Businessman Story From Economic Times

How Lalita de Goederen turned Bagel cafe
into Rs 2.5 crore business in the NCR

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012/may/28
http://www.ideas.economictimes.com/index.php?option=com_winners&Itemid=142

Lalita's Bagel Cafe
One of the things that expats miss the most is authentic food served back home. For Lalita de
Goederen, a Dutch national settled in India, this sparked off a Rs 2.5 crore business idea: Lalita's
Bagel Cafe, the only such cafe chain in the National Capital Region.

Though Goederen shifted to India in early 2007, the 32-year-old's connection with the country is
much older. Her father stayed in India in the 1960s and her parents were inspired enough to give
her an Indian name. She travelled to India in 1985 and again in 2001, but it wasn't enough for
her.

So, soon after her marriage in 2007, she decided to make a home in India, husband in tow. It
helped that she was working for Burson-Marsteller, a Netherlands-based consultancy firm, at the
time. She had an interview scheduled with BM-Genesis, but prompted by her palate, she decided
to change tracks.

"I loved my job, but being away from home urged me to think differently. I missed the Dutch
food, so I sniffed out a business opportunity, especially since I always wanted to start such a
venture," says Goederen. "Four years ago, there was no bagel bakery in Delhi. It was a gamble
since there was the risk of the idea not being accepted in India," she adds. That's how Lalita's
Cafe was born in mid-2008.

While launching a start-up is not a cakewalk in India, Goederen discovered that things are far
worse for non-citizens. "Unlike in Holland, there was no chamber of commerce for small start-
ups to solicit help. So, I tried all the new restaurants in town, spoke to a few owners to
understand how it's done," she says.

As a foreigner, she also couldn't buy property in India. With renting the only option, Goederen
zeroed in on Gurgaon as the location for her first cafe because of an easy delivery network and
lucrative real estate prices. In November 2008, she rented a place on Arjun Marg and invested a
seed capital of Rs 40 lakh, which included her and her husband's savings, along with some
money from family and friends.

The next hurdle was doing up the interiors. Since the cafe required a new ambience, she had to
construct the first floor from scratch. This took up about 7-8 months, during which time she
continued to pay a steep rent of Rs 90,000.

Scouting for staff, too, was a battle. A newspaper advertisement resulted in a hundred calls a day,
but most were weeded out due to the language barrier. Finally, in June 2009, supported by a 15-
strong staff, Goederen's venture took off.

The menu consists of nine types of round bagel breads with a hole in the centre, sandwiches with as
many as 80 different toppings, salads, soups, pastas, milkshakes, smoothies and desserts. Goederen also
bakes stroopwafel, a Dutch cookie filled with caramel and sandwiched between two thin Dutch waffle
wafers.

"I had to find the right recipe for Indian temperatures. This took me six months to get started," she
shares. In her quest for authenticity, she imported the kitchen equipment from Holland.

Delhiites liked it so much that her venture broke even in just six months. Her turnover in the first year
was Rs 50 lakh, and 17 months later, she opened a second outlet in Gurgaon. However, the venture is
yet to generate profit as her earning is ploughed back into the cafe.

Today, there are three Lalita's Cafe's dotting the NCR, with a fourth one slated to open this month in
Delhi. In 2011-12, the venture generated Rs 2.5 crore and currently employs 60 people. Goederen is
targeting Rs 5 crore in the next fiscal year. With a Dutch investment group set to fund her venture,
Goederen plans to use the money to expand her footprint in Delhi in the coming year.

How Vritti Solutions has grown to a Rs 8
crore venture

There's a reason so many start-ups are focused on softwareall you need is a computer and a
brain. This is the reason that when Veerendra Jamdade graduated in mechanical engineering in
1988, he decided to work on software development. "Though I had considered options like auto
ancillary and edible oil, they were capital-intensive and I couldn't raise the funds. Setting up a
software development business would have required a more manageable Rs 70,000," says 44-
year-old Jamdade.

Hailing from a family of farmers at Wai, Maharashtra, he did not even have this amount, so he
decided to apply for a bank loan. "My cousin became a guarantor and helped me get the loan
from Sangli Cooperative. I still had to raise Rs 15,000 as margin money, for which my father and
friends pitched in," he says. Jamdade used the money to buy a computer, printer and a stabiliser.
Apex Computer System was born in a rented flat he shared with a friend.

His business idea? Helping timestarved students. In those days, engineering students would rely
on a mechanical typewriter to prepare their reports, but Jamdade figured he could save them the
effort, and make himself some money, by printing it for them. "We started a new trend and when
the report submission deadline loomed in March/April, we made around Rs 25,000," he adds.

However, having to juggle the loan repayment meant that he could not afford to be a full-time
entrepreneur. "I had to pay an EMI of around Rs 1,800, so I picked up a job at SKF Bearing for a
salary of Rs 1,700, and started handling the business in my spare time, helped by one other
employee," he recalls. In the next two years, he diversified into desktop publishing (DTP) and
computeraided designing (CAD). His turnover in the first year: Rs 3 lakh.

Then, in 1995, Jamdade bought a house for Rs 5 lakh and shifted his office here. It was only in
1999 that he moved into his first formal office, a 400 sq ft space at Kothrud, one of the prime
locations in Pune. His day job wasn't a complete waste either. While he started by working in the
industrial engineering division at SKF, he later asked for a transfer to the information systems
department. "I learnt a lot and gained knowledge about enterprise resource planning," he says.
However, in 2001, he decided to quit and devote all his time to the growing business, which was
being spearheaded by his wife.

On resuming command, he decided to focus on software development and launch of new
products for various sectors. In keeping with the new profile, he renamed the firm J&C Software
Consultants in 2001. "Our first major product was Adat, which means 'commission' in Marathi. It
was designed for traders dealing in agricultural products. Today, more than 2,000 traders are
using the software," he says.

He also started expanding to cities such as Mumbai, Latur and Ahmednagar with the help of his
channel partners. A software program, Petrosoft, which was designed for petrol pump owners, is
being used in several cities. "We are also in the process of developing software for banks," he
adds. In 2005, he changed the firm's name to Vritti Solutions.

The next milestone year was 2006, when the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation
(MSRTC) decided to introduce computerised announcement in the state transport buses. "We
bagged the project, but after we developed the software, we discovered that MSRTC lacked
sponsors. We decided to sponsor 80 bus depots, which cost Rs 3 lakh each," he explains. His
firm gets 26% of the air time, which can be sold to third parties. "We are in talks with four other
states, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, to start similar projects," he adds.

Jamdade is proud to be "the first to start the concept of audio-video advertisements in rural
areas," which he wants to expand to other states too. It will need an investment of Rs 8-10 crore
in the next one year. "Our turnover will grow by 400% if this happens. In Maharashtra, we are
tapping only 40% of the market. We plan to go for the remaining 60% in the coming year," he
says. Today, Vritti Solutions boasts an office space of 4,000 sq ft at Kothrud, a headcount of 100
and a turnover of Rs 8 crore in 2011-12.

ET Wealth: How this car servicing site
MeriCAR.com helps get discounts at your
neighbourhood workshop
Setting up a date to get your car serviced is mostly a time-consuming and expensive affair. To
alleviate the tedium, Delhi-based Rakesh Sidana came up with a one-stop web portal,
MeriCAR.com, for car service and repairs in the National Capital Region.

Here's how it works: you register on the site, fill in your car details, basic personal information,
choose a booking date, a convenient time and the service required. Then you pick a dealer or
workshop from the given listit throws up results close to your residential address, which are
screened on the basis of customer reviews and quality checks by the MeriCAR teamand click
on send enquiry. You will get a call from the dealer/workshop in no time. The icing on the cake?
The site offers discounts of 10-50% for services such as tyre replacement, batteries, car cleaning,
and the like.

Sidana took a circuitous route to entrepreneurship. After graduating from the Punjab Agricultural
University, Ludhiana, in 1995, he did a two-year post-graduate course in technical and computer
management from the All India Management Association-Centre for Management Education in
Delhi. "I was fascinated by the dotcom boom and wanted to launch an online company, but was
waiting for a unique idea," he says.

In the meanwhile, he decided to hone his technical skills. So, from 1998 to 2004, he worked in
the technical department of various dotcom companies, such as Panalinks, and IndiaMart
Intermesh, and for the next four years, he freelanced. "I used to bid for global Web projects and
offer consultancy," he says. In August 2008, he registered his own company, Amoeba Webware,
which offered Web solutions to global firms.

However, he kept hunting for ideas, and after observing major gaps in the unorganised car
servicing industry, he knew he had hit pay dirt. "When I shared the idea of MeriCAR, about 15
vehicle owners instantly showed interest in signing up," says Sidana. So he launched
MeriCAR.com, under Amoeba Webware, in February 2009. He invested Rs 20,000 from his
savings, rented an office space in Gurgaon, and hired a person to coordinate with dealers. They
signed up with him by paying an annual fee of Rs 5,000 and a fixed amount (they were charged
Rs 50 at the start, but now shell out Rs 75) for every customer that comes through the portal. On
the other hand, registered users can make free bookings and enjoy discounts.

However, Sidana ran into problems as MeriCAR, which had started with one workshop,
managed to bag only four by the end of 2009. "The idea started taking shape in 2010, when we
got 55 workshops," he says. The venture notched up revenues of Rs 5 lakh in 2010-11, Rs 12
lakh the following year, and is targeting a turnover of Rs 37 lakh in 2012-13. However, it will
take at least a year before MeriCAR generates profits, says Sidana. It boasts a list of 500 verified
workshops across India, 180 dealer members in the NCR, and six employees in Delhi. In March
2011, Sidana introduced a loyalty program, and the firm has also created a review model, where
car owners can share feedback through the firm's website.

MeriCAR attracted a seed funding of Rs 20 lakh from MyFirstCheque, a Mumbai-based early-
stage fund, in March 2011. It plans to use the amount to spread out to cities like Chandigarh,
Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Plans are also afoot to tie up with garages to
provide car servicing facilities after office hours. It promises to be an enjoyable ride.

How Shashank Joshi harnessed power of
mobile wallets to forge a Rs 240 crore
business

You can call me a serial entrepreneur. I started my first venture as a 19-year-old student, and
moved on to execute and abandon four business ideas over a span of 16 years before setting up
my current venture, My Mobile Payments Limited. Given my backgroundan army officer for a
father and a medical practitioner mothernot many would have thought I would shun the
services route. Yet, I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

When I was pursuing my mechanical engineering degree from MIT, Pune, in the early 1990s,
software programming was the biggest craze. So I enrolled myself for a software diploma course
from Aptech Institute in 1992. Around that time, I bagged an offer to develop a software
program for a couple of corporate clients through Aptech. The size of the first deal was about Rs
10,000 and it took me around two-and-half months to develop the program. Hot on its heels,
another couple of projects landed in my lap and in 1992-93, I made a turnover of around Rs
70,000 with zero investments.

After completing my education in 1994, I set up my own computer
retail store, where people would be able to personally handle and
experience computers before making a purchase. This might be
ubiquitous now, but when I conceptualised it, it was different. Back
then a customer had to place an order with companies such as IBM
and HP and the model would arrive directly at their homes.

The idea in place, I applied for a loan from the Pune People's Co-
Operative Bank for Rs 2 lakh, with my mother as the guarantor.
Incidentally, the bank policy was to furnish loans only to
entrepreneurs in manufacturing business. But thankfully, one of the
directors had seen the concept I was peddling in practice in the US
and he sanctioned the loan.

By September 1994, I leased a 300 sq ft place at Shaniwar Peth in
Pune, and hired four people to handle operations, and Om Computers
was born. We were the first to coin the term 'one-stop computer shop'
and the concept was a hit. Multimedia, especially, was a huge crowd puller. Our turnover in the
first year of operations was over Rs 9 lakh. Three years on, we had three more outlets in Pune,
had increased our turnover to Rs 3 crore.

Things were going great, but by 1999, the competition heated up considerably and the margins
were getting squeezed. So, we decided to change the business model and get into the data
transcription business in 2000. The new business was called Voice Soft and between 2000 and
2003, it was registering an annual turnover of around Rs 1.2 crore. When this marketplace also
started getting too crowded leading to cut-throat pricing, I decided to don yet another avatar and
get into the merchant cash advance business. The new venture, called Prospect Base, was set up
in 2003. The idea was to offer businesses a lump sum in exchange for a share of future sales and
mostly target companies that have strong credit-card sales but don't qualify for loans, either due
to bad credit or little or no collateral. For seven years, we registered a turnover of about Rs 1.6
crore annually. But after the fall of Lehman Brothers, we were forced to close this business by
mid-2010

However, I rose again and started a new venture called My Mobile Payment Limited (MMPL) in June
2010. This time, I joined hands with seven promoters and we equally chipped in to raise Rs 6 crore as
the seed capital and leased a 6,000 sq ft office space in Bandra, Mumbai. Since I manage the business, I
have a 25% share in it.

The venture's biggest claim to fame, so far, is the recently launched m-wallet service called Money on
Mobile (MoM). It enables subscribers to buy prepaid mobile top-ups, DTH recharges and make utility bill
payments using their cell phones instead of cash or plastic money. MoM's service operates independent
of the consumer's mobile operator or bank, so any mobile subscriber can avail of its services through
SMS or a mobile application-based platform. Mobile money credits can be bought from our franchisees.

MoM was first launched for the B2B market in 2010, and a year later, received the RBI's permission to
offer semi-closed m-wallets for the consumer market. Currently, the service is being rolled out pan-India

with a network of 82,000 retailer touch points and a presence in 300 cities. So far, MoM has added 5
lakh subscribers and has a daily business volume of Rs 2 crore.

In its first year of operations, MMPL generated a turnover of around Rs 19 crore. In 2011-12, we scaled
up to post Rs 240 crore and this year we are eyeing Rs 1,500 crore. We also hope to increase our staff
strength from 150 to 200 people. As the fastest growing market of its kind in the world, India's mobile
phone industry presents a hotbed of opportunities and MMPL aims to harness this power.

How Vipul Kasera's travel portal posted a Rs
1.8 cr turnover within three years
Story
Comments (8)

Read more on Vipul Kasera|travel portal|Kolkata|ET Wealth
12
inShare
<a target="_blank"
href="http://netspiderads2.indiatimes.com/ads.dll/clickthrough?slotid=37105"><img
alt="Advertisement" height="71" width="640" border="0"
src="http://netspiderads2.indiatimes.com/ads.dll/photoserv?slotid=37105"></a>

Google doesn't have all the answers all the time. It was this kernel of learning that had Vipul
Kasera vying to start his own venture. Being a travel buff, he had relied on the search engine to
come up with 'interesting getaways near your city', but over the years, the options had begun to
dry up.

So the 29-year-old decided to bridge this gap and aggregate weekender experiences. In April
2009, he set up LifeIsOutside.com, an experiential travel portal, which helps discover and plan
getaways.

The website was not Kasera's first shot at being his own boss. After graduating from RV College
of Engineering in Bangalore, in June 2005, he worked for a tech company, Thought Works, as a
consultant in the city. Says Kasera: "Thought Works encourages employees to pursue projects
and launch start-ups. I took a six-month sabbatical in October 2007 to launch
Commuteeasy.com, an online car-pooling service." Today, the portal is run by Ashwin Sampat,
his ISB classmate.

He called it quits in May 2008 and took 11 months to consolidate his travel-based concept and
conduct surveys to understand customer requirements. He put in Rs 1 lakh as seed capital from
his savings and launched the site with only 20 service providers in and around Bangalore. Within
days of starting it, he got a call from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, an
opportunity to sharpen his entrepreneurial skills.

For the next one year, Kasera travelled back and forth, trying to juggle his MBA and business.
During this period, he also realised the importance of building a scalable business. "You always
start from zero, but if you grow at a very slow pace, people lose interest. You need to keep
growing quickly," he says. It helped that the portal was selected by the Wadhwani Centre for
Entrepreneurial Development, located at the ISB campus, to be incubated after his graduation in
March 2010.

In August, he hired his first employee and money started flowing in, with a few individual
bookings a month. Then, in January 2011, Kasera's sister, Yamini, officially joined LifeIsOutside
as a co-founder. Till then she had been involved as an adviser while she worked with
Asklaila.com as a product research manager. A month later, the siblings rented a 750 sq ft office
space at Malleswaram, Bangalore, and started adding more regions to the website.

Today, they offer weekend getaways around Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kochi, Coimbatore,
Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi. You can search for options not only by city, but narrow
it down by interestwildlife, beaches or spas, or even by distance. With five employees and 600
service providers, most of its customers come in via Google.

From the initial 15 bookings a month, it has shot up to 15 bookings a day, apart from the 35
enquiries every day. The biggest chunk of business comes from the nearly 50 corporate clients,
which include Yahoo, Tesco, HP, Thought Works and MindTree. The company generated Rs 1.8
crore as turnover in 2011-12 and has already managed to break even.

What are Kasera'splans for the future? "We want to focus on building a back-end set-up and start
travel desks in firms that we are already working with. We expect to increase our revenue by
100% in the next fiscal," he says.

Pune entrepreneur Avinash Dhume in race
for global recognition

NEW DELHI: He earned nearly Rs 4,000 for 10 years after his modest Class 12 education but
when he realised his company was paying him much less than what it earned, he came up with a
business idea which now fetches him more than Rs 40 lakh a year.

38-year-old Avinash Dhume, a resident of Pune, took the risk of setting up a publication house
specialising in affordable educational material in 2007 with a meagre Rs 20,000, and now is
nominated in the People's Choice category of Youth Business International Award.

Avinash could win a prize of $ 1,000 if he won through a voting procedure beginning from July
9 to July 16. The Youth Business International was founded in 2000 by The Prince of Wales,
who continues to be its president.

"My family was apprehensive about my start up, fearing it would not last long and that I would
not find a job either, but the wait was worth it," Dhume, who looks after a family of seven, and is
the father of a four-year-old son, told reporters.

A "magical experience", Dhume said about his business adventure 'Kaushalya Publications',
which he started with financial support and mentoring from Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust
(BYST). Dhume generated Rs 9.50 lakh to start up along with his other two partners Ajay
Gaekwad (37) and Adhinath Koshti (36).

"We worked together in a publication and realised what the company gains out of its sales, we
get paid very less in comparison. So why not start something of our own? So we took the
plunge," Dhume said.

"Avinash is a proud example of India's inclusive growth story. You don't have to be at the top to
give back to the society. Such small scale entrepreneurs are more aware of their community and
their responsibility towards it than those who are at the top," BYST co-founder Laxmi
Venkateshan said.

Competing with several publishers in the state was not easy for Dhume and they had to interact
with students, teachers and student to understand their needs. Finally they came up with
academic books which were more attractive and reasonably priced, he said.

Money-making venture: How Upasana Taku
and Bipin Preet Singh's ZaakPay simplifies
online payments

Despite the mushrooming growth of e-commerce transactions in the country, sluggish payment
gateways have been one of the biggest deterrents. To begin with, there weren't too many
choicesapart from the payment gateways provided by banks, CCAvenue, PayPal and EBS
were the only big players ruling this segment till a couple of years ago. Besides, almost all of
them had either high sign-up costs or inferior technology, or both. In an attempt to bridge this
gap, Upasana Taku and Bipin Preet Singh launched Zaakpay.com in September 2010.

Taku considers herself a start-up enabler and aims to simplify online payments in India. She has
the right credentials for the job: after an engineering degree from the National Institute of
Technology in Jalandhar in June 2001, she joined the Stanford University's SLAC National
Accelerator Laboratory as a research assistant. Between 2004 and 2010, Taku job-hopped from
HSBC in San Diego to Paypal in San Jose, returned to India, to join a social enterprise called
Drishtee, and ended up at a social media firm, 2020 Social.

Around this time, she was introduced to Singh and her entrepreneurial aspirations took wings.
Singh, an electrical engineer from IIT Delhi, is the founder of MobiKwik.com, an online mobile
recharge services provider. The duo hit it off and Taku became a director and partner at
MobiKwik in February 2010. Here, she realised that slow-moving or failed payments were a
constant challenge for the growth of an e-commerce company. The duo brainstormed for a
solution and ZaakPay was incepted.

Together, they pooled in Rs 25 lakh from their savings, hired two people and started devising a
more refined payment gateway from the living room of Taku's apartment at Dwarka, Delhi. The
idea took five months to execute, and by February 2011, the product's first prototype, Bankpay,
was ready. Their first pilot launch was in May 2011, around the time the team shifted to a rented
office at Dwarka. But before long they were engulfed in legal problems. They faced regulatory
challenges because the RBI's rules on Electronic Clearing Services did not recognise such an
innovation as legal. Says Taku: "If I want to make a transaction on any ecommerce site, I have to
give a mandate to the bank saying that ZaakPay will facilitate my transactions. The process will
be repeated for every new site I need to pay up at." The apex bank was also wary of giving
ZaakPay the right to pull out money from the customer's bank.

Luckily, they were ready with plan B and the fledgling start-up did not fold up. ZaakPay team
had been working on another product, Webpay, which allows e-commerce businesses to accept
payments from its users via credit and debit cards. While there are similar products available in
the market, they require heavy paperwork. ZaakPay is the only Indian company to ease this
process by making the interested business fill an application online, which does not take more
than 15-20 minutes. Once it's reviewed, the site can go live the same day or at the most in a
week's time. Webpay was officially launched in March 2012.

Webpay charges merchants a monthly subscription fee of Rs 500, along with a per-transaction
fee of 3%. Starting with just five customers, ZaakPay currently has 47 clients, including portals
like DMAi, Deals-AndYou, KnowledgeBunch and Mobi-Kwik. It clocked a top line turnover of
Rs 7 crore between March and June 2012, thanks to the funding from Sequoia Capital last year.
It has a 12-strong team in Delhi and one person in Bangalore. ZaakPay expects to break even in
the next two years and is eyeing a top line revenue of about Rs 50-70 crore in the next fiscal
year.

How Indrajit Sabharwal made Simmtronics
Semiconductors into a Rs 550 crore business
Story
Comments (16)

Read more on Xerox|the middle|Tablets|Simmtronics Semiconductors|SI
Consultants|nVidia|motherboards
8
inShare
<a target="_blank"

What does it take to build a Rs 550 crore company that ranks among the leading manufacturers
of memory modules, motherboards, tablets and more? A hefty investment? Loads of luck?
Prominent angel investors? In the case of Simmtronics Semiconductors, it was none of the
above, just old-fashioned diligence.

After acquiring an engineering degree from Pune University, I bagged a Rs 1,500 a month job
with ICL UK (now Fujitsu ICIM), a Pune-based company. During my stint here, I notched up
three part-time management degrees. In 1991, I shifted to Delhi, job-hopped twice, working up
the pecking order in Comptech and International Data Corporation, before finally deciding to
turn an entrepreneur.

In January 1992, I launched a small consultancy, SI Consultants, with barely Rs 10,000. I took a
bank loan to buy a computer, hire three employees, and we were in business. Over the next eight
months, I worked with the likes of Modi Lufthansa, Xerox, HP Digital and Sahara Airlines on
business development and IT solutions, earning nearly Rs 30 lakh.

Towards the end of the year, while holidaying in California, I was introduced to one of the
owners of Kingston Technology. The meeting led to an association with the world's largest
independent manufacturer of memory products, and over the next two years, I was not only
Kingston's distributor in India, but was also trained in manufacturing memory technology. I
travelled to the US every two months to hone my skills while my staff continued to run SI
Consultants.

By 1994, I had picked up the nuances of the business and found myself tiring of selling Kingston
in India. The time was ripe to launch my own brand of memory modules, and this is how
Simmtronics Semiconductors was born in April 1994.

To get started, I took a loan of Rs 1 lakh from the Bank of India, beefed it up with my savings
and bought a small office at New Friends Colony in Delhi. I hired a couple of hands and set up
shop. We started by selling memory modules and Dynamic Random Access Memory technology
to companies like Tulip Telecomm, working our way up to clients like HCL, LG and Sahara.

In fact, I hauled down SI Consultants to start distributing memory technology through
Simmtronics Semiconductors. We were manufacturing the modules in California and importing
them because the technology did not exist in India. Of course, we had to pay a hefty customs
duty of 30-40%, but the market was lucrative and we were the first movers, so we did not have to
worry.

