#32 - MAY 2010 by CyberMedia (I) Ltd

MAY 2010

Reliance SME Loans are smart because they give you the flexibility to tailor your repayment schedule to suit your individual needs.

75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON

a loan that bends itself for your business needs.

You can pick a step-up plan – i.e. gradually increasing EMIs. You can choose a step-down plan – i.e. gradually decreasing EMIs. You can opt for a Bullet Payment – a lumpsum payment as the final EMI to close the loan. You can go for a Balloon Payment – which allows you to make a larger-than-usual EMI payment in a month when business is particularly good. Don’t just live big, live smart.

200 3838 (toll free) VOLUME 3 ISSUE 08

*sms charges as applicable. All loans will be at the sole discretion of the company. Conditions apply. www.relianceconsumerfinance.com

entrepreneur of the month/

R S Agarwal, Emami Group columns/ Willing Suspension of Disbelief

For more details sms SMEF to 55454* or call 1800

/Rs 30

Vol 3 / Issue 08 / May 10

DL(S)-17/3314/2008-09-2010 DARE

RNI No.DELENG/2007/22197. Posting Date: 5th & 6th of every month. Posted at Lodi Road HPO.

Can Entrepreneurship be Taught in a Classroom? The Startup named Venture Capital business exchange/ 92 pages including cover

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BOARD OF ADVISORS C K Prahalad

University of Michigan

N R Narayanamurthy

Chief Mentor, Infosys

Kanwal Rekhi

20 cover story

Chairman, TiE

Romesh Wadhwani Chairman & President, Wadhwani Foundation Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande

Chairman, Sycamore Networks

Saurabh Srivastava Chairman, Indian Venture Capital Association Kiran Mazumdar Shaw R Gopalakrishnan

Chairman & MD, Biocon Executive Director, Tata Sons

Philip Anderson

Professor of Entrepreneurship, INSEAD

Shyam Malhotra Editor-in-Chief Abraham Mathew President Krishna Kumar Group Editor ANALYSTS Abhishek Chanda Aman Malik Binesh Kutty Nimesh Sharma Shivani Singh Vimarsh Bajpai OPERATIONS Ajay Dhoundiyal Product Manager Prasanna Srivastava Product Manager VIjay Rana Design Anil John Photography SALES & MA Jaideep Mario Gabriel Ankur Kalia Abhinav Trivedi Baijau Abraham Kingshuk Sircar

MARKETING Associate VP West North North South South-East Asia

PRINT & CIRCULATION SERVICES Rachna Garga VP T Srirengan GM, Print Services Sudhir Arora Senior Manager Circulation Pooja Bharadwaj Assistant Manager, Subscriptions Sarita Shridhar Assistant Manager, Reader Service Printed and published by Pradeep Gupta. Owner, CyberMedia (India) Ltd. Printed at International Print-O-Pack Limited, B-204-206, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase 1, New Delhi-20 Published from D-74, Panchsheel Enclave, New Delhi-17. Editor: Krishna Kumar. Distributors in India: Mirchandani & Co., Mumbai. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission.

Startups you can bet on

BANGALORE 205, 2nd Floor, # 73, Shree Complex, St.Johns Road, Tel: 43412333 CHENNAI 5B, 6th Floor, Gemini Parsn Apts, 599 Mount Road, Tel: 28221712 KOLKATA 23/54, Gariahat Road, Ground Floor, Near South City College, Tel: 65250117 MUMBAI Road No 16, D 7/1 MIDC, Andheri (East) Tel: 42082222 DELHI D-74 Panchsheel Enclave Tel: 41751234 PUNE Flat No. 9, F Block, Popular Heights 3 Koregaon Park Tel: 65000996 SECUNDERABAD #5,6 1st Floor, Srinath Commercial Complex, SD Road. Tel: 27841970 SINGAPORE 1, North Bridge Road, # 14-03 High Street Center Tel: +65-63369142 CORPORATE OFFICE Cyber House, B-35, Sec 32, Gurgaon, NCR Delhi-122001 Tel: 0124-4822222, Fax: 2380694

92 pages including cover 4

MAY 2010 | CONTENTS | DARE.CO.IN

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DARE.CO.IN

73 interview

Harish Bijoor

columns

Consults Inc.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief 18 Can Entrepreneurship be Taught in a Classroom? 35

Bijoor speaks about brand and business strategy

The Startup named Venture Capital 78

events

82 strategy Setting up stem cell banks

C V Nerikar of Cryobanks speaks about how entrepreneurs can setup stem cell banks

others Feedback 8 Exchange 12

Clean Technology takes Headstart Startup Saturday by Storm 74

nen Triggering a Grassroots Revolution 88

42 entrepreneur of the month R S Agarwal Emami Group

indexs Organizations 84 People 85

Agarwal shares his insights about his business empire. DARE.CO.IN | CONTENTS | MAY 2010 5

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NOVEMBER 2009 | COLOMN | DARE.CO.IN

Editor Note May10.indd 6

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blogs/edit

So long, farewell to you and you and you

ou are holding the 32nd issue of DARE in your hands. It took more than a year of work for us to get the first issue out. So, in total, that is almost 45 months for me with the concept of a platform for encouraging and showcasing entrepreneurship. That is a long time for me to be associated with any single project. In short, it is time for me to move on, to other challenges. I will continue to be associated with the area of entrepreneurship, starting off a new business within CyberMedia of consultancy around entrepreneurship. Immediately on my agenda is a longterm project of working with several business incubators in the country, to improve their performance and output. I will also be indulging in my other passion - online technology and communities; leading the rollout of a new generation web platform for CyberMedia's web properties. The last 45 months have been quite eventful by any standards. We saw the global economy at the pinnacle, and we witnessed the steep fall and are now watching the resurgence of a new dawn. We saw entrepreneurship go from being a fringe topic to becoming mainstream in almost every discussion. And we saw India taking centre stage amongst the comity of nations in more issues than one. I have enjoyed every minute of this topsy-turvy journey and have enjoyed the conversations I have had with each one of you in person, through these pages, at my blog and on social networks. I do hope that this journey together was as interesting and fruitful to you as it was to me. I will cherish the friendship and close association I built with many amongst you and will look forward to continuing them even as our roles in life change. I will continue to be available on Twitter and LinkedIn amongst other places under my usual handle - kkumarkg. Till we meet again...

/Krishna Kumar DARE.CO.IN | BLOGS | MAY 2010 7

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magazine

Windfall profits from carbon trading This article is a valuable insight into the carbon trading business which has 8

magazine

Ten out-of-the-way Hotel Concepts Disused Tube Station: Looking at this great article made me think. Living in an old London Tube station! Problem is the lack of light, but some people would love that idea. Didn't Hell-Boy do that? via. Email magazine

Business of Foreign Language Schools Foreign Students need places to stay: As the foreign student population grows, so will the demand for accommodation. This is a great way to earn a little extra income if you can provide a nice room with breakfast for a language student. And you also get another member in your family if you want! via. Email

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Managing your noble intent A social enterprise should also be run professionally like any other commercial outfit. Unless you have the discipline, the motivation, leadership and the drive to succeed, there is no way a social outfit can survive, for profit or not-for-profit. This is a good summary. Santosh Bhandarkar Why Use Managed IT Services? That's interesting that outsourcing is good for everybody but it is very effective in small and medium-sized companies. The knowledge is really limited to a select few that the company hires. Nice blog. via. Email

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Digging gold in rural India This is a very nice idea, particularly for those who are having farmlands near cities with availability of water. Many people wish to cultivate land but urban areas do not allow this. Getting opportunities to get away on weekends to nearby farms can certainly meet the needs. Also, with people today trying to escape the urban madness even for a single day, seem to be heading towards rural areas which gives them the opportunity to enjoy the landscapes and food like Jowar roti and vegetables in a typical rural environemnt and let them enjoy it immensely. MBT Shoes

taken the green world by storm. Its exciting to learn about the India Inc. profiting and managing this. Arunabh

Gurnam Arora, Kohinoor Foods Visionary Par Excellence: The answers given by Gurnam Arora, were apt, precise and to the point. What I apprciate in this person is his humbleness and kindness towards his fellow beings. I have been interacting with him for the past two-and-a-half decades. One thing I can emphatically say is that like "Kohinoor Basmati Rice" he tends to get better with age and has

magazine

blog

Marriage, Modeling or Masters? Women Entrepreneur Networking not really a good Idea: I think creating a network exclusively for women will be as good as shielding them from half the business world and depriving them of the much needed exposure and experience. There's a whole multitude of us entrepreneurs who are trying to be seen in the business circles; limiting that circle would be an even greater injustice! Ammar A. M. magazine

www.dare.co.in | email: dare@cybermedia.co.in | SMS â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;DARE <your msg>â&#x20AC;&#x2122; to 56677

feedback

A good time to try out an agroprocessing unit? Food processing and preservation: The government has recently come up with a large scale upgradation in the area of food processing and allied fields. However, it is probably not attracting the right people for the task at hand. The reason for this is probably the halfhearted approach by the government itself. Lack of clear cut incentives and startup help/solutions could also be one of the reasons. Personally I feel that with the vast agricultural zone covered up in our country, there exists immense potential in this field if the enterpreneur is willing to peep in. This certainly is the need of the hour for both self-sustenance and the growth of the country. G K Poonjatt

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magazine

Tyre Recycling : The New Business on the Block I read the article about recycling automobile tyres. The author has given the need, various methods and briefs about the work. Most important is the sourcing of equipments and technical knowhow. There may be many entrepreneurs who would want to start this business but in absence of proper knowledge it becomes difficult for any newcomer to venture into it. Small units should be designed to make complete process in different units. It will reduce the individual investment and small procurements of used tyres can be handled easily, thereby reducing the cost of transportation and providing more employment in small cities. The project is very much required in any form and this shall save natural resources and provide employment to many people. Dev Kumar Godika

Nice article. You have explained facts and figures in a subtle manner. As an MBA (pursuing) student, I am studying the industry. I found that it follows a perfect competitive industry structure. Also I studied the balance sheets of certain listed companies which are in this business. They are working at 10-15 percent net margin, which is minimal. Let me know your view. Dhanraj Baheti Environmental Assessment of Industrial Clusters CEPI: It is a welcome step by CPCB, MoEF and IIT Delhi to formulate a framework for a single indexing method to describe the environmental integrity of industrial clusters in India. The framework however misses certain vital information like pollution load, and rather news

Yes, technology and equipments play an important role in setting up a new project. For assistance regarding technical knowhow, technology and source of equipments as well as market information, one can contact us. We are a project cum technical consultancy organization situated in Delhi and active in the field of rubber and tyre technology for the last 17 years. Dr. S.N. Chakravarty

From the look of it, the business appears very lucrative. A whole range of products can be developed from rubber crumb including nonslip flooring, waterproofing and sealants, automobile parts, bicycle tyres, and machinery parts like rollers, gaskets, etc. In a way a very flexible customer list!!! The biggest constraint however in doing the business in India is that unlike Europe and US, we do not have mass scale tyre landfills from where to lift the tyres(our raw material). Most tyres are burnt for rural household and industrial fuel in India as against collection for recycling. It may not be economical to have collection centres acoss the country to collect and cart them to one central processing unit. However, in case the tyre recycling business qualifies for carbon credits, it might be worth looking into. I invite comments and views from Dr. S.N.Chakravarty and others. Rtvik Sethia

relies on a number of industries per ten sq km. This does reflect the true potential of the cluster to exert environmental pressure. At the same time, it also relies on news paper reports and other casually prepared reports to determine evidence of impact on human health and ecology. These aspects need a relook to include more credible evidence. Nihar Who Really Owns Your Company Okay, great! so what should be the target controlling stake percentage? The correct answer isâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it depends! However, where the promoter is also in the execution team, then dilution till he/she owns between 26 to 33 percent is a sweetspot. There is enough listed companies' data available. Sanjay Dwivedi

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never changedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the same quality, the same aroma, and the same taste. Kudos to KOHINOOR. via. Email

You have to understand that a corporation is not in anyone's control. Board of directors can be replaced and so can the executive management team. If you still want to preserve "control" it might be better off working with other structures as either a sole proprietorship or as an LLP but obviously you won't get invested in, into such structures. Typically, the first investor who comes on board will carry veto rights. How do you fight that? You cant! The promoter is no more than a super employee. They are the management and also a stakeholder. And they can't wear both hats at the same time. It's complex, but one at some point needs to understand that. Of course there are radical cases when certain board members are given multiple voting rights (the case of Google for example), but you have to be an extraordinary genius and have a brand bigger than the company to command such things. Vijay Anand

MAY 2010 | FEEDBACK | DARE.CO.IN

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• partners • mentoring • funding • guidance • advice • ideas...

Submit exchange requests at: website: http://www.dare.co.in/ marketplace.htm OR email: dare@cybermedia. co.in or SMS ‘DARE <your msg>’ to 56677

aving done B.Tech from IIT Guwahati and worked as a software engineer in Bangalore for one-and-a-half years, I always wanted to be a successful entrepreneur and with that dream started a food venture in Bangalore along with a friend. We have a very unique idea and zeal to create a successful chain of outlets. We are looking for investors and mentors who can be part of our journey. We would like to start our venture in Bangalore. Madat

have regularly read DARE ever since one of my friends introduced me to it and have been very impressed with the magazine and the content it carries. I am interested in starting an online household services business with focus on working households and apartment societies. I am planning a startup either in Bangalore or Chennai to begin with. The idea I am planning to execute is unique and also has the potential to scale up. I need funding and mentoring for the same. I already started one such venture few months back, but was forced to close down due to lack of funds. But I am still passionate about it and would like to venture into it, with proper funding. There is an immense opportunity for this business, especially in cities like Chennai and Bangalore. It has a huge acceptance potential considering the current social scenario. I am seeking a likeminded partner to work with and also infuse new innovations in the same. Persons with similar ideas are welcome to join me if they prefer to. I am also in the need of funds for my venture and am open to suggestions regarding this. Satish, Chennai

need angel funding for my already running matrimonial website. Parag Response Please send me more details about the website to work upon. Naresh D Jhawar

am looking for a sponsorship for my newly established NGO in India. The society seeks to aid in conserving forest and wildlife, mostly in the 12

deprived areas. I am looking forward to hearing a response from you. Naved Khan Response Please provide more details on the same. Naresh D Jhawar

pples n Cherries Preschool is the vision of professionals from UK, India and the USA. We are looking for professionals from any background to be part of the fastest growing, recession-free education industry. Complete training and set-up support provided. Please visit our website for more information. Arvind Mishra

e are an industry leader in the business of importing and manufacturing corporate gifts and premium/promotional articles in UAE, with a small presence in the Indian market as well. For our India operations we are looking for a CEO with relevant experience, entrepreneurial skills and a gogetting attitude. The right person will have partnership in the profits of the division. Biren Jasani Response I am interested in knowing more about the CEO position available for the corporate gifts and premium articles exporting company. Please give the contact person's mail ID or contact number. Stalin Varghese

e are interested in contacting growing SMEs and large Indian companies looking to enter lucrative US markets. Innoversant Solutions Pvt. Ltd is a boutique, multi-disciplinary management consulting firm assisting international and domestic businesses and economic development agencies. We are the official representatives of Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA), Virginia, USA. We assist growing Indian companies with their expansion/ entry into the US by locating in Fairfax County, Virginia. We at FCEDA provide a wide array of information and free and confidential services to help Indian businesses locate or

MAY 2010 | EXCHANGE | DARE.CO.IN

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• partners • mentoring • funding • guidance • advice • ideas...

Submit exchange requests at: website: http://www.dare.co.in/ marketplace.htm OR email: dare@cybermedia. co.in or SMS ‘DARE <your msg>’ to 56677

need angel funding for my already running matrimonial website. Parag Response Please send me more details about the website to work upon. Naresh D Jhawar

am looking for a sponsorship for my newly established NGO in India. The society seeks to aid in conserving forest and wildlife, mostly in the 12

deprived areas. I am looking forward to hearing a response from you. Naved Khan Response Please provide more details on the same. Naresh D Jhawar

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expand commercial operations in Fairfax County, US. The FCEDA promotes Fairfax County, Virginia, as a world-class center of commerce and trade and the technology hub of the east coast. Every year the FCEDA assists hundreds of companies with expansion or relocation needs. Due to the close proximity to Washington DC, the Dulles and Reagan Airports, excellent access to the North American markets, a large cluster of technology companies in the county and excellent business environment, Fairfax County is one of the best locations for growing Indian companies to set up their US business. In fact, Fairfax County was recently called “one of the great economic success stories of our time” by Time Magazine. Sidharth Responses: Cybermotion technology is a 19 year old company into 1. Industrial automation 2. Solar plant integration and 3. Defence automation. We are very keen to address the industrial automation outsourcing needs to the American and European - automotive, medical electronics and defence automation requirements. We are keen to set up a base in the US and utilize our deep domain knowledge in the said area. We are sure that we can create jobs in the US and would use local people along with some of our

experts. We would like to start with partnering existing firms (in the US) doing similar business but wanting to expand. Please do let us know how to proceed. We very much look forward to your reply. Anand Jambholkar, MD, Cybermotion Technologies Pvt. Ltd. I would like to know more about your services, fees, payment terms and support during the business deals. If possible can you give me some reference in India, where by I can ascertain the information. V R V Shankar Contact me. Mahipal Saddi I would like to contact you to start discussion on how we can join hands to service US market. We are a small web development and application development company. Vasanth

am looking for individuals, private or public limited companies who would like to get involved with us in doing bamboo business on a large scale. I am basically based in London, UK and have access to UK and EU markets. Punit Sethia Response What exactly is your current setup? Do you already have a sourcing/ manufacturing setup in place? Please explain. I have strong interest in this segment and am also looking for a partner. Snehal Pandya

or businesses/companies seeking franchise expansion, we can create your entire franchise expansion strategy and execute the same. From all facets of franchise development, creation of manuals, franchise agreements, franchise marketing and franchise recruitments, you can trust the franchise experts to take your business to the next level. We can recruit the right franchise partners for your business across India. Ask the experts on exciting franchise marketing and recruitment strategies on how you can grow your business across the country. For entrepreneurs seeking new businesses, we can help you choose a business that fits your skills, experience, investment levels and lifestyle. Sparkleminds, Bangalore

have a concept on remote healthcare services–an end-to-end healthcare delivery system for the developing world. I am looking for people who want to be a part of the core team and also angel funding to kick off the pilot project. Tarunesh Response What level of angel investing are you looking for? Healthcare is very close to my heart (perhaps because I wanted to be a doctor but ended up being an IT guy!) and am looking to get involved. Based out of Bangalore currently but due to return to UK in short term. Let me know if you are interested in collaborating. Snehal Pandya

e are importing LED from Southeast countries and we are looking for dealers across India. If interested, please contact me. Arun Kumar P

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omeIndiaHome.com is a web-based company into realestates providing online listings of residential properties and offline brokerage services to our customers. Our goal is to be a one stop shop for all our customer’s property needs. The company was formed in August, 2009 and started its operation in and around Thane. We have since then doubled our revenues in the 2nd quarter. We have also been covered in Hindustan Times a couple of times. We are on the lookout for investors and mentors that could help us with scaling the business and managing our sales team more efficiently. Please contact us for more details. Tushar Manik (Co-Founder)

have huge aspirations to become an entrepreneur. I have designed an innovative idea/concept code name. Please let me know your comments. Guru Vishnu

e are one of the Award winners of Power of Ideas conducted by The Economic Times. Our company vision is to create SMS media. In this SMS media we have three major divisions - SMS Services, SMS Promotions, SMS Projects. We have been successfully running our SMS Services and SMS Promotions. In this SMS services for the first time in India we are going to launch one of our product called SMS Cinema Ticket & SMS Bus Ticket. The Customer can book the ticket in any corner of the city. The speciality of the product is there is no GPRS, Internet, credit card or computer is required. The Service is for all common man. All they require is a basic mobile phone. We are getting very good response from the public & and theaters. But, we are struggling a lot in the area of funds. We have approached many banks to get a business loan to

expand our business. Unfortunately we are unable to get a business loan from the bank. Because our is a startup company. Now we are seeking financial investment partner to expand our business. Here We wish to say one thing — we got a good driving Force after we got the appretiation certificate from the Power of Ideas. Now we hope your media will bring us from darkness to brightness. V.Ravishankar

intend to start a vocational training institute for blue collar workers. There is high requirement for certain skills due to extensive construction work everywhere (electricians, plumbers etc). Looking for partners/affiliates to work with. Happy to discuss more on contact. Jitu Pandya, Bangalore

am from Bangalore. I have huge interests towards photography, I am very interested to host a “Mobile Photography” contest and exhibition at Bangalore. I request for sponsor(s) and guide to organize the event. I am ready to join if any one wish to join me as a partner to make this event a big success. M Guruvishnuvardan Response Please contact me Naresh D Jhawar

e are a group of postgraduate doctors practicing in Mumbai since last 24 years. We have started a new company called Ageless Medica Health Management for giving anti-aging, aesthetics and cosmetogynaecology services to people. We are experts in health management. We are looking for assistance for marketing to corporates and copromoting our services to high end clients on partnership bases. Dr Jagdip Shah, Director Ageless Medica Health Management

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am looking to start a business manufacturing and selling products made from bamboo. Happy to partner with anyone with similar passion. Am in Bangalore currently and will move to UK in the near future. Contact me Snehal Pandya

have a business proposal that could breakeven in the first year itself and there is a ever expanding market readily available for the services. I am looking for funds to the tune of Rs.50,00,000-1,00,00,000. The project will give an assured return of 20% in the first year and 25% in the next consecutive years. I am looking at an exit option of buying back the shares @ 250% of face value. Minimum investment period is 2 years. Deepak Bijaya Padhi Response I am an NRI, and plan to settle down in India soon. I have the investment and like to know more details from you to proceed further. Najeeb

am associated with the HR department of a hotel. I am very keen in opening up a hospitality and hospital management institute near Beleghata Region. Interested people who can finance the project may pls contact me. Return assured as will utilize the space for other educational activities as well. Arindam Banerjee, Kolkata

am working on a transport project in Delhi which can reduce pollution, save money for commuters, increase the comfort and generate revenue. This project can be extended to most of the cities in India. At present, I am looking for a mentor and investor to help in making this idea into action. If anybody finds interest in helping the commuters and have the same passion to decrease the pollution, kindly contact me through email or phone. Saroj Sinha

want to contact Arjun who is from First10, a direct marketing compny based on the Internet. His article was published in the Exchange column of Dare Mar10. I want to join him, plz provide his contact. Ameet Kumar

am a regular reader of your magazine and believe that DARE always supports upcoming entrepreneurs! I am a BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus (2005-09) graduate. I have always

