Lounge for 18 Sep 2010

New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Pune

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Saturday, September 18, 2010

Vol. 4 No. 37

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT IDEA? 13 simple but cool business ideas that you could have thought of first

Ayesha Grewal at her store in Delhi’s Shanti Niketan market.

THE GOOD LIFE

SUNIL KHILNANI

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akistan has long rocked itself in a cradle of victimhood, attributing its torments to ploys and conspiracies hatched elsewhere. And so it was perhaps inevitable, after the devastating floods in July, that some in Pakistan blamed the floods on clandestine US and Indian manipulation of monsoon clouds and river flows. It was just as inevitable that we Indians—also habituated to playing the victim, especially in regard to Pakistan—played up our hurt at being blamed for having a role in our neighbour’s national catastrophe. >Pages 4­5

Champion wrestler Sushil Kumar talks about his journey from Haryana’s mud pits to the Olympic medal and international stardom >Page 18

THE MYTHOLOGIST

Devdutt Pattanaik makes the Mahabharat thriller­like—another successful attempt at articulating big mythological ideas >Page 16

SPICE GIRL

Sarita Choudhury, known for her roles in ‘Kama Sutra’ and ‘Mississippi Masala’, on her debut in an Indian film >Page 17

>Pages 6­14

PUBLIC EYE

DANGERS WITHOUT BORDERS

BAPROLA’S BABYFACE

STALL ORDER

SHOBA NARAYAN

NANDINI RAMNATH

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

BANGALORE’S GOT MASS TO CLASS A TICKET TO RIDE AND BACK

S

tarting this week, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is running its newly procured Mercedes-Benz luxury buses to the Bangalore airport and back, offering competition to the fire-engine red, poetically named Vayu Vajra Volvo buses that already ply the airport route.

Some of the new buses will even have wireless connectivity. Have you ridden the airport bus in Bangalore lately? I did this for the first time last week, I am embarrassed to say. >Page 5

C

an Anjaana Anjaani hold its ground in the post-Dabangg world? Will audiences who have hooted their hearts out at Dabangg’s unabashed gimmickry care for a privileged and beautiful couple who set out on a road trip across a pothole-free and flood-unaffected foreign country? Among all the things being said in praise of Dabangg, the assertion that it has gladdened the hearts of the so-called “chavanni class” is the most interesting. According to the theory... >Page 17

PHOTO ESSAY

AMID THE CLOUDS

HOME PAGE L3

LOUNGE First published in February 2007 to serve as an unbiased and clear-minded chronicler of the Indian Dream.

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE LOVES | THE REVISED WHOLESALE PRICE INDEX

A lime ‘n’ lemony India The updated index is a snapshot of a nation rapidly updating its tastes and aspirations

MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN VENKATESHA BABU SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT (MANAGING EDITOR, LIVEMINT)

FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI ©2010 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

I

t is official. There is a new India out there. A richer, more modern India that is consuming wonderful new things, and abandoning the boring commodities of yore. No, it’s not the blurb for the latest India-China—Chindia??—book by some desi professor at Harvard or Oxford.

It is what the office of the economic adviser to the government of India has revealed in the brand new Wholesale Price Index or WPI. The WPI is the price of a basket of goods that is supposed to be representative of what the nation consumes. It only looks at the prices at which goods are bought and sold by companies, and not consumers, but the price of this basket is still a ready reckoner for whether prices are going up or down.

Those numbers the talking heads on TV rant and rave about when they talk of inflation? That’s the prices on the WPI they are talking about.

Now the government has revised the WPI, after almost 15 years, to make allowances for how the nation’s consumption has changed. Or so they say (there are some whispers that the new index also helps bring down inflation figures. Thereby making UPA II look better).

Make juice: Lemons are in.

The new WPI then is a more up-todate reflection of how we live our lives.

What are we eating? Still rajma chawal?

Or more nigiri sushi? Still wearing dhotis? Or orange corduroy hotpants like everyone in the trendy Lounge team?

The list contains hundreds of such items and many more industrial products. A virtual updated snapshot, if you will, of what we consume.

Lounge decided to compare the new and old WPI lists to see what new products made it. And what old-fashioned staples have been dropped, or adjusted into other more important categories.

New entrants into the list include lemons, refrigerators, washing machines, microwave ovens, video CD players, dish antennas and condensed milk.

Also debuting on the index are cotton trousers. Making way for these pants, it appears, are dhotis. The government has also now found it worthy to start looking at the price of footballs and toothbrushes.

Though don’t get all excited if you are a Manchester United fan with sparkling teeth. These items account for only a tiny portion of the overall WPI. Footballs bounce in at 0.00425% weightage and toothbrushes bristle at 0.01001%.

When it comes to weightages, things have changed there too.

Food—dropping from 15.40246% to 14.33709%—has yielded ground to gold jewellery, soft drinks, alcohol and beer.

Papad, oddly enough, is a new entrant (masala papad goes well with beer. So that makes sense actually).

Also new are the “dot pen with refill” and, with terrifying specificity, cotton pillow covers.

Readers with high grooming standards will be glad to know that the government is listening to your classily put forth requests. Wax, shaving cream, shampoo and hair dye now find individual listings.

However, things that have lost listing, or have been folded into other categories, include black and white TVs, Trekker vehicles and that old favourite: “complete tractors”.

If you had any doubts about the changes taking over our country, let the new WPI set them to rest. India is changing. Our future is bright, sweet, shiny, cold and lemony. And in this new India there simply isn’t place for tractors or trekkers.

This is pillow-cover country.

Sidin Vadukut

Priya Ramani’s First Cut will be back next week.

LOUNGE REVIEW | THE PARK, HYDERABAD

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n daylight, the first greenfield seven-star hotel of the Apeejay Surrendra Group—its most expensive, at an outlay of `350 crore—isn’t exactly imposing, except for the post-modernist, criss-cross façade by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which clearly doesn’t belong in the mundane milieu of Raj Bhavan Road. The truth is, like a Vegas hotel, The Park in Hyderabad only comes into its own once the sun goes down—various recessed, chandeliered and ambient lights are switched on, the pool bar opens and an illusion of Nizamian royalty is created.

A Leed Gold certification from the US Green Building Council also means The Park has its yin and yang in order. The building consumes 35% less energy than similar hotels, so tree huggers can rejoice.

“We have sought to break the myth that designer hotels cannot be environmentally friendly here,” says Anurag Bajaj, general manager.

The good stuff The aristocratic theme kicks in from the Street Lobby itself. The floor tiles are purple Metron Bisazza, inlaid with semi-precious stones, while the ceiling above the counter is a Preksha Baid acrylic artwork inspired by the designs from a Nizam’s turban.

Abutting the reception is a dark cove done up in rusts and carmines—the Ruby Lounge. At first glance, it is all contemporary, glossy surfaces and deep sofas, but up close the Ruby Lounge has a profusion of traditional motifs: a Kalamkari ceiling has processions of gods and goddesses in the Sri Kalahasti style and floral imprints from the Machilipatnam style imprinted across it. Antiquefinish mirror walls and a pillar covered with 24-carat gold leaf completes the classical touch.

Arguably, the most extravagant of restaurants at The Park is Aish, the Indian restaurant designed by Tarun Tahiliani. Swarovski crystals and pearls lie scattered about on the mother-of-pearl inlaid

Green opulence: (clockwise from above) The post­modernist facade of the hotel; the Aish restaurant designed by Tarun Tahiliani; a Charminar­ inspired Preksha Baid chande­ lier; and the Kalamkari ceiling of the Ruby Lounge. serving platforms here, giving the impression of careless opulence.

Black and white silver-framed prints from the Nizam era cover the walls under a giant Swarovski chandelier. Zebra-striped cushions and napkin rings offer visual relief amid the dazzle. Surrounded by such wanton luxury, with stewards spraying ittar and waiting obsequiously upon you, it is not hard to fancy yourself of royal blood.

Another restaurant, Verandah, designed by the UK’s Conran and Partners, finds inspiration in the colonial era. Modelled on the British concept of an open-air sit-out, this sunny restaurant is done up in colourful easy chairs, indoor plants and jali partitions. You are losing count of designers by now—there are tables by Gunjan Gupta, lights by Romeo Louis, a private dining area by Baid. Out-

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com A MOSQUE THAT DOES NOT EXIST I read with great interest Shoba Narayan’s column “A mosque near Ground Zero will open wounds”, 11 September. I do not claim to be an authority on the issue, having never stepped foot on the ground where this debate is raging, I don’t have first­hand emotions about the subject. However, I have been reading extensively about the “mosque” in the online media and I don’t agree with Narayan’s analysis.

I’ll begin with the closing comments: “But let’s not call it a mosque. Let’s call it a memorial; a cultural centre...” Why call it a “mosque” at all? Ever since it was conceived, the Park51 project was always called an Islamic cultural centre by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and the Cordoba community in media releases, print, online and TV appearances. The proposal is to build a culinary school, a basketball court, swimming pool, an 11 September memorial and contemplation space, and a prayer hall (mosque) intended to be run separately from Park51 but open and accessible to all members, visitors and the New York community.