To say we started with a bang would be an understatement: we managed a turnover of Rs 2.5
crore in the first year itself and continued to hire two to three employees every year for the next
six years. I am proud of the fact that seven of these employees are still with the company.

The business was growing at 25-30% year-on-year and we always had more orders than we
could take care of. We were Intel's preferred IT support for all their conferences on
semiconductors. To keep up with the demand, in 2000, we tied up with SK Hynix, a Korean
manufacturer of semiconductors. Our business association with the US was giving way to
increasing link-ups with East Asian countries around this time.

Another milestone was setting up our first manufacturing plant for memory modules at Bhiwadi,
Rajasthan, in 2000. Five years on, we opened a second factory at Roorkee, and around this time, we also
started exporting globally, opening a distribution subsidiary in Singapore, in September 2005. We
opened a second distribution subsidiary in Dubai in 2006. We managed to stay afloat during the
recession and our market reach was not affected at all because our volumes were not large enough to
feel the impact.

In 2009, we decided to start manufacturing motherboards at our second plant in Roorkee, and our first
customer was Intel. The following year we went on to manufacture graphic cards for NVIDIA, a visual
computing company, and expanding to monitors and USBs.

A more recent achievement, in March 2012, has been launching the tablet, creating 24 customised in-
house products. Micromax is one of our clients and we currently make tablets for 11 countries. Globally,
we have sold 4 lakh tablets, of which 70,000 are in the Middle Eastern region.

From our first office at New Friends Colony (currently at Okhla), Simmtronics has expanded its footprint
to 21 offices across the world, besides a sourcing office in Taiwan, all of which are manned by 500
employees. We sell our products to 14 countries and our turnover last year was Rs 550 crore. We are
posting a profit of 10-12% year-on-year and hope to generate Rs 800-1,000 crore in 2012-13.

Thought Blurb: How Vinod and Razia Kunj
set up a Rs 5 crore, award-winning ad agency
Story
Comments

Read more on Vinod Kunj|Thought Blurb|Razia Kunj|Lowe Lintas|FCB Ulka|ET Wealth
6
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Forty four-year-old Vinod Kunj and his wife, Razia, are in the business of idea generation.

After riding the corporate carousel for over a decade, in 2007, the couple came up with one of
their best ideas: Why not leverage on individual strengths-his in the field of advertising,
particularly copywriting, and hers in design-to launch their own advertising agency?

The result is Thought Blurb, an award-winning firm based in Mumbai, a one-stop shop for
advertising, designing, strategy planning and activation services.

In his last days as an employee, Vinod was heading the creative department in the Mumbai office
of Capital Advertising, a Delhi-based ad firm. "After 13 years of working with big names like
Saatchi & Saatchi, Enterprise Nexus (now Bates), FCB Ulka, Lowe Lintas and Rediffusion
DY&R under my belt, I knew I was ready to wander off on my own. In fact, Thought Blurb
started around the time when the entrepreneurship trend was taking off in India," he says.

But Razia, who was working as a freelance consultant for small design firms in Mumbai at the
time, took some convincing as they had a young daughter-now 12 years old-to factor in. She
came on board to launch a start-up only when Vinod won the Baskin and Robbins account.

Vinod quit Capital Advertising in March 2007, bootstrapped on his life's savings and launched
Thought Blurb in the next month. Armed with a seed capital of Rs 10 lakh, the Kunjs rented an
office space in Andheri West. Vinod considers this an important investment because an office
projects professionalism and is more conducive to efficiency and productivity.

He hired four employees over three months and got busy with the two clients already in their
kitty. Their second client-the CDMA division of LG Mobiles for which Thought Blurb was
handling creative and strategic duties-was given to Vinod as a sort of a golden handshake offered
by Capital Advertising.

Since they started off with a bang, the company did not need to worry about cash flows and the
founders were able to take home a salary by the second month of operations. Being a small firm
actually worked in their favour in the initial days of competing with behemoths. Says Vinod:
"When a small company handles big accounts, the company can be pushed right up the wall to
deliver what the clients need." They ended the first year of operations with a turnover of Rs 60
lakh.

It was smooth sailing till 2008-9. Recession was something the Kunjs had not calculated on. The
ad business at large suffered because advertising spends are the first thing to get curtailed in a
tough economic climate. After posting a growth rate of 100% in its first year, Thought Blurb
only grew by 20% in the second year.

The couple learnt a valuable lesson: to hedge their bets. "We started focusing on mid-sized
businesses and went from 4-5 clients to 10 clients, handling niche projects," explains Vinod. The
move paid off, and in September 2009, the 11-employee agency shifted into a bigger office-a
rented two-storey space in Goregaon West, Mumbai.

Today, the firm has 12 clients, including Akzo Nobel, Reliance Digital, Reliance Fresh, Godrej
Corporate and ICICI Prudential, whose accounts are handled by them exclusively (plus five
clients who are on board on a project basis), and offices in three cities, Mumbai, Delhi and
Kochi.

A project for Reliance Industries is also underway. Their turnover this fiscal was Rs 5 crore and
the 20-strong company is now planning to establish a footprint in Bangalore and Pune this year.

How Jayont Sharma overcame obstacles to
set up gaming company Milestone Interactive
Group
Story
Comments

Read more on Milestone Interactive Group|Malcom Technologies|Jayont
Sharma|IT|gaming|Game4u|ET Wealth
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

The road to setting up the Milestone Interactive Group has been circuitous-14 years in the
making, in fact-and difficult. But when I look back at my multi-faceted console game
distribution and marketing company today, which was among the first to get into the gaming
business in India, I feel a sense of pride. Particularly since I don't hail from a business family.

My childhood was rife with struggles. Having lost my father at an early age, my family had to
struggle to make ends meet. As my father was a teacher at Mayo College at Ajmer, after his
death the college was kind enough to give my mother a non-teaching job despite her having no
prior work experience, and fund my college education as well as that of my four siblings.

To supplement the family income, I gave tuitions to school children throughout college, earning
Rs 750-800/month. After completing my bachelor's degree in the commerce stream in 1983, I
picked up a temporary job at a factory in Faridabad, which came about on my college professors'
reference. For the next 14 years, I job-hopped from company to company-HMV, Sonodyne and
Modi Olivetti-to name a few, notching up experience in diverse fields.

I also got a chance to travel: apart from visiting Indian cities such as Mumbai, Ahmedabad,
Faridabad and Jodhpur, I got opportunities to work overseas. As a 29-year-old, I was posted in
Nigeria as the chief executive officer of a multi-brand company called Malcom Technologies.

However, four years on, the political instability in the country and fear for the safety of my
family-my wife and two children-prompted me to return to India in 1995 and I joined Mumbai-
based firm, Head Multimedia as its chief executive officer.
After two years, I felt ready to start my own business but
funding was a major issue. I had only Rs 1 lakh as
personal savings, so I decided to take the help of my
relatives. I borrowed around Rs 2 lakh from my father-in-
law and another Rs 2 lakh from my sister-in-law on the
condition that I would pay them interest at par with the
bank interest rate.

I then rented a 150 sq ft office space in Prabhadevi,
Mumbai, hired three people, and kick-started Milestone
Interactive in July 1997. The initial product focus was
more on edutainment and productivity titles
(encyclopedias, fonts and clipart) but after a year the
company became more entertainment and gaming focused.
Apart from tapping a few retailers in Mumbai, I got in
touch with distributors in Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, and
Chennai to get started. In the first year itself, we posted a
turnover of around Rs 1.2 crore.

Before the year ended, we shifted into a leased 1,000 sq ft
office in Andheri. The USP of our company was the
unique cash-advance payment model we introduced for
our channel partners. Under this model, we would ask for
a 50% advance for the products they received, this at a time when the entire software industry
insisted on full-cash payments.

The move helped us to fund the business and also grow faster since bank loans were hard to
come by in those days. Also, the new system helped us gain more goodwill among our
distributers.

Another milestone year was 2002, when we decided to start a game development division along with
the existing distribution division. But the idea was easier conceived than implemented. To begin with,
hiring young talented programmers proved to be a Herculean task as there weren't many takers for a
new, unlisted company like ours.

Making matters worse was the fact that we were competing for attention against the likes of IT
behemoths such as TCS and Wipro. Gaming was still a nascent field so we found it increasingly difficult
to sustain this new division. In 2005, after incurring losses worth around Rs 2.5 crore, we decided to shut
down this vertical.

This was a huge setback because at that time we were just a Rs 6 crore company. At one point I even
contemplated shutting down the entire business, but thankfully that was just a passing thought, and a
couple of days later I found the resolve to persevere.

To raise life-infusing cash, I had to liquidate some of my personal assets such as stocks. This helped me
eke out around Rs 25 lakh, and I borrowed Rs 1.5 crore from friends and business associates. This helped
us stay afloat and survive the recession.

In 2009, we made a second attempt at diversification, focusing on setting up touch-and-feel shops for
our customers. We began this effort by launching a portal called Game4u.com in September 2009.
Before the year was out, we moved into our current headquarters, a leased 7,500 sq ft office in Andheri.
In February 2010, we launched our first physical store at Mumbai.

Today we have eight such outlets, four in Mumbai, two in Gurgaon, and one each at Ludhiana and
Jalandhar. This year, our 160-employee company clocked a turnover of around Rs 100 crore. We now
plan to raise about $10 million through the venture capital route and by diluting some stake in the
business.

We plan to use these funds to set up 50 stores in India's 30 top cities over the next three years. Since we
are growing 30% year-on-year, I am confident that the company will achieve a revenue target of Rs 500
crore in the next five years.

How providing online computer solutions to
US clients has helped Manish Sharma grow
rapidly in two years
Story
Comments (6)

Read more on Vtechsquad|US clients|Manish Sharma|leverage|IBM|ET Wealth|computer
solutions
9
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Manish Sharma, Vtechsquad
Turning into an entrepreneur is easier said than done. After over 16 years of work experience,
when I decided to start on my own, I thought, "How bad can it be?" In hindsight, it was a very
optimistic outlook because I had neither money, nor a killer business idea.

Though I had worked with leading companies, including BSNL, on IPTV solutions, mobile
applications and e-commerce, I realised that these ideas were about building an audience and
selling to a future investor, not revenue generators. My business idea had to be different.

In mid-2009, while I was researching on business opportunities in the BPO sector for a
consulting engagement, I had my eureka moment. I decided to leverage my educationB Tech
degree from IIT Bhubaneswarto provide remote, primarily online, technical support to
consumers in the US and other developed countries using Indian resources. In October 2010,
Vtechsquad Inc was officially launched.

When I had shifted to Indian corporates after a 13-year-long stint with a multinational company,
I was very disappointed. The management was more interested in holding on to the jobs by
toeing the HR line than in using their imagination and innovation to address problems. Besides,
career advancement had more to do with who you knew rather than what you knew.

So, in August 2007, I decided it was time to move on and do
something more challenging. That's when I got an opportunity
to lead the technology section at the Apollo Hospitals' new
initiative, Apollo HealthHiway, which offered cloud-based
solutions for managing hospitals and patient health records.

This was my first good experience with an Indian company run
by an Indian entrepreneur. I not only designed the technology
architecture, but also helped with the business model.

The vision was amazing, but the team to build on it was
missing. As execution faltered, I decided to move on,
convinced that I had the capability to bridge the gap between
the Indian vision and western execution and create a successful
company.

After all, I had gained enough experience in product design,
service design, customer service, sales and processes. So I
started working to get Vtechsquad off the ground.

While technical resources were aplenty in India, the challenge
was to get customers. Undaunted, I assembled a 25-strong team of youngsterstechnicians as
well as staff members who could sell over the phone and write ads for US consumers.

For the seed capital, I took a personal loan of Rs 5 lakh from Citibank in September 2010 and beefed it
up with borrowings from my family. I also leveraged my platinum credit cards. The plastic money helped
me buy the first computers for the company.

I chose Gurgaon as the operational base for three reasonsoffice space was available at a reasonable
rate, it was easy to recruit employees with technical and sales profiles, and there were ample local
broadband providers who could provide me with a 24x7 Internet line. It has worked out well since we
continue to operate from this 3,000 sq ft office.

However, by the end of the month, I was broke and was worried about repaying my home loan EMIs.
Thankfully, though, we managed to generate enough cash to sustain the business within three months
of starting out and broke even (cash flow) around January 2011. Freebies helped us gain our first
customers.

We ran advertising campaigns on the Internet targeting the US consumers who were seeking help for
their computer problems. When prospective customers called, we offered them a free diagnosis and
convinced them about our ability to solve the issues. Word soon spread and the revenue we made was
enough to keep paying for the operational expenses and advertising.

Six months on, we were on a roller-coaster ride. On the one hand, we were growing at a furious pace
and had more customers than we could handleour client base had gone up to 3,000. On the other
hand, we were beginning to face our first crisis. We had to battle issues regarding customer service,
resourcing and ethics.

So I decided to slow down and focus on consolidating operations. That's when I brought in Karun
Thareja and Abhijit Dutta to take charge of marketing and HR, respectively. Both were friends from my
days at IBM and Microsoft and they have also invested in the business.

Together we have decided to provide a great experience to our customers and employees. Of course,
this is still work in progress, but we managed to reach 10,000 customers by the end of our first year of
operations. While some of our employees make more than Rs 1 lakh a month, I am yet to start taking a
salary.

Vtechsquad is gunning for a turnover of Rs 30 crore this year and aiming to grow at 20% month-on-
month. Our recipe for success has been a mix of focus on customer service and allowing our employees
to reach their full potential. It doesn't matter that we aren't the first movers in this space, but I believe
there's room for plenty of players.

How Binanis' KinderHomes has generated
Rs 65 lakh within the first year
Story
Comments (16)

Read more on Vedant|USA|NCR|Lotus|KinderHomes|ET Wealth|Devashish Binani
3
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Delhi-based Devashish Binani, 33, and his wife Aditi, 31
Like most couples expecting their first child, Delhi-based Devashish Binani, 33, and his wife
Aditi, 31, were shopping and dreaming about their future. In the process, they also dreamt of a
business ideaKinderHomes, a furniture and interior decor store exclusively for children.

Married in 2003, the couple was expecting their first child in mid-2009 and wanted to redesign
their home before the baby's arrival. However, shopping didn't turn out to be the fascinating
pursuit that it promised to be. Says Binani: "There weren't many visually appealing kids' stores
with a range of furniture and accessories. Since our research showed the kids' retail market was
growing at over 25% yearly, we realised there was a huge gap to fill."

So, shortly after the arrival of their son, Vedant, in May 2009, their other offspring
KinderHomeswas born as a business idea. The division of labour between the spouses was
easy given their diverse skill sets and educational backgrounds.

While Devashish has an MBA degree from the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, USA,
Aditi is an alumnus of NIFT, with a degree in applied sciences and interior design from Parsons
School of Design, New York. He worked for Deloitte Consulting in New York for nearly three
years (2004-7) before returning to India in 2007 to handle his family businessmaking tin
containers for packaging itemsand head his own e-learning start-up.

Meanwhile, Aditi worked with a commercial space design company, Lotus Designs, in Delhi, for
about a year before quitting when she became pregnant. When the duo decided to launch their
start-up, Binani took charge of the finances and logisticssetting up an inventory, checking
accounts and sourcing material. Aditi handled the creative side, conceptualising and designing
products. In June-July 2010, they even travelled to Southeast Asian countries to look for raw
material suppliers.

In December 2010, the Binanis pooled in Rs 1.5 crore from their savings to rent a 3,500 sq ft
store at Mehrauli, Delhi, and another 1,500 sq ft space in the vicinity. They also hired six
employees. The next five months were spent in renovating the shop and it was finally launched
in May 2011. The shop stocks kids' furniture and furnishing, decorative items and accessories
like umbrellas and rainboots. While a bed can cost as much as Rs 69,000, you'll have to shell out
Rs 7,000 for a wall unit and Rs 1,950 for a raincoat.

The company thrives on two business models: retail and customised furniture. While it hasn't
been easy to juggle the business with the rearing of a child, the duo has managed to generate a
turnover of Rs 65 lakh in its first year of operations. The shop currently sees an average footfall
of 10 customers on a weekday. Though the Binanis easily foot the monthly expenses, they are
yet to break even. Perhaps it's the reason they aren't taking a salary yet.

Their big plans for the coming year include adding more product categoriestoys and skin-care
productsand they hope to open another store in the NCR next year. Much like Vedant,
KinderHomes is growing fast. In the first quarter of this year, the eight-employee venture has
posted a turnover of Rs 30 lakh.

With MBA from US, Indians return to do
business at home
Story
Comments (17)

Read more on wharton|Stanford|MBA|Indian students|indian|harvard|entrepreneurs
8
inShare
<a target="_blank"

With MBA from US, Indians return to do business at home
EDITORS PICK
How Binanis' KinderHomes has generated Rs 65 lakh within the first year
How providing online computer solutions to US clients has helped Manish Sharma grow rapidly
in two years
Lessons from a serial entrepreneur: Success requires a clear strategy & willingness to adapt to
market needs, says K Ganesh
How Jayont Sharma overcame obstacles to set up gaming company Milestone Interactive Group
MUMBAI: More and more Indians graduating from top global business schools, including
Wharton, Harvard and Stanford, are spurning traditional job offers in favour of starting up new
business ventures back home.
Wharton's MBA batch of 2012 had 70-80 Indians, of which 10-15 turned entrepreneurs. And in the
current class of about 100 Indians, 15-20 are already entrepreneurs or are actively working towards
founding their own businesses, according to ET estimates based on interviews with 10 alumni. Such
instances were uncommon even as recently as 2009.

Harvard Business School saw 5-6 out of 30-35 Indian students turning entrepreneurs from its class of
2011, according to alumni estimates. It hardly had any Indian entrepreneurs five years ago. Similarly,
Stanford's B-school saw a record-breaking 16% of its class of 2011 starting their own firms, with a
significant number of Indians in the group.

"Global B-schools expose them (Indian students) to a strong entrepreneurial architecture with a greater
number of role models, success stories and potential investors," says Kunal Bahl, founder and CEO of
SnapDeal.com. "This gives them the much-needed confidence to do something of their own."

Bahl passed out of Wharton in 2006 and immediately started work on SnapDeal.

"This is definitely a key trend for our generation," says Anirudh Suri, an MBA from The Wharton School
(University of Pennsylvania) class of 2012, who currently runs an early-stage venture capital fund, The
India Internet Group.

I have seen it among friends, and even as an early-stage investor, I have seen it among several
entrepreneurs I have met," adds Suri, who also runs eksms.com that gives personalised
recommendations for Mumbai restaurants over SMS, web or phone.

Adds Amrita Chowdhury, associate director-education at Harvard Business School India Research Centre:
"Indians are more willing to take risks than earlier, when there was probably the fear of failure."

More recently, Indian students in these schools are turning to entrepreneurship only halfway through
their studies.

Students like Shiv Kapoor and Aneesh Satnaliwala, founders of ThisYaThat, and Vinay Mahadik, founder
of parental control service Securly, are still pursuing management studies at Wharton. "There is no
better time to enter India than now," says Kapoor, who will soon be entering his final year of
undergraduate studies.

Good Platform for Entrepreneurship

Some like Shuchi Pandya, founder of fashion start-up Pipa Bella, who completed her MBA from Wharton
this May, had started work on her venture while in school.

"Stanford is super-entrepreneurial," says Prashant Tandon, who along with Sameer Maheshwari of
Harvard, founded healthcare-focused online retail health store healthkart in 2010. "I had no
entrepreneurial intention when I went to Stanford. But I decided to start my own venture inspired by
the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the school."

Most global business schools provide a good platform for entrepreneurship, creating opportunities to
interact with investors and successful entrepreneurs, funding support in form of seed capital apart from
teaching students how to evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities as part of their curriculum.

The Wharton Venture Initiation Program and Wharton Innovation Fund back students with seed capital
and introduce them to experienced entrepreneurs.

Others like Harvard and Stanford also provide similar resource infrastructure to its budding
entrepreneurs in addition to the entire coaching support for entrepreneurs.

Indian students are making the most of this, something that's not lost on their global counterparts.
"Since many of our Indian friends have technical or engineering backgrounds, they are now able to
attract significant investor interest in their start-up ideas since Silicon Valley and the rest of the technical
world is still extremely frothy with capital," says Daniel Garblik. He, along with classmate Lalit Kalani,
started a food products company in the US called Bandar Foods.

Back home too, angel investors and early-stage investing networks are encouraging newly-minted grads
to take the plunge.

Early-stage investments in India have nearly doubled from $475 million in January-December 2009 to
about $998 million in January-December 2011, according to data from Venture Intelligence.

"It is no longer difficult to do these start-ups in India with increasing availability of venture capital," says
Harvard's Chowdhury. The lure of doing something in one's own country is also strong. Says Bahl of
SnapDeal.com: "It's a tremendous feeling to do something for consumers you understand and see family
and people around you use what you make."

How Runjhun Gupta quit her well-paying
job to start 'ZipOut', now a Rs 10-lakh
venture
Story
Comments (2)

Read more on ZipOut|Trader|Runjhun Gupta|Inception|ET Wealth|Delhi University|Dance
150
inShare
<a target="_blank"

28-year-old Runjhun Gupta is the founder of ZipOut, which offers therapeutic dancing classes in
Noida
Perhaps she didn't want to dance to the stressful corporate tune or maybe passion finally
prevailed. Whatever the reason for quitting a lucrative corporate job and stepping into her
dancing shoes, Runjhun Gupta has no regrets. The 28-year-old is the founder of ZipOut (Zindagi
in Pajama, celebrate life), which offers therapeutic dancing classes in Noida.

Like most children, Gupta was introduced to dance by her parents. "I started at the age of six and
it has been a passion ever since," she says. However, unlike dance, the entrepreneur bug bit her
only at a later stage.

A graduate in finance from the Delhi University in 2004, Gupta worked as a derivatives trader at
Future First, before joining the Bank of America in 2007. It was here that her interest in dancing
was rekindled. "I realised that such jobs can be extremely stressful and that's why I decided to go
back to dancing," says Gupta.

So, after nearly a year of working with the Bank of America, she quit her job to start Dance
Addiction at her home in Noida, in November 2008. "Initially, only a few people joined, but at
that point, I was not looking at it as a business opportunity," says Gupta.

It was only when she found a corporate client in Cadence, an electronic design company, and
conducted a workshop for them that she realised the potential. She went on to do the same for
other companies, such as Patni Computers and V Customers, earning nearly Rs 20,000 a month
on an average for her effort.

Having realised the scope of her skill, Gupta decided to hone it and joined an executive masters
program from IIM Calcutta, again in finance, in April 2009. After she returned a year later, she
did not rush into the business, and it was only in May 2011 that a more developed version of
Dance Addiction, called ZipOut, was launched in Noida.

"In the interim period, I was busy marketing, designing the website and building the
infrastructure, for which I invested nearly Rs 2 lakh," says Gupta. "The idea was to provide a
chance to working individuals to de-stress themselves after a hectic day at work," she adds.

Despite a good start, it wasn't smooth sailing for Gupta. "Networking was initially a problem as I
had restarted after a break and was also looking to expand ZipOut beyond dance. I was planning
to include other verticals like Tranquil Addiction, Cheero Addiction and Volt Addicition," says
Gupta. Currently, two of these-Dance and Tranquil-are up and running.

The results, according to Gupta, have been very satisfactory and a year after its inception, the
company has clocked a turnover of Rs 10 lakh.

Individual members have to pay a minimum of Rs 1,800 per month for two classes a week, while
the price rises for corporate clients, where Gupta teaches dance forms like Salsa, Belly and
Bollywood dancing, to groups of 30-40 people in workshops which range from one week to six
months. Recently, she has hired one employee to help her with the project.

"Now I'm planning to start the other two verticals and open more branches to offer a complete
de-stressing package," she says.