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been passionate about food and running my own business. I am starting my food venture in GurgaonDelhi-NCR (declining an offer from Symantec). As a first-time entrepreneur, I am facing various issues and will continue to encounter such issues as I grow. As of now, I am facing an uphill task of finding a good team. I have done all the groundwork in the last few weeks and need atleast one more member who is equally passionate for food and a career in this field. I have planned to launch the venture in the next two-to-three weeks. I am looking for people interested in the venture. Sumit Agarwal Response I am interested to partner with you. Niteesh

am interested in setting up a small scale E-waste recycling industry in Hyderabad. If anyone is seriously interested to partner me, please get in touch with me by email. Najeeb

t first, I would like to congratulate you for bringing out this inspiring magazine. I am a regular reader of DARE. I have had a craving for starting a consultancy firm and your magazine has supported me a lot in understanding and facing the challenges of a start up. I have done MD from AIIMS and have served industry for approximately 4 years. I started Worksure MedPharma consultancy in April 09 with a group of doctors from premier institutes like AIIMS and PGI Chandigarh. Also we have pharma professionals, PhDs, MBAs and engineers from IIT’s working with us. We are providing consultancy services to pharma, biotech, device industries, CROs and even hospitals. By god’s grace we have got a good clientèle (four

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MNCs, three Indian pharma, etc) and reasonable turnover in just 4 months' period. Our work has also been appreciated by our clients. Now we are looking towards taking this startup to the next level. We want to flourish it as a unique CRO (a good mix of research, regulatory, marketing, sales and training at one platform) catering to above industries in India and abroad. We have the required expertise and talent to plan and execute it. We are on the lookout for venture capitalists who will be interested in funding our plans and helping us move ahead. It will be of great help. Ankit Pathak Response I just saw your e-mail. I am a Certified Research Grants Administrator, well versed in managing compliance issues, administrative and financial aspects of sponsored clinical studies and other research. Reading about your plans to venture into the US market, I wish to offer my services in these areas. I believe that with my knowledge and experience, I may be able to assist with your plans. I look forward to hearing from you. Sreemoti Mukerjee Roy

ARE had received many queries from entrepreneurs interested in the mango kernels processing industry. These entrepreneurs were looking for someone to help them with the first steps. Ravi S here wanted to provide this. I have a mango kernel processing industry. I have designed a mango stone shredder machine. Now I have 300 tons of mango kernels, whoever is interested in this business can contact me. Subbarao Sanku

shtavaidyan Thrissur Thaikat Mooss' SNA Oushadhasala Pvt Ltd, a GMP certified 90 year old ayurvedic company having 600 classical ayurvedic medicines and 150 patent drugs is looking for business houses, corporates, entrepreneurs who can invest in a chain of ayurvedic clinics, panchakarma centres, hospitals etc throughout India. Interested people

may please feel free to call back for further informations on the same. SNA Ayurveda Panchakarma Centre

e are Tribeni Thallasaemia society. We have been working for the last two years for thallasaemia patients and spreading awareness about thallsaemia in people. We organize blood donation camps every month and also give medicines and injections to patients. These activities are costly and some of the patients are very poor. We created two rooms for patients needing blood transfusion and a little laboratory for deduction of thallasaemia in people. We are looking for funding help for our society. Pronoy Mallobarman

e are in the process of starting a tele-health service – a 24x7 medical answering services company. We are currently being incubated by KIIT University-Technology Business Incubator (KIIT-TBI). Our business plan HELLODOCTOR24X7 has won several business plan competitions. We are also one of the finalists in the IIPC 08 (Indian Innovation Pioneer Challenge) and Power of Ideas. We are looking for an angel investor for our dream venture. Dr Lalit Ranjan Manik Response Please forward your plan and the requirement of funds. Also please give a note on the current status of the development in your project. Oruganti Syamala

have started an HR consultancy firm “Effective People”, to provide growth and change management, professional training and outbound experiential learning programmes after spending around 3 decades in various corporates. I would like to interact with entrepreneurs in the same field or any other field who may be interested. Atul Srivastava Response Please contact us. We are Vasai (Near Mumbai) based consultancy firm since 2004. Rajesh, Rajesh Gonsalves

Send more details on your HR Firm M.Natarajan

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Willing Suspension of Disbelief Shunning disbelief and getting just the right connect with the consumer is what always works for any brand. It is this attempt to lure people towards it that has become the order of the day. The human connect is what every brand is looking for; the better you strike a chord with the emotions, the more likely you are to succeed. /Rupin Jayal

To be a successful brand especially when it seeks to fulfil more than just a basic human need, there has to be a strong human connect.

The author is Managing Partner - Direxn: Marketing & Brand Consultancy.

“W

illing suspension of disbelief" is a formula given by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge to justify the use of fantastic or non-realistic elements in literature. Coleridge suggested that if a writer could infuse "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative. According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is a quid pro quo; the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend its judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment. These fictional premises may also lend to the engagement of the mind and perhaps proposition of thoughts, ideas, art and theories. —Wikipedia As incomes increase and more and more people are able to take care of the essentials for living, they will have more discretionary spending capability. In fact, even when wallets are tight, people tend to sometimes forgo or cut back on essentials in order to give in to small indulgences. This has tended to turn Maslow’s Hierarchy on its head. However, to be able to do this they have to believe that the indulgence for which they are diverting their precious resources is truly worth it. And this is where “willing suspension of disbelief” comes in. It is interesting to see how a literary formula enunciated in the 19th century is still relevant for the world of brands today. This willingness to suspend disbelief, in fact, even forms a part of the bedrock of the financial world. We believe, willingly, that a piece of paper has value as currency when in reality it is just a printed piece of paper. We exchange goods and services by flashing a piece of plastic and notionally

transferring amounts from one account to the other. In this case we do not even see or come in physical contact with the actual money. In a completely different sphere, we watch movies that are overtly made from sources of pure fantasy such as comics and for a while we write as-completely believe in the plot and the characters. So we are willing to “believe” in a man who has modelled himself as a bat or another who draws his power from spiders. We wait impatiently for sequels about a wizard boy and voraciously devour the tale of people from an underworld, helped by fairies and other fantastical creatures, to combat a juggernaut of evil. Even further away from reality is the world of animation. We happily believe in an ugly ogre and his girlfriend who turn from horryfying ogres to beautiful creatures in an enlightened reversal of the storyline of most traditional fairytales. The secret lies in two critical conditions for the willing suspension of disbelief—"human interest and a semblance of truth". In each case the main protagonist has to combat powerful human emotions and challenges from within while combating the fantastical threats around him or her. In every fantasy there has to be a semblance of truth and there must be a human connect. Even currency notes, almost invariably, carry someone's face who is respected and held in high esteem. The notes are invariably signed and carry an expressed promise. These all forge a sense of connect—currency notes are not just papers—they are an emblem of pride, trust and belief; all very powerful human emotions. The truth need not necessarily be a tangible or rational one. It could very easily be purely in the realm

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of the emotions. But it needs to tap a universally acknowledged emotion. Epics always deal with such fundamental human emotions such as love, fear, respect, thirst for adventure, honor, ethics, relationships, ambition, tragic flaws, victory, defeat, etc. So what does this have to do with discretionary spending and the world of brands? Actually, everything. To be a successful brand especially when it seeks to fulfil more than just a basic human need, there has to be a strong human connect. While serving ordinary rice would not materially affect the perception of the guest towards its host, the host buys expensive basmati rice instead. What drives this purely discretionary expenditure? The aroma of the rice. The host pays money for the aroma of a basic staple. It seems irrational, but in the aroma lies a deeper human connect. This is one that wants to honor and welcome guests, that desires to express appreciation and love for their presence and that wants to convey a sense of pride in providing the very best for them. So basmati clearly meets the first condition. And the semblance of truth is met by the aroma, the extra long grains that give its premium appearance, as well as the “geo-psychological” belief due to the fact that it is only grown in certain regions. People are willing to pay huge sums of money for liquor that have been stored for longer than others. Apart from the obvious human interest stemming from reward, indulgence and being perceived as a connoisseur, perhaps it is a way for people to connect with a previous more gracious era. Maybe it is the closest a person can get to actually tasting immortality or physically going back in time. Then surrounding such fine liquors are the legends of craftsmanship that smother them. Each step of the process of creation is carefully and beautifully expressed creating a “world” of flavourful refinement. As the liquor is poured into special crystal and the aroma inhaled and savoured, the world of its creation is evoked and willingly appreciated by its devotees. This forms a strong human connect—so strong that those who do not pay the liquor “respect” are immediately branded heretics and the outrage can be quasi-religious in its intensity. The semblance of truth stems from the way the liquor is created and the painstaking craftsmanship that leads to its maturity. Fine dining restaurants create a human truth by the way they cosset and

address the desires of their patrons. The semblance of truth comes from the talent and expertise of their master chef and her or his ability to create wondrous culinary experiences. The prices paid and how much a table is coveted is vivid proof of the willingness of its patrons to suspend disbelief. Similarly any premium category and brand depends on the twin pillars of human interest and a semblance of truth. So it is very important to identify why you believe people would want to pay more for your brand as compared to any other. In a marketplace where physical, tangible advantages are rapidly replicated and often result in cheaper alternatives, there has to be a robust, unique and clearly discriminating human interest and a semblance of truth, for people to be willing to suspend disbelief enough to prefer your brand over competition. Walking through shopping centres, how many restaurants and shops do we see opening almost on a weekly basis? And how many succeed in enduring? Why? Often because they are one of a long line of largely undifferentiated offerings, serving products or delivering services that are indistinguishable from those offered by the business next door. While the interiors might be fancy or the offers enticing, all they succeed in doing is generating initial trials. Without a deeper human interest and differentiating the semblance of truth, nobody is willing to suspend disbelief more than once—resulting in thinning crowds and eventual closure. While it seems simple to create or uncover “human interest” it requires a great deal of diligence to be truly authentic. It needs to be done for its own sake and overt commercialisation can erode it. It often demands to strike a balance between reality and aspiration. It involves tapping the human desires and sensitivities as well as understanding the cultural context and its evolution. For a long time many people would not eat at a five star hotel because while they may have been able to afford it they considered it beyond their station in life—“aukaat”. Today that cultural context has been virtually eliminated both by burgeoning aspirations of a youthful country as well as declining inhibitions and increasing affordability. In this case when it comes to the semblance of truth there has been a two-way process. Hotels have created authentic offerings and with increasing global exposure, people have acquired the experience with which to appreciate it.

To deliver long-term prosperity for your brand, it is critical to ensure that people willingly suspend the disbelief stemming from purely rational and tangible comparisons. Increasingly the willingness stems from beliefs created and delights consistently delivered that all express one clear differentiating brand intention. It stems from the brand often leading rather than just listening, from insight and foresight. It comes from the inherent strength of belief that the brand has in itself and the way with which it is able to transfer it to its customers. In creating human interest, brands have to ensure they are interesting and this means ensuring what they stand for stimulates enough interest to establish a connect with the people. Human interest that isn’t interesting only creates indifference. Similarly it is important to understand “semblance” as well as truth. This means that too much effort expended on explanations of the “truth” ruins the magic. In none of the movie examples quoted above has there been too much labour expended on explaining or validating the truth. It is effortlessly woven into the story. The “truth” in this case has to be treated as a critical flavouring in a culinary creation. It is a must to provide an authentic and desirable experience but it cannot overwhelm the dish itself. It needs to be hinted at, rather than emphasised. Many brands destroy the willingness to suspend disbelief by creating feature lists, technical explanations and indulging in “feature trading” thereby descending from a “semblance” to overstatement whereupon the entire promise becomes workmanlike rather than magically desirable. Just like a master magician, brands have to first generate human interest often by bringing people into their world like a magician asking for someone from the audience to participate in the illusion. Then by using easily recognisable objects they create a semblance of truth that enables the audience to suspend disbelief and be amazed by the illusion that folllows. Increasingly today many purchases are being driven by the willingness of the people to suspend disbelief and choose one option over another for reasons other than the tangible and the logical. Yet no one wants to be perceived to be illogical or overtly impulsive. For this your brand has to build a powerful illusion driven by a genuine human interest flavored with just a touch of the truth to create an irresistible dish that is truly worth paying more for. R DARE.CO.IN | COLUMN | MAY 2010 19

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his is possibly the one story that we worked the longest on. We started off by asking people to nominate startups and telling us why they think they would bet on that particular startup. We received over 600 nominations. Then started the task of collecting secondary data on each of the nominations to figure out whether they pass our definition of a start up. The process of reaching the final shortlist involved many steps. At each stage, we had no choice, but to remove from the list, companies where the founders were not willing to share information. After the first round we were left with about half the number of companies that we started off with.

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Defining a startup For this story, we defined a startup as a company that was established at least a year back and one that was not more than five years old. Most of the startups we have considered have a product or at least a prototype out in the market. Newly established ventures within existing groups were considered wherever it was clear that it was a separate legal entity. Startups which were already above the 100 Crore turnover mark, (like for example the IPL) were not considered. Clearly we were looking for early stage businesses which were yet to spread their wings.

What will make us bet on you? This was the critical question. Many

entrepreneurs either did not have clear, ratified financial information. Compounding the situation was the fact that many were cagey about sharing the finer details of their financial performance â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a situation that most VCs are only too familiar with during their initial meetings with potential investees. So, we went about what will make us bet on a given company. We ended up with two significant parameters. Either the company should be able to clock significant growth in top line â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we fixed our bench mark at being able to clock a turnover of Rs 100 Crore at the end of the next five years. Or it should have the potential to change the rules and disrupt the market segment it is playing in. We also said

that we will add to our list a small number of companies which may not meet either of the two qualifiers, but which will make a significant social impact nevertheless. In this case, we used the potential number of people who would be impacted as the criteria for inclusion. Next, we went about collecting available information on their products, clients, competition and potential market sizes. At this stage we wanted to ensure that we spoke to the entrepreneur concerned and also got their view of what their biggest strengths and challenges were. We also spoke to some industry experts to get a general feel about the future of particular industry segments, we never

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discussed with any of the experts any particular company, product or entrepreneur. We also made sure that we did not discuss with any investor any of the nominees. From the final list too, a few entrepreneurs voluntarily withdrew, because of confidentiality issues or because they felt that at this point the publicity was not good for them â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in most cases these were companies that were on the verge of tying up investments. We started off with the objective of having a hundred companies in this list, but ended up with 75. Does that make it a better list? Absolutely not. We would have loved to have a full hundred. Is our method scientific? We would say that the method is more

rational than it is scientific. We would have loved to build up models that would help us predict which startups stood a better chance of making it big five years from today. But there was simply too little data available. While we have listed the investors who have invested into these startups, there is no judgment being made about the investments. Do not try to create sub lists like no of companies per investor out of this master list. That is not how we went about compiling this list and such sub-lists would only defeat the letter and spirit of this story. If your company was one of the 600 plus nominees and did not make it to the final 75, does it mean that you will not grow big or will not

disrupt the markets? Absolutely not. At this point it could just be that we did not have enough information to make that judgment. We are not saying that each one of the companies in this list will make it big or will end up disrupting markets. We are sure that some of these will not be around five years from now (some of them may be snapped up by bigger entities much earlier) What we are saying is that collectively, this set of companies stand the best chances of being successful five years from today, amongst the current crop of startups.

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ACCENTIUM WEB Brand: Gaadi.com, SecondShaadi.com, StudyNation.com, AdLift.com, Taaza.com and SitaGita.com | Industry: Internet/Consumer Internet | Location: Delhi (Gurgaon)

ccentium is into six different online businesses catering to varied sectors. Online advertising is also growing in a big way and Accentium is well positioned to gain from it, having tapped broad but focussed markets. Take

for instance, StudyNation.com which leverages the opportunities in the education sector with advertising spends in this segment rising considerably over the years. SecondShaadi.com was its first portal, started in May-June 2007. The Company also runs the offline sales channel as well, as an extention of Gaadi.com. However, with the founders believing that the online space is quite lucrative and there is tremendous opportunity to tap; the offline mode is not high on their priority list.With broadband penetration and the significance of online media increasing, the company is worth betting on.

Founder: Vivek Pahwa Co-Founder: Umang Kumar, Ankur Warikoo Investors : Self-funded Key Clients\Customers: Various

Top-Line: 4 crore URL: www.accentium.com Accentium Web Team

ACTIVECUBES SOLUTIONS Services(s): Analytics, Business Intelligence, Application Development | Brand: activecubes | Industry: Business and technology consulting | Location: Bangalore

ctivecubes provides analytic services with supporting technology solutions in key areas like sales, marketing, supply chain, operations, and risk management to global clients across sectors-- financial

services, consumer packaged goods, retail, telecom and healthcare. While there are quite a few analytics firms present in the market, they just focus on the modeling of data and are not quite able to put together a complete solution. Whereas Activecubes assumes a more holistic approach, it concentrates on understanding its customers' needs better and thereby designing a complete solution from the data warehouse, to the modeling to consulting. Based out of Bangalore, Activecubes focuses on Australia, India and US markets.

Founder: Rajesh Varrier Co-founder: Chennira Anand GCP

Investors: Self-funded Mentors: N/A Key Clients: N/A Top line: N.A URL: www.activecubes.com Picture not available 24

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ACTON BIOTECH Product: Genetic tests for Cancer Patients | Industry: Healthcare | Location: Pune

cton Biotech offers genetic profiling tests to identify drugs your body will respond to, not respond to or will be harmed from. It has 14 odd collection centers, and has already treated 2,000 cancer patients in 3 years and sees the potential to tap the 20 lakh cancer patients in India; Cancer patients initially, because their medicines/ drugs are expensive. The statistics of scalability for Acton don’t end here. Sample this. They are currently testing for 30 genes and 10 drugs while there are almost 30,000 genes in human body and 1,000 drugs that create compatibility issues. Acton brings down the total cost of cancer treatment by providing safer, faster and effective cure. It is raring to be known as a scientific and innovative diagnostics laboratory that is bringing new development in genetics to India by “personalizing medicine” and aiming to become a 100 crore company in next 5 years.

Founder: Sandeep Saxena Co-Founder: N/A

Investor: N/A Mentor: Dr. Madhu Mehta, Dr. B J Rao, Dr. Harish Padh Key Clients: 2,000 cancer patients across India Top-Line: 15 lakhs URL: www.actonbiotech.com Sandeep Saxena

ALIGNMINDS TECHNOLOGIES Product: EatherWay | Location: Cochin

hat is it that bugs you the most when going to a hospital? The queues and the time wasted, right? EatherWay Patient Flow Management System by AlignMinds promises to provide a solution to that problem.

EatherWay seamlessly links medical practitioners and patients. Patients can now track doctors of their choice while hospitals and individual doctors can schedule appointments, digitally. AlignMinds is currently working with hospitals such as Tellicherry co-operative Hospital, A J Shetty Hospital, Mangalore and K G Hospital, Coimbatore apart from a pool of 120 individual doctors. It claims to serve about 5,000-10,000 people on a daily basis. Spurred by the initial success in the Indian market, it is now targeting the relatively saturated but expensive markets of the USA and UK.

Founder: Devanarayanan G Nair

Investors: Devanarayanan G Nair, Pradeepkumar Pillai, Vishnu Dileep and Binil Kuruvila

Co-founder: Pradeepkumar P Pillai

Clients: AJ hospital,Mangalore, KG Hospital, Coimbatore, Tellicherry Co-op Hospital and 120 individual doctors Top line: 18 lakhs p.a. URL: www.eatherway.com Team at AlignMinds DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 25

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ANDURIL TECHNOLOGIES Product: SAM (Simple Automation for Micro-banking) | Industry: IT | Location: Amity Innovation Incubator (AII), Noida

he company provides end-to-end web-based technology solutions to small and midsize micro banking organizations in SaaS (Software as a Service) model. With their model, MFIs (Micro Finance Institutes)

do not have to rely on in-house technology team, rather they can 'outsource' complete technology to Anduril and use it over the web. They provide services as Web Based (real-time centralized MIS) & end to end (device provisioning - biometric, smart card etc, hosting, customer care). With financial sector growing in a big way, it means more business for the company.

Founder: Pooja Chauhan Co-Founder: Anurag Bajpai Investor: Self Invested + Non-cash investment from AII, Noida Promoters: AII Key Clientss: Eko India Private Limited, Corenett Limited Top-Line: crossed 1 crore last year URL: N/A Picture not available

ATOM TECHNOLOGIES Product: atom IVR, atom Mobile payments application, atom sewa, Sugam | Brand: Atom | Industry: IT | Location: Mumbai

his four-year old company is being promoted & invested by Financial Technologies. The firm aims at creating automated payment eco-system which is designed to allow transaction from anywhere at anytime. Their innovation is an IVR (Interactive Voice Response ) based payment model & their applications can be easily downloaded to be of use in any handset. The company has clients which include big names like Tata-Sky, Dish TV, Reliance, ICICI Lombard, DEL, etc. They claim to carry out 25,000 transactions per day which makes the company worth betting on. The company also provides its services under the name of SUGAM wherein the apps for different purposes can be downloaded from a retail shop. Their competitors are M.Mobile, mCheck, Paymate, etc & after success they plan to broaden their horizon by extending in other geographies also. They have also signed some pending patents of products & services for mobile payments.

Founder: Dewang Neralla Co-founder: N/A Investors: Financial Technologies

Mentors: N/A Key Clients/Customers: Tata Sky, Dish TV, ICICI Prudential, MTNL, Indigo etc.

Top line: Confidential URL: www.atomtech.in Dewang Neralla 26

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AXIO BIOSOLUTIONS Product: Advanced, affordable wound care products (Launching external hemostatic patches, ďŹ rst of its kind in India) | Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat

xio produces active medical products using biomaterials for pre-hospitalization dressings for wounds. Their core product is a non-woven hemostatic dressing designed to stop bleeding from traumatic injuries

including combat and road accidents. Axio was incubated at Nirmalabs, Ahmedabad till 2007 and started operations as a full-fledged startup Company in 2008. The primary markets for Axio are hospitals and trauma care services like ambulance services. The Company has tie ups for manufacturing in place and is awaiting patent approval before beginning to tap the market.