The Park51 project is to be “dedicated to pluralism, service, arts and culture, education and empowerment, appreciation for our city and a deep respect for our planet”. Repeatedly calling it a “mosque” (and just that) is only rousing the false notions of a victory monument for Islam right at Ground Zero. Oh, but it isn’t on Ground Zero too! It is two blocks, or a few hundred metres, away from Ground Zero. And there is already a full­fledged mosque four blocks from Ground Zero. It would be wrong to assume that all mosques are symbols of radical Islam and terrorism. Coming to US President Barack Obama’s comments at the White House ‘iftar’—he took the correct position required of the chief executive charged with defending the constitution of a country. He also clarified within a day that he never commented on the wisdom of building a mosque there, which he leaves to the local community. To insinuate from this that he has lost his ability to judge the pulse of the people is carrying it a bit too far. The people who are defending the Park51 project, over a million Muslim­Americans living in the tri­state area and millions of Muslim Americans elsewhere, are also “people” of America. If the President thinks that he should stand up for them, it isn’t sudden inexplicable alienation. Let us not forget that Obama is a Nobel laureate acknowledged for his efforts to bridge the Islam­West rift. It may be an unpopular thing to do, but not the wrong thing.

Mosque or not, the objectives of the founders of this project appear crystal clear. They want to showcase moderate Islam as mainstream to the world and remind New Yorkers and visitors to Ground Zero that the enemy isn’t Islam; the enemy is the radical streak that still runs amok in each society.

The radical streak is represented by fear­mongers who vilify Islam as a whole for the actions of a few. Just because Adolf Hitler was Catholic, the Pope doesn’t become a Nazi. If an Imam in India were to propose a memorial in the Taj hotel, there would always be bigots who would want to oppose it just because the 26/11 terrorists were Muslim.

Probably we will never see Hindus and Sikhs living happily in Pakistan in our lifetime. Saudi Arabia possibly will never allow a church in the kingdom. But that is what differentiates democratic, plural societies from the rest. The day we let go of the tolerance that brings us together, we leave a hole in society large enough for opportunists to push their selfish interest through.

It’s true that surveys have found that two­thirds of New York wants the Park51 project elsewhere. But elections, and not just surveys, have also proved that a majority of Gujarat supported Modi’s conduct through the riots. That never prevented level­headed people in India from condemning his deliberate inaction.

I will quote Charlton Heston here, from his momentous speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in 1999 at Denver. Freshly scarred from the Columbine shootings, Denver overwhelmingly demanded that the NRA go away as it saw the gun lobby as the villain. Heston received personal messages asking him to get out and he responded with an appeal befitting a statesman: “...This cycle of tragedy­driven hatred must stop. Because so much more connects us than that which divides us. And because tragedy has been and will always be with us.

Somewhere right now, evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it. But each horrible act can’t become an axe for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us. America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction, when an isolated terrible event occurs, our phones ring demanding that the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because their story needs a villain. They want us to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief. To provide riveting programming to run between commercials for cars and cat food. The dirty secret of this day and age is that political gain and media ratings all too often bloom on fresh graves....”

If you replace “NRA” with “Muslims” in the above paragraph, you will get my drift. It holds true not just for America but for India too.

K.K. NEELAMRAJU ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

side is the other al-fresco restaurant, Aqua, next to the swimming pool which segues exhilaratingly into the choppy Hussain Sagar.

Numismatists would be especially pleased with the Sicca (Urdu for coin) Bar. Its oak-wood walls are covered with inscriptions of coins designed by ChoChoSan from the UK; the food is similarly themed.

Finally, the rooms, done up in impeccable white, are large and hum with a deep quiet. No surprises here—a media hub with a 42-inch LCD TV and DVD player with ports into which you can plug anything from an iPod to a pen drive. Bathrooms come with rain showers, deep-sink bathtubs and walk-in closets.

porary minimalism. Sometimes they blend seamlessly, but often, the effect can be one of an art gallery—individual pieces with no common theme. The main reception, for example, has Moroso chairs by Alfredo Haberli and Splash tables out of a sci-fi film.

Right next to it, the ceiling has inverted brass domes, a Nizam motif. Across the room are settees with cushions of deep-red satin and chintz, a distinctly West Asian look. No unifying gestalt screams out at you—just a number of beautiful pieces sit disconnectedly side by side.

Talk plastic

The not­so­good

Prices range from `15,000 for a single-occupancy luxury room to `1 lakh for a double-occupancy presidential suite.

All through, The Park alternates Nizamian baroque with contem-

Priyanka Pulla

LISTEN TO THE LOUNGE PODCAST Sachin Malhan of Inclusive Planet tells us about the start­up climate in India; shooter Samresh Jung talks shooting; Livemint.com editor Sidin Vadukut reviews the new book, ‘The March of Mobile Money’, by Sam Pitroda and Mehul Desai; and Sanjukta Sharma reviews ‘For Real’. www.livemint.com/loungepodcast

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP

PUBLIC EYE

SUNIL KHILNANI

DANGERS WITHOUT BORDERS IN THE MORAL MUDDLE OF OUR RESPONSE TO THE PAKISTAN FLOODS, WE HAVE LOST SIGHT OF ONE TRUTH: LIKE TERRORISM, NATURAL AND ECOLOGICAL DISASTERS KNOW NO BOUNDARIES, BUT THAT IS WHERE THE SIMILARITY ENDS. AN ANALOGOUS REACTION TO THE TWO WOULD ONLY IMPERIL THE SUBCONTINENT’S FUTURE

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Catastrophe: An aerial view of the flooded Sindh province; and (top) a UN helicopter drops relief material at Chandan village in Dadu district.

akistan has long rocked itself in a cradle of victimhood, attributing its torments to ploys and conspiracies hatched elsewhere. And so it was perhaps inevitable, after the devastating floods in July, that some in Pakistan blamed the floods on clandestine US and Indian manipulation of monsoon clouds and river flows. It was just as inevitable that we Indians—also habituated to playing the victim, especially in regard to Pakistan—played up our hurt at being blamed for having a role in our neighbour’s national catastrophe. At the geopolitical level, as on the personal one, being offended is a canny way of avoiding more difficult and involving emotions, such as genuine sympathy.

The ambivalent way in which the Indian citizenry has thus far addressed the human, social and economic catastrophe facing Pakistan is not just a moral muddle. It could redound to the long-term detriment of India if we fail to understand that our historical enemy is also enmeshed beside us, buffeted along with us, by environmental forces that have little respect for national borders.

Looking at images of the inundated

plains of Punjab and Sindh over the past weeks, reading stories about the massive human displacements that have followed—the largest on the subcontinent since Partition—I was struck by how proximate this natural calamity actually was. It was unfolding a few score miles away from our borders, yes, but it also felt near because it was familiar: a tragedy larger in scale than our floods in 2008 or the floods across southern India last year, but not an alien one. What distances us is a reflexive enmity.

India’s government did better than its citizenry at taming this impulse. It came forth quickly to offer assistance: first $5 million (around `23 crore) in aid, soon upped to $25 million. This offer, first refused but eventually accepted, provoked criticism in India and Pakistan both. In India, some have rightly pointed out that humanitarian aid to Pakistan often becomes a political tool. In the 2005 earthquake, terrorist-linked organizations distributed aid in order to build support—as they are doing again now, while the Pakistan military has made it a point to stamp its own insignia on aid packages so as to make clear the

aid is not coming from the country’s civilian government. But humanitarian aid becomes a political bludgeon in virtually every natural disaster, whether in New Orleans after Katrina or the Gujarat earthquake in 2001. A government that restricts its humanitarian disaster relief to countries that are likely to spend all of it in politically neutral, transparent, accountant-friendly terms is one ready to be of help only during ice-floe emergencies in Sweden.

Where our government was responsive, I’ve yet to see parallel efforts on the part of civil society to reach out to the millions of ordinary Pakistanis affected by the floods. It is commonplace among our liberal elites to say that when it comes to the people of Pakistan and India, we are all the “same”—that it is merely the self-interested military and political leaderships that feed and profit from hostility between the countries. So the recent disaster might have been thought to be an opportunity to reach over the generals and politicians and directly address the distress of people not unlike ourselves across the border. It still might be that opportunity, but I’m

beginning to wonder.

Of course, our sense of sympathy and our willingness to help invariably begins closest to home. Edmund Burke long ago wrote of our love for “the little platoon we belong to in society”. But for Burke the little platoon was simply the starting point, “the first principle... of public affections... the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”

Yet there seems to be a missing link in that chain when it comes to our neighbour, Pakistan. The reasons why are hardly mysterious. Whatever fellow-feeling there might exist towards the people of Pakistan has obviously thinned in the face of terrorist attacks, martial posturing, and a general aggressiveness that Pakistan seems to have made its stock in trade.

The memory of the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, and of Pakistan’s role in them, are still fresh and painful, and in many minds override the impulse to assist in a humanitarian crisis. But to say that a general unconcern is understandable is not to concede that it is prudent.

