service company
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
Thrillophilia.com: Kindling the potential of Indian Adventure Tourism
“If you do not dive into water, you will never learn to swim” says Abhisek Daga, the 26 year old thrill-o-preneur from Bangalore. The business we are talking about is all about THRILL.
The adventure tourism company, www.thrillophilia.com is itself a passionate entrepreneurial journey by Abhishek along with three of his friends Chitra Gurnani, Vikram Arora and Abhishek Tripathi. The gang of four had a common virus called “Adventure” afflicted in them. Their company THRILLOPHILIA is all about pumping up the adrenaline in the Indian youth, meanwhile kindling the potential of the yet to be explored market called “The Indian Adventure Tourism”.
Though he was a software engineer at CISCO systems, his love over adventure has made this fitness freak to plunge into a new kinda business. Thrill-o-philes, as the foursome call themselves were joined by Saket Tandore then. The diversity in their respective vocations, be it Engineering, Management, Computer Sciences, Marine and Law helps them come up with out-of-the-box thinking to plug their problems with quick business solutions.
Adventure tourism in India is largely an unorganised sector which has a lot of business potential, though it’s not put to test in a massive scale. Abhishek’s technological edge has put the viral WEB2.0 strategy into the adventure tourism.
The THRILL QUOTIENT is much higher in foreign tourists. “The potential for adventure tourism to add to the tourism economy in India is very high and this is the right time to make the plunge”, says Abhishek.
Thrillophilia is based out of Bangalore with back-end office at Jaipur. Their portal clocking 500 hits a day has eyed Hyderabad, Chennai, Orissa, Jharkhand and Rajasthan as their next destination with dreams to make their venture go global in the years to come.
Talking about competition, he laughs it off saying, “We thrive on competition and it pumps our urge to be ahead all the time”.
Thrillophilia currently has five partners and two employees working for the company. Open culture, equal opportunity and the right to question are the traits that are driving their culture. In a start-up where employee strength is low, work culture plays an important role and this startup pays specific importance to it.
Their strategy to take customer feedback with an additional pinch of salt is one of their pillars of success. “Not to forget that Mother Nature is the only inventory for anybody; we are a highly GREEN Company and follow the same to protect the natural inventory” Abhishek quips to Startupstory.in.
For the adventurists planning their own trips in India, they provide a link Adventure Bible with information about more than 500 destinations available in India to explore.
For people dreaming to startup Abhishek’s tells “Just do it. Patience is the best virtue of any startup. Proper planning, impeccable executions are the keys to success. Diving in new water is always difficult but not impossible”.
Thrillophilia Adventure Tours Pvt. Ltd. BF1, Cherry Lane, Green Glen Layout, Bellandur, Outer Ring Road, Bangalore-560037 Email: info@thrillophilia.comAbhishek Daga, Founder, abhishek@thrillophilia.com
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
Empowering rural folks with high tech jobs - SAJAL’S INFO-SOLUTION
Our rural India does have a huge talent pool to be groomed to make it achieve global strides. And, here is a man who made this a reality by generating high tech employees in the rural arena. Reign Over Me download
Kajal Goswami started Sajal’s Info Solution Pvt Ltd., at his native town of Malda near Kalkota. The self funded 200 seat BPO by 35 year old Kajal provides rural folks a high tech job which caters to clients from USA, UK, Australia and India. A 65 people strong team manages the UK and USA processes and their BPO has enough provision to accommodate another 200.
The absence of qualified work force in the rural area does pose a big challenge for Kajal. The poor knowledge of rural folks does get its polish for a shine with an expert team from Kolkota inculcating necessary knowledge for the employees to get them fit for this job. Boys and girls working during night is a new phenomenon in this locality. Kajal feels rubbed with salt when the locals criticize the hard working BPO people with nasty comments synonymising the nights shift job with illegal work. Even political parties raise their eye brows.
Though he makes efforts for his ark to be guided towards a distant light house, his forward sailing ark got struck with one of his clients from Bhutan making a hide and seek game with a whopping Rs.48 Lacs. Kajal is on the mouth of a giant squid, and fears that his venture could sink down the sea if not for his coffers to realize the huge sum of money. Even though Indian embassy did take efforts, Kajal is yet to see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. He express to Startupstory that he is planning for going into hunger strike till death with his family. Little respite in his life now of getting an offer as General Manager in Vishnu Assets group, which makes foray in software business.