Founder: Leo Mavely Co-Founder: Ashish Pandya Investor: NirmaLabs, MSME Foundation, Angel investors

Mentor: Dr. Madhu Mehta (MD, Anjaleem Enterprises) Key Clients: Pre-hospital emergency services, Hospitals Top-Line: Pre-revenue stage URL: axiobio.com Leo Mavely

B R COOKING SPRAYS Product: Cooking Oil Spray (Formulated regular cooking oil dispensed in a spray form) | Industry: Vegetable oils, Cooking Oils | Location: Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh

egistered in July 2009, the Company is being incubated in ICRISAT, Hyderabad. It aims to package vegetable oils in areosol cans so that consumers can spray the oil as a thin layer on to their cooking

utensils. This reduces the consumption of oil while cooking, leading to a healthier diet. The Company has developed the technology to convert cooking oils into a sprayable suspension and is currently awaiting patent registration and FDA clearances. BR plans to launch different cooking oils as sprays once the requisite approvals are in place.

Founder: Rami Reddy Bomma Reddy Investors: MSME (Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises), ICRISAT (International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics Hyderabad), TDB (Technology Development Board)

Mentors: TBI at ICRISAT, Hyderabad Key clients: Housewives, people with heart-related issues, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, etc; restaurants, hotels, and bakeries Top line: Not yet in the market URL: www.cookingoilspray.com Rami Reddy DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 27

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BUZZINTOWN Industry: Online entertainment-oriented content | Location: Bengaluru

uzzintown is an Internet portal dedicated to the promotion of live events, activities and entertainment with coverage in 19 cities in India and 16 more cities in the United States & Canada. By providing dynamic coverage

of local events, the portal keeps users everywhere tapped into the cultural pulse of their towns. The portal claims over 1.8 million registered users & millions more who visit the portal regularly and make it a success. “In the near future, Buzzintown plans to expand its presence, both online and offline, in India and abroad and foster more industry alliances, while growing the syndicated portion of its business,” says Dr Amitabh Saran. Buzzintown has a WAP site for wireless handheld devices that will allow users access content anywhere “on the go”. Video is another area Buzzintown will continue to exploit.

Founder: Dr. Amitabh Saran and Uday Bellary Investors: Intel Capital

Partners & Affiliations: ICCR, NSD, Spic Macay, Sahitya Kala Parishad, Alliance Francaise, Max Mueller, IIFA, IPL, NDTV, Times of India, LiveMedia, etc URL: www.buzzintown.com

Amitabh Saran with the Buzzintown team

CIRCUITSUTRA TECHNOLOGIES Industry: Semiconductor Software | Location: Delhi NCR

laiming to offer cutting edge SoC modelling services to semiconductor industry, named as System on Chip (SoC), CiruitSutra (CS) aims to become a world leader in semiconductor industry. Growing at 100% y-o-y in

last 4 years out of 5, it works with global mobile technology leaders like ARM, and another one which is among top 10 semiconductor companies in world, CS is a sponsor member of reputed forums like OCPIP. The team of 15 plans to expand to 50 in next two years and has got total funding of Rs1.25 crore from STEP JSSATE and SIDBI. It is partnering with big corporates and developing training modules to scale up. Being the only Indian company and recognisable in some of the international conferences, CS expects 100% growth this year as well and is pursuing its ambitious goals undeterred by the challenges.

Founder: Umesh Sisodia Co-founder: N/A

Investors: SIDBI, STEP JSSATE Mentors: PKB Menon Key Clients/Customers: N/A Top-Line: N/A URL: www.circuitsutra.com Umesh Sisodia with Team 28

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CONDOR ADVERTISING Brand: Hangvertiser | Industry: Direct Marketing | Location: Mumbai

n eco-friendly innovation from a Direct Marketing company â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Condor Advertising, Hangvertising has offers from Pune, Delhi and Bangalore where private ad agencies have shown interest in distributing Hangvertisers.

They have been offered a tie up from various media houses across many cities but will look into it only after they have the distribution channel completely set up. Getting four good clients in their first year has given a big boost to the team of 9 people. The raw material, cardboard is imported for this patented product which is 100 % recycled and recyclable. The ink used for printing is also completely water based and eco friendly. Condor is looking to touch turnover of more than Rs 10 crore in next few years.

Founder: Somesh Kamra, Peter Freislederer Co-Founder: N/A Investor: N/A

Mentor: N/A Key Clients: JBL India, Reid & Taylor, Zee News and Stephen Brothers

Top-Line: N/A Somesh and Peter at the Condor stall, located at the Vishwa Show

URL: www.hangvertiser.in

CONSURE MEDICAL Product: A solution for managing fecal incontinence in patients | Industry: Medicine | Location: Delhi

ringing a solution for a market of 3-4 million patients in India in general wards and ICUs suffering from fecal incontinence, ConSure expects to touch lives of millions of people worldwide. While the product has

still not been released commercially as it is undergoing clinical trails and awaiting ethical clearance from the government, ConSure expects a turnover of $30-40 mn in next 3 years, with the team expanding to 25-30 from three people at present. Having a network of people from IIT, AIIMS, and practising senior doctors, Nishith Chasmawala, the co-founder, says his firm is two years ahead of any Indian company that may be its competitor in future. ConSure has filed for 5 patents internationally, and is looking for partners and distributors to tap the $7 bn global market that exists for them.

Founder: Nishith Chasmawala Co-founder: Amit Sharma, Sandeep Singh

Investors: $150,000 in funding from Department of Biotechnology Mentors: Paul Yock, Balam Bhargava, Rajeev Doshi Key Clients/Customers: N/A Top-Line: N/A URL: N/A Nishith Chasmawala, Sandeep Singh and Amit Sharma DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 29

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D.LIGHT ENERGY Product: Solar lamp manufacturing | Brand: Kiran S10, Nova S200 | Industry: Renewable Energy | Location: Delhi (with ofďŹ ces in U.S, Hong Kong, Dar es Salaam, Shenzhen)

company which has sold thousands of solar lamps for as less as $10, D.light has won a lot of international competitions and has been covered by many international publications in top cleantech, social entrepreneur-

ship, innovation and design lists. With high-volume production capacity and design principles to increase affordability, the product includes a solar panel that is portable and durable. With 5 international offices and venture funding from various VC/PE funds, D.light is improving the quality of life of poor people who have to spend a lot of money (e.g., $10 /month in Africa) on buying kerosene for traditional lamps. By end of 2010, it expects to have 10 million customers, and 50 million by 2015. The team of 70 people has current growth rate of 10% and has corporate clients like ITC, World Bank, Home Town, Ujjivan, Srei Sahaj among others.

Founder: Sam Goldman Co-founder: Nedjip Tozun, Gabriel Risk, Xianyi Wu & Erica Estrada

Investors: Nexus Venture Partners, Gray Matters Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, Acumen Fund, DFJ, The Mahindra Group Mentors: N/A Key Clients: >200000 units sold in India Top-Line: N/A URL: www.dlight.in D.light Energy Team

DESICREW SOLUTIONS Brand: DesiCrew | Industry: ITeS/ BPO | Location: Chennai & rural Tamil Nadu

esiCrew Solutions is an innovative rural BPO company, incubated by RTBI of IIT- Madras. The company runs IT enabled service centers in rural areas, employs and trains local people to meet the back office demands of its clients. DesiCrew offers a unique connect between urban and rural India, with a social motive of training and hiring educated youth in backward areas of the country. The startup began with offering digitisation services such as data entry and data conversion with later adding GIS based mapping services, content creation & validation and transcription and localisation services. With two of the top five insurance companies in its kitty and two of the top global internet companies as its clients, DesiCrew is poised for further growth while creating job opportunities for people in rural areas.

Founder: Saloni Malhotra Co-Founder: Rural Technology & Business Incubator Founding Team: Ashwanth G, Udayapriya, B Rathi, Thirugnanam and Foram Mehta

Investors : Rajiv Kuchhal (angel)

Mentor: Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala Key Clients\Customers: 2 of the top 5 Indian insurance companies, 2 of the top global internet companies

Top-Line: 1.75 Cr URL: www.desicrew.in 30

Saloni Malhotra

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DHAMA APPAREL Brand: ClimaWare | Industry: Innovative products for retail and industrial use | Location: Hyderabad, Ahmedabad

hama Apparel makes specialty clothing for those exposed to adverse climatic conditions. The company caters to three market segments â&#x20AC;&#x201D; industrial, military and retail. With customers such as the Indian Military

in the fold, Dhama Apparel is poised for good growth. The patented clothing is lightweight and keeps the wearer warm or cool, using rechargeable batteries.

Founder: Kranthi Kiran Vistakula Co-Founder: None

Key Clients\Customers: BRO, BATA, Indian Military, US Military, UK MOD

Mentor: Brig Ganesham

Top-Line: 27 lakhs URL: www.dhamainnovations.com Kranthi Kiran Vistakula

DIMDIM Product: Dimdim | Industry: Consumer Web | Location: Boston, Massachusetts

n a world where technology is supposed to make life easier, web-conferencing solutions available are either not affordable or are fairly complicated. This is the thought that went behind the formation of this company. Dimdim offers a browser based web conferencing service based on the open source platform. Users can download the open source code and install it to their servers. Attendees are not required to download any software to host or attend a meeting. While the solution is free for meetings up to 20 attendees; Dimdim has fairly affordable priced plans for pro meetings up to 50 attendees, and hosting webinars that can accommodate about 1000 attendees. This company has already had two rounds of investments worth $8.4M. Dimdim has the potential to become a game changer in this line of business. Watch out for them.

Founder: Jayant Pandit, Rohit Shankar, Saurav Mohapatra, and Sundar Subramanian

Investors: Nexus India Capital, Index Ventures Companies using Dimdim: Novell, Google, Dell, Amazon URL: www.dimdim.com

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DRUVA SOFTWARE Product : Druva inSync, Druva Phoenix | Brand: Druva | Industry: Software Products | Location: Pune, India

ruva, it is. Not Dhruva or Dhruvva", says co-founder Jaspreet Singh about the name of the Company that focuses on the business of data backup. It provides software for laptop as well as

server backup, anytime and anywhere. The company's products, Druva inSync and Druva Phoenix, strive to provide data protection apart from facilitating backup and management of information. Backup is also made more efficient and faster with the help of technologies like Data Deduplication and Continuous Data Protection (CDP). Druva has 300 plus customers from 23 countries, including the likes of NASA and Indian Oil Corporation in its kitty.

Founder: Jaspreet Singh Co-founder: Ramani K, Milind Borate

Investors: Sequoia, IAN Mentors: Subinder Khurana Key Clients: NASA, Xerox, Emerson, Metlife Top line: N.A URL: www.druva.com Jaspreet Singh

EARTH2ORBIT Product: Satellite launch services | Brand: Earth2Orbit | Industry: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) | Location: Mumbai, Bangalore, San Francisco, Vienna

his one-year-old Company is an interesting one, being Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first private space startup. Interesting because space exploration and satellite launch are government-owned and government managed areas in the coun-

try. So, this service company provides an integrated business window to ISRO's marketing arm Antrix Corporation. Their business focus is in four verticals namely commercialization of Indian space technology; human space systems and private spaceflight; satellite manufacturing and consulting. Future plans include selling the earth observation data products from India's fleet of remote sensing satellites in the US market, and later plan to design and manufacture satellites, assist ISRO with its human spaceflight program, conduct novel science-related experiments in space, and develop space tourism and parabolic flights within India.

Founder: Susmita Mohanty Co-Founder: Amaresh Kollipara

Investors: Siddharth Das, Karthik Reddy, Susmita Mohanty, Amaresh Kollipara Mentors: Nilamani Mohanty, George Joseph Key clients: International companies and universities Top line: NA URL: www.earth2orbit.com L-R: Susmita Mohanty, Amaresh Kollipara, Barbara Imhof, Sanket Nayak, Karthik Reddy, Siddharth Das 32

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4/30/2010 7:48:45 AM

ECO-WISE WASTE MANAGEMENT Industry: Waste Management | Location: NOIDA co-Wise is tapping the Rs 6000 crore opportunity in the solid waste management sector, which is a relatively new concept in India compared to the west where it is a highly organized business. The typical business model involves collection, transportation, segregation, treatment and disposal of waste. And there is opportunity hidden in each step. Having started off in Noida, Eco-Wise is looking to expand in cities such as Hyderabad and Chennai. It has already bagged some large corporate customers. With disposal of waste becoming quite a challenge for municipal bodies, the country could soon see many more organized players in the business of waste management. An Assocham study shows that Delhi generates about 6,000 tons of solid waste daily. Mumbai is a close second with 5,800 tons followed by Kolkata at 4,000 tons, Bangalore at 2,800 tons, and Chennai at 2,675 tons. The more the waste, the more business and profits it means for Eco-Wise.

Founder: Manik Thapar Co-founder: None Investors: Self-funded

Key Clients/Customers: Patni Computers, Oberthur Card Systems, Haldiram's, Eldeco Infrastructure and Properties, ATS Infrastructure Top-Line: 2 crore URL: www.eCo-wise.biz Manik Thapar

EKO INDIA FINANCIAL SERVICES Product: SBI Mini Savings Account | Brand: EKo | Industry: Financial Services | Location: New Delhi

cell phone is equal to a bank account, wonder how? Meet Abhishek Sinha who promises banking servics to anyone who owns a cell phone. Founder of Eko India Financial Services, Abhishek says “We cater to the financially excluded and unbanked section of the society.” Citing the fact that while over half a billion of the population owns a cell phone; only a minority of these has access to financial services. “We need to tap this market”, says Abhishek. With a strong backing from CGAP (a part of World Bank), EKo has successfully opened more than 400 outlets in Delhi and Bihar since its inception. And it has plans to expand to Rajasthan, UP, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan soon. Equipping the unbanked low income group, Eko has opened more than 50,000 accounts and plans to cover about 35-40 million people in five years time.

Founder: Abhishek Sinha Co-Founder: Abhinav Sinha

Investors: Currently grant funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through CGAP (Consultative Group to Assist the Poor)

Mentor: Professor Swami Krishnan, Mr. Kim Askjaer Key Clients: SBI, Bharti AXA Top-Line: Rs 8,00,000 p.a. URL: eko.co.in The colourful team of Eko DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 33

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ELINA NETWORKS Product: ENPAQ UniďŹ ed Gateway, ENPAQ VPN Concentrator, ENPAQ Enterprise Manager | Brand: ENPAQ, Elina | Industry: Networking, IT Management | Location: Bangalore

his almost 5-year-old company is focused on creating networking & IT management solutions to distributed companies. It is in a space that is growing at a fast pace. The versions of its products vary from company to

company. Through robust network security, reliable connectivity, and effective remote IT management, it helps its customers stay connected. Its competitors are international companies like Sonic Wall & Fortinet, along with the network security & IT management companies in the market. They have signed one patent on technology. With some excellent clients in its kitty, the company could grow its business quite fast and could become a force to reckon with.

Founder: Vivek Shenoy Co-Founder: Srinivasa Hebbar Investors: Sunil Krishnan, Swami Manohar, Prakash Bare, and others

Mentor: N/A Key Clients: AnandRathi, RPG Spencer's Retail, Motilal Oswal, Planet-M, BSNL, BEL

Top-Line: Rs 3Cr. URL: www.elinanetworks.com

L to R, Vivek Shenoy (CTO), Srinivasa Hebbar (VP-Engg), Shekar Nair (CEO)

ENABLING INNOVATIONS AND TECHNOLOGIES Product: PISTASUITE, Mint,ES200,ES400,Active RFID Reader, Active Tags | Brand: Ennovasys | Industry: IT Solutions for SCM | Location: Chennai, India

nnovasys provides real-time asset visibility across the supply chain for enterprises through its software product. Identifying and tracking exact location of each asset helps organizations increase productivity, reduce theft, improve operational efficiency, utilize optimally and obtain industry compliance. It uses RFID, GPS, Mobile, WiFi, Sensors technologies to provide this visibility. It offers three main solutions to enhance asset visibility -- Enterprise Visibility (EVS), In-transit Visibility (IVS) and Trading Partner Visibility (TVS). These solutions are powered by PistaSuite. Located in Chennai, it partners with solution providers and hardware providers to create business solutions that can be launched in the global market. It receives royalty for the solutions distributed. The company is better than many of its competitors like Fluensee, Shipcom Wireless, AssetPulse. and GlobeRanger Corp. in the US as it offers a three-way integration of RFID, GPS and mobile phone technologiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a solution it is patenting.

Founder: Uday Shankar Investor: Self-funded

Mentor: N/A Key Clientss: N/A Top-Line: N/A URL: www.ennovasys.com Picture not available 34

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blogs/opinion

Can Entrepreneurship be Taught in a Classroom?

H /Anurag Batra

Can you learn swimming without going to a swimming pool? Can you learn riding a bicycle without actually getting on to one?

Anurag Batra is real life, first-generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. When he is not busy writing such columns, he can be reached at anuragbatrayo@gmail.com. Anurag is the founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com.

onestly I do not have a definitive answer to that. My own take is probably it is better learnt from an entrepreneur because classroom training cannot be as effective. Maybe I am propagating a clichéd point of view being pedalled for so many years that entrepreneurship cannot be taught or inculcated in a classroom. I would like to ask you the following questions: Can you learn swimming without going to a swimming pool? Can you learn riding a bicycle without actually getting on to one? I am sure you agree with me that in both cases you can't. Similarly, I believe entrepreneurship should be learnt through mentoring, inspiration and action. Real entrepreneurship happens by jumping in, trying and failing sometimes and eventually succeeding. The reason I started thinking about this is because in the past few months many business schools have invited me to their entrepreneurship programs and last month I accepted an offer to take a session at Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad’s (MICA) entrepreneurship program. I must say that it was a learning and pleasant experience interacting with these hugely talented and “budding entrepreneurs”. Did I go to a flower nursery? Budding Huh! Buzzing definitely. Lots of ideas, enthusiasm and drive. For a change I realized that they were really serious about being entrepreneurs. All had dreams in their eyes and laptops on their desks while I was interacting with them. I was talking to “Screenagers” who were searching things and concepts and people I was mentioning and talking to them about. I decided to make it interactive and asked them a question to understand where was each one of them going. I asked them “What’s your gift?” Suzoy said that his gift was the ability to simplify things— he takes sessions where he teaches non-teaching staff how to multiply without using tables. Ritika has the ability to imagine exponentially which she wants to use in making creative brochures and websites. Esha said that she could dream, and turn them into reality— her strength

was execution, and she plans to use it to differentiate between ‘recreation’ and ‘leisure’. Sapan’s gift was networking and he plans to use this in creating a discount portal, working on a loyalty program for corporate organizations and retailers. Keshav’s gift was execution which he was actively using, and already has three ventures dealing with corporate training. Siddharth’s gift was ‘observing people keenly’, which he plans to encash by working on film tourism, while Shwetha’s gift was writing, which she plans to use to make short interactive story books by having videos in them. From these varied responses I am sure you know that they took entrepreneurship seriously and were not academic about it. I was impressed, excited and also nervous. The next generation of entrepreneurs is daring and nuanced. Two of them even sent me their business plans promptly. One of them sought my help for training and showcased his excellent relationship skills. The question I kept asking myself was would they have been better off if they had joined a CEO or a senior business manager or an entrepreneur as an understudy? Wouldn't they be better off being in Delhi and Mumbai working in either entrepreneurial startups or directly with entrepreneurs? I wanted to know why they chose to be academic about entrepreneurship. Subhash Chandra did not go for an entrepreneurship course; neither did N R Naryan Murthy nor first generation entrepreneurs like Sanjeev Bhikchandani and Deep Kalra. I have reached the conclusion that what probably worked for them are the following three things: (1) Learning from each other, that’s the huge one (2) Drawing inspiration from visiting entrepreneurs (3) Having a fair sense of where they are headed I would prefer apprenticeship over a course in a school. Would they be better off participating in the Indian version of Trump's “Apprentice"? Maybe DARE magazine should start one. I would be happy to host this DAREing show. R DARE.CO.IN | COLOMN | MAY 2010 35

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GAMES2WIN INDIA Product: games2win.com, gangofgamers.com, chimpoo.com | Brand: Games2win | Industry: Online Gaming | Location: Mumbai

reated under the flagship of Contest2win, Games2win has scaled immense heights in the online gaming world within a short span of 3 years. Today, in terms of traffic, it is one of the top 20 online gaming businesses in the world (as per comScore), giving competition to names like Yahoo games, Zynga, etc. It records over 20 million unique users a month visiting from over 218 countries across the world. The company is striving to reach a figure of 30 million unique users very soon and join the league of the top 10 gaming businesses. It has a whole range of casual online games available in 23 different languages. It also develops original gaming applications for the top social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, etc. It is very popular across other global social networking sites like hi5 and MySpace. In an initiative to churn profit of piracy and bring traffic back to the website, Games2win devised Inviziads, the world's fastest growing in-game ad network for flash game publishers.

Founder: Alok Kejriwal Co-Founder: Mahesh Khambadkone Investor: ICICI Venture, Clearstone Venture Partners, Silicon Valley

Bank, Nexus India Capital

Mentor: N/A Key Clientss: Viacom, Nokia, Idea, Airtel Top-Line: 20 crores URL: games2win.com Alok Kejriwal

â&#x20AC;&#x153;GEOKNOâ&#x20AC;? GEOSPATIAL KNOWLEDGE PRACTITIONERS Product: Laser Scanning Systems, Geographic Information Systems | Brand: LASUtility, Limulator | Industry:3-D Topographical Mapping | Location: IIT Kanpur, Kanpur

eokno is a company that is still at the incubation stage at IIT Kanpur and Balaji Nagaran, the man behind it, candidly admits he does not even have a clear business plan as of now. Yet, it is his pioneering technology-

applying laser scanning techniques in Geographic Information Systems, that helps his venture find a place on this list. To be sure, in the developed world, this technology has been around for well over a decade now, but it is only coming in India and not more than 2-3 players are experimenting with it as of now. Nagarajan already has a pilot project commissioned by IRCON for its ambitious railway project in Kashmir. He now plans to tap bigger construction and infrastructure players in the private sector. And considering he has he first movers' advantage in a highly specialized field, he can look forward to good times ahead.

Founder: Balaji Nagarajan Co-founder: NA

Investors: SIDBI Mentor: Prof. Bharat Lohani Key Clients: IRCON (pilot project in Kashmir) Top line: NA (still at incubation stage) URL: www.geokno.co Picture not available 36

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4/30/2010 7:49:04 AM

GRIDBOTS TECHNOLOGIES Brand: Edubotix, SaUsR, teleGRID, gBOT, sleuthHOUND | Industry: Robotics | Location: Ahmedabad (Main ofďŹ ce) plus 15 franchisee outlets

ridbots is tapping the lucrative robotics market with an impressive line of consumer robotics, defence robotics and industrial robotics products. The company has more than 20 robotic products for consumer,

industrial and educational sectors and has 15 franchisees across India, running Robostores. These stores are immersive experience outlets--where you can go, see robots, understand how they work and buy them for your home or office.

