependent on agriculture, even a small improvement by innovative social entrepreneurs like Venky is bound to impact a wider audience and improve the efficiency of the Indian economy.
Office address: www.efarm.in No. 11 Loganathan Colony, Mylapore, Chennai - 600004 M: +91 9884761354 T: +91 44 43577236, 24450613 E: venky@matchboxsolutions.in
Google : http://groups.google.com/group/efarm
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com “Agri India” Inferno
Video clips on 1.How eFarm works and 2. The supply chain trail
IndiaKhelo.com: Lets get more medals in the next Olympics
For every 1,000 people on this planet, 175 are Indians. But, out of the 1,000 medals given out in the last “2008 Beijing Olympic Games”, only 3 were grabbed by Indians.
Does the above fact translate to the lack of talented sports persons in India ?
It’s not that Indians lack talent, but lack of a system in India to identify them from this vast country and give them a push, has been slinging enough dirty mud on the face of India with her sports fraternity garnering only a feeble number of medals in the successive Olympic games.
Though it’s not unusual that graduates from IITs fly off to developed countries chasing huge pay packets, these IIT grads in their mid twenties have turned up with a dream to improve sports in India and envisage for more number of Indians to garner those coveted medals in the next Olympics.
IndiaKhelo.com is set in to improve sports culture in India at the grassroots level. Each school, college or sports club affiliated to IndiaKhelo.com Sideways trailer has its own profile page, where they would record the results of all inter class / inter school matches. A report card facility measures their performance and gives them institutional / national level rankings. The pyramidal structure with various levels motivates the player to move up to the next level. This innovative system makes the transition of a grass-root player to a professional national level player with talent being the only criterion. This way the players know where they stand, get enough motivation to work harder and climb up the ladder. The system ensures that those at the top are the very best in their field of sports.
An IIT-Madras product of 2005 batch, Prashant was watching cricket in which India lost to Bangaladesh in 2007. Very much frustrated that he skipped his office for a couple of days. The itch in his mind, made himself to ask “WHY?” on the dismal performance of Indians in the overall sports scenario. His thirst to improve the Indian sports fraternity saw him turning down his US$ 90,000/Year job at HSBC in Chicago. His love over his country made him take the flight back to India in 2008. After a tiring search, he teamed up with the right set of people to sow the seeds of IndiaKhelo to develop the culture of sports in India.
Varun Gupta a national medalist in swimming, had dreamt of representing India. But lack of prospects hindered him to do the somersault. Instead, he switched to studies and now pursuing at IIT-Madras. An ex Sports Secretary at IIT-M, his urge to visualize a system that would help Indian sports persons in enhancing their sports career saw him joining hands with Prashant.
Vaibhav Tandon an IIT-Roorkee (2007) passed out, a national level table tennis player, was once the flag-holder in Inter IIT competitions. He was working as a Project Manager at Kotak Mahindra. His love over sports and a chance to take part in improving the Indian sports scenario seduced his entrepreneurial urge to jump into IndiaKhelo.com.
IndiaKhelo.com, a 25 people strong self funded company is based out of Bangalore and operates from Chennai, Delhi, Dehradun and soon to be at Mumbai. Being a first of its kind dedicated sports portal, identifying right people for building the team has been a real challenge.
With 2,500 users and most of them being regular in recording and accessing the statistics, people are still bound to understand the power of this simple and new kinda service in the long run. Since most of their target people live in rural area; working from just 4 metropolitan cities does not actually feed enough fodder for this company to realize its vision. To penetrate into rural India, the company is being incubated at Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) The Signal dvd in IIT-Madras campus under the mentorship of Padamshri Awardee Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala.
Being a first of its kind sports portal, it’s a mammoth task to develop a huge credibility around their product in order to get appreciated and spread across the country. Marketing is through Word of Mouth, which is happening mostly through coaches and school management whom they get to network at the educational expos and sports events. Mahesh Bhupati Tennis Academy was their first client followed by several sports academies.
In the next couple of years, they plan to reach at least 300 schools and identify good talents to be trained for International level. “Our long term vision is that everyone is playing for IndiaKhelo and we are serving every Indian athlete a full fledged performance tracking system” tells Varun.
Their model is 25% online and 75% offline and as of now internet plays that of a media. They are affiliating with Government and Corporate bodies to make the push into rural India. Revenue generation is through nominal charges collected from schools, associations and sports academies.