Human sympathy is always a tangle

VINCENT THIAN/AP

COLUMNS L5

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM AFP

of motives, and one of the motives frequently at work is self-interest. We give because we are in some way better off for having done so. This is very clearly the case for Indians in regard to the current crisis in Pakistan—a case where immediate generosity in distress may help to create an inclination for future cooperation. We’ll need the latter, because the floods there bring into uncomfortable focus a significant danger that India is going to face in coming years—a danger not spoken of with the same intensity as we speak of terrorism, but more connected to it than we usually acknowledge—and sharing with terrorism a lack of respect for borders. I am speaking of the subcontinent’s unravelling ecological crisis, encompassing the distribution of water as well as more general climatic conditions. This crisis is going to provoke mass displacement and unrest as people struggle to find survival habitats.

Both terrorism and ecological hazards defy the territorial boundaries of nation states. But they require diametrically opposite modes of approach. Dealing with terror requires a quarantining approach. With large-scale ecological problems, the only plausible approach must be based on cooperation, interconnection and negotiated agreement.

The recognition of interconnectivity in so many important domains—global markets and their global crises, security and information media—has made it in many respects the natural lens through which we now view our relationship to the world.

Yet when it comes to our neighbours, those to whom we are most closely physically conjoined, we seem to quite forget this—in favour of a simplified, one-eyed view of what our security consists in, and of how we can hope to safeguard it.

We have come to see our security in terms of defending physical borders, amassing hardware that can insulate us against enemies. On the other hand, we’ve tended to see our economic development in terms of global networks and flows of goods and services, through software that can connect us to the wider globe. In each case, we somehow hope to be able to discount the local dysfunctionalities of our region. We imagine we can escape the fact that we live in a part of the world devoid of any working institutions that can coordinate and integrate choices and that can collectively confront predicaments faced by states and governments—institutions able to sustain any degree of trust

PRASHANTH VISHWANATHAN/BLOOMBERG

between neighbouring states. In fact, in their absence, we remain subject to the tyranny of geography—in several respects.

First, given the inability of Pakistan’s state to exercise sovereign control over its territory—an inability that will persist—we are going to remain vulnerable to terrorist infiltration and attacks across borders. We should not expect any foolproof defence against threats emanating from our immediate west: We shall have to settle at best for trying to manage risks. We are going to have to find a modus vivendi, one that enables us to deal with such attacks without exciting ourselves into precipitate action (which, given Pakistan’s policy of determined irresponsibility over its nuclear arsenal, could leave us prey to dire consequences). India and Indians will be bled, perhaps not by a thousand cuts as the generals in Pakistan would like to see, but certainly by more attacks. We shall therefore have to take measures to prevent where we can, and to absorb where we must.

A strategy of prevention requires us to invest in technologies of surveillance and to develop intelligence capacities—these must have priority over other major defence buys. But in matters of security, prevention is hardly a foolproof strategy. The unforeseen will happen.

Second, precisely in order to shore up our security, we’ll also need to think about Pakistan and other neighbours in terms other than of bordered threats.

There are a whole series of environmental and ecological threats that don’t respect boundaries and

MORTEZA NIKOUBAZL/REUTERS

Concerns: (clockwise from left) The Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008 put Indo­Pak ties back by several decades; the Indus; and a family affected by floods in the Khyber­Pakhtunkhwa province. cannot usefully be thought through in terms of the enemy/ally binary: matters to do with climate change and toxic emissions, water management, as well as crucial matters of public health. Such issues, increasingly pressing, cannot be conceived of either in terms of victory or defeat, or in terms of containment beyond our borders. They are Dangers Without Borders. Floods, epidemics, and toxic air pollution do not stop at boundary checkpoints, nor do the internal social upheavals caused by floods or epidemics confine themselves

to prescribed territories. They spill over in expected and unexpected ways, and their effects can proliferate long after the actual event.

If there is one issue that literally criss-crosses our divided subcontinent, it is water: both in terms of the river systems that flow over and across national boundaries, and the rain clouds that blow across. Yet all across the subcontinent, water has become a source of nativist suspicion and distrust.

Within India, we are most familiar with disputes between regional states

(Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, for instance) and disputes between citizens and the state (the Narmada dam and many others). But with our neighbours too, water now is a regular point of dispute. Before the floods, ironically Pakistan had taken to complaining that India was stealing the Indus waters from it, not allowing enough to flow through to a country feeling the effects of water scarcity. Indeed, leaders of groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba have alleged Indian water thievery as yet another reason to press their attacks against India. India and Bangladesh have regularly squabbled over the waters of the Ganga, while in India there is now a panicked recognition that the Chinese have set in place major dam works that may drastically affect the flow and course through India of the Brahmaputra.

On the issue of river rights, India stands, as in so many matters of its international relations, in an in-between position. On the one hand, it needs to be able to dam and make use of river waters that flow into Pakistan; on the other hand, it needs more transparency and restraint on what China is doing to the Brahmaputra.

It’s in fact a river—the Indus itself—that has been the subject of the most successful cooperation between India and Pakistan. It is true that the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 is limited as a model for future cooperation. After all, it was essentially a once-and-for-all division of water rights, and not a mechanism whose operation required active cooperation between two governments; and it was always essentially a defensive, negative agreement, prohibiting certain actions rather than enabling and encouraging India and Pakistan to actively work together. Yet, we should see it as a useful example, while recognizing that we’re going to have to find ways to invent new, more positive, kinds of agreements. A first step in trying to move towards such cooperation might be to offer, in a situation of real human need, a more expansive hand of assistance. There’s no guarantee it will be taken as intended—but hadn’t we better try?

Sunil Khilnani is the author of The Idea of India and is currently working on a new book, India in Search of Wealth and Power. Write to him at publiceye@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Sunil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/sunil­khilnani

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE PTI

A ticket to ride

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tarting this week, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is running its newly procured Mercedes-Benz luxury buses to the Bangalore airport and back, offering competition to the fire-engine red, poetically

named Vayu Vajra Volvo buses that already ply the airport route. Some of the new buses will even have wireless connectivity.

Have you ridden the airport bus in Bangalore lately? I did this for the first time last week, I am embarrassed to say.

But we Bangaloreans have an excuse.

Unlike Mumbai and Delhi, which have well-connected train systems, and a culture of citizens using it, Bangalore is still working on its Metro.

Like most city dwellers, I believe in public transport; in principle. One of the pleasures of riding the Delhi Metro is to listen to a svelte girl deconstruct her first date in biological detail on her cellphone, completely oblivious of eagerly listening ears all around. And one of the pleasures of riding the trains of Mumbai is to watch a group of women deftly shell peas and diss their mothers-in-law at the same time. Come Kurla and they are done, both with venting problems and their dinner prep.

Public transport affords that cheapest

of urban thrills: a chance sighting of an intriguing person across a sea of faces.

Your eyes lock. You take stock. You wonder what he or she does for a living.

This doesn’t happen when you are cocooned in a car.

Bangalore’s airport buses have been running for over a year. Yet, they haven’t been embraced by the “first-flight-out, last-flight-in” business crowd that ought to be their natural customers. For affluent Bangaloreans who are in a hurry, the bus is both an inconvenience and a waste of time. It isn’t necessarily cheaper either. The bus from the airport to Ulsoor costs `165; a taxi for the same ride costs about `550, so if three people travel together, it is cheaper to take a cab. Then why should we ride the bus? To set an example, I suppose; and to ease traffic congestion and pollution.

Riding the airport bus is, in Bangalore, a civilized way to watch the world go by. It is air conditioned, uncrowded and brings you in contact

Spiffy: These luxury buses are being tried out on the Bangalore airport route. with a variety of people for an hour—enough time for the imagination to wander and construct screenplays. A bright-eyed young man wearing khaki pants jumps on the bus at Mekhri Circle. He smiles at the sweet young thing in the back seat. Do they know each other or is he just sweet on her? Is this his way of making a move? Will it work? Are her parents conservative or will they allow a love marriage? What does he do?

The briefcase says “Oracle”, but his long hair slots him as a copywriter rather than a code-writer. You see.

I have never taken the bus to the airport. I have waited for one and when it didn’t show up on time—schedules and times are available at www.bmtcinfo.com—I got nervous and took a car. For a first-timer, I would

suggest that you take the bus back from the airport, particularly if you don’t have much luggage. Here’s what you do. Once you exit the airport, there is a large and convenient sign pointing you to the city bus services. You walk down and soon will see white-uniformed drivers hailing you by saying, “Bus”. You tell them where you want to go—Indiranagar, Richmond Road, Jayanagar, wherever—and they will point you to the right bus. Once you get in, the conductor will come with a nifty credit-card printer-type device. You buy the ticket and sit back. When you get close to home, all you head honchos can call your driver to pick you up at the bus stop. That’s it. Or walk home, like I did.

Bangaloreans are ripe for bus travel.

Our well-meaning corporate citizens who take pride in travelling economy

will have no problems being role models. Psychologists call this positive identification and it goes like this: Azim Premji flies economy; I fly economy; I must be like Premji. Wow! The same process will happen if celebrities take the airport bus. Hordes of others will soon follow suit.