Founder: Pulkit Gaur Co-founder: None Investors: Self-funded; IIM Ahmedabad Incubator

Mentors: CIIE-IIM, Ahmedabad, Paresh Vasani, Allen D'Souza, Prof P.K.Sinha Key Clients/Customers: MHA-Govt. Of India, Indian Navy, Govt. of Gujarat, NTPC, JAL Engineers Top-Line: 1 Cr Pulkit Gaur

URL: www.gridbots.com

HUMMINGBIRD SUITES Product: Service apartment ďŹ rm | Brand: HummingBird | Industry: Hospitality | Location: Bangalore

n interesting Company, HummingBird is in the business of providing transit accommodation and various stay solutions to corporate organizations. It helps companies save 15 to 25 percent on their

travel budgets. It plans to manage 1000 rooms this year, up from 500 last year, and projects a business of over 3500 rooms in five years. Vinod Thimmaya, Founder, HummingBird expects the turnover to touch Rs 300 crore from current Rs 22 crore by then, which would include expansion into 22 Indian states and a few international locations through alliances.

Founder: Vinod Thimmaya, Vivek Madappa Co-Founder: N/A Investor: Helion Ventures

Mentor: N/A Key Clients\Customers: Honey well , TCS, Wipro , Accenture, Philips, Cisco , JP Morgan and 500 other companies Top-Line: Rs 22 Crs. Vinod Thimmaya & Vivek Madappa with CNBC Emerging India Award 09

URL: www.hummingbirdindia.com DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 37

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HUSK POWER SYSTEMS Product: Mini power-plants | Industry: Clean Tech/Social | Location: Patna

his is a startup with a huge social impact, and that is the reason why it is featured in our list. Husk Power Systems (HPS) uses novel biomass gasification technology to convert rice husks into combustible gases,

which then drive a generator to produce clean, safe and efficient electricity at affordable rates. Sounds good? Now read this: They sell the idea of biomass mini-grid electrification to village panchayats who then can provide electricity to the villagers' houses and shops. The farmers in and around that village, who have rice husks at their disposal, can sell the same to the plant. This plant is run and maintained by local community members, who gain employment because of this whole set up. As of now, HPS is successfully providing power to over 50,000 rural Indians and aim to operate 50 plants, electrifying 125 villages by the end of this year.

Founder: Gyanesh Pandey, Manoj Sinha, Charles W. (Chip) Ransler IV, Ratnesh Yadav Investors: Acumen Fund URL: www.huskpowersystems.com

Picture not available

i2i TELESOLUTIONS Product: Telemedicine Software & Services | Brand: i2iCARE & i2i CONNECT | Industry: Healthcare Technology | Location: Bangalore

he company provides TeleOphthalmology application and services on the iPhone. i2itelesolutions compresses, encrypts and transfers medical images and data via the internet to eliminate any geographical boundaries between doctor and patient.The company's presence in the healthcare sector, one of the fastest growing, is a big positive. The team of 20 is likely to grow to 35, with targeted revenue growth being 3x in one year, and $50 mn revenue base in 5 years. It has partnered with MediaLogic on exclusive global marketing and sales of leading Ultrasound reporting software SONOCARE. Dealing with challenges of slow broadband and networks, it is trying to tap the opportunity in the form of increased use of telecommunications technologies in healthcare. With products as innovative as TeleOphthalmology, TeleRadiology, TeleCardiology, and the core team having 200+ years of experience, i2i can surely make a big impact.

Founder: Sham Banerji Co-Founder: Anand Thyagrajan & Arvind Thiagrajan Investor: N/A

Mentor: Dr. Bala Manian, Dr. Subir Banerji, Dr. Rajni Battu, Dr. Arun Mukherjee, Prof. Jamadagni

Key Clientss: Narayana Nethralaya, BGS Global Hospitals, NRHM Karnataka. Total of around 80 customers Top-Line: Rs 1 crore URL: www.i2itelesolutions.com 38

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4/30/2010 7:49:14 AM

IDEAFORGE TECHNOLOGY Product: NETRA-UAV & Roto Charger | Industry: Defence Technology and Cleantech | Location: Mumbai

ho would not remember the UAV used in the movie 3 Idiots? It was made by IdeaForge, the company started by three IITians. It is entering into a strategic tie-up with OEMs for marketing and distribution

and have already appointed a distributor in Australia. This 'newest frontier in Defence' has garnered great response and some internal security agencies in the government have already bought it. This man-portable product, along with their products in the second vertical of human powered energy (read chargers) is expected to make IdeaForge a Rs. 300-400 crore company in next 5 years which will be almost 7-8 times growth in revenue.

Founder: Ankit Mehta Co-founder: Rahul, Ashish Bhat Investors: DSIR, Angel Investor Mentors: N/A Key Clients: Internal Security Agencies of government Top-Line: N/A URL: www.ideaforge.co.in L to R- Rahul Singh, Ankit Mehta, Amardeep Singh, Ashish Bhat, Vipul Joshi

IKEN SOLUTIONS Product: Mooga | Brand: iKen â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Intelligence Personalized | Industry: Business Analytics | Location: IIT Bombay, Mumbai

tarted in 2005, with a modest seed capital of Rs. 10 lakh, by Dr. Rajendra Sonar, a professor at IIT Powai, this company that specializes in developing software for business intelligence and analytics, was taken over by

serial entrepreneur Sidharth Goel, boasts of clients as diverse as Sony Music and Airtel. Goel claims a US$ 2 million contract with TCS is in the offing and in the forseeable future, iKen plans to raise US$ 4-5 million through the private equity route. In the next 3-4 years, this company has ambitious plans and hopes to achieve a topline figure in the range of US$20-25 million. Currently, apart from India, the company operates in Latin America and hopes to reach other offshore territories in the not too distant future.

Founder: Siddharth Goel, Dr. Rajendra Sonar Investors: Privately funded, thus far

Strategic Partners: Tata Consultancy Services, Comviva, Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s On India, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Larsen & Toubro Infotech, Movil Gate, Global Net, Simato Solutions

Key Clients Sony Music, MTV, Hungama, Hungama Mobile, Airtel Sri Lanka, Motorola, Claro (Part of America Movil), BPCL

Top-Line: US$ 2million URL: www.ikensolutions.com iKen Solutions Team DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 39

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IMERE TECHNOLOGIES Product: Imere ULaP | Brand: Imere and Ohe! | Industry: GeoSolutions | Location: Bangalore, India

mere with Imere ULaP Technology (patent pending), helps you locate your surroundings. It brings location awareness to applications on mobiles and laptops along with providing a host of comprehensive geospatial

features. Unlike other similar services that use GPS to identify location, Imere doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. And thereby could gain access to a huge market of cell phone owners who do not have GPS. Currently it is working with an array of teleservice providers. It has also tied up with a number of shopping malls, enabling the shops to advertise and lure customers. Alongside, it is also trying to push forward the concept of automatic toll payments. Apart from these Imere has something very interesting up its sleeve-- automatic check-in at airports to passengers through its application.

Founder: Anil Mathews Investors: Rediff.com India Ltd.

Mentor: N/A Clients: Samsung India, Rediff, Telcos (confidential) Top line: N/A URL: www.imere.com Anil Mathews

INSTA HEALTH SOLUTIONS Product: Hospital Management System & Treatment Management Systems/ EMR solutions | Brand: HMS | Industry: Hospital Management solutions | Location: Bangalore

his one-year-old company is a healthcare IT solutions company, which aims to bring about a change in the hospital management industry. Initially self invested, it has now been funded by Investor Capital Partner (VC).

The company has not signed any patent as they believe their product is that of a standard software. For them their competition is with the big players like Wipro. But in later stages, they aim to diversify by aiming the mid-players, rather than high-end hospital industry. Hence their clients are generally from outside metros. By virtue of the sector the company is in and its innovative offering could make it big in the next five years.

Founder: Ramesh Emani Co-Founder: Dr. NK Venkataramana Investors: Self invested+ Investors Capital Partner (VC)

Mentor: Board of Management Key Clients: Lifeline 24/7 Hi Tech ICU Hospital, Jeevani Health Care's, etc. Top-Line: NA URL: www.instahealthsolutions.com Ramesh Emani 40

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4/30/2010 7:49:24 AM

INVENTION LABS Product: AVAZ, a communication aid for differently abled children | Industry: Science & Technology | Location: Chennai

ndia is home to the largest number of differently-abled people in the world. Invention Labs is working on manufacturing low-cost products that would help improve the quality of life of these people. Started by

alumni of IIT-Madras, Invention Labs has developed AVAZ, a low-cost hand-held device that helps people with cerebral palsy communicate and express their needs, much like the one made famous by Stephen Hawking. The device is fairly affordable at Rs 30,000. The innovators have filed for a patent for their innovation.

Founder: Ajit Narayanan Co-founder: Aswin Chandrasekaran, Preetham Shivanna, Adib Ibrahim

Investors: IIT-Madras Incubator; DST Mentors: Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala Key Clients/Customers: Children with cerebral palsy Top line: Confidential URL: www.inventionlabs.in Invention Labs Team

ISANGO Product: Tours and Activities, Holidays | Brand: Isango | Industry: Online Travel | Location: UK, India

ould you like to pack yourself off in that flying machine with the blades buzzing and get a copter view of the Grand Canyon? Or say have a laid-back Sunday, brunching with the kangaroos? Or better, how about

reviving the writer in you by booking yourself for an Angels and Demons tour? You wonder where this is leading to? Well, to Isango. Launched in 2007, Isango combines holiday travel with more engaging and uniquely experiential activties to provide a more wholesome package to customers through its online reservation service. It offers a gamut of activities ranging from flamenco dancing in Madrid to the Eiffel Tower restaurant dinner besides offering holidays and sight-seeing across 65 countries to independent travellers. Currently, its focus is more on Europe and it plans to expand its portfolio of activities in America and India.

Co-founder: Ranjan Singh, Aseem Sadana Investors: SPARK Ventures, Beringea LLP (VCs)

Mentors: N.A. Key Clients/Customers: N.A. Top line: N.A. URL: www.isango.com Picture not avalaible DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 41

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4/30/2010 7:49:29 AM

entrepreneur of the month

The inception of Emami Group took place way back in mid seventies when two childhood friends, R.S. Agarwal and R.S. Goenka left their high proďŹ le jobs with the Birla Group to set up Kemco Chemicals, an Ayurvedic medicine and cosmetic manufacturing unit in Kolkata in 1974. With a vision of combining the age old wisdom of Ayurveda with modern manufacturing techniques for creating winning brands, the company was started with a meager amount of Rs 20,000. Emami today is a Rs 2000 crore diversiďŹ ed business group. R.S. Agarwal speaks to DARE about his entrepreneurial journey...

R S Agarwal Emami Group

MAY 2010 | BIO | DARE.CO.IN

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4/28/2010 10:29:21 AM

No risk, no gain. This has always been my driving mantra. Since my youth I have never been averse to take risks.

ou were the youngest president in a Birla Group Company and in an affluent position. Then why did you decide to start your own business? Though I was in a high profile job, being a president of the company under the legendary Late Aditya Birla, the fact remained that business was in my blood as I belonged to a business family. My family was in the business of dyes and colors. It was a considerably large business though later, for various reasons, my family could not sustain it. So driven by the spirit of entrepreneurship, I decided to take a plunge in business. Despite the fact that I had the honor and privilege to work under Late Shri Aditya Birla, I felt like doing something on my own and establish myself as a businessman.

Honestly, how long did it take between the initial thought of your own business to actually quitting your job and starting the business? Can you share with us the thoughts that were coming to your mind and how you dealt with them? I had the thought of venturing into business while I was in service. Frankly, taking a trip down the memory lane at this juncture and recalling when exactly I decided to shift to my own enterprise will be very difficult. But it was always on my mind and I was waiting for the right opportunity to make an entry. It was also a very conscious decision to enter the cosmetics business. Since I am a great believer in the holistic healing of ayurveda, my intention was to base our products on ayurvedic formulations. I also felt that the market for the ayurveda-driven personal and healthcare products is immense in India and there is a huge scope to exploit this opportunity. We did not want to emulate the MNCs but

do something that is linked with our cultural ethos. How did you come in the proximity of RS Goenka, co-founder of Emami Group? Was it Friendship, relationship, money or skill sets— what did you both see in each other to start this business together? I knew RS Goenka from my school days. We used to study together at Maheshwari Vidyalaya. I was a year senior to him. We gelled very well and I also used to tutor him on different subjects as I was very good in studies. Gradually our relationship went beyond friendship and we turned out to be each other’s soul mate. We do not consider ourselves as separate entities. We are the opposite sides of the same coin. Theoritically, it is Agarwal and Goenka family. But, in reality it is one unit. The bond between us is seamless and natural. I also feel that we have been able to stay together because both of us are givers and not takers. Both RS Goenka and myself want the other to do well. How did you spot an opportunity for this business? Why did you decide to go ahead with this business? I always thought of venturing into the FMCG business—in the manufacture of personal and healthcare products for I felt that the scope in this segment is enormous. Besides, this is also one segment which has no government regulation. So it was a very well thought out decision to venture into the FMCG sector. From an assured monthly salary to going out on the streets to make business—please tell us about the emotions, feelings, practical challenges that you faced during this transition? No risk, no gain. This has always been

my driving mantra. Since my youth I was never averse to take risks. And as mentioned earlier I was determined to do business. But there was resistance from my family during the initial days. Everybody was very apprehensive. There was the fear in them about the risk involved in any commercial enterprise. Since I was working in the rank of a President, before moving on to the business, my family members led a very comfortable life. It was scary for them to break out from the then comfort zone and usher in a life of uncertainty and risk. Frankly, it is the conviction of my courage that got me going. What were the biggest challenges that you faced as an aspiring entrepreneur — personal, professional and financial? Finance was definitely a problem. I did not have enough funds to start a business. It was RS Goenka’s father who lent us Rs 20,000 as seed capital. That is how the journey began. Since I was already exposed to the nittygritty of the business by being in service earlier, I could understand the nuances of our business quickly. RS Goenka and I supplemented each other. Besides, my knowledge as a CA and CS had also been of great help. Looking back at your entrepreneurial journey, what would you say has been the biggest success as an entrepreneur? It is very difficult to single out one success story as the “biggest”. The feeling of each success story is overwhelmingly different from the other. Moreover, I have many plans for the future and I aspire to taste more success in the coming days. Who knows the joy of those might surpass the feelings of all my previous success stories. DARE.CO.IN | BIO | MAY 2010 43

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I did not have enough funds to start a business. It was RS Goenka’s father who lent us Rs 20,000 as seed capital. That is how the journey began

What is the one failure that you would say you learnt a lot from? I do not want to remember my failures. I do not want to glorify them. Let me say that failure is not defeat unless you stop trying to achieve it. Just a couple of years back, you ventured into realty. What are your plans there? In the realty sector we have several projects in hand with more than 100 million sq ft currently under construction. Besides, post acquisition of Zandu Pharmaceutical Works, we plan to develop a 2.5 acre of land at Dadar in Mumbai. In the field of FMCG, what would you say are the areas that hold good potential for aspiring entrepreneurs? I would say non-durable products of mass consumption have a very good prospect in India. When did you know that it was time for you to go behind the scene and hand over operations to the professionals? Let me clarify that I do not act from behind the curtain. I lead from the front despite my indifferent health.

My hands are full and we intend to become a Rs 8000 - Rs 10,000 crore company over the next five years. So for me the question of going behind the scene does not arise. But Emami is a professional company and we have created verticals like CEO, CFO, etc for managing daily operations. The CEO, CFO and other departmental heads lead a thoroughly professional team comprising MBAs, CAs, etc. So the responsibility has already been handed over to the professionals and RS Goenka and myself oversee their functions. Have you trained the next generation of the family to take over? What are their roles going to be? The next generation directors have already been groomed up and are discharging their duties very effectively. In this context I would like to say that the recent acquisition of Zandu has been spearheaded by our next generation directors only. Who were the biggest pillars of support in your early struggling days? My friend and co-founder of Emami, RS Goenka and his family have been my biggest support during the initial

days of struggle. Besides, there has been great support from friends and associates. I would also like to mention that Bhagwat Gita has always greatly influenced my life and living. It has always been a great source of courage and provided enormous mental support during difficult times. Who were your biggest critics? How did you deal with them? Fortunately, I had a lot of admirers but no critics. All wished me well. How much personal time did you get when you started business? Needless to say, during the initial days there was hardly any time for me to spare for my family. How much time do you get now? Compared to those early days, now I have time to spare during weekends. I spend my free time with my friend R S Goenka as well as with a group of common friends whom I have known since my school days. What would you say is your personal success mantra? Discipline, time management, spirituality, attitude to give and in being sensitive towards humanity. R

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MAY 2010 | BIO | DARE.CO.IN

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ISENSOR DIAGNOSTICS Product: iChem (Semi-Auto Clinical Chemistry Analyzer) | Industry: Medical Diagnostics | Location: Hyderabad

Sensor, a startup by an industry veteran with 18 years of experience brings to India innovations in medical diagnostics and point-of-care. Their first product iChem, a clinical chemistry analyser, has been released a month

ago and at a price point of Rs 90,000, has garnered good response from labs, hospitals and doctors. Another product, iStratCare is meant to get medical tests done in 15 minutes flat at the patients location, at a very low cost. The team of 7, led by the husband wife duo, has plans to expand to 35 in 3-4 years and also operationalize a manufacturing plant for the products in next one year.

Founder: Vijay Mathur Co-Founder: Lakshmi Devi Investor: LKP Life Science Incubator

Mentor: N/A Key Clients\Customers: N/A Top-Line: N/A URL: isensordiag.com iSensor Diagnostics Team

ISHAYA HEALTH FOODS Product: Fresh fruit beverages and health snacks | Brand: The Juice Station | Industry: Food & Beverage | Location: Kolkata

he concept of this business is what got it into the list. The Juice Station juice van is India's 1st mobile juice bar. The company differentiates itself through a young, fun, vibrant and environmentally conscious brand that

offers health conscious youngsters an alternative to caffeine. The Juice Station was founded in 2009 and currently operates only in Kolkata. However, the big plan is to launch about 100 mobile juice vans in the next 3 years as well as launch kiosks and concept stores across 7 tier-1 cities of India. "I had put in my own funds initially; but now we have couple of angel investors based out or Kolkata, who is interested in funding us to take us to the next level,â&#x20AC;? says Arundhati Dutta. You think they can go places?

Founder: Arundhati Dutta Investors: Self Funded

Mentor: N/A Key Clients: IIT Kharagpur, events and mariages Top-Line: N/A URL: www.thejuicestation.co.in Arundhati Dutta DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 45

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JCG SALVAGE SETTLERS Brand: SalvageSettlers | Industry: Insurance | Location: New Delhi

eneral insurance companies tend to collect a whole lot of salvage material while processing insurance claims. They are now outsourcing the auction/sale of this salvage, and this is where Salvage Settlers comes

in. It helps these companies get a good deal and make more money through the sale of salvage. With some of the key players in the general insurance sector as its customers, Salvage Settlers is brokering lucrative deals in the Rs 500-700 crore salvage market in India. The company has now expanded its wings, eyeing the lucrative Rs 70,000 crore scrap market, helping corporate houses sell their scrap.

Founder: Anshul Gupta Co-founder: None

Investors: Self-funded Mentors: None Clients: All general insurance companies URL: www.salvagesettlers.com Anshul Gupta

KWENCH LIBRARY SOLUTIONS Brand: Kwench | Industry: Services/Library | Location: Mumbai

wench provides corporate library services, enabling employees to have access to thousands of titles. The USP being that the company does not need to worry about capital expenditure of setting up a library, save on physical space, cost and administrative efforts on maintain a library. Founded in 2008, Kwench has already scored 80 clients in 4 cities i.e. Mumbai, Pune, Delhi NCR, and Bengaluru. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the next five years, we would be surprised if we do not have the top 500 companies of the Sensex in our clientele,â&#x20AC;? says Prashant John. Kwench is now present in 14 cities, and banking on the fact that the young India has a greater level of acceptance of such a concept. Why should you bet on them? The fact that Kwench was founded during the recession period and started doing well for themselves in the very first three months of operations is something that should speak for itself.

Founder: Sunder Nookala, Krishnan Madhabush, Mitesh Damania, and Prashant John Co-founder: N/A

Investors: Indian Angel Network Mentors: Indian Angel Network Key Clients/Customers: Tata AIG, Vodafone, Yes Bank, Honeywell, Wipro, KPMG, Marico, etc Top-Line: N/A URL: www.kwench.in Sunder Nookala, Krishnan Madhabush, Mitesh Damania, and Prashant John 46

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LUCIFER LIGHTS Brand: Lucifer Lights | Industry: Manufacturing/LED Lighting | Location: Pune

ucifer Lights started out in 2008 with a single product for Industrial LED lighting. According to Rajesh Purohit, the company achieved break even in the very first year. Currently in 2010, the company has over 130 products and has successfully managed to bag over 70 companies in their client list. As it stands, there is no set standards certification for LED lighting; Lucifer Lights has gotten their products certified from Central Power Research Institute (CPRI). Since the pain point of this industry is the pricing of the products, Lucifer Lights plans on creating more scope for business by bringing down the price of the products by improvising on manufacturing techniques. â&#x20AC;&#x153;For instance, we have successfully managed to bring down the price from Rs 24,000 to about Rs 14,000,â&#x20AC;? says Purohit. In 2009-10, the company clocked a turnover of Rs 14 Crore and targeting to hit Rs 50 Crore in this year of operation. The company has plans to do an IPO awaiting the policy amendment which will enable setting up SME exchange.

Founder: Rajesh Purohit Investors: Self funded Bayer - Material Science, Bharati Cellular, Larsen and Tubro, Indian Oil Corporation, etc

Key Clients/Customers: ISPAT Industries, Apollo Hospital,

Top-Line: 14 Crore URL: www.ledindia.com Rajesh Purohit of Lucifer Lights

LUNA ERGONOMICS Product: Panini Keypad | Brand: CleverTexting | Location: Noida

his two-year-old Company has created a software that helps people type quickly in their regional language using a numeric keypad. The software known as Panini Keypad in India and CleverTexting glo-

bally, analyzes what you are typing and tries to predict the next character and position based on what you have typed earlier. Other than mobile handsets, this software could find use in ATMs, interactive kiosks and the like. Market seeding has started and they are awaiting patent registration to begin full-fledged marketing activities.