“Let we Indians get more medals in 2016 Olympics” Varun quips to Startupstory.in
IndiaKhelo.com Rural Technology and Business Incubator IIT-Madras Campus Chennai, 600036.
Prashant Pitti, Co-founder, E: prashant@indiakhelo.com, On FaceBook & Linkedin
Varun Gupta, Co-founder and Business Head, E: varun@IndiaKhelo.com, M: +91-9884577934, On Orkut, FaceBook & Linkedin
JobeeHive.com: Making career jump a smarter one
Accessing valuable insider information about employers and salaries in the corporate world has always been a pain point. Neither there was a platform to access, nor there any transparency. That was where this 27 year old Vishwas Mudagal from Bangalore saw an opportunity.
Vishwas got ignited of his entrepreneurial spark in 1999, at an early age of 18, with setting up a company named “InfoVision Academy” to impart computer skills to rural students. By 2001 to hone himself of his knowledge, he went on to pursue his graduation and then got into career stints at three different companies. Later, he made his journey as a full fledged entrepreneur with setting up India’s first ever employer / salary review portal in September 2007.
His simple idea was to host employer and salary reviews obtained from present or past employees of the company and publishing them anonymously for everyone to read on his Web 2.0 portal ‘JobeeHive.com‘.
“We offer something that is very useful for professionals, which other social networks do not offer. This is precisely why we have generated so much interest in the market today” Vishwas tells to Startupstory.in.
When he etched his business thought, there were too many critics running the mill and it was hard for him to make others believe in his idea. Couple of years down the lane, his yester year critics were proved wrong with his portal now hosting 30K plus user reviews, 70K registered users and clocking a whopping 3 to 4 Lac page views a month.
“Your service should solve some need in the market; should be cool to use. Then it will propagate virally on itself” Vishwas advises.
Most of the content on JobeeHive.com is free for everyone to see, though diving deep for specific information needs a sign up The Secret of Moonacre move . Now in BETA version, JobeeHive keeps its content fresh and accurate by having a ‘give-and-take’ model requiring users to submit a review of their employer or a salary report before they can view the reviews at the site. With stringent moderation process in place, the reviews, before getting published, gets into the sharp eyes of the team at JobeeHive. Abuses and confidential information are kept at bay. Like Wikipedia, the content gets better as more and more people read and rate them on the Web 2.0 platform.
Professionals are using JobeeHive.com to make their career jump a smarter one by comparing between prospective employers to negotiate for a much better pay package. More of positive experience by the users has led to viral growth with users turning up as passive brand ambassadors. Without spending a penny on marketing, JobeeHive has received great traction with Alexa ranking it the No.1 user generated employer review website in India. Tying up with job portals to provide content on ‘Job research’ and publishing out ‘Best Employer Ratings’ for each year are on the cards.
Though employees some times sling mud about their company, Vishwas admits that no company is perfect and claims that companies themselves confess to it. Employers have been getting a transparent feedback about their own company; taking it in a positive manner; benchmarking their salary package and as well comparing with their competitors. So there is now a platform for employees to voice their opinion; there are employers listening to employees and no one is now ignoring about what has been written on JobeeHive.com.
Cliffhanger video Queen of the Damned buy
The revenue model is based on several streams including corporate subscriptions, branding solutions, jobs and partnerships. Recently JobeeHive got to be selected for ‘The Power of Ideas contest’ by Economic Times. The 9 member strong self funded Banglore based startup is in talks with few investors.
“Be passionate about your idea and never say die. The one who executes well wins. The team which you put together matters a lot. Many a times it happens that your partners quit in the mid of the journey, but you need to have the strength to carry on” advises Vishwas to upcoming entrepreneurs.
Blog: jobeehive.blogspot.com
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Twitter: @jobeehive
Facebook: facebook.com/group.php?gid=51095468667&ref=share
Contact: contact@jobeehive.com
Proto.in : Sixth edition coming up at Pune
The Sixth edition of India’s premier Start-up event “Proto.in” is happening on Saturday the 25th of July’09 at Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems in Pune.
Excerpt
Witness India’s 15 most promising start-ups on showcase and be zapped in the brainstorming and networking at India’s premier start-up event.
Full Release Diamonds Are Forever rip
After its resounding successes in its past five editions across three different cities, Proto.in the India’s biggest and most awaited start-up event is back this time at Pune to continue strengthening and promoting the Indian Start-up Eco system. Proto.in has built an unmatched reputation of being the one event that the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem looks forward to, across the length and breadth of India.