The BMTC should come up with an ad campaign and plaster it inside the bus. A simple photo along with a caption that says, “Hi, I’m Kris! I ride the bus”. Or “Hi, I am Manish. I ride the bus”. Better yet, these ads should be placed in taxis or on billboards at all traffic signals. People can sit in their cars and look at the ads, while the bus sails past. That’s the other thing: Once the bus gets on to the highway, it is really fast. The drivers know when to get off and on to the flyovers, and usually end up being the fastest vehicle on the road. The inside of the bus is brightly lit and the ride is as smooth as licking an ice cream. You can read a book, listen to your iPod or even hammer out a business plan on the four seats facing each other. Corporate heads such as Vinita Bali, Wim Elfrink, Subroto Bagchi, and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw ought to consider trying it sometime: to set an example; to make bus-riding cool.

Shoba Narayan wonders what happened to that Delhi girl who had a dramatic first date. Did she ever go on a second one? Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

L6 COVER

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New Delhi,

Mumbai

Saturday­Sunda

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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2007 Vol.1 No.86

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THE ANTI­IPOD

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Arun Kumar’ s latex toys for toddlers sell widely in Europe.

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INCLUSIVE PLANET

THE IDEA AN ONLINE PLATFORM TO HELP THE VISUALLY DISABLED ACCESS INFORMATION

Finding the right websight B Y R AHUL J AYARAM rahul.j@livemint.com

····························

Past life Rahul Cherian, 36, co-founder and policy head of Inclusive Planet, is an alumnus of National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore.

He is also a specialist in copyright law and a disability policy activist. He was running his own law firm in Chennai until Inclusive Planet happened.

Sachin Malhan, 31, co-founder and CEO of Inclusive Planet, is another NLSIU alumnus, and cofounder of two companies: Law School Tutorials, an outfit to prepare students for legal entrance examinations, with centres in around 50 cities, and Rainmaker, a talent management services firm for the legal industry, which he led until March 2008.

Reuben Jacob, 35, co-founder and chief technology officer for Inclusive Planet, is the CEO of Acrodelon Technologies, a tech-

nology incubation company based in Kochi. Cherian and Malhan know each other from their NLSIU days, while Jacob is Cherian’s friend from school.

These three form the core of the founding team.

he recalls. “‘How do visually disabled people use technology?’” He came back and brainstormed with a few friends, who would go on to form the company called Inclusive Planet.

Eureka moment

Launched in October 2009, Inclusive Planet’s USP is to make information via the Internet accessible to those who are visually challenged. It does this by making visual information (such as written text) available in audio files. The website enables the visually impaired to find, share and access materials such as books and documents relevant to their study or leisure material, in formats amenable to them. It has around 4,200 active members, from places such as Turkey, the US, Canada and Latin America.

On the website’s different message boards (called “channels”), you will find ongoing discussions on issues relating to those with visual disabili-

Cherian participated in a conference of the World Blind Union in Washington, DC, in 2008. One of the items on the agenda was drafting an international treaty to make it binding for governments to make reading material accessible to the blind, the print-impaired (i.e., those who can see but cannot easily make sense of words and text) and those with visual disabilities. Indeed, a majority of the members at the gathering were themselves printimpaired. Cherian thought a consistent interface was necessary if serious change had to be brought about. The meet was inconclusive but Cherian came out with ideas. “That’s when it struck me,”

Genesis

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

ties—and a lot more. Topics can extend from “How do the sighted see you?” to “Myths about vision loss and blindness”, to casual subjects such as “The lighter side of disability”. People post comments on these channels and continue conversations while exchanging thoughts, information and banter.

One of the most popular channels on the website “Love, actually”, is something like Facebook for the visually disabled and print-impaired. There is no charge for using the site www.inclusiveplanet.com Inclusive Planet raised money through contributions from wellknown names in the field of technological entrepreneurship, such as Rajiv Kuchhal, former Infosys vice-president; Jawad Ayaz, technologist and serial entrepreneur; Kiran Gera, vicepresident of the Saarc Chamber of Women Entrepreneurs Council; and Sandeep Farias, formerly country director of Unitus.

Reality check “Our focus is to create digital world accessibility for those who are visually challenged,” says Malhan. “But doing that is not easy, as there are many gaps that need to be addressed. For instance, how does one make the online information from websites communicable to the print-impaired? Within the information systems that exist, there is a gap of accessibility as far as the latter is concerned,” he adds.

For revenue, Inclusive Planet also started a services arm that develops customized software to make online information accessible to the visually disabled and print-impaired for companies.

Plan B “There was no Plan B. This just had to work!” insists Cherian.

Secret sauce

Fully visible: Malhan (left) and Jacob (extreme right) with employees of Inclusive Planet at the company’s Bangalore office.

Remain simple, accessible and relevant. “In future, we want to reach a stage where the site is in autopilot mode,” exhorts Malhan.

Starting capital

`4 lakh

Raising the money Pooled own resources before contributions from technological entrepreneurs came in.

First customer The National Institute for the Visually Handicapped, Dehradun, was the first customer of the services arm of Inclusive Planet.

Biggest difficulty To keep developing methods to make information so accessible to the visually challenged that there is no difference from the sighted.

COVER L7

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

HUTKAY FILMS

THE IDEA MAKING HIGH­DEFINITION, SLICKLY PRODUCED MOVIES TO DOCUMENT PERSONAL OR CORPORATE MOMENTS OF CELEBRATION

Shooting the bride B Y A MRITA R OY amrita.r@livemint.com

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Past life As a senior assistant editor at The Indian Express, and after 10 years in journalism, Leher Kala, 34, had a feeling that her career had plateaued. For two years she toyed with the idea of venturing out on her own but the security of a steady job in times of global economic crisis held her back. Finally, in April, Kala launched Hutkay Films Pvt. Ltd to make short, snappy, high-definition “celebration movies” of events such as weddings, anniversaries, corporate events and award ceremonies.

Eureka moment One serendipitous day, while rearranging her bookshelf, she chanced upon the video of her own wedding. “I can’t begin to tell you how mortifying it was,” remembers Kala. It had amateur written all over it. “I looked terrible. My husband looked terrible.

There were random shots of people about whom neither of us had any clue. It was boring, and it was interminable.” While she and her husband had a hearty laugh over the shoddy video, Kala realized that traditional wedding videos, a few years down the line, are good only to raise a few laughs.

In an earlier life, Kala had worked in the Hindi film industry and as a journalist with the Aaj Tak television channel, and she was confident that she could have documented the wedding much better. “I know people

whose wedding budgets are around `3-4 crore. They want the best of everything, yet for footage of their weddings, the truly oncein-a-lifetime experience, they were paying `15,000-20,000 to random videographers. I wondered if they wouldn’t want a professionally shot and edited album,” Kala says.

Genesis That seed of an idea germinated into Hutkay Films after a chat with her former boss at Aaj Tak. “I knew I could do it, but I needed to know if it was a saleable idea. He not only endorsed my idea, but said it had huge potential since nobody else was doing anything similar,” says Kala. With his endorsement, the usually riskaverse Kala quit her job in January. In February, she got her first client—Vasant Nath, a scriptwriter and film-maker who was getting married in April.

Over the next couple of months, Kala set up office in a space provided by her husband, registered the company, hired a full-time secretary and an accountant and a part-time cameraman and editor and was ready for business. A 30-minute film on the mehendi, sangeet, shaadi and reception includes interviews and anecdotes from guests and relatives, old photographs and a narrative about the couple. “For the first film, Vasant and Vani’s Prem Kahani, I met the couple’s friends and relatives to learn about their story: how they met, when did they fall in love, who

proposed and how. While shooting I focus on only the people who are important to the couple,” says Kala.

Hutkay Films has produced 11 movies, including one on the launch of the Delhi Art Gallery at the DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, Delhi, and two films for the The Indian Express, including the FE Best Banks Award. The rates vary depending on factors such as the length of the event and where it is being held. “Corporate events are shorter and better organized, so the rates are less than weddings. Weddings, typically, are four-day affairs minimum. And there are numerous rituals to be shot. The wedding day itself demands a day-long shoot. I have four people working with me for the shoot.

Besides, the editing process takes about two weeks. This adds to the cost factor,” says Kala.

Kala is now working on a baby video. “A baby video is shot over a year, one day every month from 0-12 months. These were not what I had in mind when I started, but as people got to know about Hutkay, they came up with their own ideas. They wanted me to document their special moments, be it a 40th anniversary or a baby’s first year, and the original idea evolved,” says Kala.

them a 2-hour movie. Convincing them that it would kill the movie and make it utterly boring is a task,” Kala says. So she strikes a compromise: She makes her version of the 30-minute movie but she puts the additional unedited footage on the DVD too.

Another problem has been trying to keep a check on overheads.

“To start with, I did not have any money for cameras and other equipment, so I hired those. That adds to the overhead. But now I’m buying a camera and getting my own editing set-up. Hutkay Films now has a signature tune and I’ve commissioned 3D animation for the titles and credits.

The graphics is proving the costliest,” she adds.