Founder: Abhijit Bhattacharjee Co-founder: NA Investors: Angel investor and JSS-STEP

Mentors: Asim Ghosh Key clients: Handset manufacturers, telecom operators, Government Top-Line: NA URL: paninikeypad.com L-R: Aashish Bhanawat, Bajimohan, Bhadraji, Karthik, Munez, Venkatesh R, R.Venkatesh, Vishal Borker, Abinaya, Shalini Devi, Jyoti, Sudarshan Borker, Prashant Honnavar, Sameer Naik, Sumanth, & Ravichandra DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 47

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MANGO TECHNOLOGIES Product: Aubr, Yoj, Sumuh, MAF Suite | Industry: Telecommunications/Wireless | Location: Bangalore

developer of technology platforms and application framework, Mango has accumulated good credentials. One of its application framework has been acquired by tech giant Qualcomm. They have filed for five

patents and have 4 main products to offer â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Yoj, Aubr, Sumuh and MAF Suite. It is now bringing together an ecosystem wherein diverse players converge to develop solutions for the public wherein the targeted domains include Agriculture, Healthcare, Education and E-Governance. Aiming to be a $100 million company in the next 5 years, it is working with government bodies at various levels and partnering with domain know-how and content providers.

Founder: Sunil Maheshwari Co-Founder: Lekh Joshi Investor: Ojas Venture Partners, NSRCEL Mentor: N/A Key Clients: Qualcomm, Tier I OEMs worldwide, MNC Telecom operators, Semiconductor cos.

Top-Line: N/A URL: www.mangotechno.com

Lekh Joshi and Sunil Maheshwari

MASUTA PRODUCERS Product: Tussar Yarn Making Machines | Brand: Textile | Location: Jharkhand

yarn producers' community formed by Madhabanand Ray, its becoming a means of livelihood for many. With Rs 60 lakh of profits disbursed among 2500 yarn producers in the current year, it has a target to make

at least Rs 20000 profit for each producer, with a target of getting in 10000 producers in the next five years. For their Tussar yarn producing machines, they have been granted two patents in India, while international patents have been applied for. Masuta's current production is 13 tonnes, which is its 50 percent capacity. Rs 10 lakh funding has come from Vilgro for technical assistance. Masuta is currently expanding into Orissa and AP. With companies like Fabindia and government handloom departments being their key clients, Masuta is making a big difference to the lives of its producer members and their families.

Founder: Madhabanand Ray Co-founder: None Investors: Vilgro

Mentors: PRADAN provides MASUTA with the required professional management support Key Clients/Customers: FabIndia, Govt of India Top-Line: 60 lakh URL: www.masuta.org MASUTA Producers Team 48

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MAXHEAP TECHNOLOGIES Product: CommonFloor | Brand: CommonFloor | Industry: Online platform for niche market, residential societies | Location: Bangalore

axHeap Technologies brings you CommonFloor, a specialized online platform for residential societies. It enables Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) and societies to build better communication among neighbours who lead an otherwise busy lifestyle and rarely have the time to meet each other. The revenue model is currently local advertising to the RWAs and residents by service providers. The service is beneficial to both residents and associations as it enables easy access to important notices and announcements, discussions within the society, information regarding local services and vendors, etc to the communities. CommonFloor seeks to become the defacto RWA meeting place, albeit a virtual one. It is currently serving more than 20,000 apartment societies across cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, etc. Its clientele includes names like Sobha, Mantri, Prestige, Adarsh Apartments and others spread across 70 cities.

Co-founders: Lalit Mangal, Sumit Jain, and Vikas Malpani Investors: Accel Partners India

Key Clients/Customers: All premium apartments including Sobha,

Mentors: Gagan Kumar, Sameer Guglani, Abhishek Goyal Mantri, Prestige, Adarsh, etc.

Top-Line: NA URL: www.commonfloor.com CommonFloor’s team

MCHEK INDIA PAYMENT SYSTEMS Product: Mobile payment solutions | Brand: mChek | Industry: Mobile Payment/Mobile Banking | Location: Registered Ofﬁce: Mumbai, Head Ofﬁce: Bangalore

Chek makes your cellphone act like a debit card. It is a mobile-based secure transaction platform that can be used for remote authentication, authorization and notification of payments from your bank account

using your mobile phone. Its services are available to almost everyone who owns a mobile phone and has a bank account. For this, the company has tied up with a slew of banks and telecom service providers. SIM cards from Airtel, Vodafone, TATA Indicom, TATA Docomo, etc. come with the mChek application preloaded. One of the first companies to be certified by Western Union, mChek plans to soon start OTC (over the counter) transactions in India as it is already doing in Sri Lanka with its partner Dialog. Other plans include expanding business to Asian and African countries.

Co-founders: Bharavi Gade, John Kattakayam, Anurag Gupta Investors: Dr. Syed Zaidi, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Nexus India

Mentor: Dr. Syed Zaidi, Anurag Gupta Key Clients: Airtel, Tata, Vodafone Top-Line: N.A URL: main.mchek.com John Kattakayam DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 49

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MEDIVED INNOVATIONS Product : Active Implantable Devices | Brand Name(s): Stellar | Industry: Medical devices | Location: Bangalore

his active implantable medical devices manufacturer is poised for growth given the huge demand for such devices in developing countries that rely heavily on imports. Started in 2007, MediVed makes similar devices

of high quality at one-tenth of the US costs, at its facility in Bangalore. With healthcare sector growing at a fast pace, the demand for these affordable medical devices is on the rise. The Company is set to manufacture a whole range of such products. There is tremendous cost pressures being faced by US companies with Obama's campaign to reduce prices of healthcare leading them to offshore manufacturing of medical devices to low-cost manufacturing locations. This is where MediVed plays a role and will have an impact-- as a manufacturer of low-cost and advanced medical devices for the rest of the world.

Founder: Dinesh Puri Co-Founder: N/A

Investor: Manipal Group Mentor: N/A Key Clients\Customers: All Cath Labs Top-Line: Confidential URL: www.medived.com MediVed Team

MEDSPHERE TECHNOLOGIES Product: InstaRAD, InstaPACS, InstaCath, InstaNM | Industry: Healthcare | Location: Bangalore

edSphere Technologies is a teleradiology and PACS solution provider. The company develops teleradiology and PACS products and services for its customers located across the globe. The idea behind the com-

pany is to provide patient care at places and under conditions where the doctors with the required expertise are physically not available. Healthcare sector is booming and providing a solution like the one from the stable of Medsphere is a shot in the arm for healthcare professionals and patients. MedSphere's products allows reporting to be done through laptop and data card even while travelling or on vacation. The affordability and ease of use of its products would add to MedSphere's popularity.

Founder: Sanjeev S Co-founder: Tapesh Aggarwal

Investors: Self-funded / Angel Key Clients/Customers: N/A Top-Line: N/A URL: www.medspheretech.com Sanjeev S 50

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4/30/2010 7:51:53 AM

MYNTRA Brand: Myntra | Industry: Services/Gifting solutions | Location: Bengaluru

ounded in July 2006, Myntra is the brain wave of 6 guys from IIT/IIM background. This company was one of the early movers in India who got into the business of on-demand personalization platform for products, gifts and

merchandise. The company is exploring a hybrid model - where it has tied up with Reliance Web World and several other gift shops, where the customer can see and touch the products in person, as well conveniently pay by cash. Yet another company that was in a very early stage when recession stuck, did it affect them? "Yes, the average corporate customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; order size has gone down, but we have clocked from 40 customers to 300 customers in this time frame," says Mukesh Bansal. Myntra has received a funding of $5 million from tier 1 Venture Capital funds like IDG, NEA & Accel. The company is headquartered in Bangalore & has sales offices across Mumbai & New Delhi.

Founder: Mukesh Bansal, Sankar Bora Investors: IDG, NEA & Accel

Mentor: Sasha Mirchandani, Shantanu Bhagwat, Rohit Agrawal, Priyank Garg, Shiva Kumar

Core team members: Raveen Sastry, Vineet Saxena, Ashutosh Lawania, S S Venkatesh, Prabhakar Sunder, Rajat Shikhar

Key Clients: Yahoo, Mphasis, SAB Miller, Accenture, Tech Mahindra, Birlasoft, Headstrong etc

URL: www.myntra.com Mukesh Bansal of Myntra.com

NATUROL BIOENERGY LIMITED Product: Biodiesel and glycerin | Brand: Naturol | Industry: Renewable energy | Location: Works at Kakinada and HQ at Hyderabad

his is the company that set up the first integrated biodiesel plant in South East Asia to produce and export biodiesel generated from multiple feedstocks to Europe. C S Bhaskar, an engineer from Nagarjuna University

and management degree holder from Wayne State University, after working with Ford Motor Company and Coastal Papers, is the brain behind this project. The company is also on its tracks to produce electricity from biodiesel. It plans to generate 120 megawatts of power with an investment of about Rs 600 crores.

C.S. Bhaskar

Founder: C S Bhaskar Investors: IDBI, ICICI, LIC, NABARD, Andhra Bank, Central Bank - lenders, APIDC VC, UTI VC and SIDBI VC- equity investors

Mentor: Shashi Kumar Key Clients: Vitol, Cargil, AOT, etc Top-Line: At 80 percent operating capacity - Rs 350 Cr URL: www.naturol-bio.com The entire team of Naturol DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 51

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NEARTIVITY WIRELESS Product/services: SIMPAISA & NearField Communication (NFC) technology | Brand: Neartivity | Industry: Mobile NFC | Location: Bangalore

eartivity Wireless offers an NFC based mobile money platform that enables mobile operators, financial institutions and trusted service managers (TSM) to offer contact-less mobile banking services to mobile phone users, especially in remote areas where banks are generally not easily accessible. The service will enables the users to perform various banking services like opening a bank account, cash withdrawal, money transfer , utility bill payments, etc. through neighbouring retail stores. The service is based on NFC technology which uses radio frequencies to transfer data. Facing the challenge that only a handful of handsets currently, like NOKIA, have NFC functionality, the company has developed an innovative NFC platform, SIMPAISA, that will offer NFC functionality on any existing mobile phone through a flexible wafer that can be attached to the mobile phone sim card and a thin radio frequency antenna that can be stuck to the cover of the mobile phone.

Founder: Anish Achutan Co-founder: Mabel Chacko

Investors: Angel Investor Mentors: N/A Key Clients: Pilot with two leading operators in India and Middle east Top-Line: 1.5 million URL: neartivity.com R to L: Mabel Chacko, Avinash , Anish Achuthan, Abhimanyu Pahwa, Linoy Joseph, Shweta Vashist, Rupali , Lakshmi, Pankaj, Sumit and Amit Tikkiwal.

NEXTBIT COMPUTING Product: NxtPC, gCoSign, TVeeBoX, MaxViEW | Industry: Consumer Electronics | Location: Singapore/Bangalore

his five-year-old Company works in the area of media and entertainment electronics. Their products are primarily firmware for media phones, network PCs, and set-up boxes, etc. They also have a

collective convergence device which serves as an all-in-one application. The Company licenses their products and designs to other players or to service providers. They have registered two patents, one for an efficient video-on-demand content delivery system and another for a mechanism for delivering TV content over unicast networks.

Founder: Vishal S. N. Borker Co-Founder: Sameer S.B. Naik, Sudarshan S. Naik Borker Investor: BootStrapped

Mentor: Terry Shimada, Former V.P. Panasonic R & D Key Clients: Companies in India and Far East Top-Line: 80 Lakhs URL: www.nextbitcpu.com (L - R): Aashish Bhanawat, Bajimohan, Bhadraji, Karthik, Munez, Venkatesh R, R.Venkatesh, Vishal Borker, Abinaya, Shalini Devi, Jyoti, Sudarshan Borker, Prashant Honnavar, Sameer Naik, Sumanth, Ravichandra 54

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PCMB PLUS TECHNOLOGIES Product: Active Employee Connect Program (AECP) and Active Customer Connect Program (ACCP) | Brand: Papam | Industry: E-commerce | Location: Delhi NCR

company that might be mistaken as any other e-commerce company, Papam has recently restructured it model from mainly paper greeting card to offering corporate bond-building solutions for employees and customers of companies. With a proprietary software called R & R (Reward & Recognition) Software, it claims to take away the operational hassles that are faced by HR departments of companies while interacting with their employees from beginning to end of their tenures. With an award from World HRD Congress, Papam empowers manager to reward employees instantly, with different budgets at different levels, and wherein every employee's recognition is acknowledged across the global platform of the client company. For the greeting card offerings, it runs on a zero inventory model. Papam has been funded by DST, and expects a 500% growth with its orderbook complete for the year. Companies with huge employee base like Aircel, Dabur, Covergys, HCL Tech, MaFoi are clients of Papam. It plans to acheieve size of Rs 100 crore in 3 years.

Founder: Manish Pathak, Paras Arora Investors: N/A

Mentors: VK Jaitly Key Clients: Tata, SBI, Convergys, CISCO Top-Line: Rs 1 crore URL: www.papamcorp.in Picture not available

PRESSMART Product: ePortal, eMobile, eReplica | Brand: Pressmart | Industry: Online Publishing | Location: Hyderabad

ressmart identified an opportunity in the print publications limitation in creating and distributing content in the online world. Since the solutions are provided in a SaaS or pay-as-you-go model, it instantly clicked with the publication houses. The company was setup in 2006 and right now has a clientele of 700 publications across 57 countries and 25 languages. Their latest product ePortal is something that the founder is sure of achieving 100 percentage year on year growth. Their key clients include the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Khaleej Times, The Inquirer, Hindustan Times, Deccan Chronicle, Telegraph, etc. This company, without doubt, is heading towards big things. As for competition, says Sanjeev Gupta, â&#x20AC;&#x153;When it comes to an end-to-end product offering, we have absolutely no competition. However, yes, there are lots of small modules available out there, which are small parts of our overall offering.â&#x20AC;?

Founder: Sanjeev Gupta

Key Clients: The Wall Street Journal, Khaleej Times, The Inquirer, Hindustan Times, Deccan Chronicle, Telegraph, etc.

Investors: Draper Fischer Jurvetson and NEA-Indo US Ventures

URL: www.pressmart.com

Team PressMart: (L-R) Aditya Samdani - Head Engineering, Hasan Mirza- Head Internet Sales, Sanjeev Gupta- Founder and CEO, and Navneet Taori - Head Business Development DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 55

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PURE TECH INDIA Product: Emulsion Coolant Recovery System, Oil Water Separators, Stainless Steel Media Filters | Brand: InstaPure, Desorber, InstaTrap | Industry: Speciality engineering equipments for liquid pollution control, more speciﬁcally, engineering, automobile, petrochemical, food and ETPs | Location: Trichy, Tamilnadu

ure Tech India manufactures coolant recovery systems and is one of the three approved vendors for Indian Oil Corporation. It has developed water soluble coolant recovery systems, oil-water separators, stainless steel

filter bags and bacterial disinfection units. This clean technology company is currently being incubated at the Science and Technology Entrepreneur's Park at the Tiruchirapalli Regional Engineering College. Puretech’s equipments enable conservation and reuse of costly resources and also help in reduction of environmental pollution. The company exports to several countries namely Bangladesh, Iraq, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Dubai, Kuwait and Nigeria, and has plans to reach Australia, South America and South Africa.

Founder: Aravind A Narayan Co-Founder: Nisha G

Investors: Self, Trec Step Incubation Fund, Bank of India Mentor: Mr R M P Jawahar, Mr D Harsha, Dr S Sundaramurthy Key Clients: Indian Oil Corporation, BHEL, ACC, etc Top-Line: 53 lakhs The efﬁcient bunch at Pure Tech

RANG DE Product: Microcredit | Brand: Rang De | Industry: Microﬁnance | Location: Chennai

ang De is a web-based social initiative with a mission to provide cost effective microcredit to low income households in India. It enables individuals to participate in microcredit by lending as little as Rs. 100. Since January 2008, Rang De has reached out to over 2500 entrepreneurs across 10 states by lending over Rs. 14 million. Over 1300 individuals across the world have become social investors on Rang De. The repayment rate claimed is 98.9%. Rang De currently funds business and education loans. Their latest initiative is a microcredit backed job guaranteed vocational training program, in partnership with Pan IIT Alumni Reach for India (ReachForIndia.org). The program aims to reach out to first-time Below-the-Poverty-Line borrowers by providing them low cost loan capital for vocational education. The beneficiaries will undergo a one month fit-for-purpose training program at the end of which they will receive a certificate and employment in the relevant industry.

Co-founder: Ramakrishna N.K. & Smita Ramakrishna

Investors: Founders, CSO Partners, ICICI Foundation Mentors: Prof. P. Sudarshan, Dr. Nachiket Mor, ICICI Foundation URL: www.rangde.org

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RISING SUN TECHNOLOGIES Product: Salaree.com, RiseMoney, RiseAlumni, RiseERP, MAASS | Brand: Rising Sun | Industry: IT/SaaS | Location: Jaipur

alaree.com is a promising modular SaaS based Payroll Management System, which is totally web-based. The parent company, Rising Sun Technologies, was set up three year old company and started with 15 RubyOnRails developers. The companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main products are Salaree.com, RiseMoney, & RiseAlumni. Salaree.com is an online application to provide payroll for Indian companies. Rise money is a web application for non-banking finance companies (NBFC). RiseAlumni is an online social networking platform for offline communities (through open source). The company has signed no patents as of now, but plan to diversify themselves in later years by building software to achieve what Tally solutions does. Their main competitor for Salaree.com is a company based out of Bengaluru called E-Vaitan. They are focused on Indian market & as of now have no plans of expanding themselves beyond India.

Founder: Aditya Sanghi Co-Founder: N/A Investor: Self Funded

Mentor: N/A Key Clients\Customers: Local companies like Municipality of Uniara, Kamal Auto finance, Maharaja Sawai Maan Singh University (MSMSU), for each product respectively URL: www.risingsuntech.net Picture not available

ROBHATAH ROBOTIC SOLUTIONS Product: EC Robocleanz, Revobot Educational Kit and Introductory Robotics Courses | Brand: Robhatah | Industry: Robotic technology consulting and consumer product manufacturing | Location: Bangalore and Singapore

rofile: Started in 2004 as an incubation project in the National University of Singapore (NUS) by an Indian professor Dr. Prahalad Vadakkepat and his student Janesh Janardhan, Robhatah, is a robotics company that is active in the consumer robotics market and in the training and education space (both at the level of school kids as well as customized products for universities). In the consumer robotics segment, it has tied up with Eureka Forbes to develop an automatic vacuum cleaner for home use. It also runs franchisees across India that teach school kids the basics of robotics. Started with a seed capital of less than SG$ 50, 000 and an additional equity infusion of about US$ 0.5 million by the Indian Angel Networks. Robahtah claims to have a topline of Rs. 25-30 crores in India and seeks to generate US$ 30 million worth of business in the international markets in the near future

Founder: Dr. Prahalad Vadakkepat, Janesh Janardhan Co-founder: N.A.

Investors: Indian Angel Networks (IAN) Mentors: Dr. Saurabh Srivastava, Rajeev Karwal Key Clients: Eureka Forbes, Educational Robotics Franchises Top-Line: Rs. 25-30 crores URL: robhatah.com Dr. Prahalad Vadakkepat and Janesh Janardhan DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 57

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ROBOSOFT SYSTEMS Product: Duct Inspection Robot, Edutainment Robotics, DIY Kits and Components | Brand: DuctBot | Location: Andheri (East), Mumbai, India

he Company designs and produces industrial and educational robots. After freelancing with their robotics design services for five years, Ross Syed Farooq and Fahad Azad registered Robosoft Systems as a company

in 2008. It is a self-funded venture so far and now serves clients like Blue Star and the Indian Navy. Currently they have nine distributors across India and are expecting to extend it to forty soon. The company has a team of 15 persons. They have a prototype ready for a robot for the defense services and also plan to create consumer robots for regular household use.

Founder: Ross Syed Farooq Co-Founder: Fahad Azad Investor: Self-funded

Mentor: NA Key Clients: BlueStar, Indian Navy, EPSCO, IIT-B, Utpal Sanghvi School and other educational institutions

Top-Line: 68 lakhs URL: robosoftsystems.co.in

Top Row(l to r): Kiran Patil, Shailesh Mishra, Amrendar Singh, Aditya Desai, Sooraj T, Rajeet Nair,, Joy Jacob, Anshul Dubey, Masood Syed,Saad Azad, Center(l to r): Faizana Surve, ShaďŹ ka Syed , Sitting (l to r): Abhilash Hota, Aslam Ansari, Sandesh, Amul Mehta, Saptarshi Chatterjee, Fahad Azad, Farooq Syed

ROBOTICWARES Product: Binnover, Labsens, Webweave, Learnics | Industry: Embedded Systems, ERP Solutions, Web Apps | Location: Bhubaneswar

oboticwares deals in the fields of embedded systems, Software solutions & Web Applications, for developing real time solutions. Currently the team has developed ready for market image processing applications,

automation robots, remote controlling of appliances, e-news bulletin boards, industrial measuring tools, unmanned crafts etc. RoboticWares is a registered Incubatee, under Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. Roboticwares aims at developing new innovative products which are of public utility and beneficial for the society. They have already bagged a good list of clients that include the likes of KIIT University, XIMB College of Management, SNIST Hyderabad, Passary Minerals, Barista Silver Streak coffee shop, Sahyog Foundation, and many more.