How Sanjeev Goel set up Intec Capital and
managed to beat two recessions
Story
Comments (1)

Read more on University of Minnesota|University of Iowa|SMEs|Sanjeev
Goel|Recession|MBA|Intec Securities
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"
Intec Capital Ltd.
BSE
72.90

-1.40 (-1.88%)
Vol:6720 shares traded
Prices|Financials|Company Info|Reports
As a chartered accountant whose father has his own practice, the logical thing would have been
to join him. I didn't. In 1986, I became a certified chartered accountant after honing my skills at
SB Billimoria & Co, Delhi, and then joined Gurgaon-based Jay Bharat MarutiBSE -0.90 % as a
financial controller.

However, these were simply pit stops because I only wanted to be an entrepreneur. In 1988, I
went to the US to pursue an MBA in international finance from the University of Iowa, but was
resolute about returning to India.

In fact, I even convinced my brother, who was in favour of staying back in the US after
completing his masters in computer design from the University of Minnesota, to come back with
me in 1990. The two of us set up Intec International a computer maintenance firm, in Delhi, in
April 1990.

As seed capital, our father chipped in Rs 60,000 to help us purchase a computer. We also hedged
our realty cost by working from his office at Nehru Place, Delhi. We began by wooing suppliers
and offered high cuts from our profits so that they would forge a partnership with us.

The incentive worked and we soon became distributors for Hyderabad-based Sulakshana Circuits
to sell printed circuit boards. In the first year of operations, we managed 10 clients and generated
Rs 7-8 lakh. In June 1991, we floated a new company, Intec Automation Private Limited.

In 1992, a company called DCM Data Products came up with dealerships for computers in India.
I realised that technology would be a money spinner and so we decided to sell computer
hardware and software along with their accessories, and provide support to our clients. It helped
that my brother had a degree from IIT Kanpur and a background in computers.
Our turnover in the second year was Rs 2 crore and it jumped
to Rs 4 crore the following year. We've been doubling our
profits annually ever since. In keeping with the new business
focus, we changed the Intec Automation to Intec Infonet in
April 2002. By this time, we were a 12-strong team and were
serving 30 clients. My brother heads this firm today.

With business booming, we had surplus capital, which could
not be deployed in the hardware and software space. So, I
decided to branch out into the financial services sector. Given
my educational background, the move made perfect sense. In
1994, I started Intec Securities, a non-banking financial
company, which aimed at providing financial solutions to
small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

We went public in 1995, and settled on the name Intec
CapitalBSE -1.88 % only in September 2009. The timing
proved to be fortuitous because several SMEs had started
setting up shop in Faridabad and Gurgaon, in 1995, since they
were lured by the Maruti plant in Gurgaon and were in dire
need of financing.

At that time, banks were not too gung-ho about financing such small scale outfits. The few that
did show an interest had a turnaround time of three to four months, which was too long for the
SMEs to avail of any business opportunities. We decided to fill in the gap by funding the
businessmen we knew and those who were referred to us by others.

However, we soon ran into problems, not because of a dearth of takers but due to the risk of taking on
non-performing assets. In 1995, we wrote off four or five clients. Since our credit assessment process
wasn't fool-proof, we also came across fly-by-night businessmen. A big setback was lending Rs 25 lakh to
Western Paques, which turned out to be a bad debt.

This prompted us to meet other NBFCs and banks to learn about their evaluation processes. This turned
out to be a well-timed move because it helped us choose the right companies during the 1997 recession
and we were saved from going in the red. Our costs were limited and debt-equity ratio was very low.
This is also the reason we managed to stay afloat during the 2008 downturn, with our profits growing by
47% between 2008 and 2011.

What gives us an edge over the other funding institutions? Speed. We process loans of less than Rs 50
lakh within seven days, while higher amounts take 15 days. We are financing the machinery
requirement of sectors like auto & engineering, printing & packaging, plastic & injection moulding,
health care & pharmaceuticals, and food processing.

We take 25% as down payment and fund 75% of the loan for five years, but we don't fund at the
incubation stage. We have offices in 13 cities, which are manned by 250 employees and serve 3,500
clients.

Another feather in our cap was the 2011 tie-up with SIDBI; we do the credit appraisal for their loans. Our
turnover touched Rs 556 crore in the previous fiscal and we plan to reach Rs 1,000 crore in the next one.
We also aim to open 14 branches, two every month, in the tier II cities.

My advice to Gen Y entrepreneurs would be to start out as early as possible. The best time, of course,
would be during a recession so that you are ready for an impending boom. As they say, carpe diem.

How seven young entrepreneurs defied
hurdles to develop clean renewable energy
Story
Comments (9)

Read more on University of pennsylvania|SmartTrak Solar Systems|renewable
energy|power|Nature Infratech|Megawatts Solutions|Market
28
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Young entrepreneurs have come up with innovative solutions to develop clean energy, which
brings down the costs and is accessible by the commons

Renewable energy in India has always been a risky business, be it due to high input cost,
unsteady market or lack of government support. But these seven young entrepreneurs defied all
this and much more.

At a time when even big companies are reluctant to enter the renewable energy market due to the
huge costs involved, they have come up with innovative solutions to develop clean energy, which
brings down the costs and is accessible by the commons, even village folks, reports ET.

'SWADES' STORY IN REAL

Siddharth Malik, 30 Megawatt Solutions, Delhi

AN engineering and management degree from University of Pennsylvania, a flourishing career
with energy-focused companies in the US where the base package is a sinful $1,00,0000 per
annum. What more can you ask for?

Well, Siddharth Malik had ideas. This passionate 30-year old left all this to come back to India
and start his own renewable energy venture amalgamating high-performing solar-thermal
systems with fossil fuels.

He started Megawatts Solutions in 2010, which provides concentrated solar-thermal solutions.
"At least when sun is shining, fossils need not be fired," says Malik, adding, "this simple idea
creates long-term economic value for industry owners." Its 0.5-mw pilot project in Guragon
provides a hybrid solution by integrating solarthermal with fossil fuel that offers considerably
higher value than stand-alone solar thermal plants."

It has resulted in up to 25% more efficient performance than competing technologies , which
makes a drastic improvement in economics of solar," adds Malik.

MS' solutions are based on home-grown concentrated solar thermal technology and its role
ranges from designing to manufacturing, installing and commissioning industrial-scale solar
thermal projects. It has four projects in the pipeline including a 3 mw solar thermal heating
project in Gujarat - the largest ever in India.

SOLAR CELLS BLOOMING LIKE SUNFLOWERS!

Raghuram Kondubatla, 31 & Bhagwan Reddy, 31 SmartTrak Solar Systems, Andhra Pradesh

WHAT if one solar panel is built like a sunflower which sense and tracks sunlight the whole day in place
of four panels kept in different direction? USreturn software engineers Raghuram and Reddy developed
this very idea to clock a turnover of Rs 2 crore in just one year for their joint venture 'SmartTrak Solar
Systems' .

A solar tracker is an electro-mechanical platform fitted with panels, which follows the sun ensuring that
maximum amount of sunlight strikes the panels throughout the day. "In conventional means, to increase
the production by 25%, one has to set-up more solar PV panels .

But with the solar tracker, the same amount of extra energy is produced with less than 10% of additional
cost. It can lead to an increase in generation capacity by 25-40 %," explains Raghuram. "A cost analysis
of a 5 mw solar PV unit with 80 lakh units of output requires about Rs 47.5 crore and a tracking system
based solar PV plant can achieve this output by setting up a 4 mw plant with an outlay of Rs 38 crore."

The duo have their hopes pinned at the AP's state policy on Renewable Energy Certificates regime,
which they hope will change the scene.

POWERING THE ROOTS

Nikhil Jaisinghani, 36 & Brian Shaad, 37 | Mera Gaon Power, New Delhi

A Foreign Service officer of USAID and an international development practitioner comes together for a
venture in renewable energy may be no big deal, except if you happen to live in villages in and around
the Sitapur district in UP. Thanks to Mera Gaon Power (MGP), started by Nikhil & Brian, they now get
seven hours of electricity per night at just Rs 25 per week.

The two US citizens while working in Nigeria on captured flare gas had noticed that equipments and
facilities reached the farmers but utilising it was out of their capacity. When Nikhil moved to India in
2009, he witnessed the same problem existed for solar generated power energy in India. MGP's village-
level lighting facility generates electricity through centrally located solar panels and stores the
generated electricity in batteries.

Power is distributed over a short distance from the battery bank to households within the village for
seven hours per night. Every household gets light through light emitting diodes (LEDs), which reduce
power consumption by 90% per household. Each household can get its set-up of two or four LED and a
mobile charging point at a one-time price of Rs 40.

TRANSFORM ROOFTOP INTO A WIND FARM

Bhupesh Sharma, 22 BRESON, Mumbai

"IT'S my passion to build ideas that are useful and have real scope to reduce either cost or efforts," says
22 year old Sharma. One may tend to shrug him off as an amateur dreamer if not for his list of
innovations, which include rooftop installed wind-turbine , solar powerrun car and zero electricity
refrigerator.

Out of these, roof-top wind turbine is a commercial success helping his company Breson clock revenues
worth Rs 15 lakh in just 6 months. An engineer by education and innovator by nature, Sharma has
developed wind turbines of 800W, 1,000W and 5,000W capacity, in accordance with the wind speeds.
He did all this while pursuing his Masters in Business Design from Welingkar Institute of Management
and Research, Mumbai.

He went on to develop an economical turbine, which can be even used by individuals in their
households. "Diverse wind speeds across the country was a major challenge so I developed a business
design of customised wind turbines that helps suffice the demand of power," adds the young scientist
cum entrepreneur. Breson has already completed pilots across several states including Maharashtra,
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujrat.

TAKING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

Shyam Patra, 35 Nature Infratech, Lucknow

PETITE, bespectacled Shyam Patra doesn't come across as someone who has lighted up lives in 400
villages in the Bhagalpur district of Bihar, and Gonda and Unnao district of UP. But his company Nature
Infratech, started in 2009, has already installed solar energy-based micro grids in these villages, which
don't even have proper road connectivity.

Having worked in the power sector with companies like GMRBSE -1.12 % and Lanco, his experience is
well evident when he sells solar generated electricity at price as cheap as Rs 120/month for 5 hours of
electricity "I had worked in MNCs but that kind of work didn't create a social impact or changed lives,
completely opposite to what I wanted to do - reach to the havenots ," said Patra.

Naturetech follows a model developed by Patra to make sure that not a watt of energy goes waste.
There are rooftop installations of solar cells of 60-watt capacity for 10 households. The grid is DC and
has current circuit breakers to reduce electricity theft and is kept on only during the distribution hours --
6 pm to 10pm.

"Seeing our success, UPNEDA (Uttar Pradesh New and Renewable Energy Development Agency) gave us
a contract for a pilot project of 7 mini grids of 1.8 kw each for 200 households in Gonda, which we
accomplished in just 15 days," says Patra. He feels that banks are wary of backing renewable energy
projects and that the government should be on the forefront.

13 Aug, 2012, 08.59AM IST, Milan Sharma,ET Bureau
How Sukesh Madaan & Sandeep Ramani
made Envent a Rs 3.5 crore venture within a
year
Story
Comments (7)

Read more on The Office|The move|the middle|Sukesh Madaan|Sony Ericsson|Sandeep
Ramani|real estate
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Sukesh Madaan (R) & Sandeep Ramani
What would you call someone who quits a cushy, corporate job to join the start-up bandwagon in
the middle of a global economic slowdown? Someone intent on hara-kiri, perhaps. Undeterred
by the opposition and doomsayers, I went ahead and set up Envent Worldwide in October 2011.
The move has turned out to be the best decision of my life. Today, my company, which
manufactures and distributes innovative IT peripherals, telecom accessories and consumer digital
products, is posting a turnover of Rs 3.5 crore.

After completing engineering from Bheemanna Khandre Institute of Technology, Bhalki,
Karnataka, I got a B-school stamp in marketing from the Indira Gandhi National Open
University. I embarked on a corporate career in 1998 and for the next 13-odd years, I steadily
climbed the ladder, working for technology heavyweights like Microsoft India, Intel and Sony
Ericsson India.

In December 2010, I joined a start-up called Hip Street Online, a Canadian venture specialising
in consumer electronics and related products, as the general manager, Southeast Asia. This was
my first brush with the start-up world and proved to be an eye-opener. I was their third
employee, including the office peon, and worked here for the next eight-nine months, learning
and assimilating whatever I could. Along the way, I caught the entrepreneurial bug and decided
to float my own company. Hailing from the consumer retail side of IT and telecomm space, I
knew that the smartphone and tablet computer market, which has been picking up pace since
2010, was expected to boom by 2012. However, while everyone was talking of making tablets
and smartphones, not many were thinking of manufacturing accessories or IT peripherals. I
decided that my start-up would plug this glaring gap. Unfortunately, my family wasn't as excited
by my decision, but I wasn't to be dissuaded.

The company started with a friend pumping in Rs 2 crore, beefed up with Rs 50 lakh from my
personal savings. I did not want to approach a venture capital player at the incubation stage.
Thankfully, I did not have to worry about real estate costs at the outset since I began working
from another friend's office premises at Pitampura, even using his office phone and laptop to
make cold calls and contact distributors and suppliers. I also travelled to China and Taiwan to
find manufacturing partners.
Finally, in December 2011, I started hiring people to test sample
products and design the company website. I paid my friend nearly
Rs 7,500 a month for computer usage, stationery cost, power and
phone bills, among other things. Before the year was out, we were
an eight-strong team. We started retailing and tapping the numerous
mom 'n' pop stores across India. In the initial days, my financial life
managed to remain stable due to my wife's job with Microsoft India.

In January 2012, Sandeep Ramani, a former colleague at Hip Street,
joined me as a business partner, investing Rs 50 lakh in the
company. Our product line-up now runs the gamut, from wired and
wireless keyboards to innovative cases for smartphones and iPads,
from wireless Bluetooth headsets and portable speakers to battery
banks and boosters, all manufactured under our brand name in
China, Taiwan and Korea. We also manufacture customised
keyboards and mouse for tech-savvy children aged 5-10 years.
These are multi-coloured, have bigger keys and are spill proof.

Our products come with a one-three year warranty (depending on the product) and we have 10 service
centres across India to attend to customer grievances. To manage my inventory, I rented two
warehouses in February-March 2012. The Chennai warehouse is dedicated to sea shipments, and the
one at Naraina, Delhi, is for air shipments. Envent also has a corporate business aspect, wherein we
manufacture products for companies but don't sell them under our name. This has fetched us Rs 60 lakh
to date.

We moved to our own office space in Delhi in June 2012 and the company boasts 28 employees
manning offices in Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Ranchi, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Jaipur and
Gurgaon. We also have international sourcing offices in Hong Kong and a more recent one in Sri Lanka.
By September this year, we would have opened an office in Dubai as well.

Our revenues between April and June 2012 were Rs 3.5 crore, of which we made Rs 1.25 crore in June
itself. We hope to break even by the end of the festive season this year and are gunning for topline
revenues of Rs 5-6 crore by the end of the second quarter. If we keep growing at this level, we are
optimistic about touching Rs 25 crore by 2013. Envent's plans for next year include moving into large-
format retail outlets in India.

What have I learnt from my year-long entrepreneurship? Have a few options in hand while starting a
business because Plans A and B are most likely to fail.

How Sharanya Menon's side business High-
Light helps her make Rs 10,000 a month

Story
Comments (7)

Read more on Women|Touch|Sharanya Menon|Recycled bottles|Quentin
Tarantino|missing|Manchester United
3
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Borne of a lazy, eventless afternoon, the idea of making designer lamps has become Menons
side business, High-Light, and helps her make Rs 10,000 a month.
An empty mind may be a devil's workshop, but for 25-year-old Sharanya Menon, it simply put
her on to a path of profit. Borne of a lazy, eventless afternoon, the idea of making designer lamps
has become Menon's side business, High-Light, and helps her make Rs 10,000 a month.

"High-Light started as a hobby when I was unemployed and trying to figure out a career," says
Menon. After graduating in microbiology from Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai, in 2008,
she got a diploma in animation the following year (again from Chennai) and a job at an
animation studio in Mumbai. After about a year, when monotony set in, she switched tracks and
took up an internship in a post-production studio. However, according to Menon, she was still
missing something and decided to try her hand at advertising, assisting art directors. It was
during this interim period that she explored her creativity and stumbled upon her part-time
venture. "One afternoon, in August 2011, I found some old paints, rice lights and liquor bottles at
home and started toying with these. That's how High-Light came into being. Since it happened so
suddenly and wasn't a planned move, I did not think of developing it into a business," says
Menon.

After selling some lamps to friends, she decided to formalise her set-up in the next couple of
months. Since High-Light was a one-woman show, and Menon was working from home, all that
was left for her to do was to increase visibility. So she started putting up the pictures of her
creations on her Facebook profile. As the lamps grew in popularity, she decided to set up a
separate High-Light page (it currently has over 800 likes) in December 2011. Meanwhile, word-
of-mouth advertising has also worked well for her. In fact, the business showed such promise
that Menon opted to freelance when she bagged a job in the ad space in December last year.

The business model is simple. She posts pictures of High-Light's wares on Facebook. Interested
customers get in touch with Menon, who gets cracking on designing the ordered lamps. She
sources her raw materialused glass bottlesfrom the local garbage seller or flea market and
once the bottle-lamp is designed, she gets a local electrician to place the bulbs inside it. The
entire process can take up to four days, and the prices vary accordingly, beginning with Rs 2,100.
Calvin and Hobbes, Harley Davidson, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Comics and Manchester
United are just a sampling of the themes and customised designs that High-Light has made so far
for a client base, comprising everyone from students to housewives.

On an average, Menon gets four to five orders a month, which help her make about Rs 10,000.
Given that the cost of manufacturing is only around Rs 300-400, including labour charges, she
makes a 400% profit per lamp that she sells. However, bulk orders will never be a feature of the
company, she claims, as it will take away the fun of customisation. "I may expand to a two-three
person set-up in the near future, but the idea is still in the initial stages," she shares. For now, the
hobby has lit up her life with profit.

SaveLIFE Foundation: Piyush Tewari's
bystander medical care enterprise aims for
Rs 60 lakh turnover
Story
Comments (2)

Read more on SLF|SaveLIFE Foundation|Piyush Tewar|Medical care|ET Wealth|Delhi
Police|Apollo Hospitals
3
inShare
<a target="_blank"

To get started Piyush Tewari forged a partnership with the Delhi Police to train over 3,000
personnel to become medical first-responders.
Piyush Tewari, 32 years

Company: SaveLIFE Foundation

Headquarters: Bhikaji Cama Place, Delhi

Seed capital: Rs 50,000

Source of funds: Personal savings

Turnover in first year: Rs 45,000

Expected turnover: Rs 60 lakh

On 5 April 2007, my 16-year-old cousin, Shivam, was hit by a car and grievously injured. For 45
minutes he lay on the road bleeding profusely. No one came forward to help and he bled to
death. This tragedy cruelly brought a growing menace to my attentionthe lack of emergency
medical assistance for road accident victims in the countryand I could not turn a blind eye to
it. Thus was born SaveLIFE Foundation (SLF), a non-profit, non-governmental organisation
focused on enabling bystander medical care.

At that time, I was working for the Calibrated Group, a US-based private equity firm, as the
managing director (India). Over the next few months, while gnawing over the issue, I realised
that the problem had to be addressed institutionally.

So the first thing I did was to approach my friend and mentor Krishen Mehta, then a partner at a
global accounting firm. He advised me to establish SLF as a public charitable trust and directed
me to experts who advised me on how to go about it. The trust came into being on 29 February
2008.

While the registration process with the government was underway, I reached out to experts to
better understand the nuances of bystander care, and zero in on SLF's core focus area. A key
learning was that emergency care begins at the spot where the accident has taken place, not a
hospital.

This meant that police officers and good Samaritanstwo groups
who are most likely to respond in such crisescould play a game-
changing role in my private crusade. So I decided that SLF would
train these people to provide basic but life-saving care, including
trauma management, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and bleeding
control.

Our operations formally kicked-off in February 2009 with a seed
capital of Rs 50,000, organised jointly by me and Mehta through
our personal funds. It helped that I did not have to worry about
office space and recruitment when we were starting out.
Calibrated generously gave SLF a full-time executive office space,
which allowed me to manage my day job as well as this venture
from one location. Some of my friends and other volunteers lent a
helping hand in managing the organisation, so I did not have to
worry about salaries. SLF finally hired its first full-time paid
executive in mid-2010.

To get started we forged a partnership with the Delhi Police to
train over 3,000 personnel to become medical first-responders. We
initially convinced Apollo HospitalsBSE 1.21 % and AIIMS
Trauma Centre in Delhi to work with us, and they provided their
facilities as well as trainers for our programme. What works in
SLF's favour is that we kept the entire training operation free of
cost and our hospital partners never charged us for their support.
Our first year turnover was just Rs 45,000. Bagging the
prestigious Rolex Award for Enterprise in April 2010 was a huge
shot in the arm.

Last year was particularly significant for SLF. Seeing that the organisation was already saving
lives, it became clear to me that with a little more leadership and attention from me, it had the
potential for a nationalperhaps even internationalimpact. So in May 2011, I decided to quit
my corporate job and start concentrating on SLF. Three months on, we moved into our own
office, a rented space in Bhikaji Cama Place in Delhi.

To date, we have trained 4,500 people, including over 1,000 community volunteers, in Delhi and
Mumbai. We currently conduct about 50 training sessions a year. SLF boasts four full-time
employees and another four part-timers. By the end of this financial year, we are planning to
expand the staff to 10 full-time workers as well as earn a turnover of Rs 60 lakh. We'll also be
opening a second office in Mumbai next month.

Given that we don't provide any charged services, most of our income is from donations, awards
and grants. But our goal now is to reduce our reliance on donations by as much as 75% in the
next three years by establishing sustainable revenue lines. One tangible idea, which should
materialise by year-end, is to tap the interest we've been receiving from companies and schools,

and charge them for our training. This will help us to continue training, and equipping, our core
response teams for free, and continue saving lives.

How Shivani K Chandhok and Aditya
Kapur's venture Party Hunterz has earned
them Rs 45 lakh
Story
Comments (2)

Read more on Shivani K Chandhok|Party planning venture|Party Hunterz|HSBC|ET
Wealth|bachelorette
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Chandhok roped in her brother and together they bought the franchisee rights from Sharon
Timmins, who owns the brand Party Hunterz, which is based in the US.
Who needs an excuse to party? But we can certainly do without the headache-inducing details
that go into throwing a successful bash. Here's where Shivani Kapur Chandhok and Aditya
Kapur come to your rescue with their venture Party Hunterz.

The idea by the brother-sister duo set sail by chance. On a leisure trip to Mumbai in January
2011 Chandhok came across the Party Hunterz store in Bandra, Mumbai. "The moment I walked
into the shop, I knew that I had to get this concept to Delhi. I had gone through a bad experience
when I celebrated my daughter's first birthday in December 2010. Despite hiring the best party
planner, I had to still source various items myself," says 30-year-old Chandhok.

She roped in her brother and together they bought the franchisee rights from Sharon Timmins,
who owns the brand Party Hunterz, which is based in the US. The duo then settled on a retail
space and launched their store in Delhi in May 2011.

They sourced seed capital of Rs 50 lakh from their savings. Chandhok had been working with
HSBC Bank for five years and Citibank for seven months prior to that before she quit her job in
2010. Her 25-year-old brother, Aditya, quit around the same time after working in the social
media space with Ignite Digital Solutions for three years. Their professional experiences have
helped them define their roles and demarcate their responsibilities clearly at Party Hunterz.
While Kapur oversees marketing and promotions, Chandhok handles the logistics and
operations.

The start of their venture was slow, mostly because the height of summer kept most prospective
customers indoors. Their first order came from an unexpected quarter. A woman hailing from
Jalandhar, Punjab, was visiting Delhi and wandered into the shop looking for theme-based party
props for her son's birthday. She ended up buying stuff worth Rs 30,000, an auspicious start for
Party Hunterz, which has earned Rs 45 lakh till date.

The biggest obstacle for Chandhok and Kapur was to keep the rental low at their South Delhi
office, but the duo have learnt from their mistake. When they opened their second outlet in
Gurgaon in July this year and the third one in Noida this month, they started by renting smaller
spaces, making sure that they could easily afford the rents for some months.