Reality check

Secret sauce

It has been a challenge convincing some clients that the 30-minute length is what makes the film fun. “If you’re shooting for four days, they think you’ll give

The simplicity and uniqueness of the idea are its greatest strengths, says Kala. And the first-mover advantage. “The market’s huge and untapped.”

Plan B That’s something Kala doesn’t even want to think about. And she is quietly confident she will not need to (in the four months since she’s been in business, she says, she has recovered her initial investment and met her overheads). Instead, she plans to invest in equipment and hire some part-time staff to be able to take on more work. “If at all I need a Plan B, there’s always journalism,” she says, grimacing at the thought of going back to a job with fixed hours.

Starting capital

`10 lakh

Raising the money Kala invested her own money to cover initial costs. Her husband provided the office space.

First customer The first customer proved to be the easy part. The groom’s sister­in­law heard of Kala’s venture from a mutual friend and the groom, a scriptwriter, readily agreed to the idea.

Biggest difficulty Having to refuse work because of limited resources.

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

Take two: Hutkay Films was not Kala’s original choice of name for the company, but she is glad she chose it over the more ‘limiting’ Happily Ever After.

L8 COVER

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

TYPE FOUNDRY

THE IDEA TO CREATE HIGH­QUALITY, DESIGN­FRIENDLY FONTS AND TYPEFACES FOR INDIAN LANGUAGES

A man of many letters B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

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Past life It started, strangely enough, with a guest lecture. In 2006, Indian Type Foundry (ITF) co-founder Satya Rajpurohit was a third-year student at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. The college had invited noted Holland-based typographer Peter Bilak to speak to its students, and Bilak expressed interest in working with Indian scripts. Rajpurohit, 28, had been dabbling in similar areas, and he emailed Bilak with an offer to help.

In 2007, Bilak invited Rajpurohit (who was now interning with Lino-

type GmbH, an international type foundry, in Frankfurt) to his studio in The Hague. Bilak was impressed with his work, and the two started development on a new typeface called Fedra Hindi, which would act as the Devanagari companion to Bilak’s Fedra English (“A font is one of the technological forms of a typeface,” Rajpurohit says. “Just like an MP3 is a possible form of a piece of music”).

Eureka moment “Designing a Latin (English) typeface is much easier in comparison to Indian typefaces,” Rajpurohit says. “Devanagari itself is so complicated—with more than 800 RAMESH DAVE/MINT

characters across languages.”

Work on Fedra Hindi took two years to finish, and Rajpurohit graduated in the meantime, in early 2009. In September the same year, while discussing how best to release Fedra for the Indian market, Bilak and Rajpurohit decided to start the Indian Type Foundry.

“The advantage with a type foundry is that all you need is a couple of computers and a good printer. Most small foundries don’t need a physical office, as all of the work is digital,” Rajpurohit says.

Genesis The Indian Type Foundry went live at the end of September 2009, and the first requests for licences started trickling in within the first month. It took, however, about six months before the results began to show. TV channel Star Plus came on board a few months ago, and uses Fedra Hindi as part of its new corporate identity. Nokia Global and Reserve Bank of India also signed up soon after, using the font in various promotional campaigns.

Reality check

Typesetting: Rajpurohit’s work on Hindi fonts took two years to fine­tune.

APORV.COM

“India is a tough market to work with,” Rajpurohit says. “Clients don’t understand the need for high-quality typefaces.” Most regional language fonts are designed by firms such as Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which essentially make them as compan-

ions to software they’ve coded.

“These fonts are made by engineers, not designers,” he says. “As a result, they’re of poor quality and they’re not compliant with most international standards.”

Piracy is another problem.

“We’re careful about putting up PDFs of our fonts online,” he says.

“Most people, and this includes large broadcasting houses and corporations, have no qualms about using pirated fonts.”

Plan B “We’re not looking back now!”

Rajpurohit laughs when asked about a Plan B. “We knew, going into this, that it would take twothree years before we can expect anything.” India, he says, is a market ripe for “future investment” as “education and design sensibilities” start to trickle into firms and media houses.

Secret sauce “We spend a lot of time on our fonts, and we do an incredible amount of research,” Rajpurohit says. His online Flickr feed is filled with handwritten samples and photographs of writing in different languages, part of the fieldwork necessary for designing a new typeface.

The ITF’s new typeface family, Kohinoor, took over a year to perfect. Currently available in Tamil, it will expand the Foundry’s repertoire to 10 Indian languages.

Starting capital

None

Most of the work is digital, so type foundries don’t need an office.

Raising the money Didn’t need money—just a computer, email and Skype.

First customer The first licences were sold online through the website within the first month.

Biggest difficulty The Indian market—high rates of piracy, low design sense and an inability to understand the importance of fonts.

THE IDEA AN E­COMMERCE PLATFORM THAT LINKS ARTISANS WITH RETAIL AND WHOLESALE CUSTOMERS

Made by hand, sold online A CHOWDHURY/MINT

B Y P AVITRA J AYARAMAN pavitra.j@livemint.com

····························

Past life Sudip Dutta, 33, graduated as an engineer in 1999 from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, and worked in India for six years before moving to the US. After working there for five years with the sales department of a technology company, he returned to India with the aim of starting Aporv.com, an online platform that sells handicrafts made by artisans across India. In Sanskrit, Aporv means “unique”.

“Having been involved with BITS.aid, the first college-based volunteering organization in India, it was clear to me at the start that any venture (I start) would have (a) social angle to it,” he says. “And the profit-making factor of the idea had me single-minded in thinking in this direction.” Dutta adds that they aim to make Aporv.com the one platform for all things Indian and handmade. His core team comprises three friends, Subhra Banerjee, Shashikanth Khandelwal and Deepak Kumar, who are currently working pro bono for Aporv, and are based in the US.

Eureka moment Click and buy: Dutta turned his passion into a business.

Having dabbled in sketching and

painting for a long time, Dutta says the idea seems to have been in his mind all the time.

diverted to Aporv.org, which will work on health, education and water for villages,” says Dutta.

Genesis

Reality check

Dutta moved to Bangalore in 2009. He travelled to various places to meet artisans or contacted them through middlemen and non-profit organizations, consulting his US-based partners over email and telephone. They eventually tied up with 350 artisans and groups. After a year of strategizing and working on the website, they were ready to launch on 5 June. They have had around 42,000 visits to the website since.

Apart from online orders, the company has also landed its first corporate client, Infosys Technologies. “Infosys has given us orders for corporate gifts and in-house gifts as well. Doing business with such a recognized name at such an early stage is good news for us,” says Dutta. The start-up does not have a retail store and believes that its online presence will have a wider reach than any retail chain can hope to have.

At the moment, Aporv.com ships only in India, but they plan to change that by November. In time, they plan to set up Aporv.org, a non-profit organization. “Part of the profit from Aporv.com will be

Artisans are often apprehensive about business deals, and more so if a middleman they have worked with is eliminated. It took a lot more convincing than Dutta had imagined.

Plan B If it doesn’t work out, Dutta has the option of going back to a day job.

But having packed up from that world and invested his savings in this venture, he’d rather call it Plan D, while B and C are to make Aporv work.

Secret sauce Handicrafts is the second biggest occupation in India after agriculture, so the production rate is proportionately high. Judging from the number of clicks the site gets, they know it is safe to assume that there is a huge market demand. To counter the touch-and-feel factor that retail stores have, Aporv.com has a noquestions-asked return policy. “If you don’t like it, send it back to us,” says Dutta, pointing out that this is a unique experience for most Indians.

Starting capital

`10­20 lakh Raising the money Dutta’s personal savings First customer They got the first online order within 2 hours of launching the website in June. A US­based customer wanted to send a gift to his parents in Jaipur.

Biggest difficulty Communicating with artisans and convincing them was challenging. They were sceptical of bypassing middlemen to do business.

COVER L9

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PHOKATCOPY

THE IDEA FREE PHOTOCOPYING FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

BY PROVIDING ADVERTISING SPACE TO COMPANIES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PAGE

He is no copycat B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

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Past life All of 23, Harsh Narang graduated last month from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, with a five-year MTech degree in math and computing. As he puts it, student life was easy and the course-load, manageable. It left him with time to try out other things—help out an IIT professor with research in mathematical finance, intern at a university in Germany, work at an international investment bank’s trading desk, and intern with a tech start-up firm on campus.

Working at the bank and the tech start-up were contrasting experiences—the bank was a 9-5 job in a structured environment in an air-conditioned building that housed 1,100 people and the start-up was a room with “six people and six machines”. Narang loved the vibe at the start-up.

Eureka moment Towards the end of Narang’s third year, it was time to come up with an original business idea for one of those B-school business plan competitions where the team with the best idea gets a nice wad of cash. He and four of his IIT batchmates got to work. “We started going through our ‘pain points’,” he says. “Pain point” is not managementspeak; it merely refers to things

that can be such a pain in dayto-day college life—such as having to shell out money for all that photocopying a student has to do. “About 500 sheets a month,” Narang estimates.