Founder: Kushal Nahata Mentor: Animesh Tripathy, KIIT School of Technology

Key Clients: KIIT University, XIMB College of Management, SNIST Hyderabad, Passary Minerals, Barista Silver Streak coffee shop, Sahyog Foundation, Call for Care URL: www.roboticwares.com

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WE KNOW THE INDIA RETAIL STORY - The retail industry in India was mostly unorganized, however with the change of tastes and preferences of the consumers, the industry is getting more popular these days and getting organized as well. WE KNOW THE FACTS • The Indian retail industry is the fifth largest in the world. Comprising of organized and unorganized sectors, India retail industry is one of the fastest growing industries in India, With growing market demand, the industry is expected to grow at a pace of 25-30% annually. • According to the 8th Annual Global Retail Development Index (GRDI) of AT Kearney, India retail industry is the most promising emerging market for investment. In 2007, the retail trade in India had a share of 8-10% in the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the country. In 2009, it rose to 12%. It is also expected to reach 22% by 2010. WHAT WE DON’T KNOW is how can we as retailers, entrepreneurs or investors participate and grow with the great India Retail Story? The answer lies in “Retail Slugfest 2010” - the annual Retail Summit organized by TiE Delhi. The one day summit will cover critical learning’s and insights on strategies to earn share of mind and share of wallet of the Indian Retail consumer. The summit will bring out all the facets which go in making a great retail story. So whether it’s learning how to create your own niche in tapping your target consumers or strengthening your supply chain the summit promises to be a one stop learning and networking forum for all connected with Indian retail. Plenary sessions featuring leading retailers on Market segmentation, Differentiation, Bootstrapping, Business 2.0 etc. In addition the summit will help you get practical insights, learning’s and opportunity to forge lasting business relationships which can take your business to new heights via • My Story Sessions – Hear iconic retailers and entrepreneurs • Elevator Pitch – Pitch your business idea to investors. • Mentoring Clinic – Get guidance/mentoring on any aspect of retail business. • Networking Cocktails & Dinner – Network with some of the biggest names in the retail sector. • Entrepreneur Award Presentation To explore partnership opportunities or book exhibition space at the Retail Summit, contact Nitin Agarwal at nitin@tienewdelhi.org / 9818477719

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RURAL OPPORTUNITIES PRODUCTION ENTERPRISES Product: Natural home decorative accessories, home furnishings and eco friendly packaging solutions | Brand: ROPE | Industry: Manufacturing | Location: Tamil Nadu

ural Opportunities Production Enterprise (ROPE) is a for-profit social enterprise, based out of Tamil Nadu. ROPE manufactures natural products from rural materials and rural skills. Focusing mostly on handlooms

and handmade products like home decorative merchandise. ROPE supplies its products to international brands like Walmart and IKEA and is planning to enter into direct contracts with them. Capitalising on the growing need for natural and eco friendly products worldwide, ROPE has provided employment to 500 rural artisans since its inception in December, 2007 and plans to generate another 2000 odd employment opportunities in five years. ROPE is included in our list of startups to bet on because of its ability to impact the lives of the poorest of the poor and to get their creations to those on the other side of the economic spectrum.

Founder: Sreejith N N Co-founder: Patrick Fischer Investors: IIT Madras Rural Technology and Business Incubator, Patrick Fischer, NRDC and Villgro Innovations Foundation

Mentors: Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Mr. Paul Basil, Mr. Kunal R Sachdev, Dr. Aarti Kawlra Key Clients/Customers: Ramesh Flowers, IIT Madras, Fab India, CWithington New York, Deco de trend, FUA Window Covering Texas Top-Line: INR Rs 1.35 crores URL: www.ropeinternational.com

Rural Opportunities Production Enterprises Team

SETU SOFTWARE SYSTEMS Brand: SETU Search Engine | Industry: Software product development | Location: IIIT, Incubation Center, Hyderabad

he company provides the product enabling information extraction from text documents to give an output. It has local language search engine, for non-English web pages, but also have English web

targeted for enterprise users. Their new product, called Semantifier, is a brand in itself which has semantic web capabilities and it is their USP. Their competitors are search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc, along with enterprises like Microsoft, etc. Before geographically diversifying, they plan to come up with relevant marketing strategy. The company is in a space which is on a high growth path. Internet penetration is increasing and it would drive the company's business further.

Founder: Prasad Pingali Co-founder: Dr. Vasudeva Verma Investors: N/A

Mentors: IIIT, Incubation Centre, Hyderabad Key Clients: Rediff.com, SAMSUNG, HMRI, IIIT-H, News Hunt, National Innovation Foundation

Top-Line: Around 1.5 crore URL: www.setusoftware.com Prasad Pingali 60

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SIMPLIFIX AUTOMATION & SOLUTIONS Product: Nano-Positioner, Derailment Detection Device, Computer Interface of Micropump | Industry: Technology | Location: IIT-Kanpur

implifix, started by two IIT-K graduates is working on a set of products which include a derailment detection device funded by RDSO, a fake currency detector (cheaper technology) and a device to

generate electricity from sewage. They have two patents pending for their products.With a focus on their core competency — developing technology, they plan to partner with other firms for manufacturing and marketing. This team of 20 plans to reach a turnover of Rs 7.5 crore in two years' time.

Founder: Reetesh Kumar Singh Co-founder: Rajiv Shankar Sinha Investors: SIDBI (Incubator)

Mentors: Dr. N. S. Vyas, Dr. Anjan Kumar Gupta, Dr. Partha Sarathi Sensarma Key Clients/Customers: ICICI, Godrej (Prospective) Top-Line: Rs 20 lakh URL: www.simplifix.in/ www.bricsworld.com/ Sitting (L to R) Kirti, Manish, Rajiv Sinha (Dir), Reetesh Singh (Dir), Ashish Shukla, Manisha Lalwani, Standing (L to R) Vijay Sharma, Arind, Mukesh, Dharmendra, Rajkumar, Ravi R., Ravind, amit, Rahul, Manoj, Sudhansu, Shivshankar, Manmohit

SPORTINGMINDZ TECHNOLOGY Product: 22yardz, SKRUTiN, 3rd EYE, DRAGﬂik, 1/2VOLLEY, AMS, GOL, ﬂikVAULT | Brand: Sportingmindz | Industry: IT/Software/Products | Location: Bengaluru

portingmindz provides video-based analytical tools to the sports fraternity i.e. for the players, coaches, physiotherapists, and such. Needless to say, they are playing in the niche segment of Sports IT. The focus of their products is on cricket, along with golf, tennis, soccer and hockey. As for opportunities that lie ahead, Sanjay Rao says, “India is witnessing a lot of international federations setting up academies in the country. We are seeing a lot international sporting events happening here, such as the upcoming Common Wealth Games, and the possible Olympics. So, the scope is huge.” Furthermore, Sportingmindz has already has distributors in South Africa and UK, who have got them Somerset County Cricket Club, a few South African Coaches in the clients list. The company is seeing a 60% growth year on year and is expected to break even in the next 18 months. Sportingmindz has received angel investment 2 years back.

Founder: Sanjay Rao Co-Founder: Sandeep Kannambadi – CTO/Co-Founder, Vijay R Bharadwaj - Technical Head Sports, Prasanna Agoram - Technical Head Sports Investors: Prashanth Prakash, Sameer Mehta, Vellesh Narayanan, M R

Jayaprakash

Mentor: Same as above Key Clients: Royal Challengers Bangalore, Karnataka State Cricket Association, Indian Hockey Federation, Singapore Cricket Association, Andhra Cricket Association, Hyderabad Cricket Association, Delhi Cricket Association, and Bangalore Golf Course Sandeep & Sanjay of Sportingmindz

URL: www.sportingmindz.com DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 61

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STAR AGRIWAREHOUSING & COLLATERAL MANAGEMENT Product: Agriwarehouses, Collateral Management & Labs in the brand name of star labs | Industry: Agribusiness | Location: Jaipur, Mumbai

post harvest management company, Star Agriwarehousing provides the services from procurement, handling, transportation, warehousing and collateral management. It claims to have one stop solution for

farmers, the processors, the traders and millers. At current growth rate of 300%, it expects to grow almost 20 times in next 5-6 years, meaning a target of 300 crores. It has presence in states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi and sooner, it is moving towards Eastern and Southern markets. It is contemplating to start private online portal for trading for farmers and traders and can act as the biggest private agri mandi in India.

Founder: Suresh Goyal Co-Founder: Amith Agarwal, Amit Goyal, Amit Khandelwal Investor: Self funded

Mentor: N/A Key Clients: KS Oils, Ruchi Soya, Adani Wilmar Top-Line: Rs 17 crore URL: staragri.com Amith Agarwal, Amit Khandelwa and Amit Goyal

STUDIO ALAYA Product: Crafts & furnitures | Brand: Studio Alaya | Industry: Design-led Social Entrepreneurship | Location: Uttarakhand

ishey made Studio Alaya brand operational in 2008. This for-profit venture is a design-led social enterprise which works with rural craft and skill-based producers to design, produce and market a range of products

and accessories in locally available sustainable resources such as bamboo, natural fibers, etc. In doing so, it partners with small scale producers. Its USP lies in the fact that it offers contemporary designs made by using local traditional skills, promotes environmental sustainability and rural entrepreneurship. Their main clients include institutional buyers such as hotels, restaurants and spas as well as domestic customers and in-region tourist market. Their main competitors are multiple brands retailing design in craft goods.

Founder: Joshua P. Hishey Co-founder: N/A Investors: N/A

Mentors: N/A Key Clients: Hotels, restaurants and spas, domestic consumers and tourists

Top-Line: N/A URL: www.studioalaya.com Joshua P. Hishey 62

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SUMINTER INDIA ORGANICS Industry: Agriculture | Location: Mumbai

uminter India Organics was founded on the notion that organic farming contracted out to small farmers in India would not only help to fulfil the worldwide growing demand for organic produce but also lead the

participating farmers to greater economic stability. Although it started out as a small trading company to help local farmers, the company has grown quite fast over the years. Suminter opened a base in the Netherlands in a bid to supply the entire European market. The organic farming sector has been growing swiftly with the demand rising considerably both in India and abroad.

Founder: Sameer Mehra Co-Founder: N/A Investors : Nexus India Capital

Mentor: N/A Key Clients\Customers: N/A Top-Line: N/A URL: www.suminterindiaorganics.com Sameer Mehra

TARA MACHINES & TECH SERVICES Product: Innovative green business solutions (marketing and designing functions) | Brand:TARA - EcoKiln, TARA BrickMek, TARA Mechanized Balaram | Industry: Alternative sustainable building materials | Location:Delhi

he parent NGO that promotes TARA Machines started working in the field of alternative and sustainable building solutions well over two decades ago, but it was not until 2008 that TARA Machines, its

corporatised arm commenced operations. The company, the brainchild of IIT-trained Dr. Arun Kumar, specializes in sustainable environment friendly technologies such as EcoKlin Technology, Fly Ash Technology, Green Building Technology and Paper Recycling Technology. At present, TARA Machines claims to have a turnover of Rs. 2.4 crore with a modest annual profit of Rs. 20 lakh but is confident of growing ten fold in the next 10 years. Considering, how the alternative building materials market is picking up in India, the goal might be ambitious, but not far fetched.

Founder: Dr. Arun Kumar Co-founder: N/A

Investors: Internal accruals from the parent NGO Mentors: N/A Key Clients: Various, across infrastructure industries Top-Line: Rs. 2.5 crores URL: taramachines.com Pix not availale DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 63

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TELIBRAHMA CONVERGENT COMMUNICATION Product: BluFi, Interact, MobiLogix | Brand: BluFi, Interact, MobiLogix | Industry: Advertising, m-Governance, Retail | Location: Bangalore

ELiBrahma is into the business of targeted messaging. It has developed mobile solutions combining SMS, GPRS and Bluetooth. With its patent-pending products, Blufi and MobiLogix, it provides Bluetooth based

interactive solutions and end-to-end logistics solutions to its customers. Today, it works with some of the biggest players in this space like BlackBerry, Coca Cola, Airtel, Britannia, ICICI, HSBC, Nokia, Nike, etc. It has also partnered with various retail players like Barista, West Side, and Shoppers Stop.

Founder: Suresh Narasimha Co-Founder: Ravi B.R. Investors: Inventus, Ojas Mentor: T.V.G. Krishnamurthy Key Clients: USL, Sprite, Tata Motors, GSK, Nike, Mahindram Ford, Idea, Airtel

Top-Line: Run rate of 150K USD per month URL: www.telibrahma.com

The TeliBrahma Team

THE LOOT INDIA Brand: The Loot Store | Industry: Retail/Multi-brand Discount Store | Location: Mumbai

he Loot is a multi-brand discount chain offering a wide range of products in apparel, footwear and accessories for men, women and kids with discounts ranging between 25% and 60 % on top national and international brands. In a time span of about 5 years now, The Loot has managed to expand to have 150 stores (40 company stores, 110 franchised) across 85 cities in 22 states with 3 Lac square feet operational area; among which, about 100 was setup in the period of recession. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have avoided being inside the mall. Our property and operational has been very low. We had already gotten into Tier-2 & Tier-3 cities where recession did not really make much difference,â&#x20AC;? says Jay Mehta. The Loot has witnessed growth at 55 percent year on year, and currently is sitting at a turnover of 107 Crore, with a target of achieving 200 Crore this year. This self funded venture is looking at doing an IPO in the coming year.

Founder: Jay Gupta Investors: Self Funded, SBI Bank Funding

Key Clients: Puma, Madhura Garments, Reebok, Adidas, Nike, Levis, etc

Top-Line: 107 Crore URL: www.thelootstores.com Jay Gupta 64

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TRINGME Product:VoicePHP (TringPhone, Google Talk, Mobile VoIP, Click to Call) | Brand:TringMe | Industry: Net-based telephony | Location:Bangalore

tarted in May 2007 by Yusuf Motiwala, a seasonerd IIT-trained professional with long stint in the telecom industry, TringMe has grown phenomenally over the last two and a half years. Today, it boasts of a client-base as diverse as IBM, AOL, Calliflower and Facebook. TringMe integrates several existing VoIP platforms such as Skype and Google Talk to create a single platform for voice-over-internet telephony. In the general elections of 2009, several candidates had used TringMe's services to reach out to their voters. Motiwala is coy about sharing his topline figures and other financial numbers. Having said that, the only major constraint that is perhaps keeping this technology from scaling up are volumes. But with India and similar geographies fast taking to the Internet, that ius bound to change. With a lean team of seven employees in India and three abroad, TringMe manages to operate in eight countries including India.

Founder: Yusuf Motiwala Co-Founder: N/A Investor: None, so far Mentor: N/A Key Clients\Customers: IBM, Infosys, AOL, Skydeck, Calliflower, Ning, Facebook, Blymee, Skylight Topline: Figure not shared Picture not available

URL: tringme.com

VAATSALYA HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS Brand: Vaatsalya Hospital | Industry: Healthcare | Location: Bangalore

0% of India lives in semi-urban and rural areas while 80% of Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s healthcare facilities are located in urban areas. Vaatsalya is on mission to bridge this gap by bringing "affordable, accessible and appropriate" health-

care services to under-served areas in Tier II and Tier III towns. Vaatsalya Hospitals provide primary and secondary care services with emphasis on prevention. Specialties at each hospital include paediatrics, gynaecology, medicine, and surgery. With a presence across Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, Vaatsalya aims to expand to 100 hospitals pan India in the next 5 years. With current growth of 6x stabilising at 2-3x, the turnover is expected to cross Rs 150 crore in 5 years. It is tying up with infrastructure partners, undertaking greenfield - brownfield projects apart from partnering with existing hospitals in those towns for expansion to achieve faster turnover time.

Founder: Dr. Ashwin Naik Co-founder: Dr. Veerendra Hiremath, Rocky Philip, Dr. Renganathan.V, Bheemanna Ganti

Investors: Aavishkaar, Seedfund, Bamboo Finance (Oasis Fund) Mentors: N/A Key Clients: 18,000 patients per month Top-Line: 35 crore URL: www.vaatsalya.com L to R: Bheemanna Ganti, Dr.UmashankarBhavi, Dr.V. Renganathan, Dr.Anil Bidri, Dr. Ashwin Naik, Rocky Philp, Dr.Srinivas Jagdani, Dr.Veerandra Hiremath and Venkatram.K DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 65

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VIA HUMAN RESOURCE SOLUTION Product: Cocubes | Industry: Human Resource | Location: Delhi NCR

ocubes, derived from Co3 (Connecting Companies and Colleges), provides an end-to-end campus recruitment platform. It boasts of a base of 650 colleges, ten big corporate clients and 75 SMEs (for

regional recruitments in the northern region in the last three months). Having grown from a team of two founders to 24 within two years, Cocubes has a unique innovative self-developed model for online recruitment.They charge on an average Rs 100,000 from a college and almost same from the corporate clients as a sign up fee and annual subscription. The company expects to tap 2000 colleges and 500 big and small corporate clients next year.

Founder: Harpreet Grover Co-founder: Vibhor Goyal Investors: Ojas Venture Partners

Mentors: Gautam Balijepalli and Raghu Batta Key Clients/Customers: Cognizant, WNS, CMC plus 650 colleges, ten big clients, 75 SMEs

Top-Line: N/A URL: www.cocubes.com VIA Human Resource Solution Team

WEATHER RISK MANAGEMENT Brand: Agro-Sense, Automatic Weather Stations Verde Live, Weather Data forecasting | Industry: Insurance, Agriculture, Information Services | Location: Kanpur

eather Risk provides weather data monitoring equipment, accurate weather forecasts and precautions and weather index based financial products and is growing at 30% per year. It has established Weather

Index Insurance market in India; and has deployed 200 automatic stations across the country. With a vast market in rural areas in power sector, it expects to achieve a turnover of Rs 20 crore in the next few years by giving out franchisees and tying up with telecom companies. The team of 30 has bagged clients such as ICICI, IFFCO, Bloomberg, Pepsi, Dupont, among other 50,000 customers. The firm has also filed for patent for automatic stations.

Founder: Sonu Agrawal Co-Founder: Anuj Kumbhat Investor: SIDBI

Mentor: Vijay Mahajan Key Clientss: ICICI, IFFCO, Bloomberg, Pepsi, Dupont

Top-Line: > Rs 1 crore URL: www.weather-risk.com Picture not available 66

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WEBAROO Brand: SMS Gupshup | Industry: Mobile Community Platform | Location: Mumbai

ith 30 million users of its online mobile platform - SMS Gupshup, Webaroo is poised to become one of the largest mobile community platform. The interactions are of two types- 1-to-Many & Many-to-Many. Users create

and join communities on SMS GupShup in a wide range of categories such as finance, entertainment, lifestyle, health, sports, technology, health, social awareness etc. The community interactions through SMS are well tapped by more than 10000 big and small companies to give their advertisements. Webaroo has filed for 5-10 patents for its technology, which has been widely used at low cost for even social purposes, including giving warnings to sailors for sea storms. Expecting a $ 10 mn projection for coming year and 10 times growth in next 5 years, SMS Gupshup plans to tap 100 mn users and more than a lakh of firms to use its community platforms, as it expands to 10-15 countries in next 6 months.

Founder: Beerud Sheth Co-Founder: Rakesh Mathur

Investor: Globespan Capital Partners, Charles River Ventures and Helion Ventures

Key Clients: 30 million users Top-Line: $ 5mn URL: www.smsgupshup.com Beerud Sheth with Team

WILCOM Product: Design house for transmitters, receivers, etc. | Brand: WILCOM | Industry: Telecom | Location: Mumbai

his 5-year-old company has just moved out of SINE IIT-B, which continues to be its mentors & promoters. The company designs antennas, amplifiers, etc, along with the radiation shield to absorb microwave

radiations. The company mainly focusses on telecom operators and defence sector to them they provide radar system, mobile jammers, etc. Their current competitors are companies like Shyam telecom, Kaveri, etc. Their USP is their design oriented functioning in which they have high level of expertise. Last year they have seen a growth of 200 per cent in their turnover. The telecom sector is set to see more action with 3G roleout on the cards. This could further help WILCOM grow.

Founder: Dr. Girish Kumar Co-Founder: Nirja Kumar, Suresh Babu

Investor: Salora Group Mentor: SINE, IIT-B Key Clientss: Sri Ram Urban Infrastructure, Piramal Industry, etc.

Top-Line: 84 lakhs URL: www.wilcom.co.in Dr. Girish Kumar DARE.CO.IN | 75 STARTUPS YOU CAN BET ON | MAY 2010 67

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YASHRAM LIFESTYLE Product: Ladies Undergarments | Brand: Morph Maternity Wear | Industry: Apparel | Location: Bangalore

ashram Lifestyle is a three-year-old company dealing in maternity wear and hygienic undergarments for women under the brands Morph Maternity Wear and Adira Period Panties. Their products include a range of

maternity wear in both Indian and western designs and period panties. Maternity wear is a new but fragmented and largely undifferentiated market. Hygienic undergarments for women is what sets this company apart. They have filed for two patents; one for a leak-proof layer in nursing garments and the other for the material used for their period panties. Yashram has tie-ups or is in the process of tying up with retailers like Lifestyle and Big Bazaar and selling in UAE, Malaysia, France, Ireland and England.