About the Organizers:
The Knowledge Foundation (TKF) is a not-for-profit organization engendered by passionate individuals who are technologists or strategists or entrepreneurs or professionals or artisans or even all of these! These are individuals who are dedicated to promoting knowledge in all forms possible and organize world class conferences, seminars and workshops to aid the same. This foundation to its credit has organized several big events including BarCampChennai, BlogCamp, Proto.in, SearchCamp and WikiCamp.
What is special in this Sixth edition?
This edition of Proto.in intends to take a solid leap and focus on policies that support Start-ups both in IT and non-IT sectors. The start-up community at Proto.in will analyze and understand how best to leverage the existing policies and in what ways it can get involved with key stakeholders such as the government in strengthening the policies further.
Ganesh Natarajan (CEO – Zensar Technologies, Chairman - IT & ITES CII and Member - Chairmen’s Council NASSCOM) will deliver the keynote address to the community during this edition. For the first time, the audience will get an in-depth analysis on Intellectual Property rights and how it affects start ups by renowned experts. It will see the focus to move beyond dot com to non internet ventures and how to be a part of this space.
The story so far
Over the last five editions, Proto.in has showcased close to 100 start ups. Many have leveraged the platform to close funding, develop new business opportunities, create media traction and even connect with potential hires. Some of the Proto success stories –
· NextBiT Computing has closed several major deals post their proto.in showcase
· IXiGO.com was funded by BAF Spectrum in 2008
· Lucid Software was funded by Mercatus Capital in 2009
· Lifeblob was seed funded during 2008
· Yahoo acquired a stake in Tyroo
during 2007
received over 7 awards, including the woman entrepreneur of the year and has been angel funded.
Aloke Bajpai of iXiGO.com networking with the Start-up Community at Proto.in
“Showcasing at Proto.in built good credibility for my iXiGO.com in the start-up ecosystem in general and investors in particular. Proto.in kick started a lot of good things for us.” quips Aloke.
Entrepreneurs, experts, venture capitalists, students, start-up companies will all converge at Proto and as Kunal kashikar, part of the Proto.in volunteering team at Pune puts it, “You don’t want to miss Proto.in as it is one mega day of entrepreneurial activities unleashed!”
Arun Prabhudesai, co-founder of “Hover.in” a Pune based start-up and founder of one of the top Indian Business Blog “Trak.in”
“I think its high time Proto.in happened in Pune, especially because the startup community here is quite vibrant. Many startups have cropped up in Pune over last couple of years. So I think it is great to have Proto.in here.” Arun tells to Startupstory.in.
For buying tickets and registration visit http://www.proto.in/the-event/registrations/
For sponsorship opportunities shoot your email to sponsor@proto.in
Get updated of the buzz around Proto.in by joining the community mailing list at http://www.proto.in/reach/proto-talk/
Contact: Ravi Shankar, ravi@proto.in, +91 9444923443Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World rip
PgcInfotech.com: Incubating business ideas.
During his college days, Yeragaselvan got to hear the stories of his college mates getting into jobs, most of which, they later realized themselves to be a square peg in a round hole. Some of the people were into jobs that drove their motivation spirit down into the drain.
Hailing from Chennai, Yeraga disliked going for the usual nine to fiver job. After completing his B.E. in Electronics and Communications from Kongu Engineering College, he went to the UK to pursue his Masters degree
at Westminster University in London . But his inner urge to become an entrepreneur saw h
im dropping his higher studies. He came back to Chennai and co-founded PGC Infotech during 2008 along with his friend Prem.
PGC Group is a diversified group having business interest across real-estate, energy, textile, retail, etc., and has launched a technology seed fund for incubating various business ideas. The objective of this fund is to incubate various business ideas, whereby, the best of the ideas are nurtured by best of the talent. Each idea gets enough resource at PGC Jacob’s Ladder dvd and the venture is meticulously planned and delivered into this world.
Each of the incubated idea at PGC Infotech takes its path from idea to delivery and then from operations to commercial deployment. It is a real challenge for Yeragaselvan, since the birth of the product right from conceiving the idea requires the same person to focus in order to make the end delivery a successful one.