Along with props, Chandhok, Kapur and their eight-member team provide party planning
services. They have tie-ups with party planners, bakers, vendors and catering services and charge
Rs 5,000-30,000 for an event. But if you're willing to manage things on your own, you can buy
or rent stuff from them, such as a costume for Rs 1,500-2,500 a day or special lights for Rs 300-
750 a day.

The biggest trick for their successful venture is innovation and catering for niche events, such as
baby showers and bachelorette bashes. Recently, Party Hunterz launched accessories to celebrate
the International Beer Day on the 5 August. With plans to open more stores soon, the duo plan to
break even by the end of this year.

How Naresh Khattar's 'Me n Moms' has
grown to a Rs 80 crore pan-India network
Story
Comments (6)

Read more on Naresh Khattar|Me n Moms|ET Wealth|Bureau of Indian Standards|Amit Kumar
1
inShare
<a target="_blank"

"Clichd as it may sound, I never planned to be an entrepreneur"
Cliched as it may sound, I never planned to be an entrepreneur. Yet, today I am the CEO of Me n
Moms, a company that has grown 40% year-on-year for the past five years, posting a turnover of
Rs 50 crore in 2010-11.

As a child, I wanted to join the armed forces, but despite having cleared the entrance exam, I
could not live my dream because of poor eyesight. Then my father suffered a stroke just as I
completed my graduation in 1982, and I found myself taking over the family business. I
continued to sell sari falls for the next five years, and though it wasn't the most glamourous of
jobs, it was a source of income.

I also got married during this period, and in 1987, my first daughter, Mamta, was born. With her
sprang the idea of a brand new business. Like any other father, I wanted to buy a whole lot of
goodies for her, but even though I lived in a metro city, I had to visit several shops before I could
get all I wanted. This got me thinking and I decided to open a shop that would house all the
things related to toddlers under one roof. Me n Moms had just been born, but only in my mind.

However, during the late eighties, setting up a shop was much tougher than it is today. To begin
with, one could only get a lease if one happened to know the owner. Since I had never been an
aggressive entrepreneur, I sat on the idea for two years, taking time to muster courage to launch
the venture. Finally, in May 1989, Mamta Collections, a 50-sq-ft shop, opened for business at
Santa Cruz, Mumbai, with a seed capital of Rs 5 lakh. As envisioned, the store, which was
manned by four employees, catered to all the needs of a newborn.

Over the next five years, the shop grew in popularity, attracting customers from across the city
and our turnover shot up to Rs 60 lakh. Despite the steadily increasing sales, the small size of the
shop proved to be a big deterrent. My customers wanted me to shift to a bigger space, and I
obliged in May 1994. I bought a 350-sq-mt shop at Juhu and renamed it Me n Moms. It was
located in a relatively posh area and was air conditioned, not common in those days. This helped
increase the flow of customers, especially the well-heeled, which resulted in a higher turnover.
However, a few things remained unchanged: I ensured that I carried my original team with me
since they had a very good understanding of the market, products and customers. More
importantly, they shared my passion for the brand and wanted to see it grow. I increased the
employee count to six to cater to the increased footfalls at the new shop. Prior to the advent of
malls, a shop's brand name was its lifeline and to make fresh inroads into a market, one had to
constantly generate new ideas. This is why customer feedback was so important. I realised that a
lot of customers, especially working couples, did not get enough time to shop since almost all
shops remained closed on Sundays. So I decided to rotate the staff and kept Me n Moms open all
week, a rare option in those days. This proved to be a masterstroke and increased our sales
substantially.

The setting up of Mamta Collections had opened up a new avenue for usB2B marketbut
after 1994 it grew so big that we had to set up an office at Khar in September 1995 specifically
for this purpose. Since our shop housed Singapore-based brands like Tollyjoy, in addition to a
few European ones, we began supplying these to big stores in Delhi and Mumbai. The going was
so good that Me n Moms remained a one shop-cum-B2B set-up till 2004. When malls started
mushrooming in various parts of Mumbai, we decided to expand our business by tapping this
trend. In the same year, we launched another outlet of Me and Moms at the Inorbit Mall at
Malad. It became a lot easier to reach out to customers and we maximised this advantage. We
also started expanding to other cities in 2004, and over time, we became the leading importer,
consolidator and marketer of infant products in India.

In 2006, we launched the MeeMee brand of baby and mother care products, which were 20-30%
cheaper than the other brands. These are certified by the American Standard of Testing Material
and Bureau of Indian Standards and, last year, contributed almost 75% to the total turnover. Of
course, there have been hiccups along the way. In 2012, we had to shut down our Surat outlet
because the shopowner tried to extort more money. Looking back, I also regret not getting an
MBA degree, which would have taught me a lot of things that I had to learn on my own. I also
wonder if I should have been a little aggressive and launched more stores,

Still, Me n Moms has done well. In 18 years, it has grown to a network of 11 company-owned
shops across India, apart from one franchisee in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. We now plan to launch
three more shops in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. With an estimated turnover of Rs 110 crore in
this fiscal year, up from Rs 80 crore in 2010-11, I really have no complaints.

(As told to Amit Kumar)

How Nischal Puri's 'Brandis' has managed a
pan-India presence across 2,000 stores in a
year
Story
Comments

Read more on Shapoorji Pallonji|savings|Nischal Puri|innerwear|Gokak Textiles|ET
Wealth|career
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Nischal Puri quit his corporate career in August 2010 and decided to start Brandis Manufacturing
and Marketing in Bangalore
Gokak Textiles Ltd.
BSE
45.00

1.30 (2.97%)
The idea of starting my own venture was a natural progression in my career after having moved
up the corporate ladder for 12 years. When I completed my MBA in marketing from the
University of Lincolnshire, UK, in 1998, I joined the apparel and innerwear industry.

After working for several companies, I ended up heading the marketing division of Jockey India
between 2004 and 2008, and then took over as the CEO of Forbes brands, a divison of Gokak
TextilesBSE 2.97 %, of the Shapoorji Pallonji group.

Having understood the basics of the business, it made sense to start something of my own in the
same industry segment. So I quit my corporate career in August 2010 and decided to start
Brandis Manufacturing and Marketing in Bangalore.

It was easier said than done. While starting out, a lot of entrepreneurs spend time on networking,
identifying channel partners, and procuring raw material. For me, this was relatively easy since I
had been in the industry for a long time. The hurdles I faced were in dealing with the banks since
they were the toughest to convince about the concept.

The means that the banks use to analyse and screen a business idea for funding continues to be
archaic and they are unwilling to offer financial support to new ventures. In fact, the bank loan of
Rs 1 crore that I finally got, took 10 months to arrive. So even before the foundation of the
business had been laid, I realised that I had chosen a difficult and unpredictable path for myself.

Armed with a seed capital of Rs 23 lakh from my personal savings, I
had started working on the business model, getting channel partners
and raw material in place, in August 2010. However, we managed to
launch only in May 2011 once the bank loan came through. I
decided to kick off in the premium segment and BEYOUTY, our
women's lingerie brand, was launched in five cities-Delhi,
Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Chandigarh-in the first month. The
reason for picking the premium segment was simple.

The mass market for innerwear is dominated by either unorganised,
local players, or by much bigger companies, and to compete with
them, we would have to produce a lot more, for a lot less. By
sticking to the premium brand, we were able to keep a tight check
on quality by procuring the raw material on our own and
outsourcing just the stitching. By February 2012, we managed to
launch 2GO, the men's segment of innerwear.

Within the first five months of launching BEYOUTY, we had
spread across India. Our turnover in the first year of operations was
Rs 3.5 crore. The decision to spread out to the entire country was a
calculated move since it is easy to be branded a regional player in this industry, and we wanted
to avoid this.
We received an overwhelming response right from the start. I did not expect such a high demand
for our products, and at one point, this turned into a problem. In April 2012, we were unable to
supply the quantity that the market wanted. I remember that a number of channel partners
complained about how we were unable to fulfill the market need. Since we had failed to
anticipate this, we were forced to increase our prices to cut demand. It did not help that a second
loan of Rs 1 crore from another public-sector bank, for which we had applied around this time,
was delayed by three months.

Another challenge that a first-time entrepreneur typically faces is managing daily expenses during the
initial phase of the venture. I had prepared myself for this situation and had a back-up plan. While
Brandis is my primary focus, I also take out time to offer consultation to various apparel companies.
Thankfully, my experience in the industry helped me get enough freelance assignments. This income
continues to take care of the regular household expenses since I am yet to draw a salary from the
business.

Another critical factor, which has helped sustain my enterprise, is that my wife is employed as a retail
consultant. This means that taking care of monthly expenses has never been a problem. In fact, I would
have been unable to start the venture if I hadn't had the financial support from my wife.

Today, we have a presence in more than 2,000 stores across the country and are planning to continue
expanding our footprint. We also intend to launch our own retail stores in over a year. From starting
with 12 employees, Brandis now boasts a 35-strong headcount. However, the bank's response continues
to remain a worry.

I fret over the company's inability to raise enough capital to cater to the market demand and banks fail
to appreciate the fact that adequate capital is crucial in upscaling a business. Nonetheless, we will be
breaking even in another four months and, hopefully, I can then start drawing a salary.

How Ankur Mehrotra succeeded with
DeliveryOnCall by adding a variety of
products and services
Story
Comments (5)

Read more on Standard Chartered Bank|savings|investments|home delivery|Freelance|ET
Wealth|
6
inShare
<a target="_blank"

To start with, Ankur Mehrotra rented an office in Noida, Uttar Pradesh and, in September 2011,
he registered the company as Deep Roots Core Services
Despite the recent talk about the bursting of the e-commerce bubble, e-service continues to
thrive. Making the most of it is 32-year-old Ankur Mehrotra and his start-up, DeliveryOnCall.
This online and on-call facility is a one-stop solution for all home delivery requirements-
groceries, bakery, meat products, pet accessories, restaurant dial-a-meals, even laundry service-
for the sloth generation.

Having worked in the banking industry for seven-and-a-half years, Delhi-based Mehrotra was
familiar with the problem of combining erratic office timings with the running of a household. In
2009, while working with the Standard Chartered Bank, one of his clients inspired and egged
him on to start his own venture. However, Mehrotra did not rush to execute the idea, quitting his
job only in August 2011, two years later.

To start with, he rented an office in Noida, Uttar Pradesh and, in September 2011, he registered
the company as Deep Roots Core Services. For all this, he shelled out Rs 1.25 crore, put together
from his own savings and and by borrowing money from family and friends.

DeliveryOnCall follows a simple modus operandi-users can either place their order on the site
under various verticals, or call 120-4580-800, and the product will be delivered in less than 60
minutes. There are no delivery charges and the customer has the option of swiping plastic money
or paying cash on delivery. The service is currently available only in Noida and at Indirapuram,
Delhi.

Mehrotra began by employing three people, including a watchman from his building, someone
he had known for many years. Mehrotra also hedged his personal savings, liquidating
investments to support family expenses for at least one year. He was helped by the fact that his
wife works as a freelance designer in textiles.

By the end of the year, he was getting 1,000 hits a day on his website, but it has not been a
smooth ride all the way. "When I approached the vendors with my idea, they thought I would
end up earning a bigger chunk than them. My family was also not too convinced," he explains.

However, the concept has caught on and he is reaping the rewards. Some of the well-known
eateries to be roped in include Subway, Yo! China, Nathu's, and local ones such as Defence
Bakery, Mithaas and a pet shop called Pet's Paradise.

Today, DeliveryOnCall has 30 employees, with 20 delivery boys who travel up to 3 km to
deliver orders. The company receives 200-250 orders a day, most of which are via phone and has
helped it notch up a revenue of Rs 1.5 crore till date. Mehrotra expects to break even in the next
four or five months and generate about Rs 4 crore by March 2013.

Next on the cards is expanding the product repertoire to include items like sweets, as well as
maid services and birthday party booking orders. Mehrotra also plans to spread the company's
footprint to the National Capital Region within the next three months and set up a shop in
Ahmedabad by next year.

How Sarita & Suparna Handa's home
furnishing enterprise has grown to a Rs 100
crore venture
Story
Comments (5)

Read more on Zara Home|textiles and antiques|Sarita Handa Exports|Sarita Handa|Sarita and
Suparna Handa|Pottery Barn|Kaleidoscope
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

"We are expecting a double-digit growth in the next fiscal year and have recently forayed into
domestic retail", says Suparna Handa.
Canara Bank
BSE
437.70

3.85 (0.89%)
NSE
437.40

3.80 (0.88%)
Was the building of a multi-crore textile business a planned effort?

Sarita Handa: A big part of my career in textiles wasn't planned, but I always wanted to live life
to the fullest. In the 1970s, I never thought I would set up a business and was actually
considering becoming a teacher.

In the late 1980s, however, I decided to take up a job with Shyam Ahuja in Delhi, but quit in
1990. For two years I researched before starting a home furnishing product manufacturing unit in
1992.

How did you choose textiles?

Sarita: Since I was married to an army officer, I travelled across the country with him and even
learned to stitch my own clothes. In 1972, he was at the Defence Services Staff College at
Wellington, Tamil Nadu, where I came across beautiful hand-embroidered linen.

I brought them back to Delhi and sold them to friends over a coffee party. However, it wasn't till
the 1990s that I thought of starting my own venture due to two reasonsmy husband's job did
not allow us to stay at one place and I did not have enough financial support.

How did the Sarita Handa brand emerge?

Sarita: Once I found myself drawn to textiles and antiques, I started collecting books,
documents and textiles from museums, flea markets and quaint old shops. I did not have any
formal training as a designer but learnt from friends, family and mentors.

The Sarita Handa brand was born in February 1992. I hired a few tailors and started operations
from my mother's home at South Extension, Delhi. In 1993-94, we hired a small workshop at
Tughlakabad.
How was the journey from idea to execution?

Sarita: We began as a small line, but entered the international market for
fashionable home furnishings right from the start.

We first did business with a German catalogue company called Heine
GMBH, which owned companies called Spiegel Inc and Eddie Bauer in the
US. A few months on, we started working with other firms, such as Grattan
and Kaleidoscope, in the UK. Our big-ticket contract came with
Bloomingdale's in 1994.

What was your source of funding and scale of investment?

Sarita: Like most entrepreneurs, we struggled to raise money, borrowing
from family and putting in our lives' savings. In addition, we approached
Canara BankBSE 0.89 % for loan, and in 1992, we got Rs 10 lakh. In fact,
the bank has partnered with us since our launch. Also, luckily for us, the government was
supportive of textile exports at the time.

Any crisis points in the initial years?

Sarita: Tughlakabad was not a very clean area and we didn't have many facilities. Funnily
enough, flies were a big problem. While making quilts by hand, flies leave their droppings, a
very subtle stain like a black dot. If the colour is natural, it starts showing.

In fact, we had to reopen a shipment of 500 quilts and had to scrub each stain with a toothbrush.

Due to this problem, we also had to fly the shipment back and forth several times, which
impacted our profits.

This highlighted the need to move out and set up base in a better place, which we eventually did.

How did you scale up the business?

Sarita: In 1995, we set up our first factory at Udyog Vihar, Delhi. Since we had eight clients,
including Ralph Lauren, Bloomingdale's and LA Rinascente SpA, we started focusing on
manufacturing products.

In the following year, we set up another 40,000-50,000 sq ft factory in the same area.

Though we had bought land at Manesar, Haryana, in 2000, we continued with our four factories
and office at Udyog Vihar till 2005.

I was shaken by my husband's demise in 2001, and it took me a few years to regain control of my
life and business. Eventually, in 2006, we moved to the 1.8 lakh sq ft factory at Manesar, which
is also the location of our head office.
When did the firm break even?

Sarita: We managed to break even in the very first year but we
continued to plough the money back into infrastructure.

We didn't take salary for the first two years and made do with bare
essentials. The banks started trusting us only when we made
profits, which was in 1993.

What are your future plans?

Suparna: Sarita Handa Exports is the manufacturing arm of the
business, which does private label bedding for the likes of Pottery
Barn, Macy's, Ethan Allen, Zara Home and Bloomingdale's. We
have 150 employees and a workforce of 6,000-7,000.

We are expecting a double-digit growth in the next fiscal year and
have recently forayed into domestic retail. Our first store opened at
Khan Market, Delhi, in January 2012.

The second store at Defence Colony will be ready by the end of
this year and we hope to launch five more in the next 18 months.

We also plan to move to the global markets in 2014. Our aim is to
maintain the dignity of our brand by offering our consumers a
complete experience. For us, it is all about product, price and
people.

Meet entrepreneurs who faced the dotcom
bubble burst and relaunched their businesses
Story
Comments (8)

Read more on vss mani|V S Sudhakar|Sanjay Anandaram|Kiran Gopinath|Justdial
service|Dotcom entrepreneurs|Bookmyshow.com
1
inShare
<a target="_blank"

ET lists a few gritty entrepreneurs who faced the dotcom bubble burst and relaunched their
businesses later with modifications to suit the evolving marketplace
It was during a vacation to South Africa that Ashish Hemrajani discovered the wealth of leisure
time options that could be sourced on the internet.

International ticketing companies such as Fandango and Ticketmaster helped the 24-year-old
plan his entertainment choices so well that he was inspired to launch a ticketing venture on his
return to India.

Hemrajani quit his job at advertising major J Walter Thompson to launch Bigtree Entertainment
a decade ago. But his dreams were shattered when he could not sustain the business after the
dotcom bubble burst in 2001. He managed to stay afloat by running call centres and developing
software and technologies for cinemas.

Gradually, he relaunched the brand as BookMyShow.com in 2007, when he saw a revival in the
consumer market.

"It was the second coming," says Hemrajani, who now
sells over a million tickets per month. He is one among
many internet entrepreneurs who rebuilt their businesses
after the dotcom bubble burst. Many entrepreneurs shut
shops because the idea and technologies were far ahead
of their times to have market potential.

However, a few brave entrepreneurs such as Hemrajani
have relaunched their businesses to suit the evolving
marketplace.

"We now have over 90% market share in the online entertainment ticketing space," says
Hemrajani, who helps the company's clients purchase tickets for the latest movies, music
concerts, plays, stand-up comic acts and major sporting events in the country. He estimates that
around four billion movie tickets get sold in India every year.

The firm offers tickets at over 250 cinemas across India in association with major cinema chains
like Inox, Fame, Big Cinemas and theatre venues such as Prithvi, India Habitat Centre and
Rangashankara. Hemrajani said they get 40% of its revenues from managing non-movie events
including Formula 1, Indian Premier League and Yonex badminton championships.

Last month, Accel Partners India put Rs 100 crore into Bigtree Entertainment. The money from
Accel will be used to tap single-screen cinemas and events in small towns and cities of India and
building technologies around mobile payments and applications.
entrepreneurs|Bookmyshow.com
1
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Like Hemrajani, VS Sudhakar and five other friends launched online retail website Fabmart in

1999. Though a few early adopters used the service, they were ahead of the curve and could not
move the mass market in terms of volumes.
The dotcom bubble burst worsened the scene. "We
underestimated the situation," says Sudhakar, who was
the first chief executive at India's first internet services
company Planetasia.com.

He kept the online business on backburner but
continued running it in a small way and put all the
energies on physical retail chain of grocery stores under
the brand name of Fabmall, which merged with another
grocery retail chain Trinethra.

Seven years later, the chain was acquired by the Aditya Birla Group after the venture reached to
200 stores across Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. Last year, Sudhakar
returned to his original idea of selling grocery onlinea $1-billion opportunity following a
casual conversation with serial entrepreneur Krishnan Ganesh. He launched online grocery store
BigBasket.com in December last year along with Fabmart co-founders Hari Menon, Vipul
Parekh, VS Ramesh and Abhinay Choudhari. Ganesh also became an angel investor in the firm.

Within a few months of the launch, ChrysCapital co-founder Raj Kondur, who had invested $4
million in Fabmart, dialled in Sudhakar again. Kondur, who had joined Ascent Capital, led a first
round funding of $10 million in BigBasket, three months after the startup was launched.
BigBasket now delivers food items such as fruits, vegetables, bakery, dairy products, frozen
foods and toiletries to over 15,000 customers in Bangalore.
The startup's network, which relies on a fleet of Omni
vans to deliver products, aims to expand the service to
cities such as Hyderabad and Mumbai by the end of this
year.

Sanjay Anandaram, a venture capitalist who mentors
startups, says if the business doesn't have the
fundamentals in place, it is better to shut down, cut
costs or change the direction.

"It's not just about being first to arrive, it is also about being first to survive," says Anandaram.

VSS Mani, founder of local search provider Justdial, is among one such survivor who was not
swayed by the irrational exuberance of the dotcom era.

Mani launched Justdial with personal savings of Rs 50,000, five employees, borrowed furniture
and rented computers in 1996. He had already experienced the harsh realities of being an
entrepreneur.

Before Justdial, Mani had started a venture in 1989
AskMe, India's first phone-based directory in Delhi
along with three other partners. But he had to wind up
the venture, as telephone penetration was very low at
the time and the idea did not take off.

After four years of trying his luck at various
enterpriseseven as a wedding plannerto save
money, he launched Justdial, and one year later registered the domain name as justdial.com,
when there was a buzz about internet in Western world.

Despite selling a small stake to an internet firm to test the market in 1999-2000, he did not lose
the focus on the telephone-based service. Mani launched the internet-based service in 2007. He
said over 60% of queries now originate from internet and mobile.
Justdial clocked in revenue of Rs 277 crore in FY2011-12 and a profit after tax of Rs 52 crore. In
June, Sequoia Capital, which has been an early investor in iconic companies such as Apple,
Google and Cisco, led a Rs 305-crore round of funding in Justdial, its largest investment in an
Indian company so far.
This bootstrapping was a valuable lesson for
entrepreneurs such as Kiran Gopinath, founder of
Ozone Media, a leading internet advertising network.
Gopinath was introduced to the world of internet by
DBS Internet, selling Web-based solutions and
advertising, when he was just 26. Excited by the
vastness and immense opportunity of the industry, he
co-founded Webshastra, an internet advertising firm in
1999.

As he launched the firm, Warburg Pincus, the New York-based private-equity firm, injected $1
million into Webshastra. "The joy, happiness and dollar stars in our eyes lasted only for 13 days
before the market sank," says Gopinath. Webshastra, which had 43 employees and offices in
Delhi and Mumbai, had to scale down staff to seven after a year.

"All of us missed a point that people have to work and not focus on being cool," says Gopinath.
Webshastra was acquired by US-based search engine marketing agency Position2 in 2006. In the
same year, Gopinath started his next venture Ozone Media again in advertising space. This time,
he started with tight financial management and a solid business model. "In our second avatar, we
hired people who were not looking for a cool company but to work hard," says Gopinath. Ozone
became profitable without any funding.

Two years later, technology investor IDG Ventures injected a few million dollars in Ozone
Media. The 75-employee business now services customers such as Citibank, HDFC, ICICI,
Kotak and brands like Airtel, Dell, and Unilever, over the internet, social media and
mobilephone. It has operations in the US and Canada and plans to tap South-East Asia as well.

"Greed and fear drive man. Bubbles will keep occurring as new players enter the market every
decade or so," says Anandaram.

How to survive a meltdown

-Don't jump onto a bandwagon. The trick is to enter a business as an entrepreneur, investor or
supplier before it becomes the most talked about thing that everyone wants to do.

-The ultimate test is whether the business is making money or has a visible path to make money
at a particular size

-Don't be a copycat! Start the business because of a need or experience with a problem

-Valuation is money in the mirror!

How Khushboo Shrivastava made Rewa
Escape spa a Rs 60 lakh company in a year
Story
Comments (4)

Read more on The move|The Client List|Rewa Escape spa|pierre cardin|Mumbai|Khushboo
Shrivastava|Hugo Boss
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

She invested nearly Rs 30 lakh, most of which went into leasing, doing up the interior, and
training staff in massage techniques.
The decision may have sprung from the head, not heart, but considering 28-year-old Khushboo
Shrivastava's passion for work, it's hard to tell. Shrivastava has set up Rewa EscapeSpa by the
Bay, a small boutique spa tucked away in a corner of Mahalaxmi, Mumbai, is barely a year old,
but is already creating ripples and thriving on its nearly 2,000 clients. Offering luxury for less, it
is a welcome alternative to the expensive spa treatments offered by five-star hotels.