Founder: Deepa Kumar Investor: Stumpp, Schuele & Somappa

Key Clients: Women, Nursing Mothers, Mothers-to-be Top-Line: One crore URL: www.yashram.com

Deepa Kumar with team Yashram

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• partners • mentoring • funding • guidance • advice • ideas...

am currently working on a plan to set up an e-waste management project in Bangalore. If somebody is interested and would like to join me, kindly contact me giving brief details of your experience and strengths. Umang Agarwal Response I am interested in the project. Can you give me some more details regarding the project? Shilpa Malik

2. Ability to drive execution by spending full time 3. Electrical (engineering) background and passion in the (solar/wind) energy business 4. Long term and high goal commitment 5. Ability to contain costs Raghavendra Ijjada Response Can we discuss more. Please share your contact details Rafiq, Dsouza Vincent

have about 2.5 acre land near Indore at Dhar road 7 km from Indore. I want to start school. Can you help me. Sudhir

am not a big player in the Indian electronics industry to invest in crore, but I want to start my own business based on importing solar products from China. I have no knowledge in importing any product and its associated intricacies like import duty, etc. Could you please guide me through the process? C. L. Joshi Response Hi, where are you from? I am from Delhi and can help you set up an import operation from China. Would like to discuss your business plan in detail. Please call me or email me with additional details. Amit Gupta

Submit exchange requests at: website: http://www.dare.co.in/ marketplace.htm OR email: dare@cybermedia. co.in or SMS ‘DARE <your msg>’ to 56677

read about your article in the magazine DARE. I have a showroom in Sector : 17,Chandigarh and have run a book shop for the last 35 years. I would like to increase my sales through Internet selling. Though I have been sending traditionally say through VPP, or say courier, but these are mere modes of sending but not the advertising. How do I enhance my sales through net. Navneet Vermani

e are a 1.5-year old company working in the solar energy space. The company has started generating revenues now. We are looking for an enthusiastic entrepreneur to drive it aggressively to the next level. Here are the required qualities: 1. Based out of Bangalore

egal Equipment and Services is an authorized dealer for CHTZ URALTRAC LTD - RUSSIA in India for all the heavy construction and mining equipments for last 18 months. We have done last year a business of 40 lakhs and this year we have picked up orders for eight crores from respectable industry. We are professionals with more than two decades experience in sales/ service/parts in heavy construction and mining equipments. As we have good potential and opportunity to grow further in a big way and duly supported by our principles. We are looking for an angel investor to further help us in growing the business and be a part and parcel of the organisation. D. Naidu

irst of all let me thank DARE for all the good things you are doing by supporting the young entrepreneurs and even in getting the link to angel investors to fullfil their dreams. Well I have considerable experience in abovesaid industry. I have a proposal from company to submit a business proposal on the above subject. It would be helpful if you could guide me in this matter. Dathathri Naidu

e are from rice processing unit and have huge stocks of edible rice bran, filled in bags. This is a by-product of our process. Hence we would like to know, what other products can be produced using the same? And also welcome consultancy for guiding us. please respond. Umapathy. M, Habib Oil & Grains Processing Unit, Mysore

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lady entreprenuer wants to find another who is interested to set up a food venture in a small way. If anybody is interested kindly contact Vijai bhaskar, Hyderabad

e are a young HR OutSourcingconsulting-staffing firm located out of Bangalore and Pune, looking for dynamic Business partners to join us during our early journey. We would like to build business verticals for effective service delivery & innovate with new ways of hiring and training. We are looking for like minded people who would like bring innovation and technology. Please contact to discuss further. T Jagdish

have been involved in evolving and running several businesses that have a wide social (especially rural) footprint. My present venture is a project called ‘SoyFit,’ under which we have established a complete system of decetralised production of Soya based health products in geographically spread out micro-industries (called ‘franchisees’), under the same raw material, quality standards and brand. Extensive training, technical support, marketing support and hand-holding is available. The project in its simplest form, requires an investment of Rs 6-8 lakh from a franchisee in typical B cities, and gives back a net profit of Rs 1 lakh if operated on 30% installed capacity. We currently have five units operational in North India and are expanding to another ten by November 2009. We wish to scale it up to forty units across India by December 2009. The whole project is bankable and especially designed with youth employment in mind. Health foods have a good future present and market due to rising health awareness. At a later date, we intend to involve more youth for marketing of this product line under micro-financing project ‘Kaamyaab Yuva’. We would like to get in touch with small entrepreneurs willing to set up franchisee units in their areas, enablers of youth employment, angel investors, and NGOs to contact us who think they can carry

this project further. J.S. Sandha Response I am interested in your project, please provide details regarding the same, I am a sales and business development professional from Punjab. Inder K Sharma I would like to know more about this.please revert back on my email ID. Rishu Kumar I am interested in carrying out the franchisee for Pondicherry region. Kindly send me the formality details. Magesh M

have a concept for remote healthcare services – an end-toend healthcare delivery system for the developing world. I am looking for people who want to be a part of the core team and also angel funding to kick off the pilot. Dr. Sanjay Sharma I want to be the part of core team. Please share details. Inder K Sharma, Punjab

pen LX Linux was judged as the best Operating System in 2008. KalCulate is the First Linuxbased financial accounting package, worldwide. Together, this gives an affordable, secure and friendly (also virus-free) business desktop to the users. The products are ready, test marketing has been done with good results and now we are looking for a funding partner to take it to the national and then international levels. More details can be obviously provided to the interested VC/ funding partner. Sudhir Gandotra Response Please send me details regarding this. Mujeeb

college going kids and professionals. Shobha Rao, Khargar

read the article about Akshat Mehra's Chamak washing and ironing services. I would like to contact him personally. Please give me Akshat Mehra's mail ID or contact number. Stalin Varghese

am a qualified company secretary with professional experience of more than 15 years in corporate, legal, fund raising and financial as well as commercial matters. Seeking opening in this regard to best utilize my potential and create value addition. Rajesh Sodhi, New Delhi

e are a start up in education sector in NCR and now planning to enter the play school domain and looking for suitable partners, if anyone is interested then feel free to contact. Kabeer Response I run a brand marketing and communications consultancy company in Mahim based out of Mumbai. I am quiet keen to help you guys in launching the play school as I have worked in the education sector for an IB school project. So I could help with the brand positioning, brand strategy, school logo identity, communication material etc. You can mail me for more details Shyam

am an NRI, plan to settle down in Hyderabad soon.Interested in setting up tyre recycling plant in Hyderabad, I am looking for a partner having similar interest in this industry. Please get in touch with me by email. Najeeb

am looking for funding to start a coffee shop cum art gallery. The coffee shop will be focused on selling only Indian filter coffee. The art gallery will be adjacent to the coffee shop. The art gallery will source local talent and make available art/photos for rent! Targeted customers are young

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• partners • mentoring • funding • guidance • advice • ideas...

am looking for potential buyers/ strategic partners for a technology, which has been granted a patent. This technology relates to an exhaust cooker, which utilizes waste heat/gas from the exhaust pipe of a vehicle to cook food. The device can be used for any kind/size of vehicle. We have working models of the device for demonstration purposes. The device is thus helpful in energy conservation. Aseem Singla

e have a play-school/ preschool concept with daywise curriculum. We are looking for a channel partner to promote franchiser/franchisee module. Those with 300-400 sq. ft. office space or ready to start a play school in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, or Delhi can become our channel partner. Response Waiting for detail. Aseem Singhania

am looking for a like minded partner to open a nursery/play school in Pune. I can invest in place. Anyone interested please call me or write to me. Aparna

Submit exchange requests at: website: http://www.dare.co.in/ marketplace.htm OR email: dare@cybermedia. co.in or SMS ‘DARE <your msg>’ to 56677

y company is into the waste paper business since 1969. Services offered by us are: • Collection of waste paper and paper products on as it is where it is basis. • Only shredding of all kinds of paper and paper products. • Shredding and collection of the shredded material. (Above services are offered on one time or contract basis.) Interested people and companies can contact me on my mail id Anup Jani Free Demo by Vijay, Indigo Retail Response Like to see your free demo

session. I would like to see your free demo session. Jagath Kumar Manney

am looking for people to join me to create a mobile technology business. Looking for some guidance/ thoughts on the market in India & current scenario. Jagdish, Bangalore-Pune

refer to the Exchange request submitted to you on C-DAC Gist PACE Authorized Training Centres across India through franchisee model. While thanking you very much for publishing the same DARE February 2010 issue in Page No. 10 (middle column), at the end I regret to inform you that the request was not separated by my name and was combined with that of a medicinal tree plantation request of Ashok Todakar. This is for your kind information and process the requests appropriately. Thanks again. M.Natarajan

, along with my friend, am running a food catering company called “Sakkat food”. After launching our catering ideas successfully, we are planning to start an outlet here. We have a very special, unique and “one of its kind” concept about the outlet. We are looking forward for a right investor to be a part of our business journey. Rohit Bhat, Sakkat Chef Response Contact me. Harmesh Thakker

Exchange

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Harish Bijoor owns a private-label consulting ďŹ rm that specializes in brand and business strategy.

How important is it to know your customer? and Why? The customer is a very important entity. All business exists and revolves around this entity. The very purpose of all business is the fulfillment of the needs, wants, desires and aspirations of this entity. To that extent, the customer is the central focus of all business activity. The customer is the pivot around which all else revolves. The customer therefore needs to be understood. Not only at skindeep levels, but at levels that are deeper and subliminal even. Most businesses understand customers as numbers and numbers that contribute volumes and value to the enterprise they run. Most companies however do not believe it is important to drill beneath the skin of it all. If you understand your customers well, and in more ways than skindeep customer understanding, it si a good insulation of your business. You wil be able to predict behavior, predict change and gear up your business to face it all when it happens. Most businesses however

don't do this, and get surprised when their customers articulate new needs and gravitate towards new brands, new processes and new vendors. All of a sudden. Understanding customers in depth is a business-insulation process at the macro-level and a business-enhancement process at the micro-level. What methods can companies use to know their customers better? There are methods that are soft and hard. The soft methods revolve around observational studies on your customer. What does he do? Where doe she shop? How does he do this? What is he looking for? How satisfied is he with what he has? And more. Add to this the quantitative techniques of data mining. Understand the numbers in depth and drill them to milk out insight. Watch how the numbers pan out seasonally. See a trend and paint a pattern. A more holistic method is the scenario planning method of understanding the customer. Here, you paint several scenarios of futurepossibility and you traverse down each to build business plans relevant, original and innovative to cater to each possible route.

How good is it to target a niche segment of customers? What are the cons? Targeting niche customers can be an approach that works in businesses where niches offer the biggest premiums and the biggest value. The pros of this approach is the fact that the entire focus of the business is geared to meet the needs of small sets of focussed customers. Key account management works very well here and delivers. This works best when 80 per cent of the business in category comes from this niche which is a sub-set of the 20 per cent of the market. Mass categories cannot adopt this approach. Most fo the time such an approach can paint your business int o a corner. A corner in which you are doomed to exist in forever. How can startups build their brand at low-cost and reach out to their targeted customers? Branding has two process flows. One is top-down. The second is bottom-up. Startups would do best to adopt bottom-up approaches. The bottomup approach is not advertising centric. it is not about mass media domination. It is about dominating niche mediums that work best at the bottom-end. it is about 1:1 selling 1:1 marketing, 1:1 branding and 1:1 PR. It works well when orchestrated as a marketing program with a clear focus and a clear set of deliverables defined. R DARE.CO.IN | INTERVIEW | MAY 2010 73

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Clean Technology takes Headstart Startup Saturday by Storm From robots to pivots to ideas on clean technology, this Startup Saturday in Pune and Mumbai had it all. Read on what entrepreneurs from these two cities had to offer.

tartup Saturday, Pune: This Startup Saturday turned out to be very interesting because the theme was clean technology. So prior to this meet, my notion of clean tech was constrained to something like cleaning up gobar and converting it into clean, odorless and colorless biogas, or harnessing some electricity for street lamps from the scorching heat that we are suffering from today. With this presentation my idea for clean tech has completely changed. Anil Paranjape started with a simple definition of clean tech— anything done in a cleaner way or in a less dirty fashion (may be cleaning your bedroom for starters!). One thing Anil was able to thoroughly convince was his motto, ‘Sustainability has to come from the heart'. The presentation started with a series of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) regarding the state of our whole ecosystem and the mess surrounding it. There were lots of disturbing questions which made one think for a moment, about the sorry state of the world we are living in. One question that caught my attention was “What’s the unhealthiest food for babies?” Quite surprisingly, the answer turned out to be, breast milk (smartly excluded from the answer options). Now with all the campaigning that has been going around to promote breast milk, this was a total surprise. The reason being that women living in poor conditions don’t have access to clean

source of water and hence consume a lot of unnatural chemicals, which in turn is consumed by the baby in the form of breast milk. Another good example of clean tech was about a group of a MIT, LBNL scientists and fellow colleagues who joined hands to build a stove which would consume less than half the firewood a normal stove would consume. The stove is cylindrical, made of sheet metal, two feet high and 14 inches in diameter and sells for $2.49. So what’s the big deal, you would ask? There are about 2.2 million refugees huddled in makeshift camps in the Darfur region of western Sudan. In the camps, they are safe but the womenfolk have to venture out in search of firewood. Once they are out of the camps they are susceptible to physical abuse by Arab militia. According to Ashok Gadgil, key researcher of this project, this stove reduces the probability of women getting physically abused. They have won the “Popular Mechanics Award”. Here we don’t see a path-breaking technology, but it really addresses a very serious issue. “Sustainability has to come from the heart”—The statement made by Anil from the very beginning of the presentation sounds very apt. The second presentation was from Padmakar Kelkar of Bright Star Electronics. According to Padmakar, their product is a first of its kind solar powered pivot in the world, although

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there are pivots that are powered by external electric supply. Their pivot is controlled by microcontroller and is smart enough to calculate the spread and distribution of the field. One unique feature they talked about was their end gun, which sprinkled into the corners of the field. The advantages of pivot irrigation over flood irrigations mentioned included: 1. Less water wastage 2. Even distribution of water 3. Improves cultivation upto 20 percent One of the major advantages they spoke about was that the pivot involves no human involvement. So this way a farmer is not dependant on the field laborers who usually are very inconsistent with their schedule. He/she can put the pivot for charging during the day and the pivot would irrigate the farm in the night. Currently the pivot is used to irrigate onion farms. They are running a pilot project on the farms of Rawat brothers. Bright Star expects the market size of close to 500 units in the next three years in India. However, they feel the greater potential for this lies in the American and European markets, where the farms are huge in size and farmers are sound financially to purchase their pivot. According to their calculations, Return of Investment (ROI) for a farmer purchasing their pivot is close to five years for a farm of twenty five acres. Currently there has been no subsidy offered by the government; the reason being the equipment is meant for bigger farmers and government doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t offer subsidy for those well-off. They also presented a video which had Bharat Banka, MD and CEO of Aditya Birla Private Equity analyzing the business potential of their product. He stated that the product has addressed the pain point effectively for two reasons.

The product meant to be used for agriculture and water conservation, which is the need of the hour, would be valuable to the farmers. It is using solar power, which is a clean source of energy. Also it cuts off the dependability on the unreliable source of power from the electricity board. As for challenges, the pivot was built for farms in the range of twenty five acres and above whereas the farms in India are very fragmented. Even if a farmer owns fifty acres of land, the typical size of each farm would be three to five acres. So they are trying to target community-oriented farming where a group of farmers plan to farm a single homogeneous plot of land. Also they are trying to respond to the market needs with a smaller version of their pivot which is cheaper and can work out well for a small plot of land. Since they have developed expertise in designing the controllers for the pivot, they are planning to sell the controllers to European countries where these can be used in externally-powered pivots. Startup Saturday, Mumbai: HeadStart presented a new format specially designed for April Startup Saturday. It had pitches in front of the panelists, live TV show recorded and it had real powerpacked interactions. The Special Lightening Pitches HeadStart had a Panelist Lightening Pitch section for this month. Here selected startups got an opportunity to present in front of the panelists who have been there and done that. We had the first lightening pitch from an ex-service man. Mr Shivaram who has served the Indian Navy in his heydays has now taken the baton forward with his own venture IDACS. IDACS manufactures energy-saving products for corporate houses and residents at very affordable costs. Having served clients like NICE, and Microsoft; IDACS presented its special panelist LP to take DARE.CO.IN | EVENT | MAY 2010 75

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some solid advice and seek some funding for the company. Next to present in front of the Panel was Saptarshi from Robosoft Systems. A regular head starter, Saptarshi with his group of friends has a challenging task. To create more awareness for Robotics and sell products that help corporate clients ease their life. A product called Duct Cleaner Robot was briefed which has already won clients like Blue Star and Voltas. It was quite interesting to find out how Robosoft is trying hard to make people understand the concept of Robotics and how they have derived a business model for sustenance by enlightening many minds across engineering campuses in India. The Panelists advice: The panelists were clear that a startup which can sustain and doesn’t have an immediate increase in size on cards should ideally not look forward to venture capital. As one of them said that if you have a positive cashflow and do not have a vision to multiply the size of your venture as of now, seeking venture capital would simply mean discounting yourself to the maximum and losing the game in the long run. Regular Lightening Pitches: Apart from the Special LPs which got a chance to present in front of the Panelists, the attendees also had a chance to experience two other technology ventures that were presented by Ankesh of SuccessNexus and Spandan from MobStreet. Success Nexus, a startup by Ankesh Kothari takes a completely new look at the affiliate model which, Ankesh claims, hasn’t evolved since 1998. The business model relies on a win-win-win deal where the seller gets new buyers, the affiliates who put the word out get some commission on sales and Success Nexus which hosts the complete platform takes small percentage fee. Currently under beta phase, Ankesh invited the 76

audience to sign-up with an invite code (123456) and experience the fun themselves. Next was a very apt and wellthought presentation from MobStreet. While Spandan was starting the presentation, the stage was getting reworked for the special ET Now episode on Mobile VAS. Ideally it becomes a challenge to present in a chaotic situation but Spandan had a better idea. He started the discussion talking about how superstitious he is, rolled on discussing the struggle that people in metros have to go through and ended up with an offer no one could reject. MobStreet. in, his startup offers best deals on various services like spas, restaurants, movies, sports, etc and other best stuff in your city. And what deal he threw to the crowd? A straight 50 percent off on any bill at Pizzorama by paying one rupee in advance to MobStreet. ET Now Panel discussion on Mobile VAS: A segment of the very popular ET Now show—Starting Up was shot among HeadStart audience. The team included Virendra Gupta, Founder of Verse, Samir Bangara, COO Indiagames, Sailesh Varudkar, AVP VAS, Vodafone, Zubin Dibash, Head AVP Innovations, TATA Docomo, Siddharth Agarwal, Founder Mobicule and our very own host Sudhir Syal. Before winding up there was a special segment which was hosted by ET Now. The panelists threw good insights on how we are experiencing the Indianized version of trends like the Apple App Store and VAS applications which were once only talked about in the US and Japan. The team even shed some light on how business models can sprout considering the demographics, the likes and dislikes and the purchasing power of an ordinary Indian consumer. Many intriguing questions from the audience were handled by the panelists. R

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blogs/opinion

The Startup named Venture Capital /Vijay Anand

Venture capital has been around in India for a while but has not gained enough popularity. Is it the overhype working against it or the entrepreneurs are just playing it down?

M The venture capital industry is a key component of a healthy ecosystem but it is just one component, not THE component.

Vijay Anand is an entrepreneur who has experience starting and building various technology startups, starting at the young age of 16. He is currently the Incubation Manager at RTBI, an incubator in IIT Madras that focuses on building rural-focused businesses. He is also the founder of Proto.in, Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premier technology showcase event and is involved in various initiatives that are shaping up the emerging entrepreneurial scene in India. He blogs as The Startup Guy at www.vijayanand.name and tweets regularly at www.twitter.com/vijayanands.

ost people in India would argue today that the country's sensation about entrepreneurship and business is a recent one. Many would also tell you that Indians generally have an affinity to take risks. A lot many more, along with the media might also tell you that unless you raise venture capital, you'd never be able to build an enterprise in India. None of these statements are true. Entrepreneurship has been a movement in India since the late 80s when the foundation of commerce and business in this country started taking shape. You will notice that most of the government initiatives in terms of entrepreneurship are as old as the day when this country gained independence. In the mid 90s when policies were framed to make enterprises flourish, taxation rules helped them grow, and IT as an industry was born and started taking roots, it felt as if entrepreneurship had reached out to the masses. It only seems that way because apart from a few major successes, and especially the IT industry which thrives on the massive tax subsidies of the government, we haven't seen

that growth being an inclusive one. It is capitalistic at best. Go back to the roots of how businesses have been traditionally built in this country and you would see a rather different story. Reports suggest that there are close to Rs 32 million small and medium enterprises in India and as per the report, these are entities that are generating more than two to three crores in annual revenue. The average number of companies that get funded by the venture capital community today in a year is around 150; where then did the rest of the companies raise money from? Here is a question that I have been asking entrepreneurs lately and I get some rather disturbing responses: Which is riskier and has a higher rate of interest on itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a bank loan or venture capital money? If you are like most people, you would claim that it's a bank loan, but it is quite possible today that you can take a bank loan at around 10-15 percent interest rate, and apart from the collateral (there are also collateral-free loans now), there is not much risk to it. Take money from a venture capital firm, which is no more than a specialized bank, and you are committing to a 400 percent interest

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The average number of companies that get funded by the venture capital community today in a year is around 150; where then did the rest of the companies raise money from?

rate in a time frame of five years and the power to appoint other officers, liquidate the company and a seat at the governing board for them. Of course it makes sense to make that promise when you can justify the nature of the business you are in, the growth rate and the stage at which your company is in, and if you are one of those really rare companies which can outgrow that interest rate—most companies will never be able to do that. Why then aren't the venture capital firms telling you that? Truth is, they themselves haven't figured it out. The venture capital industry has a record of never performing as it should anywhere out of Silicon Valley. Even in the Valley where there are close to 1000+ venture funds (compared to the 132 funds in India), not more than 25 are profitable and make money. Most companies that are successful and make it past the headlines to us are the ones that are being fostered by a select few. When the same model does not even span out in the same area, let alone the same continent, can we really expect it to work miles away in a continent and country which has its own flair as to how things work? I guess not. The venture capital industry is a key component of a healthy ecosys-

tem but it is just one component, not THE component. And in this scenario, there is much that the industry as a whole has to experiment before it can arrive at the framework which will make sense for India. Currently, in no way does it do that. In the past five years, close to 1.6 billion dollars have gone into investment in India as PE/Venture Capital and very few of those dollars have made returns. On the other hand, look at the companies that you will find in the manufacturing sectors, companies such as Shakti Masala (which processes, packages and retails masala powder) which are less than a decade old and garner a whopping Rs 320 crores in turnover each year. Such companies were started with less than Rs 10,000 as initial capital, was built with loans, repaid and turned profitable—it makes us doubt what we have been hearing that Indians don't have a risk-taking appetite. We do. We always did, but lately we have been trying to offload that risk onto a vehicle named venture capital, which unfortunately is not ready for prime time yet. It's time to go back to the basics of building businesses in India, lest you want to wait for the VC industry to mature. R

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I completely agree with Sanjeev Bikhchandani that if you have a meaningful goal in your life, it will give more (and constant energy), and money is a by-product of it. You don't dream of making a 500-crore 80

company, you dream something else, which is much larger and much meaningful. Limesh Parekh magazine

Schauna Chauhan, Alisha Chauhan, Nadia Chauhan Parle Agro Kudos: The trio is a trendsetter for today's gereration which is an ideal blend of elegance, intelligence and professionalism. The most challenging part has been that of Nadia; product development, marketing and distribution. Being a marketing professional myself I can visualise the challenges she must have faced but execution has been the most meticulous one. Sudhir Medirattavly

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How to DARE & Survive This is a reader of DARE for years but writing for the first time. I pay my sincere thanks to you and your team who has given us a teacher like DARE because it has taught me how to dare and survive in the toughest time with positive energy. DARE is becoming a guiding and motivating force among whosoever read it. I have a plan and idea to create an enterprise that will operate in the service space. To elaborate it further, it is about providing entire financial products at one-stop product domain and can be extended to other products also.The idea is in the initial stage. Here I need your inputs on two basic questions— a) How to go ahead regarding documents in order to create an enterprise? b) What should be a cheap funding option? Please guide me with your expert answers. Subodh Kumar, Delhi 19 mistakes online businesses make Payment gateway expenses: It is quite prohibitively expensive to use online payment gateway for small businesses in India. The worse is that the service providers do not really understand what we need. magazine

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How to become a Sachin Tendulkar of your business Outstanding article: Amazing article, shows so many different ways in which you can be inspired by a person of another field. The entrepreneurs mentioned here are all super achievers and like Sachin they are also super enthusiastic, honest, passionate and extremely humble human beings Neetish magazine