His financial situation is so bad that he is neither able to pay his employees nor renew the website of his company. But rural Indians have their own human touch. 28 of his employees are still sticking to his company for the past some months without any salary but with their only goal to work and make the company come back to full steam. Once he tried to sell off his personal assets to pay them, but there was a stiff opposition and they swore not to take a single rupee until the company regains back into good health. Is this the power of rural India!!
Wishing him success in his business and I salute the efforts of him and his employees to make their hard work realise its goal in the near future.
Address:Sajal’s Info-Solution Pvt Ltd Bachamari, Palpara Malda, West Bengal, India 732142 Mobile: +91 9733213073, 9832048292 Contact:goswami.kajal@gmail.com
Network: bpo-ceo.ning.com/profile/KAJALGOSWAMI
Website: www.infosolution.co.in (now it is not working since he is not in a position to renew it) Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. movie download
HomePlanGuru.com: Ideas for your dream home
“The Fallen Tomato Cart” an article authored by Subroto Bagchi inspired this man to taste entrepreneurship. Having run his local tabloid at Nanganallur in Chennai and his college magazine at the Madras Institute of Technology, he had a head-start on using entrepreneurial skills to raise funds at an early age.
Though he has IT experience in Infosys for 8+ years and short career stints in USA and @ Cognizant & MindTree, the entrepreneur inside him gave him the guts to make the jump off the cliff, but with self imposed conditions like: my venture should add value to everyone in India; mine will not be just another services company; will not just be doing another job; it should be a legal and highly ethical business.
In the year 2004, he designed and built his own feature-rich house at a cost of Rs.700 per sq. ft., The Watcher buy but builders were charging upwards of Rs.1,200 per sq. ft. A back-of the envelope calculation showed that Rs.500 per sq. ft. is being sucked by the builder from your pocket in an invisible way. For a nominal 1000 sq. ft. basic house, the ‘extra’ benefit for the builder is a whopping Rs. 5 Lakhs.
“If proper planning is made at the micro level, you stand to get more for your money, if you find it difficult to do micro planning for your home, I am there to help you…”, tells Virupakshan, the founder of www.homeplanguru.com the self funded start-up from Chennai. Sam’s Lake move
In a scenario where most of us, while buying a house go by the blind reliability of a builder, here is a guy who is setting the mast to hoist the “AWARENESS” flag for buyers on quality aspects of a house to be looked into while buying the service of a builder.
Since the concepts of “quality aspects in buying a home” and “micro planning of construction activity” are hardly heard of, Virupa finds it a big challenge in convincing his customers. On the other hand, for the customers who are willing to implement the suggested changes, there is resistance from the builders on implementation of these quality concepts as it results in hitting their profit margin.
Running the company single handedly, Virupa claims it to be Number One with a niche offering that has no competitors. “Electrical switches come with 10 years warranty and plumbing items come with 7 years warranty…”, these are the facts being thrown out by Virupa, but most of us have never ever got to hear from a builder or plumber/electrician. He gives out services like “3D plan”, “Wall plan”, “Comfort plan”, “Safety plan”, “Futuristic plan”, etc., at charges ranging between 50 paisa and Rs.3 per sq. ft. Though this start-up is at an early stage, it already has 50 happy customers.
To complement his concepts, he is preparing a book titled:
“‘ABCD of getting your Dream Home…”
Though the economic slowdown is giving cold feet to many ventures, Virupa is in cloud nine since the market is bound to shift from being builder driven to a customer driven one.
His future plan is to reach customers throughout India apart from partnering with a good company to be a “Certifying Authority” for newly constructed houses. Having seen the quality of homes during during his career in USA, he is in a mission to make Indian Homes on par with developed countries in terms of comfort, safety and quality and at right cost.
Address:HomePlanGuru.com Virupakshan Krishnamoorthi
C-1, Raj Paris Apts, 82, Kamaraj Street,
Virugambakkam, Chennai - 600 092
Tel: +91 9840 847872
Contact: info@homeplanguru.com
Micro Blog: http://twitter.com/virupa
Network: www.Linkedin.com/in/virupakshan
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