"I wanted to marry the retail format of business, which was my core competence, with luxury
brand management. Another trigger for launching it was the fact that the spa industry was
growing at an incredible 40% CAGR," says Shrivastava.

After graduating in commerce in 2004 from the Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi, Shrivastava
joined her family's business, manufacturing and exporting leather garments for brands such as
Hugo Boss, Pierre Cardin and Marks & Spencer. In 2006, she enrolled for an MBA degree at the
Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and a year later she approached Calvin Klein India to
work in Mumbai. However, she quit in 2008 to work as a freelance consultant for international
luxury brands like Floral 2000 and Celebrity Kid's Portraits. This is when she felt the need to be
her own boss.

After eight months of searching for the right location, she leased a 500-sq-ft space at Mahalaxmi,
south Mumbai, in April 2011. She invested nearly Rs 30 lakh, most of which went into leasing,
doing up the interior, and training staff in massage techniques. The spa was officially launched in
October 2011, and besides the regular run of services ranging from a manicure (Rs 550) to body
massage (Rs 2,800), she also has some unique offerings. Trying to break free from the clutter,
she offers five dry body massages, which are done with the clothes on; these are for people on
the move who don't have the time for showering after an oil-based massage. Word of mouth has
worked well in boosting the client list and repeat customers are given loyalty cards to avail of
free treatments.

In a short span of 11 months, Shrivastava has come a long way from earning Rs 1,290 from her
first client to the current turnover of Rs 60 lakh. She broke even at an operational level in the
first month itself, pumping the money back into the venture. Her efforts are also gaining
recognition. "We were awarded The Brands Academy Service Excellence Award 2012 for the
best upcoming day spa in Mumbai, in July this year. These were organised by the market
research agency, BIG Research, and we were selected from among 300 spas," she says.

The rapid ascent to success doesn't mean Shrivastava hasn't faced any challenges. "Attrition is a
major concern in this industry, with the people we train quitting in a couple of months. Even
though contracts are in place, they are difficult to execute in India," she explains. However, with
her 12-strong team, Shrivastava hopes to break even and generate profits in the next three years.
She also plans to open 2-3 boutique spas, one of them in Mumbai by next year.

How Akshai Varde has made Vardenchi
Motorcycles a Rs 1 crore remodelling
business
Story
Comments (4)

Read more on Vardenchi Motorcycles|remodelling motorcycles|ET Wealth|Akshai Varde
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

For the past eight years, Mumbai-based Varde has been designing customised bikes through his
venture, Vardenchi Motorcycles.
Akshai Varde may not be a rock legend like Jon Bon Jovi or Joe Satriani, but he's as inspired by
motorcycles. However, his tribute to these machines has found a different interpretation. For the
past eight years, Mumbai-based Varde has been designing customised bikes through his venture,
Vardenchi Motorcycles. Thumbing his nose at purists and using the Royal Enfield as a base, he
has discovered the massive and emerging market for customised bikes that cost a fraction of the
western counterparts.

"I got my first bike when I was 16, not yet the legal age, and used to ride it in the inner lanes of
the city," says the 31-year-old. His ride was a Yamaha RD 350, a legendary bike of the 1980s,
but this was not the first bike he remodelled. That passion came later; first he had to complete his
education. After completing a diploma course in hotel management from Sophia College,
Mumbai, he joined Jet Airways as cabin crew in 2001. Towards the end of 2004, he was bitten
by the bike bug. He bought an old Royal Enfield for about Rs 17,000 and decided to give it a
makeover. "It grabbed a lot of eyeballs and my friends appreciated my work. Soon after, Ash
Chandler, a stand-up comedian and actor, commissioned me to make a similar bike for him.
That's how Vardenchi Motorcycles started," says Varde.

In April 2005, he rented a small place at Juhu to remodel his first customer bike, but did not
leave his job. "I did not quit because I had no idea if it would turn out to be profitable," he says.
His work hours at Jet Airways left him with enough time to remodel the bike, helped by the two
workers he had hired. Five months later, the bike was ready and was sold for Rs 65,000. Varde
did not make any profit, but he was hooked. During that year, he designed six bikes, making 10-
15% of profit on each. Finally, convinced that there was a market for his passion, Varde quit his
job in December 2005 and focused on building Vardenchi Motorcycles.

He put in Rs 2 lakh from his savings, spending most of it on getting basic tools like welding
machines, cutters, etc. Currently, he has a line-up of four custom-built models, starting from Rs
3.5 lakh and moving up the scale, depending on the level of customisation. Alternatively, a
customer can buy a Royal Enfield and hand it over to Vardenchi for customisation for Rs 2.5
lakh.

He retains the engine, chassis, front suspension and electrical parts to ensure the client can
savour the Royal Enfield flavour. Depending on the customer's location in India and the level of
customisation, the delivery can take four to six weeks. His customers, including Bollywood actor
Jackie Shroff and TV personality Karan Grover, are delighted with the end result, and Varde is
happy with an average of 25-30% profit margin across all the models.

Through word of mouth publicity and media coverage, Varde's business is growing 20% year-
on-year, with Vardenchi's turnover hitting Rs 1 crore in the last fiscal year. With business
booming, he has recently shifted his workshop from the Juhu to a 2,000 sq ft space at
Jogeshwari.

Varde is now looking forward to seeing his creation in Bollywood, having built a bike for
Akshay Kumar's upcoming movie Oh My God. Next on the cards is setting up a custom factory
by year-end and he's in talks with venture capitalists to finance it.

5 Oct, 2012, 06.33AM IST, Shreya Biswas,ET Bureau
ET Young Leaders Awards 2012: Women
entrepreneurs like Ecosphere's Ishita
Khanna stretch the limits
Story
Comments

Read more on young women|Women Entrepreneurs|Women|intellectual property advisory
firm|ET Young Leaders Awards 2012|Business ideas
1
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Ishita Khanna, Ecosphere

Nidhi Saxena, Karmic Lifesciences

Shaleen Raizada, Sanshadow

Puja Arora, SchoolAdmissions.in

From starting up intellectual property advisory firms to helping parents with school admissions,
these young women have carried business ideas through with sheer grit and have big plans for
the future, says ET.

Puja Arora Age: 35

Venture: SchoolAdmissions.in

A platform which provides complete information about schools and admissions all over India.
Offers parents complete support for school admissions. It also helps in getting tutors, fee
payment, peer group networking, stationery, uniforms, learning tools and after-school
activities/courses.

THE TRIGGER

When Puja's son was eligible for nursery admissions in Delhi, she hit many walls. His playschool
informed her they were organising a meeting on school admissions, but it turned out to be a
session on cooking for kids. When angry parents suggested to the management that they should
hire a people who can get updates of schools in Delhi and post them on their website, they were
told that it was a tough task. It was then that Puja decided to do something, and went live on the
same night in December 2007.

INVESTMENTS

The boot strap venture was incubated with Indian Angel Network last year and is looking at
raising seed capital.

MILESTONES

The flagship venture of Edumitr Technologies, SchoolAdmissions.in has more than 40,000
families registered in Delhi and NCR alone. It provides parents with regular alerts and details on
admissions through email, SMS, Facebook as well as mobile applications.

WHAT'S NEXT

It now plans to go national with a recently-launched interface that will have nationwide
searchable listings of schools from playschools to K12 schools based on various parameters that
parents look for.

Shaleen Raizada Age: 42

Venture: Sanshadow

Sanshadow is an intellectual property consultancy firm which advises scientists and companies on how
intellectual property rights can be created with changes in technology.

THE TRIGGER

Her initial work involved understanding and creation of IP with the government and the private sector.
She realised scientists were completely unaware of many innovations that could be patented. And since
lawyers did not have technical knowledge on innovations, they couldn't help in getting new patents.

INVESTMENTS

Her family and she invested around Rs 20 lakh, while another 50 lakh came in from Indian Angel
network in 2006. Today, Sanshadow has a revenue of Rs 1 croreplus and has been logging 20% to 25%
profits over the past three years.

MILESTONES

Sanshadow has helped create a 1,000 patentable inventions, besides helping numerous Indian
companies in defensive measures (such as lawsuits, infringement of IP).

WHAT'S NEXT

Sanshadow has been profitable for the third consecutive year and is planning a quantum jump this year.
It is in talks with Chinese and UK companies, given the huge opportunities in terms of IP litigation and
protection in those countries.

Ishita Khanna Age: 35

Venture: Ecosphere

A social enterprise that works to protect the environment and develop alternate and sustainable
livelihood avenues for the local Spiti community by using available resources responsibly.

THE TRIGGER

Having grown up in Dehradun in the foothills of the Himalayas, she wanted to work on issues pertaining
to conservation of the rich natural environment. Initially, she worked with the Himachal Pradesh
government in women's empowerment, which led her to Kulu and Hamirpur. She later realised a lot
could be done to launch commercially viable livelihoods in Spiti too. Ecosphere was launched with
friends in 2002.

INVESTMENTS

German funding agency GTZ pumped in Rs 11 lakh in 2002. Ecosphere later invested Rs 20 lakh to Rs 30
lakh each year from various funding agencies and its own earnings.

MILESTONES

From five villages in Spiti, Ecosphere now reaches 55, with diverse income-generating opportunities. It
has built greenhouses to address unavailability of green vegetables with the long and severe winters
haunting the region. It has also installed solar panels and wind mills.

WHAT'S NEXT

Ecosphere plans more tourismrelated initiatives. It is also working on a project to help irrigate
agricultural land through solar water lifting, which aims to transport water from different sources with
the help of solar panels.

Nidhi Saxena Age: 38

Venture: Karmic Lifesciences

A four-year-old full service contract research organisation involved in the process of drug development
by pharmaceutical companies.

THE TRIGGER

After completing her MBA from SP Jain Institute of Management and Research and working with Wipro
and GE, she was associated with the clinical trials industry. She realised that life sciences was a high-
potential area in India due to strong fundamentals, huge industry size, stability and good growth rate.

INVESTMENT

The company has raised funds from Indian Angel Network, Mumbai Angels and Basil Growth
Corporation and is now looking at a Series B Round for an additional $10 million.

MILESTONES

The firm has executed over a 100 clinical trials and more than 80 clinical data management and bio-
statistics projects, besides supporting study design, medical and scientific writing for over 100 protocols
across broad-based therapeutic areas.

WHAT'S NEXT

Karmic is now looking at going global and starting a fullfledged US operation this month, besides having
delivery capabilities in Europe and APAC. It expects to be a $ 100-million company with operations in 20-
plus countries by 2017-18.

15 Oct, 2012, 08.00AM IST, Milan Sharma,ET Bureau
Hunting for business ideas? Look for
problems
Story
Comments

Read more on The National|Startups|Starting a business|Networks|ideas|Google
India|Entrepreneur
5
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Consider the following start-ups that zeroed in on a problem and offered a feasible and scalable
solution.
Keen to start a business but can't decide on a viable idea? One way out of this quandary may be
to actively start looking at problems around you. Numerous start-ups have blossomed not
because they boasted a revolutionary business idea, but because they managed to find an
efficient solution to a problem that others had either ignored or were unable to solve. "A concept
shouldn't just sound cool to an entrepreneur, but also solve a problem that they can relate to and
is relevant to a lot of people. In this case, the satisfaction the entrepreneur receives will keep him
motivated much more than having a cool idea," says Gautam Gandhi, head of new business
development for Google India, and a serial entrepreneur.

Where's the problem?

In one word, everywhere. Problems can be big or niche, personal, professional, or both.
According to Gandhi, an open mind and communication are the easiest ways to locate a problem.
"Ask people about the issues they face and see how many are affected by it," he adds. You could
also consider problems that affect you personally. "While coming up with a solution, check that
it is interesting enough for a number of people, and whether they would be willing to pay for it,"
he adds.

How to do it?

Here are some start-ups that grew by solving problems.

The Maid's Company

This venture, set up by Gurgaon-based Gauri Singh in 2010, turned out to be a boon for
households looking for reliable help, and for domestic workers, who found a stable source of
income. This was a corollary to another idea by SinghUrban Mahila & Mazdoor Alliance, an
organisation set up by Singh in August 2008, which extended financial and healthcare services to
urban, poor women. Over time, Singh noticed that almost 30% of the members were domestic
helps. "We researched this unorganised market and found that there was no standardisation of
skills and wages. There was a high dependence on informal networks to source such workers,
who were riddled with security and trust issues," says Singh. Her solution, The Maid's Company,
generated Rs 3.5 lakh in the first year of operations and provides 250 maids as of now.

Easy Fix Solutions

When 25-year-old Shaifali Agarwal couldn't promptly find reliable handymenelectricians,
carpenters, plumbersto fix the problems in her new apartment in Delhi in 2009, she spotted a
glaring need for a venture promising a one-stop solution for home/office repairs. Two years later,
in 2011, she set up Easy Fix Solutions, which posted a turnover of Rs 80-90 lakh in its first year.
Today, Agarwal has a team of nearly 300 people catering to the National Capital Region (NCR).

DeliveryOnCall

Founder Ankur Mehrotra has eased the way in which families shop for groceries and other
monthly supplies with this Rs 1.5 crore Delhi-based company. "The idea came to me when I was
working in the corporate sector since I could hardly spend time with my family. The only day we
had to ourselves, Sunday, went into stocking up. This is true of every nuclear family and I
wanted to work towards saving precious time," he says. He hit bull's-eye with
Deliveryoncall.com, an online and on-call facility for getting everything from grocery to pet
accessories, even laundry service, at your doorstep.

Farm2kitchen.com

Seema Dholi launched this Gurgaon-based company in 2011 after the birth of her baby. "When I
was pregnant with my first child, I was very particular about the food I ate. There was not even a
single organic food supplier and hardly anyone knew what organic meant. That was the trigger
for me," she says. Today, the company has its presence in 262 cities across the country.

Look abroad for ideas

If you aren't good at problem-solving, you could consider another fertile ground for entrepreneurial
ideas: abroad. Gurgaon-based GS Bhalla did. During his foreign trips, he came across the concept of
frozen yogurt, and decided to launch it in India four years ago. The result? Cocoberry, which has its
branches across the country, has been making a 300% profit year-on-year since 2008. "At that time, the
Indian demographic was undergoing a change, leaning towards healthier food options. I decided that's
where I would make my mark," says Bhalla.

Similarly, Amit Kohli and Akhilesh Bali came across the idea of online food delivery, especially from
smaller restaurants in the neighbourhood. "It works very well in several western countries. However,
the restaurant industry in India is more fragmented and non-standardised. Hence, the need to adapt the
business model to serve the small restaurants in India was crucial," says Kohli. So they took a franchise
for FoodPanda.com, which allows you to order food from a restaurant near you in Mumbai and the NCR.
The portal's USP is that it brings restaurants and consumers together on a common platform. This helps
the small restaurants gain access to a larger set of customers in their area without any investment of
their own, thereby increasing their business.

How Ashok Reddy's TeamLease grew into a
Rs 700-crore business
Story
Comments (18)

Read more on TeamLease|manpower solutions|Jobs|entrepreneurs|Business|Ashok Reddy
62
inShare
<a target="_blank"

TeamLease provides manpower solutions to companies and, in 10 years, has grown to a Rs 700-
crore business.
An entrepreneurial idea can take root anywhere, irrespective of the environment. So, even though
I hail from a family that is not business-oriented and have an educational background geared
towards the corporate worldShri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi, followed by IIM,
BangaloreI always wanted to start something of my own. This is the reason that just three
years into my first job in the equity department at ICICI Securities, I was ready to follow my
start-up dream.

It helped that I was not venturing into the new territory alone. Manish Sabbharwal, my classmate
from SRCC, and his friend Mohit Gupta, joined hands with me to launch India Life Pension
Services, in 1998, in Bangalore. We bootstrapped Rs 5 lakh and started managing funds for
various companies. By 2001, we had become the largest pension management fund in the
country. However, the competition was heating up. So when Aon Hewitt offered to buy the
business in March 2001, we jumped at the chance.

This is an important lesson for entrepreneursno matter how passionate you are about your
venture, you need to understand the ground realities. We decided to exit the business while we
could make a high profit, and these proceeds helped us launch a new business nine months later.
In April 2002, TeamLease Services Private kicked off operations
with a seed capital of nearly Rs 2.5 crore. We set up shop in
Bangalore with just four employees. This time around, we were
betting on human resources. TeamLease is a people supply chain
company offering a variety of temporary and permanent staffing
solutions.
At the turn of the millennium, the country was witnessing a
substantial leap in the number of employment opportunities across
various sectors and industries. Our attempt was to provide all these
companies with good, credible workforce. Today, we offer a gamut
of services, ranging from temporary staffing to payroll process
outsourcing, regulatory compliance services and training and
assessments.
Our business model is simple: a lot of companies need employees
for a certain period and lack the manpower, or incentive, to scout
in-house for the same, and this is where we step in. We provide
them with the required number of professionals, picking eligible candidates from a variety of
sources. We have a dedicated talent scouting team, which scans resumes posted on our website
as well as various job portals, such as Naukri and Monster.
However, the candidates accepted by our clients are not technically recruited by them.
TeamLease manages the payroll of all the employees that it supplies. In return, we get a
commission depending on the number of people hired and the tenure of their contract, which
usually ranges from six months to a year.
Though the three of us had prior experience in running a business, the dynamics of our new venture
were very different. To begin with, TeamLease was going to be a much bigger business. Also, in an
employee-centred business model, it becomes important to understand the working of all concerned

sectors, not just yours. This is the only way to limit the chances of supplying a candidate who is not good
enough for a job. Looking back, I wish we had a better software to streamline our search for potential
candidates in our initial days. One ace up our sleeve was that we did not need to scramble for clients.
During our pension fund management days, we had interacted with a lot of corporate clients, and that's
how we tapped our first customer, Intel.

TeamLease's turnover in the first year of operations was Rs 8 crore, and we managed to break even in
2006. For the first six years, we grew at about 100% year-on-year, but then recession struck. We bore
the brunt of the meltdown because the demand simply dried up. From an average of about 10,000 open
positions a month, the demand came down to just 500 in 2008-9. Likewise, we were forced to downsize
our employee base from 65,000 to around 45,000, while our full-time staff strength was chopped by
35% to 1,100. In the heat of expansion, we had reached out to 24 cities, but during this period we were
forced to limit ourselves to only nine branches, mainly in the metro cities, along with a few training
centres in tier-II cities like Kochi. Our turnover fell 50% during this period, but the recession also served
as a reality check. It helped us focus on efficiency, not just the size of the company.

However, we are over the worst phase now. TeamLease has posted a growth rate of about 100% again
in the past two years, and our current employee base is about 75,000 across various sectors at over 800
locations. Last year, we posted a turnover of Rs 700 crore and expect it to go up to Rs 1,020 crore in the
coming fiscal year.

How CJ George of Geojit BNP Paribas
transformed a small company into a big
brokerage firm
Story
Comments (5)

Read more on US Federal reserve|sebi|Rakesh Jhunjhunwala|Geojit BNP Paribas|Geojit|CJ
George|Brokerage
1
inShare
<a target="_blank"

In the 25 years since he launched the venture, CJ George pioneered many innovations that have
today become norms in the Indian financial sector
Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services Ltd.
BSE
22.85

0.05 (0.22%)
NSE
22.65

-0.25 (-1.09%)
It was on a whim that CJ George, Managing Director of Kochi-based Geojit BNP ParibasBSE
0.22 %, who was pursuing his doctorate, started broking firm GeojitBSE 0.22 % as a partnership
with Ranajit Kanjilal in 1987. George took sole control of the venture after Kanjilal's retirement
and took Geojit public in 1994.

In the 25 years since he launched the venture, George pioneered many innovations that have
today become norms in the Indian financial sector. Geojit was the first to do away with sub-
brokers. It launched internet trading in the country, entered the Middle East and took BNP
ParibasBSE 0.22 % as a partner. George tells Radhika P Nair his journey of making a small
Kerala-based company into one of the most respected brokerages in the country:

THE BEGINNING

I was working with a broking firm before I launched Geojit and was fed up with the way the
industry was run. The brokers and sub-brokers were doing their own trade and cheating clients.
So we decided not to do trading. Even today, after 25 years in this industry, I have zero
investment in stocks. We decided we will do an honest execution service. The timing was perfect
as India was just opening up in the late-80 s and early-90 s and the stock market became
important. We grew along with the economy.

PIONEER

We did away with sub-brokers and started franchisees in 1996, thus retaining control of client's
money. In 2001-02 , Sebi went through our system extensively and made sub-brokers into
franchisees for others as well. Today, out of 540 offices , 350 are owned by us and the balance is
franchisee-run . When National Securities Depository (NSDL) was started, we were among the
first to become members in 1996. The most important contribution we made to the country is to
introduce internet trading, in February 2000. Now internet trading contributes 35% of our
volumes. We were also the first Indian brokerage to launch in the Middle East and now have a
presence in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait.

PARTNERSHIPS

In 1995, the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) acquired a 24% stake in
the company, the only instance of a government entity acquiring a stake in a stock broking
company. In 2005, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala took 14% stake and in 2007, BNP Paribas acquired
33% after extensive due diligence. This was an achievement for us as they chose us over
brokerages in Mumbai . We also started a joint venture with BNP in institutional trading. But this
was dragging our financials down, so BNP acquired our stake late last year. This has helped
improve our financials and the second quarter (FY2012-13 ) profit is at Rs 45.31 crore against Rs
6.05 crore in the same period last year.

WAY AHEAD

We are again in the midst of major changes. There have been three questions always-where ,
when and how to invest. In the eighties 'how' was the most important question. Now, with mobile
and computers, execution of trade is in your hand. Now, the most important questions are 'where'
and 'when' . So we are in the process of converting every customer-facing employee into an
advisor, training them and making certifications compulsory. In two years, we will move
completely to an advisory-based service.

How Roopesh Aggarwal's ad firm
Advertisement India grew into a Rs 5 crore
venture
Story
Comments (8)

Read more on The National|Roopesh Aggarwal|Lucknow|glamour|ET
Wealth|Entrepreneur|Business
21
inShare
<a target="_blank"

What began as a means to supplement family income has grown into a Rs 5 crore advertising
venture.

My foray in business was not a planned move trigerred by my strong entrepreneurial instincts. In
fact, I was compelled to work while I was in college as my family was facing financial problems.
However, finding a job was difficult when I enrolled as a 21-year-old student of BSc (Chemistry)
at Lucknow University in 1993. So, I began to scout around for opportunities that would let me
earn enough to support myself, and starting my own venture was the only option.

I toyed with various ideas, finally zeroing in on publishing advertisements for clients in various
newspapers. Beyond the glamour of big companies flashing massive advertisements, a number of
smaller firms and individuals also put up their ads, and I believed this was a big market waiting
to be tapped in Lucknow. The biggest advantage was that I could set my own hours and run the
business from home. The first advertisement that I put up was, of course, my own. I used Rs 500,
which included my pocket money and money borrowed from my father, to carry advertisements
in a local Hindi paper about my venture, Advertisement India.
The business model was, and remains, the same: for every ad that
we get published in the paper, the client pays us 15% of the fee.
When I started, I mostly approached small shops to put up their
ads along with matrimonial ads. It took me one month to get my
first client, a video parlour in Lucknow. I got the ad printed in a
local paper for Rs 60 and earned a commission of Rs 9. Over the
next three years, my business earned me enough to support
myself during college years. In fact, I even hired a person to
collect ads from the clients. By the time I graduated in 1997, I
was earning about Rs 4,000 a month.

It may not seem like a profitable venture, but the fact that I had
been running the business successfully for three years was a big
boost to my confidence. I had also begun to enjoy the work and
was certain that I wanted to pursue this. In the meantime, I had
also managed to widen my network beyond the Hindi newspapers
to the English ones as well as magazines.