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Products just sold to keep Retailers Happy I want to bring to your kind notice two different businesses that usually happen and that do not benefit the manufacturer or producer and are only there to fill the pockets of the retailer community completely; who are more than willing to waste the materials to ensure price levels are mainatined above the common man's reach. 1. PRICE LISTS of products which are circulated are 80-90 percent of the actual price at which they are traded. Some of the examples are firecrackers and hardware supplies 2. BANANA SUPPLIES: Inspite of yields getting better and better, the retailers ensure they get the bananas at five rupees a dozen but they sell at 20-25 per dozen. No efforts go in ensuring better supply chain .It is observed that for every banana sold, two bananas are wasted by the retailers to ensure demand-supply gap. No wonder this useful fruit never gets into the midday meal of the needy children. Some drastic policy changes need to come in otherwise this trend which is a standard code of practice will waste whatever is produced in the country and the products won't reach the common man. Vijai Bhaskar

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blog

My unnamed Pakistani friend in Dubai : Why Indians and Pakistanis must be friends In 1996, while searching for an address in Hanover, Germany, I stopped by a shop owned by a Pakistani. I bought an ice-cream from him and told him that I have been walking around for the last one hour trying to find a particular address. As I finished my ice-cream sitting on the fence near his shop, the man called up somebody to take care of the shop and asked me to sit in his car so that he can drop me to the place I was searching for. He drove me to my destination. He was happy to help an Indian. He went out of his way to help me. I still remember him after 15 years. Parveen

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Scaling up your Business Hiring the Right Talent: I fully agree that all the threeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;capital, people and organization are important if we think of scaling our business. Most important is the people. Its very difficult to get the right people to do the job with a farsighted vision. Rashmi Priya 24 Must-have Elements for your Business Website Great Points: These 24 points have included almost everything that should be present in a business website. It provides easy access to users as well as a means to share their mind by way of blogs. Rashmi Priya Tyre Recycling : The New Business on the Block Efficiently collecting used tyres for recycling: Because of their bulky nature, collecting and transporting old tyres for recycling constitutes a large part of the operating costs. Equipment to shred the tyre at the point of collection will save a lot of cost involved. It will have to be done environmentally and safely. We are willing to start an old tyre collection service on our website www.MyFleetView.com. If someone wants to drive that business - we

have more than 6000 commercial vehicles already registered. Vikram Puri magazine

Kites: A micro opportunity Very heartening to know about kite flying and industry. As a sailor I have seen very huge silk kites in butterfly/ insect shapes in China. Old Marconi, ships' lifeboat radios used to be provided with a cloth box kite, enable the lifeboat survivors to send a radio message through a thin copper wire antenna held aloft in high winds by the box kite. Kites are never flown from ships as that would mean a distress situation. I would like to see our great big companies come forward and encourage better quality of kite making and flying festivals. Nagesh L. Naidu The Business of Vending Machines Modern Vending Machines : Thanks to the author for this interesting article on vending machines. I have been an avid follower of vending machine and their developments world over. To be frank, these days, the technology in vending machines have taken a big change and no longer are these machines confined to just vending a bottle of soft drink or some small packet of chips. These days there are machines capable of freezing food, heating the same and giving you a well cooked hot meal (all while you are listening to your favourite music or watching a movie trailor on the video screen attached)... These machines may be costly, but worth every penny, for the operator and the consumer... Prasanth magazine

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Food for Thought at Suminter India Organics Empowerment of farmers: It's really good to think about farmers, since they are ending their lives due to the scarcity of fundamental needs and committing sucide. By empowering the farmers, the country can grow in true sense. Chitra Sharma

Celebrating Women Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow The mindset of the human race should change in allowing women to work, as their double responsibilities at home drags them back. Even today all members in a family want mothers to be the man Friday or else the kids go out of control. This is current reality. How about a change? Maj Gen PP Das

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What do I do with the money now? Advisor: The entrepreneurs who have worked hard to build good businesses know the difficulties in raising capital when they were growing. So, I feel when they are able to raise capital, they should allocate a small portion of that money to invest in early-stage companies. There is no risk capital available in India, and this leads to a great loss for not only the entrepreneurs, but also for the nation in lost opportunity, jobs and value creation. Hemant Nitturkar

A New Model for Early-Stage Venture Capital Investments I agree with Mr Krishna Kumar's analysis. A new VC model has to be developed considering the Indian context. Suresh B

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That goes same for other services like SMS communications through Internet. Thank you Krishna Kumar for the wonderful post. Vimala

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C V Nerikar CEO, Cryobanks International India

hat should one consider closely while planning to start a stem cell bank? One of the things that is critical in a stem cell banking operation is understanding what segment of banking you want to be in. One goes into the public domain and the other goes into private domain. You can also have a hybrid model too. Which model you follow will decide on this aspect. The second thing is what product you want to bank. This will decide who your target customer will be. You may have umbilical cord banking, adipose tissue banking, tooth banking etc. Tooth is also a very good source of stem cells. Depending on what exactly you are looking to bank, your business proposition changes. For eg: you say you want to open a fat stem cell bank, then your segment of population is further reduced. How many people do you know in your immediate circle who want to go for liposuction. So your segment becomes very restricted. So your price proposition, your proposition of how you present the whole thing across, changes all together. Based on what you wish to bank, your infrastructure is linked. So if you wish to bank umbical, there is a particular set of instrumentation etc. There is a difference of instrumentation, difference in technology and infrastructure which come into play for different types of banks. What are the key challenges one comes across? Right Awareness: Awareness is the first thing. In the West there are very strong public banks available. So a guy when he requires it, he can rely on this When a part of this company was started, cord blood banking was an expensive proposition. It was considered that only a particular strata of the society can think of this. The reason is that Rs 70,000 is no joke. Our effort was to make it easier for our customers to go in for this banking. So we brought in an EMI scheme, making it cheaper for everyone to avoid it. Every parent should have the right to bank, provided they believe in it. And I

don't want them to believe in it without actually having understood the concept. I want it to be a thought through evaluated decision rather than just a spontaneous decision. So our thinking was how can I make it easy. So we brought down this price barrier from Rs 70,000 to Rs 3,400. Right Set of People: This is a very people-driven business. This is because it is a concept that people need to understand. As humans we like social touch. Actually there is no availability of trained manpower. There is a huge shortage of right kind of people. This is because the industry is very nascent. Slow Growing Business: This business requires a lot of funds. It has comparatively a longer gestation than most other businesses. Once it reaches a critical mass, it has a snowball effect. But you have to wait. It may take one year or 20 years. This depends on how you strategize, how you market and various other aspects. How does your EMI scheme works? I look it from middle class perspective. When a baby is born, the parents have to bear so many expenses. There is meternity costs, socio-religious costs, costs on of medicines etc and then you are talking of cord blood. You have suddenly loaded the person with extra cost. The guy may want to go in for EMI scheme: Rs 3,400 over a period of 25 months. This splits over a period of time. We haven't come across too many defaulters. If there have been any defaulters, it has been because they felt it was not the right decision to take. This scheme is largely driven by us. We are in the process of linking up with some banks. So we believe that it will take things forward. What is the market size? India is about 26 million births, and all these are potential customers. Even if 10% go in for this banking, the potential is huge. There is a lot of scope for someone to walk into the business.

How does one start a stem cell banking business? There is significant capital outlay in terms of setting up a bank but there is even more expense in terms of running the business. My thumb rule understanding is 1:5. There is longer gestation periods, lots of advertising and marketing, awareness driven activities are needed. A lot of awareness can be done by successes coming out of it. What is the risk in this business? The biggest threat is that if tomorrow it comes out that the product is not needed. That is the only risk I see. Say tomorrow a research says you don't need to bank your stem cells, we can create enough of them from your hair follicle. Then the industry is going to get affected. Then there are liability issues. We are an insured company. We are the only company in India which is insured in this business. Second is the risk of regulations. Tomorrow, you have momand-pop banks coming up in every city. Here we are sitting with a Rs 30-40 crore investment, naturally my costs will be higher. There has to be some standard guidelines, some licensing procedure. As of now there is something but it is not stringent enough. So we get global accreditaions, we work on those models. There are also some ethical and religious issues. What is the cost of setting up this business? Most equipments are imported. Rooms have to be fully access controlled, highly secured with all state-of-the-art facility. If you have land or building, the cost would be Rs 20-25 crore. Cost of running, depends on how you run it. When we entered this market, people were using vials for storage. It was an open storage system. Vials have a problem of contamination. Vials have a problem of contamination. When we came we brought in something known as closed bag system. We can store more than 1.5 lakh cells. R

MAY 2010 | INTERVIEW | DARE.CO.IN

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Organizations DARE.CO.IN

covered in this issue, in alphabetic order; first appearance

“Geokno” Geospatial Knowledge Practitioners.....................................36 Accentium Web................................24 Activecubes Solutions .....................24

Lucifer Lights ...................................47 Luna Ergonomics.............................47 Mango Technologies ........................48 MASUTA Producers.........................48

Acton Biotech ..................................25 maxHeap Technologies ...................49 AlignMinds Technologies .................25 Anduril Technologies........................26 Atom Technologies ..........................26 Axio Biosolutions .............................27 B R Cooking Sprays ........................27 Buzzintown ......................................28 CircuitSutra Technologies ................28 Condor Advertising ..........................29

mChek India Payment Systems.......49 MediVed Innovations .......................50 MedSphere Technologies ................50 Myntra..............................................51 Naturol Bioenergy Limited ...............51 Neartivity Wireless ...........................54 NextBiT Computing .........................54

ConSure Medical .............................29

PCMB PLUS Technologies ..............55

D.Light Energy .................................30

Pressmart ........................................55

DesiCrew Solutions .........................30

Pure Tech India ................................56

Dhama Apparel................................31

Rang De ..........................................56

Dimdim ............................................31

Rising Sun Technologies .................57

Draper Fischer Jurvetson ................55

Robhatah Robotic Solutions ............57

Druva Software ................................32

Robosoft Systems ...........................58

Earth2Orbit ......................................32

RoboticWares ..................................58

Eco-Wise Waste Management ........33

Rocky Philip .....................................65

Eko India Financial Services ...........33

Rural Opportunities Production Enterprises ....................60

Elina Networks.................................34 Emami Group ..................................42

SETU software systems ..................60

Enabling Innovations and Technologies .............................34

Simplifix Automation & Solutions .....61

Games2win India .............................36 Gridbots Technologies .....................37

Star AgriWareHousing & Collateral Management ...................62

HummingBird Suites ........................37

Studio Alaya.....................................62

Husk Power Systems.......................38

Suminter India Organics ..................63

i2i TeleSolutions ...............................38

TARA machines & Tech Services ....63

ideaForge Technology .....................39

TELiBrahma Convergent Communication................................64

iKen Solutions ..................................39 Imere Technologies..........................40

Sportingmindz Technology ..............61

The Loot India..................................64

DARE is not an acronym. It represents the daring spirit of the entrepreneur. The red color for the R of DARE represents the fire in the belly of the entrepreneur. You could think of the D representing the face, A representing the chest, R representing the belly and E representing the feet of the human body. Hence the red R. The entrepreneur dares to do things. (S)he dares to do things differently

SMS “DARE <your comments, questions or suggestions>” to

Insta Health Solutions......................40

TringMe ............................................65

Invention Labs .................................41

Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions .......65

Isango ..............................................41

VIA Human Resource Solution ........66

iSensor Diagnostics .........................45

Weather Risk Management .............66

Ishaya Health Foods ........................45

Webaroo Technologies ....................67

JCG Salvage Settlers ......................46

WILCOM ..........................................67

56677

Kwench Library Solutions ................46

Yashram Lifestyle.............................68

dare@cybermedia.co.in

MAY 2010 | INDEX | DARE.CO.IN

Organizations and people index.i84 84

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People DARE.CO.IN

covered in this issue, in alphabetic order; first appearance

Abhishek Sinha................................33

Dr. Bala Manian ...............................38

Nirja Kumar......................................67

Sanjay Rao ......................................61

Abhijit Bhattacharjee........................47

Dr. Girish Kumar ..............................67

Nisha G............................................56

Sanjeev Gupta .................................55

Abhishek Goyal................................49

Dr. Harish Padh ...............................25

Paras Arora......................................55

Sanjeev S ........................................50

Activecubes Solutions .....................24

Dr. Madhu Mehta .......................25, 27

Patrick Fischer .................................60

Sankar Bora.....................................51

Adib Ibrahim ....................................41

Dr. Nachiket Mor ..............................56

Paul Basil .........................................60

Sasha Mirchandani ..........................51

Aditya Sanghi ..................................57

Dr. NK Venkataramana ....................40

Peter Freislederer ............................29

Saurav Mohapatra ...........................31

Ajit Narayanan .................................41

Dr. Prahalad Vadakkepat .................57

Pooja Chauhan ................................26

Sham Banerji ...................................38

Alok Kejriwal ....................................36

Dr. Rajendra Sonar ..........................39

Prabhakar Sunder ...........................51

Shantanu Bhagwat ..........................51

Amaresh Kollipara ...........................32

Dr. Rajni Battu..................................38

Pradeepkumar P Pillai .....................25

Shashi Kumar ..................................51

Amit Goyal .......................................62

Dr. Renganathan.V ..........................65

Prakash Bare ...................................34

Shiva Kumar ....................................51

Amit Khandelwal ..............................62

Dr. Subir Banerji...............................38

Prasad Pingali .................................60

Siddharth Das..................................32

Amith Agarwal .................................62

Dr. Syed Zaidi ..................................49

Prashant John .................................46

Siddharth Goel ................................39

Anand Thyagrajan............................38

Dr. Vasudeva Verma.........................60

Prashanth Prakash ..........................61

Smita Ramakrishna ...................56, 64

Anil Mathews ...................................40

Dr. Veerendra Hiremath ...................65

Preetham Shivanna .........................41

Somesh Kamra ................................29

Animesh Tripathy .............................58

Fahad Azad .....................................58

Priyank Garg....................................51

Sonu Agrawal ..................................66

Anish Achutan .................................54

Gabriel Risk .....................................30

Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala .........30, 41

Sreejith N N .....................................60

Ankit Mehta......................................39

Gagan Kumar ..................................49

Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala ...............60

Srinivasa Hebbar .............................34

Ankur Warikoo .................................24

Gautam Balijepalli............................66

Prof. Jamadagni ...............................38

Subinder Khurana............................32

Anshul Gupta ...................................46

George Joseph ................................32

Prof. P. Sudarshan ...........................56

Sudarshan S. Naik Borker ...............54

Anuj Kumbhat ..................................66

Gyanesh Pandey .............................38

Pulkit Gaur .......................................37

Sumit Jain ........................................49

Anurag Bajpai ..................................26

Harpreet Grover...............................66

Raghu Batta.....................................66

Sundar Subramanian.......................31

Anurag Gupta ..................................49

Janesh Janardhan ...........................57

Rajat Shikhar ...................................51

Sunder Nookala ...............................46

Aravind A Narayan...........................56

Jaspreet Singh.................................32

Rajesh Purohit .................................47

Sunil Krishnan .................................34

Arundhati Dutta................................45

Jay Gupta ........................................64

Rajesh Varrier ..................................24

Sunil Maheshwari ............................48

Arvind Thiagrajan ............................38

Jayant Pandit ...................................31

Rajiv Kuchhal...................................30

Suresh Babu ....................................67

Aseem Sadana ................................41

John Kattakayam .............................49

Rakesh Mathur ................................67

Suresh Goyal ...................................62

Ashish Bhat .....................................39

Joshua P. Hishey .............................62

Ramakrishna N.K ............................56

Suresh Narasimha ...........................64

Ashutosh Lawania ...........................51

Karthik Reddy ..................................32

Ramani K .........................................32

Swami Manohar...............................34

Asim Ghosh .....................................47

Kranthi Kiran Vistakula ....................31

Ramesh Emani ................................40

T.V.G. Krishnamurthy .......................64

Aswin Chandrasekaran....................41

Krishnan Madhabush.......................46

Rami Reddy (Bomma Reddy)..........27

Tapesh Aggarwal .............................50

Balaji Nagarajan ..............................36

Kunal R Sachdev .............................60

Ranjan Singh ...................................41

Uday Bellary ....................................28

Beerud Sheth...................................67

Kushal Nahata .................................58

Ratnesh Yadav .................................38

Uday Shankar ..................................34

Bharavi Gade...................................49

Lakshmi Devi ...................................45

Raveen Sastry .................................51

Umang Kumar .................................24

Bheemanna Ganti............................65

Lalit Mangal .....................................49

Ravi B.R...........................................64

Umesh Sisodia ................................28

Binil Kuruvila ....................................25

Lekh Joshi .......................................48

RMP Jawahar ..................................56

Vellesh Narayanan...........................61

Brig Ganesham................................31

Leo Mavely ......................................27

Rocky Philip .....................................65

Vibhor Goyal ....................................66

C S Bhaskar ....................................51

M R Jayaprakash .............................61

Rohit Agrawal ..................................51

Vijay Mahajan ..................................66

Charles W. (Chip) Ransler IV ...........38

Mabel Chacko ..................................54

Rohit Shankar ..................................31

Vijay Mathur.....................................45

D Harsha .........................................56

Madhabanand Ray ..........................48

Ross Syed Farooq ...........................58

Vikas Malpani ..................................49

Deepa Kumar ..................................68

Mahesh Khambadkone....................36

RS Agarwal......................................42

Vineet Saxena .................................51

Devanarayanan G Nair ....................25

Manik Thapar ...................................33

RS Goenka ......................................42

Vinod Thimmaya ..............................37

Dinesh Puri ......................................50

Manish Pathak .................................55

S S Venkatesh .................................51

Vishal S. N. Borker...........................54

Dr S Sundaramurthy ........................56

Manoj Sinha.....................................38

Saloni Malhotra................................30

Vishnu Dileep ..................................25

Dr. Amitabh Saran ...........................28

Milind Borate....................................32

Sam Goldman..................................30

Vivek Madappa ................................37

Dr. Arun Kumar ................................63

Mitesh Damania...............................46

Sameer Guglani...............................49

Vivek Pahwa ....................................24

Dr. Arun Mukherjee ..........................38

Mukesh Bansal ................................51

Sameer Mehta .................................61

Vivek Shenoy ...................................34

Dr. Ashwin Naik ...............................65

Nedjip Tozun ....................................30

Sameer S.B. Naik ............................54

VK Jaitly...........................................55

Dr. B J Rao ......................................25

Nilamani Mohanty ............................32

Sandeep Saxena .............................25

Yusuf Motiwala.................................65 DARE.CO.IN | INDEX | MAY 2010 85

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Triggering a Grassroots Revolution Participants of the National Entrepreneurship Network’s faculty development programs are making a change where it matters the most – among grassroots entrepreneurs. Going beyond their classrooms and campus walls, they are driving socio-economic change by working with low-income or marginalized woman entrepreneurs.

Madhavi Lokhande Welingkar Research Centre About 25 women in a low income slum in Bangalore resolved to change their lives. Making pickles or tailoring blouses looked like a good way to start. However, even these home-run businesses required capital--but these women had none. A bank loan was the only resort, but with no bank balance, credit history or collaterals, many banks turned them away. Madhavi Lokhande, a financial accounting professor at Welingkar Research Centre, Bangalore, is committed to not only help these women get bank loans but also ensure that the money is managed well and they successfully grow their ventures. Madhavi has helped 13 women get bank loans and worked with 12 others with their business models. A participant of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Program – Tools for Growing Your Business, organized in association with the National Entrepreneurship Network, in November 2009, Madhavi is inspired to put her learning into practice with grassroot entrepreneurs. “The tools stay the same, whether it is applied to high-impact startups or small businesses. These women are vulnerable--an unpaid bank loan can ruin them. A structured approach to their ventures can help them grow their business, rather than lose it,” says Madhavi. 88

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Anita Priya Raja

Vellore Institute of Technology Business School When Vellore Institute of Technology’s NEN faculty leader Anita Priya Raja met Sangameshwari, one of Vellore’s oldest and most successful woman entrepreneurs (she started an apparel business in 1962) last month, little did she know that they were kicking off a quiet revolution in this conservative, small town of Tamil Nadu. According to Anita Priya, entrepreneurship is not a desirable career option for women in Vellore – a fact that is forcing many woman entrepreneurs to remain small scale and low key about their business. Limited access to resources, both financial and physical, lack of communication and marketing skills, and barriers to operating in a male dominated environment along with familial opposition are gnawing sharply at their chances of success. To help Vellore’s woman entrepreneurs overcome these constraints, Anita Priya, supported by Sangameshwari and her colleague Sherlie Jaykumar, is working on a two-pronged approach: developing skills and facilitating networks among the woman entrepreneur community. Applying the tools and learning she picked up at the National Entrepreneurship Network’s foundation course on entrepreneurship in July, 2009, Prof Anita Priya designed and conducted a workshop, that focused on empowering these women with financials of running a business, idea generation, understanding business process lifecycles and ensuring sustainability of their ventures. About 16 woman entrepreneurs, having businesses as diverse as food products, boutiques, playschools and jewellery design, participated in her day-long workshop on April 10, 2010. “More than just acquiring knowledge, the workshop was an opportunity for these women to come out and talk about their businesses. It gave them the visibility that they so critically needed,” Prof. Anita Priya says. Rekha Pravin, a jewellery designer who attended this workshop couldn’t agree less. “It was interesting to learn that even though our businesses were diverse, our challenges were common. I will definitely attend the next workshop and bring more woman entrepreneurs along with me.”

Rosy Fernando

MOP Vaishnav College for Women Over a 100 small-scale woman entrepreneurs in Chennai have a reason to thank NEN faculty leader, Rosy Fernando, professor at MOP Vaishnav College for Women. She is working with these women to build their small ventures ranging from food to catering to laundry. About a 100 women engaged in the laundry business are adopting Rosy’s ideas—transiting from manual to power washing; offering additional services of dyeing and darning, and producing their own detergents for washing. Rosy is not only mentoring them but also organizing skill-building workshops for them. She has also appealed to the Chennai Municipal Corporation to support these women. Meanwhile, five low-income women are shifting their catering business from their homes to a kiosk, located right in the heart of Chennai’s bustling Nungambakkam, with the acrive support and mentoring by Rosy. She trained them in hygiene, maintenance and attractive packaging, and is now working with civic authorities to obtain required permissions for operating the kiosk. She is also developing their marketing strategy using attractively painted pushcarts for lunch box delivery. Rosy estimates that these changes will triple their revenue from Rs 500 to Rs 2000 per day. Rosy belongs to the first batch of NEN-Stanford-IIMB Entrepreneurship Educators Program and became a certified entrepreneurship educator in 2009. “Working with marginalized self-help groups has given me a meaningful way to apply my knowledge on entrepreneurship. Partnering with me are 300 students from the E Cell of MOP Vaishnav College. Together, we identified groups that need our support and helped them find solutions to scale up their businesses,” she elobrates. More articles on www.nenonline.org. Content provided by NEN DARE.CO.IN | NEN | MAY 2010 89

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