Employing nearly 100 people, PGC infotech based in Chennai has a development center at Tirupur in Tamil Nadu. Getting a team at his development centre is a difficult task since it is situated too far away from a metropolitan city. Yeraga has to ensure that people joining his company will not get disoriented with the place. He takes into count the attitude of the people as the primary yardstick to judge an incumbent employee for his company. The required skills are then imparted to make the employees fit for the marathon run at PGC Infotech.
The interesting fact about Sharad the CEO at PGC Infotech is that he was in a top job at a leading corporate house before joining this startup. His designation was President and was heading the US operations at 3i Infotech, the software arm of ICICI Bank.
Being at various high responsibility jobs in India and in USA, Sharad gives out a pep talk to Startupstory.in.
“I believe to be innovative and create something new. For this I should go to the seed level rather than worry about the size of tree trunk”, quips the 35 year old Sharad.
Corporate Vs Startup
“Corporate is about defending your turf and Startups are about building a new turf. In corporate environment you focus on leveraging what you have, thus you need to be more defensive in your approach. In Corporate, you create virtual boundaries and waste time to defend them, whereas in a startup, you create new boundaries that are always focused on building your business idea. So in a Startup your approach to business is forthcoming and open.”
Sartup scenario in India
“Startup is not a new phenomenon for India, but these days it has got its needed formal identity. India has a more vibrant small business setup when compared to corporate America. Earlier in India, either you had a government job or you had to start a business. Remember startup is a painful ride with minimal immediate returns and has more complexity. But, it is the kick you get that keeps you going day in and day out.”
Strength of an Indian CEO
“We as Indians are very well equipped with dealing the unknown. In our day to day life, there is no guarantee that next moment we will have electricity, whether the elevator will work, whether the maid will show up, where the person driving in front will turn, but we very comfortably navigate it. Whereas in a developed country the factor called ‘unknown’ is negligible and is predictable. In a developed country the train arrives on time, everything works in a clockwork precision and people are in peace. So, Indian managers are seasoned to lead business in uncertain times very comfortably without panic. We have unknowingly inherited the skills needed to manage a startup which has many unknowns and is a very unpredictable system”.
The startup journey
“The pleasure is not in the destination, but in the journey, generally your current goal is your next destination. But when you reach it, your itinerary would be ready for the next destination. Enjoy the journey and remember whether the destination or milestone is success or failure. It is just incidental, don’t pay too much attention to it.”
Indian Startups and Indian economy
“Startup successes are very critical for our country. We need a lot of positive stories and press bytes. Some how I think we after independence thought it is the responsibility of the government to fix all the problems and even we want them to create employment. In current wave of economic growth, we moved from desired government job to corporate job. While we go to school, why are we trained to join in some job? Why we are not taught to start a business and solve a social / political problem and convert it into an opportunity and monetize from it?”
“The success of a startup can inspire and liberate an innocent graduate or even a college drop out to make the plunge and solve our social and economic challenges and contribute to our economy as a whole.”
Are you still defending your own turf at a big company? Why not build a new turf?
Are the Corporates hearing?
Address: www.pgcinfotech.com Level 6, 10/11 Dr.Radhakrishna Salai Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, 600004 T: +91 421 4314400, Toll Free - 1800 103 0800E: info@pgcinfotech.com
W: pgcinfotech.com, whereismyboss.com
Sharad’s twitter - twitter.com/sharadvajpayee
Deskaway.com: Put your projects on cruise control
Gone are the days, when managing a team project involved the flexing steps of planning, scheduling and setting up the project. With the blessing of internet, now less planning is done and more of work is executed, with people in the team dispersed far and away even across the globe.
Sahil Parikh, the 29 year old entrepreneur from Mumbai sets in to cool off the vapours which usually rumbles up whenever more people are involved in a project. His SaaS (Software as a service) Daylight divx venture, DeskAway.com is a subscription based collaborative online service which enables business teams to organize, manage & track the progress of their team work from anywhere. This self funded startup is on track to provide simple and powerful tools through the web for people to work in a smarter way and at an affordable cost. Besides the project collaboration features, DeskAway also includes comment threads, RSS feeds, instant email notifications, user profiles and twitter-like social message updates.
In the year 1997, Sahil went to USA for pursuing his higher education at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wherein he got associated with the founding team of an entrepreneurship society in his university. He had the luck of rubbing shoulders with investors and incubators. Further he got into multiple jobs which gave him the moral strength to co-start his own web design and development consultancy with his wife in March 2002.