I could now focus on my venture on a full-time basis and this helped me increase the number of
advertisements. Another factor was that a number of small enterprises began to come up in
Lucknow in the late 1990s, which helped me increase my monthly salary to about Rs 10,000
within a year of graduating. I also hired five more salespeople, and since I continued to work
from home, I managed to cut down on office rent. I also began to pour some of the profit back
into the business. During those days, getting a bank loan for a business was very difficult,
especially for a business like an advertising agency. This is the reason I had to fund the
expansion plans with my own money. The most critical move was to create an online presence,
so I set up a website in 1999, and also hired a few more sales representatives.

Though I had established myself on the Web and could have handled the business easily from
my Lucknow office, I decided to expand to Delhi and Mumbai to gain credibility. Another
reason was that most of my clients' businesses had expanded to other cities and they wanted to
print ads in other editions. Besides, I wanted to be taken more seriously and compete with the
bigger advertising agencies. Often, the clients who had worked with us in Lucknow were
surprised to find that we could get their advertisements printed even in the national editions.
Most of them assumed that since we were based in Lucknow, our sphere of operations was
limited to that area. This is the reason that in 2000, I spent Rs 3 lakh to open offices in Delhi and
Mumbai.

We also started tapping an important market within online advertising: matrimonial ads. When I
had started, ads for recruitment were the biggest draw, but after 2000, matrimonials began to
dominate and now these form the bulk of our revenue. About 10 years ago, when we would
average 100 small ads in a month, we have grown to manage 700-800 ads a month, and these

range from Rs 2,500 to Rs 25 lakh.

As the business has grownwe have 18 employees and about 70 clientswe've had to innovate
to ensure growth. We have started a doorstep cash pick-up facility, where you can book an
advertisement online but pay in cash to our executive, who will collect it personally. What
prompted us to launch this service was that most people, especially those in smaller towns, do
not trust online payment options. We are now building a team that focuses exclusively on
tapping the small and medium enterprises for advertisements. I believe this segment will emerge
as the main source of revenue generation in the future.

Travelyaari : How three IIM-A graduates
solved the problem of booking bus tickets
Story
Comments (38)

Read more on website|Travelyaari|south indian|online portal|Entrepreneurship|CIIE
5
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Travelyaari, the online portal, has made the most of problems faced by people in booking bus
tickets.
South Indian Bank Ltd.
BSE
25.10

0.00 (0.00%)
NSE
25.05

-0.05 (-0.20%)
Travelyaari was essentially a campus start-up, which was born of classroom and hostel
discussions. As a second year student at IIM Ahmedabad in 2006, one of the issues that I, along
with other friends, came across was booking bus tickets. It was virtually impossible to
accomplish this task at the time, especially if you wanted to go to another state. The only option
was to seek travel operators in the area and book tickets without the advantage of comparing
prices. It was also a business idea that was just waiting to be explored.

So, in June 2006, I decided to conduct research on the subject along with my batchmate, Aurvind
Lama. Soon, we realised that we had hit the bull's-eye. The number of buses per thousand people
in India was just 1.3, compared with Brazil, which has 10 buses per thousand, and the US, which
has 3.9 buses per thousand. It was clear that by making bus bookings easy, we would also
facilitate the growth in the number of buses in India. However, we could not immediately
breathe life into our business idea because according to IIM-A policy, students are not allowed to
be associated with any venture or job during the course. So we decided to bide our time,
researching and refining our business idea and developing beta models for our future website.

During this period, we discovered that apart from the basic front-end issues, the business we
wanted to be associated with was plagued by serious back-end problems as well. For instance,
online bookings require technology to show real-time booking status in order to facilitate a
transaction. We realised that providing this technology was another viable operation that our
business model could address. So we started looking for a tech-savvy teammate and found one in
Prateek Nigam. In April 2007, the three of us formally launched our company, Mantis
Technologies.

At the outset, we decided to concentrate solely on providing back-end support to various
operators, beginning with Gujarat. The rationale was that this technology-driven business would
not be capital-intensive from the word go. Also, the move tied in neatly with our plan to start
small. Having worked for a large MNC between 2002 and 2005, the decision to go solo was a
big one. To begin with, we pooled together Rs 2.5 lakh as seed capital from our personal savings.
It helped that we did not have to worry about real estate costs since IIM-A has a facility called
the Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), which provided us with an
office space measuring 1,200 sq ft for just Rs 2,500 per month.

Over time, we extended our footprint to Maharashtra and Rajasthan. One of our biggest breaks
came in September 2008, when we bagged the contract to handle the back-end operations for
ticket booking on MakeMyTrip.com. We managed a turnover of Rs 10 lakh in the first year of
operations, but consciously chose to pump back all the earnings into the business in the initial
years. It is important to understand that unless an entrepreneur is ready to make such sacrifices,
his business is likely to suffer, especially in a price-conscious market like ours.

Although the business was running smoothly, we never lost sight of our original plan about
facilitating front-end bookings and enabling travellers to book tickets directly from our own
website. However, for this we needed at least 40-50 travel operators to work with us. So, when
we reached this magic number in December 2008, we launched our dream portal,
Travelyaari.com.

The next milestone year was 2010, when I finally started drawing a nominal salary. In September
the same year, we moved out of the office provided by CIIE and rented a 3,500 sq ft office space
in Bangalore, which serves as the company headquarters today. The reason we chose this city
was because it offers a readily available talent pool and the fact that the south IndianBSE 0.00 %
bus market is better organised.

In the course of the past two years, we have set up offices in 10 major cities across India and
have tied up with 1,200 travel operators. Today, our 200-employee company enjoys a 15%
market share, and is second only to Redbus in the online bus ticket booking market. We have a
base of 50,000 unique visitors a day and our turnover in this financial year was about Rs 150
crore. We expect this to rise to Rs 400-500 crore in the next fiscal year.

As for our future plans, we are currently in talks with venture capitalists to raise $10 million
(about Rs 55 crore) for the next leg of expansion, which includes launching international
operations and brand building.

From Rs 10,000 to Rs 350 cr: Akshaya's
decision to construct green buildings has paid
off
Story
Comments (32)

Read more on tamil nadu|T Chitty Babu|green projects|Green Buildings|Green Building
Council|ET Wealth|Andhra Pradesh
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

I can vouch for the fact that as long as you take up projects you are sure of executing in the given
time and budget, it is as easy or difficult as any other venture.
Growing up in the 1970s in a quiet, little town tucked away in the southernmost tip of India, tall
buildings were a rarity for me. At Nagercoil, near Kanyakumari, the tallest building I knew of
was the clock tower. It fascinated me and I knew I wanted to design and construct big buildings
for a career. However, since I came from a humble background, I had to take the longer route to
achieve my dream. It took eight years and a long run at the corporate carousel before I got
around to starting the first project under my banner, Akshaya Limited.

After completing my five-year civil engineering degree programme from SIT Tumkur, I joined
Dual Structurals Private Limited as first engineer, in 1987. I worked for the construction
company for the next six years, eventually being promoted to director in 1993. However, two
years on, boredom set in and I was itching to do something new. A comfortable job was no
longer good enough as I was still working on someone else's ideas and there was no challenge in
terms of creativity. So I quit my job and, in October 1995, I started Akshaya with a seed capital
of Rs 10,000.

It is a myth that one needs to have deep pockets to enter the realty market. I had already
established a network of contacts during my previous job, so credibility and workflow were
never a problem. To keep things simple at the outset, I took on the role of a contractor. Interested
parties would entrust me with projects with a clearly specified budget and timeline.
It was my responsibility to get the architect, engineers, raw
material, and the like, and the amount I saved was my
commission. I hired just one employee, a civil engineer, to help
me while my wife pitched in with book-keeping. My first project
was worth Rs 2 crore and I made a handsome profit. By the end
of March 1996, I had already started working on four projects and
the profits enabled me to move the company headquarters from
my house to a rented office at Adyar.

Another misconception is that the realty sector is full of
problems. I can vouch for the fact that as long as you take up
projects you are sure of executing in the given time and budget, it
is as easy or difficult as any other venture. Also, one needs to
give every business some time to growit took a year for my
company's revenues to hit the Rs 1 crore mark. It was not until
October 1998 that I attempted to go beyond playing the contractor
by taking on my first independent project, that of developing four
apartments. I invested Rs 55 lakh in this venture. It was small
change compared with the projects that I had handled in the past, but it was a start and there has
been no looking back ever since.

Here's another tip for realty entrepreneurs: guard against the temptation to spread out too soon. I
am not against ventures in different geographical locations, but one must first master the area one
starts out from. Thankfully, for Akshaya, there has been a lot of scope for growth in Tamil Nadu.
Over the past 14 years, we have ventured into various cities within the state, from Coimbatore
and Salem to Madurai and Trichy. It is a market that I understand and we have been able to
execute more than 150 projects in the state so far. Between 1995 and 1998, I took on contractor

roles for projects in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh too, but the self-developed projects have
been limited to Tamil Nadu so far.

Recognising the importance of any business to keep innovating in order to grow organically, I
took a call to concentrate solely on green projects at the beginning of 2008. Not only did this
move send out a strong message that we care for our planet, but also captured the imagination
and consciousness of the new buyers. In a way, we were among the first companies to join the
green bandwagon, and this gives us an edge today, when certifications and clean records are
paramount. I am proud of the fact that we have consistently bagged good ratings from all the
important certifying agencies in the market. Three out of our nine projects till date are platinum
rated and the rest have been given gold ratings by the Indian Green Building Council, an
independent rating agency. We also received the best legal systems award from CNBC/Crisil for
four years in a row (2007-10).

I am now looking forward to unveiling the tallest residential tower in Tamil Nadu. Kickstarted
last month, this two-acre project, called Abov, will boast 6,700 sq ft homes with one on a floor,
and each priced at about Rs 7 crore. In keeping with the growing demand, we have set up offices
in Chennai, Salem, Coimbatore, and most recently (2010) in Dubai. Our aim now is to reach out
to a lot more customers while continuing to meet the industry standards.

How Sandeep Gajakas built unique shoe-
laundry business in Mumbai & why he
rebootd his strategy
Story
Comments (36)

Read more on Sunday ET|Shoe Service Institute of America|Sandeep Gajakas|NCC|Mithibai
College|BlackBerry|Air India
51
inShare
<a target="_blank"

He has rebooted his strategy because though people are thrilled about the idea but back off after
talks with family, which doesnt like the idea of cleaning shoes for a living.
NCC Ltd.
BSE
40.70

0.20 (0.49%)
NSE
40.55

0.15 (0.37%)
Sandeep Gajakas wipes his spectacles clean, methodically and constantly. During the course of a
two-hour interview at his residence in suburban Mumbai, Gajakas would have cleaned his
glasses about half a dozen times. He also constantly places his phone and this correspondent's
phone in straight lines, facing him. Haphazardness doesn't quite work for Gajakas.
"It [cleanliness] used to be almost like an OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder] a few years
ago," says the 35-year-old, smiling. "But marriage has had a good influence on me and I am a lot
more at ease." Yet, Gajakas admits that he is very particular about keeping things clean, be it his
house or his shoes. The latter cleaning shoes is how Gajakas has made a living since 2003.
Gajakas is the proprietor of The Shoe Laundry, a shoe cleaning and repair service.
"I can make out the story of a person's life by looking at his shoes. Does he walk a lot? What
does he do for a living? What is his lifestyle?" says Gajakas. And how does he divine these
insights? Well, experience, he shrugs. "I would have cleaned 30,000 pairs of shoes and repaired
some 60,000 pairs personally since 2003," he says. That might sound like an extraordinary claim,
but then many things about Gajakas are just that: extraordinary.

Stepping Stone

Gajakas spends most of his time at home, chained to his BlackBerry or laptop. He reads and
answers close to a hundred emails each day. A chunk of these emails have photographs of badly
soiled or damaged shoes. These photographs have been emailed to Gajakas by employees and
owners of the franchises of The Shoe Laundry from across the country. Gajakas looks at each
image carefully and suggests a solution, which he emails back. The other emails are enquiries
from people who are interested in investing in a Shoe Laundry franchise known as Shoe
Vival.

Gajakas hasn't always worked from home, even though he confesses that there are some great
advantages in doing so like having lunch on time. Till a year ago, he had an office, a
workshop and a thriving business in Mumbai. "Back in 2009, we were doing 80-90 pairs of
shoes a day and I had 16 employees at the workshop," recalls Gajakas. But then, he decided to
close the booming business and focus on expanding his business network. But before we get to
know why Gajakas chose to close down his Mumbai business, here's a quick look at how
Gajakas built it from a scratch.
Squeaky Clean

When Gajakas was eight years old, he moved to a boarding school in Panchgani. There he
excelled in sports and was an NCCBSE 0.49 % cadet. His father, who worked with Air India,
travelled the world and would purchase expensive, branded shoes that weren't available in India
for Sandeep. "The discipline of NCC [where shoes are expected to be sparkling clean] and the
need to maintain my expensive shoes was my first step towards shoe-cleaning expertise... though
back then I never thought I would make a living out of it," says Gajakas. "I was a sportsman and
cleaning red soil from sports shoes can be quite a challenge," he recalls with a smile. It was
probably the beginning of his obsession with cleanliness.

In the late 1990s, as he was pursuing his bachelor's degree in Mithibai College in Mumbai,
Gajakas remembers looking at thousands of students going about with dirty shoes, not without
some degree of horror. But the shoe laundry idea still did not dawn on him. Armed with a degree
in fire engineering, he was all set to move to the Gulf for a regular job in 2001. And then, 9/11
happened. Gajakas' parents shot down any move to the Gulf, afraid that a war was about to break
out.

"So, there I was, stuck in India, with a degree that had few employment prospects, wanting to do
something different, lots of dreams but nowhere to go," says Gajakas.

Sole Proprietor

Gajakas made a laundry list of businesses that he wanted to try his hand at. Among them were
floriculture business, fashion choreography business (he had won several choreography shows in
his college days), air-conditioning dealership (since a family friend owned an AC company) and
shoe-cleaning business. A financial analysis of each business was done. Eventually, the shoe-
laundry idea won simply because "it hadn't been done before and that excited" Gajakas.

Gajakas then hit the first roadblock: parental approval. His father was willing to help his son set
up any business but the thought of a qualified, award-winning sports champ cleaning other
people's shoes for a living horrified the parent. So, Sandeep found himself without funding. A
job at a call centre followed, partly to raise some money.

A little after a year, the monotony of a desk job got to him and he quit. He was ready to take the
plunge. He distributed 5,000 pamphlets in a housing complex, advertising shoe-laundering
services. "Nine out of the 10 calls I got were from people asking me if this was a prank," recalls
Gajakas. But a few tried the service and were impressed. Gajakas, personally, cleaned the shoes.
"For me, it wasn't about dirt. It was about cleanliness," he adds. What followed was a series of
favourable press reports, thanks to the novelty of the idea.

Wear and Tear

Gajakas toyed with several names for his service, including Sandy's Shoe Laundry. But then,
sandy isn't often associated with shining shoes. "We also began to get really badly damaged
shoes for repair. People would approach us saying 'take your time, but do something'. You will
be surprised at how sentimental people can be about their shoes," says Gajakas, who adds that he
would personally repair badly damaged shoes. The trickle of cleaning jobs, over three years,
became a flood of repair and resurrection jobs. Today, Shoe Laundry charges Rs 180 to clean a
pair of shoes (including pickup and delivery) up from Rs 99 in 2003

By 2009, The Shoe Laundry had scaled up: cleaning over 2,500 shoes a month. He was giving
talks to entrepreneurs; the company itself was a case study in a few business schools. Copycats,
sniffing an opportunity, sprang up. Gajakas himself was stretched. "I was dealing with
customers, organising the pick-up and delivery of shoes from every nook and corner of Mumbai,
paying salaries, running an office, handling and overseeing a workshop, not to mention still
personally cleaning and repairing badly damaged shoes," he recalls. "I got into this business not
to make tonnes of money but to do something different. I had got to where I was because I had
innovated and now I was getting tied to a desk and worrying about the logistics of picking up
shoes from all over Mumbai," he says. Also, between 2003 and 2009, he hadn't taken a single
vacation.

The Franchise Solution

All this made him take a hard re-look at his business. "If we had to grow the business beyond
Mumbai or even beyond what we were doing, I had to do things differently," says Gajakas.
These realisations led to the establishment of Shoe Vival, the retail franchise of The Shoe
Laundry. The first franchise came up in Bhutan in 2010 and since then franchises have opened in
Bangalore, Surat, Indore, Gurgaon, Pune and Coimbatore.

"My biggest handicap is that I am the sole knowledge hub of processes and techniques of this
business. Plus, I don't have graduates being churned out in shoe-cleaning and repair technology
from any institute," says Gajakas. Those are the perils of starting a business that did not exist.

Gajakas spends a lot of time answering queries from people who are interested in starting a
franchise. Even though there are many enquiries, conversions are far less. "People are thrilled
about the idea and are all ready to start a franchise. Then they back off after a discussion with
their parents or wives, who don't like the idea of cleaning shoes for a living. It's a caste-related
perception," says Gajakas. For now, he says he is having "serious negotiations" with 10 people
who are willing to start a franchise. Enquiries have come in for franchises from the Philippines,
Uganda and Australia, says Gajakas.

What is his next big priority? Gajakas is seriously hunting for franchises in Mumbai, his home
turf. "It's among the biggest markets in the country," says Gajakas. He is also in advanced talks
with Shoe Service Institute of America, a trade association of the American shoe repair industry
for licensing a proprietary service he has developed, which will be marketed in the country.

Does Gajakas ever regret his decision to take the franchise route and work from home? "No," he
says. "I have the time and mind space to innovate with new techniques and processes now,
instead of struggling with the logistics of a day-to-day business. Plus, I get to eat lunch on time
something that I never did for years."

Canvera: IIT graduates' venture offers print
& e-commerce solutions to photographers
Story
Comments (4)

Read more on proof|Photographers|Oracle|Info Edge|IIT|Funding|ET Wealth
18
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Canvera.com, an online photography company, which provides mass customised printed
products and e-commerce solutions for professionals.
Oracle Financial Services Software Ltd.
BSE
2923.05

-12.15 (-0.41%)
NSE
2923.60

-7.40 (-0.25%)
Building a business venture from a hobby is a tried and tested route. So, given that I and my
business partner, Peeyush Rai, are passionate shutterbugs, it made sense to combine forces to
launch Canvera.com, an online photography company, which provides mass customised printed
products and e-commerce solutions for professionals.

Rai and I were together at IIT Bombay (1989-93), after which I left for my PhD in electrical
engineering from Purdue University, Indiana, USA. In 2000, after a few jobs in digital imaging, I
joined Shutterfly, a business-to-consumer online digital photography company, as an engineering
manager. Meanwhile, Rai began his career as a software engineer with Citicorp in Mumbai and
then moved to OracleBSE -0.41 % in the Silicon Valley, California. He returned to India in 2003
to head Centrata's India software development centre, followed by a stint at newScale. We both
shared a compatible work relationship and this is the reason I did not have to think twice when
he called me up in early 2006, suggesting a business partnership. By November that year, I was
shuttling between the US and India to hash out ideas and raise funds for our start-up. I joined Rai
in developing a business proposal, but at this point, the only thing we were sure about was that
we wanted to do something in photography. It helped that our spouses had steady jobs and we
had ample savings to fall back on.

For the next five months, we studied and analysed the Indian market. We thought of building a
business around camera phones, but as we couldn't come up with a viable business model, so we
didn't pursue it. Our research also showed that there were barely 3-4 million digital cameras in
the country, growing at 30-40% year-on-year. Professional photographers formed a key
component, with 50-60% of the revenue coming from weddings alonenot surprising since
India witnesses 12 million weddings annually. To make an extra buck, these photographers sold
photo-books to consumers, but this market was unorganised and offered a low quality output,
with the photo-books often coming apart in a year or two.

We finally decided to position ourselves as the only organised player offering print and design
services to professional photographers. A high-quality photo-book is not easy to produce on a
mass scale, but since I had worked at Shutterfly I understood the technology. Besides, we
realised that the end-consumer was willing to pay more for quality.

So, in February 2007, we registered the company as Canvera Digital Technologies and set up
shop at Rai's Bangalore residence. However, it wasn't till July 2007 that I quit my job to move
back to India. In the first month of operations, we started working with 10-15 photographers.
Looking back, it was easier to convince photographers to work with us for a charge than to woo
deep-pocket investors. However, we got lucky in November the same year, when we got our first
round of funding worth Rs 9 crore from angel investors like Footprint Ventures, Draper Fisher
Jurvetson and Mumbai Angels. This was a rare break because venture capitalists typically want
proof of concept and evaluate the execution of an operating model before parting with the
money.

This money was invested in setting up operationsbuilding
production facility, hiring a software engineering team and sales
organisation, and launching the business on a grand scale. We
started offering finished products, such as customised wedding
albums, photo-books, calendars and traditional photographic
prints, to the photographers working with us, and in March
2008, our website went live. In July, we participated in two
trade fairs in Hyderabad and Chennai, which helped boost sales,
and we managed to move into our first office in Bangalore a
month later. Before the end of September, we had opened three
more offices, in Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi, hiring 7-8
people for each office. We had 150 photographers wanting to
work with us by the end of the first year and our revenue was
Rs 1.6 crore.

By 2011, we had emerged as the leading name in the business.
Today, we are a 275-strong sales team meeting digital
photographers across 400 cities in India. Canvera currently has
offices in nine cities, including Chandigarh, Kolkata, Mumbai,
Lucknow and Jaipur. We also have the lowest attrition rate in the industry, across departments,
having lost only one person in five years. We have already collaborated with nearly 12,000
photographers since starting out, and 300-400 more are being added every month. Our current
annual revenue is Rs 21 crore, with Info EdgeBSE 0.33 % recently investing Rs 35 crore to help
us expand the business and increase spend on product R&D.

Our business development plans are aimed at beefing up the services. For Rs 12,000 a year, we
build a portfolio website, create a private, password-protected gallery, which can only be
accessed by the end-consumer commissioning the photo shoot, who can then select the pictures
he wants printed. The photographers too can set their prices for prints and sell the photographs
online through an integrated e-commerce platform. All this will be available on smartphones as
well as tablets. Though this service is already being offered under a close beta program, we are
looking at a complete rollout by April-June 2013.

We plan to open five more offices, beginning with Indore and Surat before year-end, and one in
Kochi by February 2013. We expect our employees to grow to 750-800 by March 2013, with the
next fiscal year likely to yield Rs 28 crore.
ThinkLABS: Two IIT graduates' start-up
uses robotics to make learning science easier
Story
Comments (7)

Read more on USA|Robotics|Indian Institute of Technology|Gaurav Chaturvedi|American
Society of Mechanical Engineers
67
inShare
<a target="_blank"
If you've read Five Point Someone by ChetanBhagat, you'd know that a six-pointer isn't
considered an academic whizkid in the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs). In fact, there is a
running joke among IITians that a six-pointer justifies his education by becoming an
entrepreneur. As a student of mechanical engineering at IIT Bombay (2000-4), my extra-
curricular activities, particularly in robotics, overshadowed the lack of academic excellence. I
was better in practicals than theory. So in my case, too, the campus was where the
entrepreneurial seed took root.

I participated in several national level competitions in robotics and was also part of the team
representing my college at a contest organised by the prestigious American Society of
Mechanical Engineers in New Orleans, USA, in May-June 2003.

We made a baseball testing machine, and though we didn't win
the competition, I learnt a lot. To begin with, I realised that robotics was not just a hobby in the
US. It was used as a project-based learning tool from the fourth grade in schools. They
implemented the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) approach to
learning, which meant putting classroom learning into practice for skill development. This is
when a business idea started buzzing in my head.

As soon as I returned home, I started conducting research on the Indian requirement for
implementing this concept in schools. By July 2003, I was hard at work trying to indigenously
develop a pedagogy that would enable children to learn science using the robotics technology.
However, family pressure to get a stable job did not allow me to explore the idea after
graduation. Instead, I joined Hindustan Petroleum's Mumbai refinery as a project engineer in
July 2004, but within a year, I was chaffing at the bit. Since I had no family responsibility, I felt I
was whiling away the only time I had to do something unconventional. So, in December 2005, I
quit my job, and with my father's support, began work on my idea.