And an idea was born—why not let college students photocopy for free and stick an ad for a chocolate bar on the other side of the sheet? That way, the chocolate maker pays for the photocopy and the student can use the money saved for movies and pizza. The clincher, says Narang, was when he came up with the name for the service—PhokatCopy. It sounded just right.

“With that name, I knew I had to go with it,” he says. “It was gut feeling.”

Genesis The PhokatCopy idea won Narang and his team five B-Plan prizes. Somewhere along the line, while pitching it to judges at various competitions, Narang actually got sold on it himself. “I realized that I had to try this plan out in the real world,” he says. “Otherwise I would always have this regret.”

In June 2009, while still in his final year, he, along with three friends, set up PhokatCopy Student Advertising Pvt. Ltd. The initial capital came from his parents and the money they had won in B-Plan competitions. The main task ahead was to sell his business model to potential

advertisers—companies that would want to target the college crowd. By end-July they had their first customers—Career Launcher, Café Coffee Day, Nirula’s and Fastrack.

His original plan after graduation was to intern with a bank in Germany. But he got increasingly drawn into the business—the day he collected his German visa, he cancelled his plane ticket to Germany. The same day PhokatCopy got a prized customer—Apple Inc. This was in August.

Reality check There have been hurdles aplenty. Narang points out that making cold calls to companies’ marketing departments is never fun; the response is often indifferent or even rude. Nine out of 10 people don’t have the time to listen to you. To keep themselves motivated, the team members maintained a pleasant, informal working environment and gradually learnt how to make a pitch.

“We reached out to a lot of advertisers,” says Narang, “and finally managed to convince some of them.” The biggest change in plan was to not make the service free upfront. PhokatCopy operates through photocopying shops around campuses in Delhi and there was nothing to prevent the photocopy guy from getting free sheets from

them and just giving it to the raddiwallah.

S o t h e m o d e l w a s refined—now a student pays for his PhokatCopies and gets a scratch card in return. He then registers on the PhokatCopy site, keys in the unique scratch card number and voila! The money paid for photocopies gets added to the student’s cellphone prepaid account. So if you spend `40 on photocopying 20 sheets, you get `40 credit on your cellphone prepaid card. Narang says 95% college students have prepaid phone cards. So it’s a perfect fit.

Narang also realized that it made business and ethical sense to use environment-friendly, wood-free paper (made from sugarcane pulp) and ecofriendly printer ink.

Plan B Harvard Business School loves to take failed entrepreneurs for its MBA programme!

Starting capital

Under `5 lakh Raising the money Family and money won in B­school competitions.

First customers Career Launcher, Café Coffee Day, Nirula’s and Fastrack.

Biggest difficulty Getting advertisers.

Marketing departments are sceptical of a new advertising medium.

Secret sauce Passion. “I had an idea and I had to make it work,” Narang says.

Entrepreneurship is not a glamorous affair but he loves the idea of making an “impact”, as he puts it. Already catering to 50 colleges in Delhi, Narang estimates that PhokatCopy is reaching 75,000 students. Soon, the service will also be provided to 20 colleges in Mumbai.

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

An original: Narang, who just graduated from IIT Delhi, in one of the photocopying shops at a campus. He estimates that PhokatCopy is currently catering to around 75,000 students in Delhi.

L10 COVER

COVER L11

LOUNGE

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

DIAL­A­BOOK

THE IDEA TO ORDER ANY BOOK OVER THE PHONE OR THROUGH AN SMS, AND HAVE IT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOORSTEP WITHIN 48 HOURS PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

Speed reading B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

······························

Past life

Farm­fresh, chemical­free: Grewal divides her time between the hills and Delhi to oversee both arms of her venture—procurement and sales.

THE ALTITUDE STORE

THE IDEA TO SOURCE CERTIFIED ORGANIC FOOD PRODUCE FROM ACROSS INDIA FOR URBAN CONSUMERS

From the hills to your home B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY seema.c@livemint.com

····························

Past life Ayesha Grewal, 36, worked as a consultant with a bank in the US after doing her master’s in global finance from the University of Denver. Her first job was to evaluate fraudulent earnings announcements. A year and a half later, Grewal quit and returned to India in 2000 with the idea of setting up two dot-com ventures. Neither concept worked out. Grewal ended up working with Winrock International India, a non-profit organization, managing the finance portfolio for its renewable energy group. Again, within a year and a half, she “realized that she had philosophical issues with the job”; in 2003 she quit to set up a consulting company—Environment Energy and Enterprise Ventures (e3V). This was the first entrepreneurial venture she set up with two partners, taking on assignments in countries such as China and Brazil, apart from India, to work on renewable energy resource projects.

It was during one such assignment in Uttarakhand in 2005 that she got the idea for her second venture—Kurmanchal Organic Ventures—which works in the field of processing organic fruits. “I started working with a farmers’ federation and realized that I need to look for income-enhancement opportunities for the farmer. Since apple was the No. 1 crop, I decided to create products that would generate such revenue, and that’s how I started making organic apple juice.” But since the apple season lasts only three weeks in a year, it did not make sense to concentrate only on one fruit. Grewal started to

expand the product range and sourced other fruits—plums, peaches, apricots—to make juices, butter, syrups and jams, and now even vegetables for pickles.

Eureka moment The farmers in the hills grow “wonderful products organically and most of these end up in the mandi (wholesale market) where they get no premium for growing organic foodstuff or for the variety of products they offer,” says Grewal. As Kurmanchal Organic Ventures’ organic apple juice gained popularity in select circles in the Capital, Grewal started getting feedback that people wanted more organic food items. “Delhi was clamouring for organic produce.

Besides, the farmers often wondered if there was a way they could sell their other produce at prices that were better than the mandi.”

It all came together for Grewal and in 2009 she decided to set up The Altitude Store online (it was a part of e3V till February, but is now a private limited company).

At first, she planned to concentrate on dried herbs, pulses, rice varieties, juices and jams, among other things, but with word-of-mouth publicity, more orders started coming. Grewal set up a store in Delhi’s Shanti Niketan market and started participating in local events to popularize the concept.

Genesis From 108 products in 2009, The Altitude Store stocks and sells close to 500 products today, besides organizing weekly fresh organic vegetables and fruits delivery. “I was getting disenchanted with the consulting work. I never saw the projects to

fruition stage. Most projects take a couple of years to show results and I hardly ever went back to see them. I wanted to work on a project or venture where I would be present from start to finish.”

Now, she divides her time between the hills and Delhi to oversees both arms of her venture—procurement and sales.

Reality check Reducing the influence of the middlemen is still a challenge. “This is mostly because for the farmers, the aarats (middlemen) are there 12 months in a year and hence supplying to them remains a priority.” To break the dependency of the farmer on the aarat, Grewal knows that she has to be there for farmers for the whole year and be able to advance small loans when they need help in case of sickness, crop failure or weddings, among other things. “Currently, only 30% of our stuff comes directly from the farmer. I want to increase that in the coming years.”

Plan B Go back to consulting or become a full-time cheese maker, for which Grewal has done a course.

Secret sauce Keeping the business plan flexible, including more ideas and services as she goes along and adding a personal touch by interacting with customers as closely as she can. Though she is not able to do it for all customers, Grewal says she still tries to deliver apple juices or veggies to her first-time clients herself. “Also, I keep a track of all emails that come in personally and ask for suggestions from clients on how we can improve our delivery systems.”

Dial-a-Book is a Delhi-based start-up founded by brothers Mayank and Tarang Dhingra. Tarang, 25, is a final-year student at the University of Delhi. Mayank, 27, is a software engineer who left a corporate job at Fidelity International in 2005 to work for a string of tech startups—from SlideShare, an online presentation hosting service, to MPower Mobile, which works with mobile payments. In 2008, before the Twitter bandwagon bulldozed its way across the country’s Internet landscape, he experimented with creating a Twitter-like service for India called Kwippy—which Mayank called a “conversational platform”. The site folded in mid-2009, and subsequent dabbling in ideas on what to do next led to Dial-a-Book.

Eureka moment “We were trying to make ordering books as simple as ordering burgers or pizza,” says Mayank, of the initial idea. “Most of us are not very comfortable with e-commerce, and giving out our credit card information online.” His solution was to combine cash on delivery with fast, personalized service—delivering books ordered through the phone within

48 hours. He conducted a “brief, unscientific” survey on Twitter, where he has around 1,381 followers, to find out if there could be a market for this. “I found out that people who buy books value convenience, and not just price—and what could be more convenient than a simple phone call or SMS?”

Genesis Mayank started a trial run for Dial-aBook on 25 September 2009. He purchased a SIM card for the phone number, set up the website, and began to promote it through social networking services. He sent emails to close friends, set up an active Twitter feed and advertised the service on Facebook. Concurrently, he and Tarang scoured Delhi—from the narrow lanes of Daryaganj to Nai Sarak—for book suppliers and wholesalers, building up a network of around 50-60 vendors and agents.