The perception then in the USA was that India is a low-cost service destination perfect for off-shoring and that good quality products don’t come out of India that often. Though the number of clients for his service business grew in the successive 3 years, Sahil’s interest to plunge into a product business made him quit his job and shift his web design business to India in early 2005. Later he added up DeskAway, his first ever SaaS product during late 2007.
Though he was trying to phase out his service business, he could not do so since there was no other income to fuel his uphill journey. To earn the money needed for running his product business, he added up a couple of web development projects. Unlike a service business which earns money right from day one, a product business needs much of the time and effort to build and it pays back only at a later stage. The effort needed for steaming up his product business was getting beaten down and his entrepreneurial journey was facing a slippery path. He then took the critical decision to quit all service projects and concentrate 100% on DeskAway
. He quips that it was best decision he had ever made in his life.
Now a team of 12 comprising of developers, online marketers, web/UI designer, business strategy consultants, testers, etc., manage the show. Sahil feels a joy in helping a developer learn new things to create a win-win situation. He is particular on hiring a person who wants to learn, rather than an expert who only wants to earn.
Web-savvy teams and professional small businesses which work in virtual teams are his target users. Though there are more than 11,000 registered users to boast off, getting new customers have been his real juggernaut. In India, people didn’t understand the business model of this online product and why the software was so affordable? He laughs at instances where he was called in by Ad agencies and PR firms for presentations, and they would want to buy and install the DeskAway software in their stand alone PCs. There is an online help & video section to impart knowledge on how to get started with DeskAway
. This has drastically reduced the cost which was otherwise incurred towards customer acquisition and support.
A social network sort of open relationship exists between this company and feedback from their customers are taken in the right spirit to make DeskAway more productive for the user. Their product offer starts with a basic “free” version (supports 5 users) which has almost all aspects of the product to the higher end “$99/month” model (Unlimited users). Poltergeist divx
Sahil votes for promoting his business through the online medium due to lower cost and higher reach. To make their presence known far away, initiatives such as SEO, SEM, online affiliation are often explored in addition to implementing a vibrant FaceBook Fanpage and maintaining an active presence on Twitter.
“At the end of the day software should be fun and easy to use. Just like your social network. Right?” Sahil tells to Startupstory.
Address: DeskAway.com, Great Western Bldg, 1st Floor, 130/132, Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg,Near Lion Gate, Fort, Mumbai, India - 400023, T: +91-22-22854133 E: info@synage.com
Blogs: DeskAway.com/blog & SahilParikh,com
Micro Blogs: Twitter.com/DeskAway & Twitter.com/SahilParikh
FaceBook Fanpage : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Deskaway/34895509600 November Son buy
Inkfruit.com: Socializing the T-Shirt
Buying a tee shirt involves going up to the shop and picking the one which has your favorite colour and design. Probability of being unlucky, your choice of design and colour gets overruled with the availability at the shop. But, how about getting your own customized tee shirt. Inkfruit.com, a Mumbai based startup by two IIT passed outs, spices up to quench the need for awesome T-Shirts by utilizing the power of Web 2.0 and the artistic strength of the designer community.
At Inkfruit, a designer submits his design for free; a 10,000 strong online community gives their votes and feedback; the winning design gets to do its cat walk to the printing lab; the designer gets paid for his work; his name gets etched in each and every tee that comes out into the market.
28 year old Kashyap Dalal, a 2002 IIT-Mumbai passed out of Civil Engg. stream has an MBA from IIM Lucknow with a couple of years experience as Sales & Marketing Executive with HLL in Chennai.
29 year old Navneet Rai, a 2002 IIT-Mumbai passed out of Civil Engg stream had a stint for 2 years as Product Manager at “Tex Indus”, a textile production house in Gurgaon
Good designs gets churned out from top Indian design institutes, but many of these get shelved to the bin due to the absence of a platform for such designers. The vision in Rai & Dalal to bridge this gap by providing a Web 2.0 platform saw the birth of Inkfruit.com, during mid 2007. The jump off the cliff into a new kinda business was not an easy ride for them. Having shelled out their own savings of Rs.4 Lakhs, initial days were like sailing in a rough sea. From running errands of a delivery boy to that of being execution manager and taking care of customer servicing of their own company,, their financial constraints often decided for them, rather than their business logic.