In the next six months, I put together Rs 1.5 lakh from my savings, and asked some juniors from
IIT-B to help design a robotics kit. The content was centred on teaching the basics of mechanical
engineering to junior college students. They worked on weekends and I paid them a stipend of
Rs 5,000. By February 2006, we were ready with the finished product and organised a small
programme at the College of Engineering, Pune. I was expecting close to 20 sales, but managed
many more, making a profit of 20-30%. Buoyed by the success, I incorporated the company as
ThinkLABS Technosolutions in October.

Keen to replicate the Pune success, we started organising training programmes, tapping 10-15
colleges in tier II & III cities. This brought in close to Rs 10-15 lakh, which was re-invested in
product development. We made another kit, which was focused on learning electrical
engineering with robotics. One-and-a-half years later, when we needed to scale up the venture, I
approached the incubation cell at IIT-B and bagged a soft loan of Rs 10-12 lakh, along with
infrastructure.

It had also dawned on me that a door-to-door selling model can't be scaled easily. So I hired nine
people to convert my functioning business idea into a designated enterprise. Around this time,
Gaurav Chaturvedi, my batchmate at IIT-B, came on board as a co-founder. Prior to joining, he
had been working in a start-up called Rhizo Tech, but has been involved in sales and marketing
for us since 2006.

Recognising that we needed to develop a deeper engagement with school children, we started
approaching schools with career- and job-oriented course modules. In January 2008, we got the first
round of funding from SeedFund, which helped us push the dream. By the end of 2009, we had two
trainers for schools and 4-5 trainers for colleges. Today, we have 105 people dedicated to the task. In
many ways, 2009-10, was our first year of operations since we had neither made sufficient money to be
quoted nor was the accounting formalised. Our turnover that year was Rs 1 crore from eight schools and
two colleges. By the end of 2010, we doubled the figure.

We broke even last year in our operational costs, raking in Rs 5 crore in 2011-12. Today, we have 200
schools and 28 colleges in India as our clients, but this is a high traction space. In addition, we have 15
international schools in our kitty; three are in Saudi Arabia and the rest in Dubai.

In this financial year, we are expecting close to Rs 10 crore, of which we have already achieved Rs 8
crore. This helped us move into a rented office space at Powai, Mumbai, a couple of months ago. In the
next three years, we are hoping to hit the Rs 50 crore mark. In the near future, we plan to approach
government schools and the retail market with basic science experiment kits for children to help them
have fun with robotics.

(As told to Milan Sharma)

14 Jan, 2013, 08.00AM IST, Amit Kumar,ET Bureau
Under the Mango Tree: How Vijaya Pastalas
venture is eyeing Rs 60 lakh turnover by
selling honey
Story
Comments (14)

Read more on World Bank|Vijaya Pastala|UTMT|Under the Mango Tree|Touch|The
National|MIT
5
inShare
<a target="_blank"

The financial results have been rewarding too, and the company is eyeing a turnover of Rs 60
lakh this year.
It may take a moment to come up with a start-up idea, but it can take years to develop one into a
feasible venture. For Vijaya Pastala, her dream enterprise, Under the Mango Tree (UTMT), took
14 years to shape up.

After acquiring a post graduate degree in regional planning from the MIT, US, in 1993, Pastala
returned to India and stumbled upon the name for her future venture. She was helping in the
rehabilitation work at Latur, Maharashtra, after the devastating earthquake of 1993, and worked
in a makeshift office with a tin roof, which would become stifling. So, Pastala and her teammates
took refuge in the shade of a mango tree, and she decided that if she ever started a venture, this is
what she would call.

For the next 12 years, she worked as a development professionalprimarily on livelihood and
natural resource managementwith the likes of the World Bank, KfW Bankengruppe, European
Commission and the Aga Khan Foundation. When her son was born in 2003, she changed career
tracks. "I wanted to devote attention to him, so I moved from full-time employment to the role of
a consultant," says the 47-year-old. It was only towards the end of 2006 that Pastala started
thinking about starting her own enterprise. "It had to be related to agriculture as I had worked in
the area for a long time," she says.

It took Pastala about a year to zero in on exactly what she wanted to do. "The answer was
flowers as it has remained a relatively neglected area. It was while working on this concept that I
decided to deal with honey," she says.

According to her, the concept of honey is generic in India, where the packaging seldom specifies
the kind of honey being sold. "In a lot of markets, the makers inform about the type of honey,
such as litchi, mango, raspberry. The other kind is the one that is sourced from a particular
region," she explains. As Pastala was to discover, gourmet honey had not been very popular in
India. She figured that she could take a step to change things.

In January 2008, she registered her company as a proprietorship, while parallelly working on the
finer details, such as getting in touch with local self-help groups and NGOs to source honey from
various parts of the country. In December that year, armed with Rs 3 lakh as seed capital, UTMT
made its debut at the Upper Crafts exhibition in Mumbai. The capital mainly went into setting up
the website and purchasing the initial quota of honey.

The business model of the company is simple. The sourced honey is tested, certified, packaged and
labelled in a production plant on rented premises in an industrial area, in Mumbai. The packaged
products are sold online, delivered to over 100 shops in Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as to a lot of
B2B partners like Taj Hotels. In fact, this month, the company has tied up with Nature's Basket to supply
in the National Capital Region. Over the next few years, UTMT plans to have a pan-India presence.

The company turned into a private limited in June 2010 and employs 20 people. The annual purchase of
honey has risen from 500 kg in the first year to about 15,000 kg in this fiscal year. The financial results
have been rewarding too, and the company is eyeing a turnover of Rs 60 lakh this year.

How Swati Seth quit the corporate rat race
for her handicraft venture The Color
Caravan
Story
Comments (3)

Read more on Wipro|The Color Caravan|Swati Seth|startup|Retail|outh Delhi Polytechnic
College|Lucknow
27
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Swati eyeing a gross turnover of Rs 7 lakh this year. Next in line is the setting up of an online
store, which is likely to be unveiled by 2013.
Wipro Ltd.
BSE
398.85

2.90 (0.73%)
NSE
399.25

3.45 (0.87%)
It may have taken Swati Seth nine years and six jobs to figure out what she wanted to do, but it
has been worth the wait. The 34-year-old's labour of love is The Color Caravan, a Rs 7 lakh
handicraft business.

Seth, who graduated from the South Delhi Polytechnic College in 2001, started working with
interior designers and textile design houses in college itself. After graduation, she changed three
jobs in a couple of years. "I was never happy with the quality of work and knew I didn't want to
do this," says Seth. So she quit her job and travelled for a month. On her return, she worked for a
year with WiproBSE 0.73 % BPO in Delhi, and then came a five-year stint at Afaqs, a marketing
communications firm. It was at this point that Seth, an avid traveller, started to look at the
potential of working with handicrafts. "Nearly 2-3 years before setting up The Color Caravan, I
began collecting handicrafts, getting in touch with the craftsmen and NGOs for a possible
venture," says Seth.

Finally, in July 2010, she quit her job, and having already worked out the design aspect, she
focused on arranging the seed capital. After her bank loan application was rejected, Seth used her
savings and borrowed from her family to rake in Rs 2.5 lakh. She kept the operating expenses
low by working from home, and since she only kept product samples at homedeliveries were
made as per ordersSeth didn't have to invest in warehouse space either. Finally, in October,
Seth launched The Color Caravan with just a page on Facebook, followed by an exhibition in a
mall on Diwali. In fact, most of her seed capital went into showcasing her collection in
exhibitions, while her social media gambit paid off when she had bagged her first international
order from Australia within 24 hours of launching.

The business model was, and remains, simple. Seth puts up pictures of her products on the
Facebook page, which is also the medium for interested parties to contact her. She then reverts
with the product listbaby clothes, bamboo jewellery, cushion covers, etcand account details.
The prices range from Rs 200-4,000.
Of course, there have been challenges. Seth started supplying to retail stores in Delhi, Gurgaon and
Bangalore, but found that "the retailers were not pushing to sell the products and the unsold inventory
often came back in a bad shape. So I withdrew," she says. She has also cut down on the exhibitions as
they have become too expensive. From 6-7 exhibitions a year, she now participates only in 2-3. The
biggest learning, however, has been that merely sourcing products can't sustain the business. So, in
January 2011, she started making her own products, and today this brings in about 70% of her revenue.
Nine months later, her enterprise became a three-strong team, with one part-time employee.

Another milestone came in March 2012, when she shifted back to her hometown Lucknow due to
personal reasons. The business, nevertheless, continued to thrive. Today, she receives about 400 orders
a month on an average, and showcases the works of artists from over eight states. Though she pays
herself a modest salary of Rs 10,000 a month, the business is yet to break even. Earlier this year, she re-
tapped the retail route, tying up with stores in London and Dubai, and is eyeing a gross turnover of Rs 7
lakh this year. Next in line is the setting up of an online store, which is likely to be unveiled by 2013.

Power of Ideas 2012: How five startups &
their apps have captured the attention of the
Indian market
Story
Comments (2)

Read more on TWAANG|TABTOR|Startups|SHOPCIRCLE|Power of Ideas
2012|MUSIGURU|Mobile Telecommunications
33
inShare
<a target="_blank"

These days, there are mobile applications to service almost every need. ET profile five such apps
that have managed to capture the Indian markets attention recently.
Mobile Telecommunications Ltd.
BSE
3.47

0.03 (0.87%)
Ten-year-old Kavya MD attributes the significant improvement in her previously poor maths
scores to Tabtor, a locally-developed special education mobile application that works on the
Apple's iOS platform.

PrazAs, the firm behind Tabtor, is just one of the myriad start-ups looking to cash in on the
ongoing mobile boom, which has seen usage of mobile phones in India skyrocket to about 900
million, driven by a combination of an increasingly wealthy middle-class, low mobile billing
rates and the advent of affordable smartphones.

"Consumers in India are leapfrogging into mobile," says Ravi Gururaj, vice-president for cloud
platforms group at Citrix Systems. "Smartphones are very empowering." According to Subho
Ray, president of Internet and Mobile Association of India, the country is slated to become one
of the biggest players in the global app market by 2016, overtaking even mature markets like the
US.

"This is no surprise," says Ray, who expects the Indian mobile app market to be Rs 1,800 crore
at the end of this year, pointing out that conditions for the Indian market to become a leader have
improved. The Indian app market grew at over 22% last year.

App developers have adopted a twopronged strategy, which they feel will allow them to tap into
one of the largest consumer markets in the world as well as appeal to the global marketplace,
allowing them to monetise their product faster.

Rohith Bhat, whose startup Robosoft Technologies created
Camera Plusan app that enhances phone camera functions
expects the domestic market to generate a quarter of his
company's business over the next two years.

Robosoft's revenue for fiscal 2011-12 was about Rs 80 crore. The
company now gets 10% of its business from India. "We are tying
up with local brands to build the apps for them," Bhat said.

Vishal Gondal, managing director of d igital at DisneyUTV, says
that as it is now possible to publish apps on Apple, Nokia and
Google platforms "it gets downloaded from any part of the
world." ET profiles five such mobile apps, across sectors, which
captured the market's attention recently.

TABTOR

PrazAs, a startup founded by BITS Pilani and IIT alumni,
developed education-focused Tabtor, whose adaptive learning
software is being used by students of 14 schools in India and the
US. The company designed the app at its research and
development centres in Chennai and Bangalore. "We are as
excited as the children," says Sandhya Khandekar, who teaches
maths at GEAR Innovative International School, a school in
Bangalore that uses iPads to teach students.

"Even those who are not good at the subject are now finishing the
problems quickly." M Srinivasan, founder and chairman of
GEAR, said the app assists each student to learn at a comfortable
speed. "We are enabling everybody to climb their own mountain.
We don't want to force students to go on the same path and same
speed." The school now plans to customise the app further by
including other subjects like English and Science. PrazAs is
looking to monetise the app by creating customised versions. It
also plans to publish it on the Android platform.

SHOPCIRCLE

ShopCircle, developed by Bangalore-based data analytics startup
Activecubes, helps consumers find prices of products at brick-
and-mortar stores, making shopping easier. The app allows a
consumer to see all offers within a 10 km range. Rajesh Varrier,
CEO and co-founder of Activecubes, says consumers now do not
have to spend valuable time scouting for dealsit helps find
information and compare prices of the same product sold in
nearby retail locations. ShopCircle, which went live three weeks ago, has around 1,000 users in

India, according to Varrier. Activecubes aims to make money with the app by tying up with
retailers, advertisers and financial institutions. "The product details are on your fingertips and
you are not now dependent on the sales people," Varrier said.
JANA CARE

Jana Care, a startup founded by alumni of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard
Business School, helps diabetics. The Bangalorebased startup's app helps diabetics to check their
blood glucose levels and other health parameters by plugging in a sensoralso developed by
Jana Careto their mobile phones. This turns the phone into a cost-effective diagnostic device.
Sidhant Jena, an alumnus of Harvard Business School, co-founded the firm with Michal Depa, a
researcher at MIT. Tarun Khanna, a professor at Harvard Business School and Devi Prasad
Shetty, cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya, are advisors to the firm. The
company is planning to release their first product in early 2013, following clinical trials.
MUSIGURU

For today's overworked and constantly-on-the-move professionals, indulging passions is often a
pipe dream, given the demands of their jobs. It's a conundrum that MusiGuru wants to resolve.
MusiGuru, a mobile application launched by Bangalore-based startup Levitum Software
Systems, is a video-based learning platform, where Carnatic music is taught to users.

Built on the ubiquitous iOS platform, the app offers users the opportunity to learn music even
while mobile. "It's a storefront for musicians and teachers, who want to sell their content, as well
as build their brand," says co-founder Arvind Krishnaswamy.
The start-up, which has been bootstrapped by its founders so far, has worked out a revenue
sharing model with musicians on board their platform. There are also plans to tie up with various
music colleges to access their content. There has been no institutional funding so far. We may
look for it once the company grows to a certain size," says Krishnaswamy.

Started in late-2009, the founders were quick to take advantage of India's booming mobile
telecommunicationsBSE 0.87 % sector. The increasing penetration of smartphones in India has
also helped. "Smartphones have been a proven monetisation platform, and we decided to focus
on it in order to get an initial engagement with users," Krishnaswamy said.

TWAANG

Offering legal high-quality musical content is what differentiates Twaang from its peers,
according to the developers of the mobile app's developers. The online music library app
developed by Sound Ventures and launched in November this year, has tied up with close to 50
record labels and musicians to bring their music to listeners globally. "Twaang offers music that
is not readily available, but is in high demand. We use an advertising-focused model, and
revenue is shared with artistes," says Vishnu Raned, co-founder of Sound Ventures.

The app, which is free, allows users to access 75,000 songs, across 6,000 albums, featuring about
4,000 artistes. Next on the startup's agenda is to increase the number of songs to one lakh by the
end of the year. "We are planning to come out with a premium version of the app in 2013, which
will be subscription-based, but ad-free. Users can also listen to tracks even while offline," Raned
said. He expects Sound Ventures to post its first revenue by January, after which the founders
will look for institutional capital. "We are in talks with a number of brands. We will need
funding, since we are looking to build a team that will focus on design and user interface," he
said.

Power of ideas: Bangalore-based venture
Practo Technologies offers clinic management
software solutions
Story
Comments

Read more on united states|Shashank ND|Sequoia Capital|Practo Technologies|National
Institute of Technology|Clinic|Abhinav Lal
2
inShare
<a target="_blank"
It is often said that necessity fuels innovation.

Shashank ND, 25, made that fortuitous discovery
during a personal crisis, when he tried to obtain
electronic records of his father's medical reports.

Stymied by the lack of digital access to critical
records, the then-final year engineering
undergraduate student at National Institute of
Technology at Surathkal founded Practo
Technologies with fellow student Abhinav Lal.

"At the time, there were no facilities available to
a doctor to keep digital records of medical
reports, which in turn, could also be accessed by
patients. It was common to see doctors'
appointments get missed, wrong prescriptions
filled and reports going missing. Our plan was to
change the existing scenario as it was, through
technology," Shashank says.

The four-year old, Bangalore-based venture
offers clinic management software solutions to
medical practitioners, helping them to automate
appointments with patients, store healthcare
records, including x-rays, files, prescriptions and
billing.

The start-up's flagship product, Practo Ray, is a
software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool hosted online,
which helps doctors schedule appointments,
track a patient's medical records and send out
follow-up reminders to them.

According to Shashank, the software tool is used
by close to 10,000 doctors across the country, as
they look to streamline their practice by going
digital.

Practo's platform currently manages 10,000
appointments per day across 5,000 dental,
wellness and other healthcare centres across
India. It serves an estimated three million
patients, for whom the service is free.

"Doctors pay a monthly fee to utilise the services
provided by Practo Ray, but it goes a long way in solving their problems, and ensuring that their
patient records are free from any damage or loss," he says. It is a model that has gone on to
capture the attention of risk capital in India.

"All things start small. Practo started as a tool for doctors, but has now evolved into something
far bigger and with wider reach," says Shailendra Singh, managing director of Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia, with its investment focus on healthcare and consumer-facing businesses, found Practo
fitting in well in its portfolio.

In July earlier this year, the global venture capital firm invested Rs 25 crore in the start-up "It has
become a multi-dimensional communication platform for doctors and patients," Singh pointed
out.

The fact that Practo has managed to straddle three sectors - Healthcare, Consumer and
Information Technology - that have traditionally received a majority of private capital in India,
makes it a unique proposition for investors.

In India, markets evolve very differently than they do in the west. Practo could be defined as a
healthcare SaaS company, but it has also evolved into a consumer company," Singh says.

However, the co-founders prefer not to slot the venture into a particular slot. "Practo is, and will
always be, a patient-facing start-up. That was and remains the core philosophy of the company.
We cater to them using B-2-B software. But it is a B-2-C company," Shashank says.

Apart from Practo.com and Practo Ray, the company has also rolled out Practo Hello, a cloud-
based, smart logic software solution that allows patients to reach their doctors at any given point.
Users can find, connect and share details with their doctors through a dedicated online interface.

Also, by throwing open their application programming interface (API) for other healthcare
providers to build applications, Practo is positioning itself as a big-game player. The first
application built on this platform is a virtual receptionist that has already been bought by
hundreds of doctors. It can locate doctors at multiple clinics, make appointments and integrate
the patient records.

"The target is to have about one lakh doctors on the Practo platform by end-2013. We are
looking to be present across 25 to 30 cities soon," Shashank says.

The capital infusion from Sequoia earlier in the year is being used to expand its 80-member team
to around 350 and launch products in the US and Europe in next two years. "The second round of
funding is not on the immediate agenda. We might reassess sometime towards the end of the
next fiscal. We're quite well- capitalised for the moment," the co-founder says.

Given the critical need for quality healthcare and the corresponding lack of reach faced by
patients in the country, Practo's investors are hoping that the company sets a standard in ensuring
a greater connect between doctors and their patients. "We hope Practo helps define the standards,
over time, for India and other emerging markets," Singh says.

Startups that Clicked: Innovative ideas
which grew to outperform initial expectations
Story
Comments (3)

Read more on venture capital|TaskRabbit|Slice|San Francisco|Pittsburgh|Pinterest|Pawngo
3
inShare
<a target="_blank"
From personal image curating to social task-mastering, these seven companies generated plenty
of buzz in 2011, but are set to take the spotlight in 2012.
Pawngo: Launched in June, Pawngo is best described as an online pawn shop: users can put up
an item of value and receive relatively small loans. In less than six months, the Denver-based
startup has already loaned more than $2 million.

TaskRabbit: Founded in 2008, San Francisco-based TaskRabbit, an online task-for-pay
platform, is growing leaps and bounds. In early December, it received $17.8 million in series B
financing and plans to expand from five cities to 12 by next year.

BlackLocus: Ever wanted to keep a better eye on your competitors' pricing strategy?
BlackLocus, launched in 2010, is an online service which lets you do just that. In July, the
Pittsburgh-based startup got a $2.5 million equity investment by venture capital firm DFJ
Mercury.

Pinterest: Launched in 2010, this invite-only social discovery platform lets users connect
through the images, pages, recipes, and whatever else they find on the Internet. Think of it as a
personal online mood board. Though it has been around for over a year, it quadrupled its visitors
since August, going from 1 million to over 4 million now in just four months.

Slice: Slice is a free online service that organises users' online purchases. Still in beta, the service
has generated a good amount of press, with positive reviews. It has now announced a new 'Track
with Friends' feature, which lets users visually track gift packages.

Birchbox: Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp founded Birchbox, a $10-per-month subscription
service that sends beauty samples to members, last year. Less than a year old, Birchbox currently
has 45,000 users and 25 employees. The service has expanded to giving beauty advice, via their
blog.

Expensify: This online service that streamlines expense reports has raised over $6.7 million in
two investment rounds. Founded in 2008, the company today counts 90,000 organisations as
customers and 650,000 individuals. The firm has expanded the service to phone apps.
Source: Inc. magazine

Giveter.com: ex-IITians' start-up helps
people zero in on the perfect gift
Story
Comments (14)

Read more on savings|Mayank Bhangadia|Giveter.com|Gift ideas|Gift
59
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Mayank Bhangadia (left) and Avinash Saxena (right) with two other team members
Whoever said men are bad at coming up with gifting ideas haven't met Avinash Saxena and
Mayank Bhangadia. These two IIT-Delhi alumni (2006) have made it their mission to help
people zero in on the perfect gift, no matter what the occasion and age of recipient. With
Christmas and New Year around the corner, their labour of love, Giveter.com, just might be the
e-solution to your gifting dilemmas. "We started this portal due to the problems we faced and
because the concept of gifting has great potential in India. We wanted to make the idea of
'giving' bigger than 'gifting', hence the name Giveter," says 29-year-old Bhangadia.

The duo conceived the idea in January 2012, when Bhangadia was working with Schlumberger
Asia Services, an oil field service company, as a management consultant. Saxena, on the other
hand, was the chief technical officer at Zomato.com, a restaurant review platform. Both quit their
jobs towards the end of May 2012 and launched Giveter two months later.

Here's how it works: visit the site, select details from the available dropboxes for the age and
relationship with the person, the occasion, then hit go and you will be bombarded with
suggestions. You can refine the results through filters like price and personality of the recipient,
which means you'll get different gift suggestions for a homely friend, the practical pal or the
creative co-worker.

The first thing that the co-founders did was to register their company as Relevant E-solutions.
Armed with a seed capital of Rs 40 lakh, taken from their savings as well as from the families,
they moved into a rented office space in Gurgaon. They started with five employees, as well as
the designing of their website, in July 2012. While they did consider building their own
inventory at the time, the idea was dropped due to the high costs. Instead, they chose to build
collaborations with various e-commerce sites, such as Ferns N Petals, Flipkart, Watchkart,
Bagskart, Zanzaar, FirstCry, FabFurnish, CountryFlora and Rangiru. This decision worked out to
their advantage since their only operational costs are salaries, realty expenses, and coffeethe
team needs a caffeine count of 900 mg a day to handle the 20,000 hits the portals gets daily.

The start-up is also betting big on the social media, which fuels its popularity. Says 28-year-old
Saxena: "Gifting is also a social experience. Hence, we have recently tied up with Facebook."
Once you log in via your Facebook account, Giveter will ask you to select a recipient from your
contact list. It will then automatically establish the age and relationship, track hobbies and likes
to determine the area of interests, and find a suitable gift.

Currently, the business, with 10 employees, is generating a daily revenue of Rs 1 lakh, but they
are yet to break even. This is the reason both Saxena and Bhangadia haven't started taking
salaries. Next on the cards is going for venture funding for business expansion and tying up with
international sites. As for the growing competition in the e-services space, Bhangadia quips, "We
are competing with Google, but only in the gift search category."