As the first orders began to trickle in, mostly from friends and family, Mayank put the basic modus operandi in place. The customer would send an SMS or call in with his requirements. Mayank would send a confirmation, then find out how soon he could get the book from his supplier network. He’d SMS the estimated delivery time. Once this was confirmed, one of Dial-a-Book’s delivery staff (the company currently

METER DOWN

has five employees, including the two founders) would set off. Mayank still makes about 30% of the deliveries himself, and tries to keep the operation as lean as possible. “I’m averse to the idea of funding by venture capital funds,” he says. “We wanted to be profitable as soon as possible—and we managed that in the first month itself.”

Starting capital

`50,000

Raising the money Personal savings.

First customer A friend of Dhingra’s from school, on Google chat, expressed interest while he was explaining the trial run he’d just started. The book was ‘The Road Less Travelled’.

Biggest difficulty Tying up with Delhi’s byzantine web of small suppliers and procuring books in time to make that 48­hour deadline.

Reality check Dial-a-Book began to deliver about five books a week in its first month, with volumes growing slowly. This became an early concern, as suppliers were iffy about dealing with small-order quantities. “We don’t stock too many books, so we had to build up volumes to avoid any supplier bottlenecks,” Mayank says.

Dial-a-Book’s order volumes are now about 100 books a month, which Mayank calls “comfortable”.

They’ve also started accepting orders outside Delhi, and tied up with courier services, but the Capital still accounts for 70% of their orders.

More than 20% of their orders come from Twitter and Facebook, so Mayank keeps a constant watch on the company’s online presence.

“We get all sorts of requests, from eclectic music books to 18th century manuscripts,” he says. One early customer wanted a copy of Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad, which

On call: Mayank Dhingra wants to make buying books as simple as ordering pizza.

Mayank was unable to source from local suppliers. He got it shipped, by “sheer luck”, from a friend holidaying in Belgium who spotted it in a local book store.

Plan B If Dial-a-Book isn’t viable in two years (“Unlikely. We’re already viable!”), Mayank says he’ll go back to a 9-5 job for a while, which will give him the security to hatch further cunning plans. “I’d make a different kind of Web product—maybe some-

thing in the realm of social commerce, or Facebook-assisted shopping, you know?”

Secret sauce “Customer service is our mantra.

Our post-sales support is really strong, and we’re trying to be as responsive as fast as we can,” Mayank says. He offers gift-wrapping services and discounts, and hopes to conduct frequent meet-ups and book-related events. “Anyone can sell books, but we discuss books.”

THE IDEA USING AN AUTORICKSHAW AS A MARKETING MEDIUM BY PUBLISHING A MAGAZINE JUST FOR PASSENGERS AND SELLING ADVERTISING SPACE ON THE VEHICLE

Starting capital

`40 lakh approx.

Raising the money Mostly money Grewal saved from her consulting days.

First customers Her mother, sister and four friends. But the first ‘real customer’ she interacted with was an Australian lady, Debbie Hill, who ordered a case of apple juice that Grewal delivered herself.

Biggest difficulty Figuring out transport and delivery systems from the hills to Delhi, inventory management at the store, and finding new ways to ensure better incomes for the farmers in the hills.

One for the road B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

······························

Past life Three college friends, Mulchand Dedhia, 24, Simi Sailopal, 23, and Ishan Mehta, 23, started working on the concept a year ago. After completing his graduation in mass communication, Dedhia, who is also a part-time photographer, got a job at an advertising agency. He quit after an altercation with his boss and decided he would finally work on his dream of starting something on his own. Sailopal was working with a public relations agency and Mehta was a content writer with Hungama Digital Media Entertainment. Sailopal left the project midway, opting for further studies.

Eureka moment The three friends got together for a brainstorming session and hit upon the idea of exploiting spaces within and outside an autorickshaw for advertising. This led to the idea of launching a dedicated magazine for auto travellers—this way they could sell advertising space in the magazine. In October, they discussed the idea and the first issue of the monthly Meter

Down was launched in March in Mumbai. They realized a consumer usually spends at least 10-15 minutes in an auto. The brands would get audience attention for those 15 minutes, more than any other medium could provide, Dedhia adds.

They commissioned a survey of 200 people and studied travelling patterns. “There’s so much traffic now and the people who are travelling get bored. We found that they either call friends and increase their phone bills, listen to music or just don’t do anything.

We thought we’d make their boring ride a little fun,” says Dedhia.

permission from the road transport office (RTO), besides registering with the Registrar of Newspapers for India. The autorickshaw drivers soon realized they were serious and knew exactly what they wanted.

Mehta, the editor of the magazine, has a team of freelance writers who contribute every month. The magazine is supposed to be a “time-pass” read, so the content includes everything from movies and music to fashion, food and humour. The venture broke even after the first issue and they have been making a profit since the second.

Genesis

Reality check

“Initially, we were the heads and the peons of the company. We were doing everything, from getting quotes from printers to talking to 500 autorickshaw drivers,” says Dedhia. Convincing the drivers was the most important part.

Auto drivers get a fixed amount at the end of every month. They get to share 30% of the magazine’s advertising sales among themselves or, if there are no ads, each gets `200 that month.

They approached the heads of two autorickshaw unions and got

Their biggest challenge was to convince media planners to buy space in the magazine. But it was by no means the only challenge.

An auto ride is not a smooth one in a pothole-ridden city such as Mumbai, so it’s difficult to read.

They restricted article length to 300 words and increased the number of photos.

They also had to prevent passengers from taking the magazine with them. So they punched a hole on the top left hand side of the magazine and it’s now tied to a shelf in

the auto. At the end of every month, Dedhia and Mehta check if the shelves are in good condition and if the magazine is still there.

mitted to the plan and have taken it forward by advertising at the back of the auto and on the auto curtains during the monsoon.

Plan B

Secret sauce

“We had some 19 ideas after our brainstorming session. We can work on any of them,” says Dedhia.

For now they are completely com-

Hard work and a lot of patience. “You need to handle people with care. I quit because my boss wasn’t good at handling people,” says Dedhia.

Starting capital

`75,000

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Read and ride: Dedhia (left) and Mehta successfully partnered with autorickshaw drivers.

Raising the money The three partners contributed `25,000 each from their savings.

First customer The State Bank of India, which agreed to advertise with them, paying just the basic cost of printing the advertisement.

Biggest difficulty Getting advertisers on board.

L10 COVER

COVER L11

LOUNGE

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

DIAL­A­BOOK

THE IDEA TO ORDER ANY BOOK OVER THE PHONE OR THROUGH AN SMS, AND HAVE IT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOORSTEP WITHIN 48 HOURS PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

Speed reading B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

······························

Past life

Farm­fresh, chemical­free: Grewal divides her time between the hills and Delhi to oversee both arms of her venture—procurement and sales.

THE ALTITUDE STORE

THE IDEA TO SOURCE CERTIFIED ORGANIC FOOD PRODUCE FROM ACROSS INDIA FOR URBAN CONSUMERS

From the hills to your home B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY seema.c@livemint.com

····························

Past life Ayesha Grewal, 36, worked as a consultant with a bank in the US after doing her master’s in global finance from the University of Denver. Her first job was to evaluate fraudulent earnings announcements. A year and a half later, Grewal quit and returned to India in 2000 with the idea of setting up two dot-com ventures. Neither concept worked out. Grewal ended up working with Winrock International India, a non-profit organization, managing the finance portfolio for its renewable energy group. Again, within a year and a half, she “realized that she had philosophical issues with the job”; in 2003 she quit to set up a consulting company—Environment Energy and Enterprise Ventures (e3V). This was the first entrepreneurial venture she set up with two partners, taking on assignments in countries such as China and Brazil, apart from India, to work on renewable energy resource projects.

It was during one such assignment in Uttarakhand in 2005 that she got the idea for her second venture—Kurmanchal Organic Ventures—which works in the field of processing organic fruits. “I started working with a farmers’ federation and realized that I need to look for income-enhancement opportunities for the farmer. Since apple was the No. 1 crop, I decided to create products that would generate such revenue, and that’s how I started making organic apple juice.” But since the apple season lasts only three weeks in a year, it did not make sense to concentrate only on one fruit. Grewal started to

expand the product range and sourced other fruits—plums, peaches, apricots—to make juices, butter, syrups and jams, and now even vegetables for pickles.

Eureka moment The farmers in the hills grow “wonderful products organically and most of these end up in the mandi (wholesale market) where they get no premium for growing organic foodstuff or for the variety of products they offer,” says Grewal. As Kurmanchal Organic Ventures’ organic apple juice gained popularity in select circles in the Capital, Grewal started getting feedback that people wanted more organic food items. “Delhi was clamouring for organic produce.

Besides, the farmers often wondered if there was a way they could sell their other produce at prices that were better than the mandi.”

It all came together for Grewal and in 2009 she decided to set up The Altitude Store online (it was a part of e3V till February, but is now a private limited company).

At first, she planned to concentrate on dried herbs, pulses, rice varieties, juices and jams, among other things, but with word-of-mouth publicity, more orders started coming. Grewal set up a store in Delhi’s Shanti Niketan market and started participating in local events to popularize the concept.