With commitment levels being given a litmus test, all the hulla bulla got to settle down a bit with seed capital coming in from two of their seniors at IIT during 2007, thereafter receiving angel funding in the year 2008. This financial support allowed Inkfruit
Daylight movie to pursue a more aggressive business plan which paid off Rs.2 Crores as turnover in just one year of its inception. Inkfruit.com is now setting its strings to attract design talent from across the world to create awesome merchandise, which they say is still not so far available from leading brands even though they are equipped with professional design teams. Is that the power of Web 2.0 ??
Selling out about 6,000 tee shirts a month and their website clocking 5 Lakh plus web views a month, inkfruit.com now has a team of 15 people to take care of activities like web designing, managing the social media, graphics designing, buzzing with retail outlets, serving the customer, supplying t-shirts, etc.,,
Marketing is done more through online with presence on Orkut, Facebook Paycheck dvdrip and Twitter; added up with reviews by bloggers and through mobile Ad campaigns. Offline promotions take place by sponsoring of events at colleges and campaigns in design schools and monthly contests offering upto Rs.10,000 for the winning designs. Of course online marketing is getting its veto due to its reach and cost effective factors.
On entrepreneurship the quip from them is “Your passionate customers are extensions of your company and they are your valuable assets”
Address: Inkfruit.com., Tenement No.105/846, Ground Floor, Motilal Nagar, Road No. 1, Goregaon (W.) Mumbai - 400104 Contact: priyanka@inkfruit.com; Tel: +91-22-65292584Blog: www.blog.inkfruit.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/inkfruit-design-your-graphic-t-shirt/21172612060
Twitter: www.twitter.com/inkfruit
Letzknow.com: Student entrepreneurs setting to kill the information gap
The taste of entrepreneurship kindled their spirit since their age of 14 while studying 8th grade with registering a company named “Tech Track Technologies” through which they churned out their own good quality self assembled computers to schools and renowned banks such as State Bank of India, Indian Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, etc., After two and half years they switched to multimedia and data recovery services.
While studying 11th grade the duo created a mark of being recipients of United Nations’ Youth Leadership Award from Mr.Kofi Annan, the then Secretary-General of UNO, at the Global Young Leaders Conference 2003, in New York. This award recognizes youth leadership in business, social as well as cultural activities. The two were selected on the basis of “empowerment by self employment”. The trip to United States got them an exposure on the functioning of American educational bodies. By comparison back in India, there is a huge information gap in the academic field. The vision to bridge this information gap saw the birth of letzknow.com during end 2007.
Mani pursuing Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering discipline at the Amrita University in Coimbatore
Sures is now a student of BioTech Engineering discipline at the VIT University, Vellore
Mani and Sures hail from Salem a town in Tamil Nadu. They have had their time together for 12 years at the same school. Interestingly they were childhood enemies till 5th grade and best friends after that. Their travel to USA for the UN conference gave an opportunity to explore and understand each other for a lifetime relationship. While pursuing their studies they were on the lookout for external events to enrich their knowledge. But, many a time, most of these wonderful opportunities came to be known too late to be missed. Lesson is that, timely information is wealth; and the duo strive to achieve this through their www.letzknow.com to dissipate information such as upcoming academic conferences, symposiums, cultural festivals, technical contests, workshops, scholarships etc.., on immediate basis complemented
A 6 member core team of students with clearly assigned roles run the show, besides an ever-growing number of young minds taking up various responsibilities like campus ambassadors, contributors, et la..,
The big challenge for them is that, their web site is to handle nation-wide traffic and has to open up fast even in the slowest internet connection in the remotest corner of the country. Making the right choices of the back end technology and the front end user interface is a life lesson for these young thrillers. Bouquet for them is their site clocking 16K + unique visitors in two months since going live. Their target users being students, faculty, alumni and anyone with academia, they are serving out for free with an idea of pepping it up with a bit of premium services in the future.
On marketing, “If the product and service is strong then every user is a marketing guy for us, Word of the Mouth is our style of marketing” quips Mani.
On entrepreneurship Mani is of sure that it doesn’t pay unless until the person in the driving seat is really passionate about it. “So get in only if your heart and mind is in line with it” tells Mani.
Address: www.letzknow.com #87, Ansari Street, Ramnagar, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu - 641009. Contact: info@letzknow.com Tel: Mani: +91 98945 80664, Sures: +91 98948 49647Blog: letzknow.wordpress.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/pub/dir/manikandan/hk
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