Power of Ideas 2012: How Delhi-NCR,
Mumbai, Pune, Chennai are catching up to
startup culture
Story
Comments (3)

Read more on Wipro|venture capital|the rest|The National|Strides|spread|Silk
27
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Bangalore has consistently emerged as the best place to launch and nurture startups in the
country. Access to a deep talent pool and risk capital has helped the city catapult to the top.
Wipro Ltd.
BSE
398.85

2.90 (0.73%)
NSE
399.25

3.45 (0.87%)
Bangalore has consistently emerged as the best place to launch and nurture startups in the
country. Access to a deep talent pool and risk capital has helped the city catapult to the top. But
Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad are catching up, finds Team ET.

BANGALORE

Bangalore's rise as the preferred destination for technology start-ups took off more than 70 years
ago when the foundation stone of a Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd engineering facility was laid in
the city. The abundance of engineering talent, ecosystem of academia, multinationals and a
professional class of managers has led to greater socio-cultural acceptance for high-tech
entrepreneurship. This has helped the city leapfrog over more established commercial centres
such as Delhi and Mumbai.

Technology and tech-focused startups dominate the city's entrepreneurial landscape and have had
a positive impact on other sectors like education, healthcare, renewable energy and life sciences.
This upward spiral has come despite the city's creaking infrastructure and lack of sustained
government support and is likely to catapult the city as one of the top-5 destinations globally for
startups in the coming decade, say industry experts.

Leading startups: Flipkart, InMobi, redBus, Myntra Leading investors: Sequoia Capital. Accel
Partners, Helion Venture Partners, New Silk Route, Seedfund Top sectors: e-commerce,
technology and technology services and education services

Forecast: The expectation is that Bangalore will be the first Indian city to rank amongst the top-
5 global startup destinations, driven largely by its brand, cultural and financial proximity to
Silicon Valley and education infrastructure. However, what is required are greater government
and regulatory support to foster entrepreneurship.

Amount of capital raised in FY 2012 (YTD): $131 million

39 deals

CHENNAI

Paying less for talent, space and living costs is what makes Chennai attractive to entre preneurs.
Over 500 engineering colleges in the state provide a steady stream of new hires, while major
anufacturing and automobile companies provide a customer base for enterprise-tech ventures.
Startups, however, suffer from a paucity of networking events and risk capital. It also suffers
from frequent power cuts.

Leading startups: Bharat Matrimony, Perfint Technologies, Freshdesk, OrangeScape,
ChargeBee, Shopo Leading investors: Chennai Angels, VenturEast

Top sectors: Enterprise technology for auto, healthcare, retail, shipping and freight
management; healthcare, education.

Forecast: Risk capital is getting easier to access, as global funds like Accel and Nexus invest in
city-based startups. This bodes well for Chennai.

$36 million: Amount of capital raised in FY 2012 (YTD)

9 Deals

HYDERABAD

In the last three years, capital for young startups has risen dramatically, though it is not as
abundant as in mature markets like Bangalore. Outreach and networking has picked up due to the
presence of the Indian School of Business and International Institute of Information Technology.

Leading startups: Edutor Technologies, Gharpay, Mojostreet, TalentSprint, Apalya
Technologies Leading investors: Hyderabad Angels, VenturEast.

Top sectors: Education, enterprise software and mobility, IT Services, pharma and bio-techBSE
0.00 %.

Forecast: City-based incubators and accelerators set to kickstart growth that could catapult the
city to the number two spot.


8 deals

MUMBAI

The inherent entrepreneurial culture, coupled with the availability of risk capital, has made the city an
ideal location for startups. Startups here focus on finance, retail and consumercentric businesses that
address a local customer base and also gain from access to a wide pool of mentors. Dampeners are high
cost and lack of engineering talent.

Leading startups: Pubmatic, Netmagic, Suvidhaa, CarWale, Games2Win, FreeCharge, Goli Vadapav,
MyDentist, Ola Cabs, Meter Down.

Leading investors: Mumbai Angels, Kae Capital, Blume Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia
Capital, IDG Ventures, MyFirstCheque, Seedfund, Matrix Partners.

Top sectors: Retail, F&B, finances Forecast: Poor infra and high costs are stopping Mumbai from having
India's best startup ecosystem. This is unlikely to change dramatically in the near future.


28 deals

DELHI-NCR

The closest competitor to Bangalore, the region wins due to superior infrastructure and lower costs.
Startups in education, IT, manufacturing, retail and healthcare have chosen NCR due to easy access to
capital, customers and talent. The city has also seen the emergence of online retailers because of access
to warehouses, network of distributors and good transport infrastructure.

Leading startups: Snapdeal, Yebhi, Akosha, Reverse Logistics Co, Mettl.

Leading investors: Indian Angel Network, SAIF Partners, Canaan Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Top sectors: Retail, education, technology, manufacturing and healthcare.

Forecast: With startup and networking activity picking up, Delhi-NCR can become the top hub in the
country. Cheaper power, better infrastructure and security are needed to drive growth.


29 deals

PUNE

Away from the shadow of Mumbai, the city is mounting a credible challenge to Bangalore. Pune has a
ready pool of high-quality technology talent and access to capital and market. However, critics say
entrepreneurs focus on technology-focused start-ups. Poor infrastructure and power supply are other
disadvantages.

Leading startups: Dhruva Software, Faaso's, Shopsocially, ReliScore, Social Web Factory, Quick Heal,
Persistent SystemsBSE -1.54 %.

Top sectors: Technology and engineering.

Forecast: It is Pune's infrastructure that is holding the city back. Otherwise it can become the primary
technology startup hub.


9 Deals

(Data source: Venture Intelligence)

IIM graduates' environment-friendly
detergent Krya averages sales of Rs 1 lakh a
month
Story
Comments (55)

Read more on Organic|Krya|IIM|fmcg|ET Wealth|detergent
106
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Meet Chennai-based spouses-turned-business partners, who opted out of the corporate rat race
one sure idea: to work on an environment-related concept.
There's nothing new about people leaving lucrative MNC jobs to start their own ventures, but
how many are enterprising enough to quit without knowing what they want to do or how to go
about it? Meet Chennai-based Preethi Sukumaran and Srinivas Krishnaswamy, spouses-turned-
business partners, who opted out of the corporate rat race on the same day, 31 January 2009, with
one sure idea: to work on an environment-related concept.

"After graduating from IIM in 2001, we both worked in various FMCG MNCs for eight years.
So, we were confident about brand building, marketing and handling the venture, but weren't
sure about the product itself," says Krishnaswamy, who graduated from IIM-Bangalore, while
his wife is from IIM-Calcutta. So, the couple, who got married in 2003, decided to see the world
while waiting for inspiration to strike. Indeed, it was during their year-long travel across India
and Europe that they figured out how to integrate their personal quest of sustainable urban living
with a business venture. The solution was to create a basket of sustainable, organic goodies. On
returning home in 2010, the duo researched the market for organic products, and zeroed in on
organic washing detergent as their first product. "In 2009, we had started using soapberries for
washing our clothes and realised that not only were they environment-friendly compared with
the usual detergents, but were equally, if not more, effective," says Sukumaran.

Within the organic product universe, the humble detergent had remained on the sidelines despite
contributing heavily to soil and water pollution. "Till that time, the players in this market were
small and unorganised, so we decided to launch organic washing detergent," she adds. In May
2010, they finally figured on a name, Krya, meaning mindful action, and by October 2010, the
company had been registered.

The couple did not set up the venture in the traditional way, that is, first launching and then
promoting it. In fact, they did the reverse. "After registering our company, while we were
looking at sourcing our product, working on the website design and other back-end issues, we
started a Facebook page and a blog. Over the next six months, we interacted online with a lot of
people, telling them what we were planning to do and how we were going about it," says
Sukumaran.

Before long, the couple got an active Net community. They also finalised the soapberries they
wanted to use and struck a deal with an organic farm near Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. "The latter
would process and manufacture the product and send it to our office in Chennai," she adds. By
the time the product was launched in May 2011, Krya had built a potential customer base
without spending muchRs 6 lakh for the entire process, from idea inception and registering the
company to renting a 250-sq-ft office space at Mylapore, Chennai, and launching the product.

Currently, the business is averaging sales of about Rs 1 lakh a month. A more encouraging sign
has been the re-trials and recommendations from their customers. "As of now, we not only sell
the product, but also offer after-sales service. As more people use it, the awareness will
increase," she adds.

They are now working on product packaging, keen to source vegetable ink for printing the brand
name and launch other products like dishwashing soap, in January 2013, followed by skincare
products in 2014. The company expects to break even by the end of the financial year, which
hopefully, will allow the founders to finally start taking home a salary.

12 Nov, 2012, 08.00AM IST, Milan Sharma,ET Bureau
How four avid bloggers from Chennai made
IndiBlogger into a Rs 1 crore venture
Story
Comments (12)

Read more on Vineet Rajan|Renie Ravin|Karthik DR|IndiBlogger|Fiat
5
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Offering an interface between companies and clients, IndiBlogger has grown to a Rs 1 crore
venture.
Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.
BSE
897.30

-1.90 (-0.21%)
NSE
897.95

-2.85 (-0.32%)
For most people, blogging serves as a good pastime, a forum to air or read views and opinions.
However, for four yuppies from Chennai, harnessing the power of blogs has proved to be a
money-minting venturea Rs 1 crore business, to be precise. "We were all avid bloggers and
saw the potential early, so we based our business idea on it," says 33-year-old Renie Ravin,
managing director of IndiBlogger.

Launched in August 2007, IndiBlogger.in started as a free blogging platform for Indians.
However, the foundersRenie Ravin, Karthik DR, Vineet Rajan and Anoop Johnsonhad a
bigger game plan: to mobilise the blogosphere, a nascent field at the time, so that companies and
brands could engage with their customers. The idea was conceptualised by the founders (barring
Rajan), all in their 20s, at a party in early August 2007. At the time, Karthik and Johnson were
selling security solutions for Ostsold Software, and Ravinalso Johnson's childhood friend
was working as a Web architect for Broadspire, a software company, in Chennai. Convinced that
they were on to a good thing, the trio quit their respective jobs shortly afterwards and focused on
their start-up. Rajan left his account manager's job with Hewlett Packard, Hyderabad, to join
IndiBlogger after a bloggers' meet in Pune, in March 2008.

Luckily for the founders, they found an angel investor in their friend Nitin Bindal, who chipped
in with the seed capital of Rs 32 lakh. The money was spent on building infrastructure and
marketing. "Since we are based in different cities, conference calls remain one of the biggest cost
centres for us," says Ravin, who is based in Chennai. Johnson, director of marketing, lives in
Bangalore, Delhi-based Karthik is director, finance, and Rajan, director, pre-sales and
consulting, lives in Mumbai.

Here's how IndiBlogger works: Registering one's blog is free of charge, but members must
publish at least five blog posts to continue to be a part of the community. The company's eight-
strong team handles support and moderation from Chennai and Bangalore. The revenue comes
from connecting brands and bloggers via unique blogging contests and meets, which are
organised periodically across the country. The idea stems from the fact that brands see value in
connecting with bloggers, who can influence the purchase decisions of their peer groups. In fact,
a Neilsen report, Global Trust in Advertising Survey 2011, shows that less than a third of
Netizens trust advertisements, while 92% have faith in peer and word-of-mouth
recommendations.

Initially, the company survived on the angel money, with the founders trying to contact the companies
that were into digital initiatives and address their needs through brand engagement events. "The
challenging part was to convince them of the value we provided," says Ravin. February 2008 was a
milestone year, with Microsoft sponsoring their first bloggers' meet in Bangalore. Of the 57 bloggers
who registered, 50 showed up. The income generated kept them afloat till more work came pouring in.
In the first year of operations, the company generated a turnover of Rs 40 lakh, but the founders did not
take a salary for the first couple of years, managing on their personal savings.

In March 2009, they managed to rope in their first independent client, a local radio station in Bangalore.
Today, their clients include Lakme, Castrol, Apollo Hospitals, Mahindra & Mahindra, Cleartrip, Vodafone,
Dove, Samsung, Surf Excel and Fiat, to name a few. IndiBlogger has held 61 blogger meets across the
country, and in September this year, they held their first international bloggers' event in New York. No
wonder they are confident of earning a turnover of Rs 4.5 crore by the next fiscal.

23 Nov, 2012, 10.14AM IST, Peerzada Abrar,ET Bureau
Power of ideas: How to turn an idea into a
product in two days
Story
Comments (19)

Read more on Startups|Startup Centre|prototype|Power of Ideas|Microsoft|Indian School of
Business|Google
47
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Technology contests that challenge aspirants to turn an idea into prototype in less than two days,
are drawing young engineers in droves
A new wave of technology events, such as in 50hrs and Startup Weekend, are proving to be a
hotbed for budding entrepreneurs to share ideas, create new ventures and even find financial
backers, writes ET.

Despite being the most recent addition to India's crowded startup calendar, technology contests
that challenge aspirants to turn an idea into prototype in less than two days, are drawing young
engineers in droves.

Modelled after similar events in the US, these competitive gatherings have spurred the launch of
over a dozen new start-ups in less than a year.

Mentored by experts, these fledgling ventures are being snapped up by accelerators, investors
and incubators, creating a steady pipeline of new technology ventures, as in the case of a young
team of engineers from the coastal city of Mangalore.

As rookie graduates, friends Jazeel Badur Ferry (23), Mohammed Saud Bakhar (23) and Nazim
Zeeshan (23) found jobs at a BPO firm, while they scouted around for better opportunities. In
June 2011, they stumbled upon an entrepreneurial contest to build a prototype of a technology
product in less than 50 hours.

At the event, the team of three built a product called Eventifier, which stitches together photos,
videos, slides, tweets and conversation spread across the web from a single event. The utilitarian
product has now bagged 20 customers spread across the US and Europe. The fledgling startup
has also been picked by The Startup Centre, a Chennai-based accelerator, and received seed
funding.

For aspiring technology entrepreneurs, these structured programmes are proving to be a surefire
way of turning ideas into businesses.

"Most of the participants at these events are around 25 years and say, 'what do I lose, if I spend
two years on my own startup'," says Ramesh Loganathan, vice-president (products) at Progress
Software, who is one of the mentors at Startup Weekend events.

Beginning with open pitches on a Friday, attendees bring their best ideas and inspire others to
join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday, the teams focus on customer development, validating
their ideas. On Sunday evening, teams demo their prototypes and receive feedback from a panel
of experts. "It is amazing to see many launch startups after the event. Others who could not, join
these new ventures," says Loganathan

PEER VALIDATION

One such startup, Carrot Mobiles, built its first product, a mobile app, within 50 hours at a
Startup Weekend event. "Happy Hourss" helps locate the nearest bars, pubs, and exclusive deals
on drinks.

Founder Kiran Chowdary, 31, a mechanical engineer from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological
University, Hyderabad, attended the event scouting for inspiration to float a second
entrepreneurial venture. His first, an education company was sold to competitors below cost.

After winning the competition, Chowdary's startup has bagged around 60 pubs and bars as
partners. And now, in a bid to go global, the Hyderabad-based firm has applied for admission to
the Chilean accelerator programme Start-Up Chile, which he hopes will provide an entry into the
Latin American market.

ADVANTAGE OF NETWORKS

Similarly, at another Startup Weekend gathering in Delhi, Bhavesh Dhupar (28), an engineer from
Meerut University, met Sameer Guglani, co-founder of The Morpheus, a Chandigarh-based accelerator,
who decided to mentor the team.

Dhupar's team developed a product Kinesis.io at the event, which allows users to operate consumer
devices with body gestures. For instance, during a surgery, doctors can use gestures to operate imaging
devices without having to waste a lot of precious time sanitising their hands. Other applications include
allowing kids to use gestures to interact with cartoon characters in a virtual world.

Guglani of Morpheus says regular networking events do not add much value for entrepreneurs, "Events
like Startup Weekend and In 50 hrs are more practical and result-oriented. The regular networking
events are more about giving lectures," says Guglani, whose firm is backing 56 startups.

FUNDING BOOST

Deobrat Singh (28), who attended a Startup Weekend session last year, met a host of investors such as
Paul Singh, partner at 500 Startups, a USbased seed fund and startup accelerator.

Deobrat Singh's venture gazeMetrix, which was built at the event, has received a total funding of around
$140,000 from 500 Startups and other angel investors.

An engineer from the University of Mumbai, Singh earlier worked at technology majors HCL and
Microsoft, but always wanted to do something on his own. At the Startup Weekend, Singh and his team
of co-founders-Saurabh Paruthi and Debayan Banerjee-dabbled with building a mobile payment
product, but did not receive much attention.

They persevered by attending a second event in the next month, where Paul Singh was assigned as a
mentor. "We did not sleep for three days, as we had to change the product at the last moment before
the demo," says Singh.

Using proprietary computer vision and machine learning algorithms, gazeMetrix now analyses 12 million
pictures per day from social media to identify brand metrics for over 20 advertising agencies.

"Regular business plan competitions make no sense for technology product firms, as technology keeps
changing every six months," says Vijay Anand, founder, The Startup Centre.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Sachin Gupta was 22 when he graduated in computer science from IIT-Roorkee and was hired by
Google. But within three months, the young engineer quit his job to pursue his dream of
entrepreneurship.

Along with another IITian Vivek Prakash, he launched his own venture HackerEarth after building a
product at StartupWeekend in August.

"I could not even dream of building my own product while working in a large company," says Gupta,
whose parents were initially sceptical about his decision, but later supported him.

Gupta's startup HackerEarth enables companies to hire programmers by putting up online programming
tests across several programming languages and platforms. The firm has been selected by GSF
Accelerator, which has invested around $30,000 in the venture.

How Manju Agarwal turned her gift
packaging venture 'Nimantran' into a Rs 75
lakh business
Story
Comments

Read more on Nimantran|money making venture|Manju Agarwal|gift packaging|ET Wealth
24
inShare
<a target="_blank"

The homemaker had a knack for designing at weddings, so she started making invitation cards
and planning dcor from the handmade paper her husband exported.
When Manju Agarwal claims she loves the big, fat Indian weddings, she's not talking of her
fascination for glamour and bling. It's the bloated business potential that Agarwal is drawn to
the planning segment is worth Rs 1.59 lakh crore, of which gift packaging for special occasions
accounts for 2% of the pie.

It was the burgeoning trend for customised and premium packaginga vertical growing at the
rate of 25% annuallythat spurred her to start her venture, Nimantran, in 2006. Besides the
weddings, Agarwal wanted to tap into other occasions, such as birthdays and baby showers, and
created a one-stop shop for invites, packaging and accessories. Think marble or glass boxes, potli
bags, gold and silver coin boxes, trousseau boxes, sweet boxes, as well as invites and pouches
fabricated from eco-friendly, handmade paper entwined with fabrics. Today, Nimantran is a Rs
75 lakh business.

A commerce graduate from SNDT College, Mumbai, Agarwal married into a Marwari family in
1984. Her husband's company exported paper and printing products, but starting her own
business was never on the cards. However, the homemaker had a knack for designing at
weddings, so she started making invitation cards and planning decor from the handmade paper
her husband exported. "I thought this paper could be used for more than just commercial and
industrial purposes. The challenge was to make this coarse and eco-friendly raw material look
attractive and classy by deploying my skills," says the 49-year-old Agarwal.

Finally, in August 2006, she decided to turn her hobby into a viable business. To begin with, she
drummed out Rs 2 lakh from her savings and set up shop in her family's vacant workshop at
Patel Nagar, west Delhi. Along with a team of four, she started creating and marketing her
products among family and friends. However, she was not satisfied with the limited scale of
operations and, so, towards the beginning of 2007, she displayed her designs at a wedding
exhibition, Vivah, which was held at The Taj Palace Hotel, Delhi. This was a turning point for
Nimantran since clients started pouring in, the first being an event manager from Bangkok, who
wanted to source traditional Indian items.

By March 2007, Agarwal and her team moved into a rented office-cum-showroom at Naraina,
which went on to become her first store in the capital, in August 2011. Nimantran's turnover in
the first year of operations was Rs 3.5 lakh, and she broke even in 2009.

In a span of six years, Agarwal's customer base has grown to 600, and now includes big names,
such as the Jindals, the Dhoots and the Katarias. Her charges vary according to the client's needs,
but the broad price slabs for a wedding card and gift box set are Rs 450-950, Rs 1,000-4,000 and
Rs 4,100-15,000. Not surprisingly, there were technical glitches along the way. "We were using
marble and glass to make wedding boxes for a client. We did not give the adhesive ample time to
dry, so as soon as the boxes reached the client, they started coming apart. I had to send a team of
four to fix it," she remembers.

Nimantran today has 30 employees, with the second store at Pitampura, Delhi, having opened
just days ago. Plans are afoot to open two more stores in Delhi in the next 18 months. Agarwal is
investing close to Rs 25 lakh to give shape to her expansion plans. Currently, 55% of
Nimantran's revenue comes from the customised services, while 45% is from retail. Since July
2012, Agarwal's son, Rachit, has been helping her expand the business, and the duo is eyeing a
turnover of Rs 1.27 crore in the next fiscal year.
8 Oct, 2012, 08.00AM IST, Milan Sharma,ET Bureau
How Asher brothers expanded their start-up
'Tonic Media' to a Rs 2.75 crore venture
Story
Comments

Read more on Tonic Media|Skoda|search engine optimisation|savings|Samir Asher|National
Open School in Mumbai
0
inShare
<a target="_blank"

Chetan (left) and Samir Asher
When Mumbai-based brothers Samir and Chetan Asher launched Tonic Media, a digital media
agency, in 2007, the plan was to tap the nascent media space. They not only cut the mustard in a
quickly saturating market, but in the past five years, have managed to service over 200 clients
across 18 countries.

The duo's backgrounds fuelled their entrepreneurial ambition. Chetan, 32, a bachelor in
commerce from Mumbai University, spent nearly five years with EnableM.com, the company
that ran Indbazaar.com (disbanded two years ago).

He joined as a content writer fresh out of college in April 1999, but in 2001, he learnt about
digital media solutions, when his firm was forced to diversify into it, courtesy the dotcom bust.
He quit EnableM in 2004 and took up a job with the mobile and telecom division of
Indiatimes.com.

Around this time, 30-year-old Samir was in the middle of a two-year course in economics and
arts from the National Open School in Mumbai. In June 2005, he joined as an independent
consultant for search engine optimisation (SEO).

The brothers' jobs made them realise the need for a specialist digital media agency, which could
serve as an antidotehence, the name Tonicto a brand's struggles of connecting with
consumers.

To take their idea to the next level, Samir quit his job in 2006 and joined hands with his brother.
The rest of the year went in researching and syndicating Samir's SEO marketing list of clients.
The duo finally registered as co-founders in August 2007.

Starting with a seed capital of Rs1.5 lakh, drummed out of their savings, the Ashers set up shop
in a rented office at Malad, Mumbai, after four months of working from home.

Says Chetan: "The biggest challenge was to find the right manpower." Through it all, there was a
client waiting for resultseven before its launch Tonic Media bagged a UK-based client
requiring SEO.

Three months on, they were on a roll, and with the client base beginning to swell, they hired four
people. By April 2008, the firm had broken even and had a profit margin of 15-20% by the end
of the first year.

The brothers ploughed back every paisa into the business, a move that paid off during the
recession. Says Chetan: "The recession made many companies realise how important the digital
media space was since it is cheaper than other mediums."

By the end of 2009, the Ashers were backed by a 24-strong team. "We don't micro-manage our
team; everyone is independent in their own way. That is essentially what a start-up needs; not
employees, but self-motivated entrepreneurs," explains Chetan.

The 46-strong Tonic Media team has been divided into divisions, each handling a separate work stream.
So Right Copywriter develops search-engine content for websites, and Guide Five handles web
marketing. The company has recently launched a new branch called Tonic Buzzthe first social media
dedicated agency in India.

The start-up boasts a long list of clients, including FedEx, Titan, Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri, Skoda,
Castrol GTX, Reliance Telecom, Kerala Tourism, Baskin Robbins and Kellogg's Cornflakes India.

In August-September 2012, it managed a footprint in Dubai too. The Asher brothers raked in a turnover
of Rs2.75 crore in 2011-12, and expect to grow at a profit rate of 30% in the next fiscal.

Businessman Story From Economic Times

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Businessman Story From Economic Times

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Lalita de Goederen turned Bagel cafe

into Rs 2.5 crore business in the NCR

You might also like