Genesis From 108 products in 2009, The Altitude Store stocks and sells close to 500 products today, besides organizing weekly fresh organic vegetables and fruits delivery. “I was getting disenchanted with the consulting work. I never saw the projects to

fruition stage. Most projects take a couple of years to show results and I hardly ever went back to see them. I wanted to work on a project or venture where I would be present from start to finish.”

Now, she divides her time between the hills and Delhi to oversees both arms of her venture—procurement and sales.

Reality check Reducing the influence of the middlemen is still a challenge. “This is mostly because for the farmers, the aarats (middlemen) are there 12 months in a year and hence supplying to them remains a priority.” To break the dependency of the farmer on the aarat, Grewal knows that she has to be there for farmers for the whole year and be able to advance small loans when they need help in case of sickness, crop failure or weddings, among other things. “Currently, only 30% of our stuff comes directly from the farmer. I want to increase that in the coming years.”

Plan B Go back to consulting or become a full-time cheese maker, for which Grewal has done a course.

Secret sauce Keeping the business plan flexible, including more ideas and services as she goes along and adding a personal touch by interacting with customers as closely as she can. Though she is not able to do it for all customers, Grewal says she still tries to deliver apple juices or veggies to her first-time clients herself. “Also, I keep a track of all emails that come in personally and ask for suggestions from clients on how we can improve our delivery systems.”

Dial-a-Book is a Delhi-based start-up founded by brothers Mayank and Tarang Dhingra. Tarang, 25, is a final-year student at the University of Delhi. Mayank, 27, is a software engineer who left a corporate job at Fidelity International in 2005 to work for a string of tech startups—from SlideShare, an online presentation hosting service, to MPower Mobile, which works with mobile payments. In 2008, before the Twitter bandwagon bulldozed its way across the country’s Internet landscape, he experimented with creating a Twitter-like service for India called Kwippy—which Mayank called a “conversational platform”. The site folded in mid-2009, and subsequent dabbling in ideas on what to do next led to Dial-a-Book.

Eureka moment “We were trying to make ordering books as simple as ordering burgers or pizza,” says Mayank, of the initial idea. “Most of us are not very comfortable with e-commerce, and giving out our credit card information online.” His solution was to combine cash on delivery with fast, personalized service—delivering books ordered through the phone within

48 hours. He conducted a “brief, unscientific” survey on Twitter, where he has around 1,381 followers, to find out if there could be a market for this. “I found out that people who buy books value convenience, and not just price—and what could be more convenient than a simple phone call or SMS?”

Genesis Mayank started a trial run for Dial-aBook on 25 September 2009. He purchased a SIM card for the phone number, set up the website, and began to promote it through social networking services. He sent emails to close friends, set up an active Twitter feed and advertised the service on Facebook. Concurrently, he and Tarang scoured Delhi—from the narrow lanes of Daryaganj to Nai Sarak—for book suppliers and wholesalers, building up a network of around 50-60 vendors and agents.

As the first orders began to trickle in, mostly from friends and family, Mayank put the basic modus operandi in place. The customer would send an SMS or call in with his requirements. Mayank would send a confirmation, then find out how soon he could get the book from his supplier network. He’d SMS the estimated delivery time. Once this was confirmed, one of Dial-a-Book’s delivery staff (the company currently

METER DOWN

has five employees, including the two founders) would set off. Mayank still makes about 30% of the deliveries himself, and tries to keep the operation as lean as possible. “I’m averse to the idea of funding by venture capital funds,” he says. “We wanted to be profitable as soon as possible—and we managed that in the first month itself.”

Starting capital

`50,000

Raising the money Personal savings.

First customer A friend of Dhingra’s from school, on Google chat, expressed interest while he was explaining the trial run he’d just started. The book was ‘The Road Less Travelled’.

Biggest difficulty Tying up with Delhi’s byzantine web of small suppliers and procuring books in time to make that 48­hour deadline.

Reality check Dial-a-Book began to deliver about five books a week in its first month, with volumes growing slowly. This became an early concern, as suppliers were iffy about dealing with small-order quantities. “We don’t stock too many books, so we had to build up volumes to avoid any supplier bottlenecks,” Mayank says.

Dial-a-Book’s order volumes are now about 100 books a month, which Mayank calls “comfortable”.

They’ve also started accepting orders outside Delhi, and tied up with courier services, but the Capital still accounts for 70% of their orders.

More than 20% of their orders come from Twitter and Facebook, so Mayank keeps a constant watch on the company’s online presence.

“We get all sorts of requests, from eclectic music books to 18th century manuscripts,” he says. One early customer wanted a copy of Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad, which

On call: Mayank Dhingra wants to make buying books as simple as ordering pizza.

Mayank was unable to source from local suppliers. He got it shipped, by “sheer luck”, from a friend holidaying in Belgium who spotted it in a local book store.

Plan B If Dial-a-Book isn’t viable in two years (“Unlikely. We’re already viable!”), Mayank says he’ll go back to a 9-5 job for a while, which will give him the security to hatch further cunning plans. “I’d make a different kind of Web product—maybe some-

thing in the realm of social commerce, or Facebook-assisted shopping, you know?”

Secret sauce “Customer service is our mantra.

Our post-sales support is really strong, and we’re trying to be as responsive as fast as we can,” Mayank says. He offers gift-wrapping services and discounts, and hopes to conduct frequent meet-ups and book-related events. “Anyone can sell books, but we discuss books.”

THE IDEA USING AN AUTORICKSHAW AS A MARKETING MEDIUM BY PUBLISHING A MAGAZINE JUST FOR PASSENGERS AND SELLING ADVERTISING SPACE ON THE VEHICLE

Starting capital

`40 lakh approx.

Raising the money Mostly money Grewal saved from her consulting days.

First customers Her mother, sister and four friends. But the first ‘real customer’ she interacted with was an Australian lady, Debbie Hill, who ordered a case of apple juice that Grewal delivered herself.

Biggest difficulty Figuring out transport and delivery systems from the hills to Delhi, inventory management at the store, and finding new ways to ensure better incomes for the farmers in the hills.

One for the road B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

······························

Past life Three college friends, Mulchand Dedhia, 24, Simi Sailopal, 23, and Ishan Mehta, 23, started working on the concept a year ago. After completing his graduation in mass communication, Dedhia, who is also a part-time photographer, got a job at an advertising agency. He quit after an altercation with his boss and decided he would finally work on his dream of starting something on his own. Sailopal was working with a public relations agency and Mehta was a content writer with Hungama Digital Media Entertainment. Sailopal left the project midway, opting for further studies.

Eureka moment The three friends got together for a brainstorming session and hit upon the idea of exploiting spaces within and outside an autorickshaw for advertising. This led to the idea of launching a dedicated magazine for auto travellers—this way they could sell advertising space in the magazine. In October, they discussed the idea and the first issue of the monthly Meter

Down was launched in March in Mumbai. They realized a consumer usually spends at least 10-15 minutes in an auto. The brands would get audience attention for those 15 minutes, more than any other medium could provide, Dedhia adds.

They commissioned a survey of 200 people and studied travelling patterns. “There’s so much traffic now and the people who are travelling get bored. We found that they either call friends and increase their phone bills, listen to music or just don’t do anything.

We thought we’d make their boring ride a little fun,” says Dedhia.

permission from the road transport office (RTO), besides registering with the Registrar of Newspapers for India. The autorickshaw drivers soon realized they were serious and knew exactly what they wanted.

Mehta, the editor of the magazine, has a team of freelance writers who contribute every month. The magazine is supposed to be a “time-pass” read, so the content includes everything from movies and music to fashion, food and humour. The venture broke even after the first issue and they have been making a profit since the second.

Genesis

Reality check

“Initially, we were the heads and the peons of the company. We were doing everything, from getting quotes from printers to talking to 500 autorickshaw drivers,” says Dedhia. Convincing the drivers was the most important part.

Auto drivers get a fixed amount at the end of every month. They get to share 30% of the magazine’s advertising sales among themselves or, if there are no ads, each gets `200 that month.

They approached the heads of two autorickshaw unions and got

Their biggest challenge was to convince media planners to buy space in the magazine. But it was by no means the only challenge.

An auto ride is not a smooth one in a pothole-ridden city such as Mumbai, so it’s difficult to read.

They restricted article length to 300 words and increased the number of photos.

They also had to prevent passengers from taking the magazine with them. So they punched a hole on the top left hand side of the magazine and it’s now tied to a shelf in

the auto. At the end of every month, Dedhia and Mehta check if the shelves are in good condition and if the magazine is still there.

mitted to the plan and have taken it forward by advertising at the back of the auto and on the auto curtains during the monsoon.

Plan B

Secret sauce

“We had some 19 ideas after our brainstorming session. We can work on any of them,” says Dedhia.

For now they are completely com-

Hard work and a lot of patience. “You need to handle people with care. I quit because my boss wasn’t good at handling people,” says Dedhia.

Starting capital

`75,000

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Read and ride: Dedhia (left) and Mehta successfully partnered with autorickshaw drivers.

Raising the money The three partners contributed `25,000 each from their savings.

First customer The State Bank of India, which agreed to advertise with them, paying just the basic cost of printing the advertisement.

Biggest difficulty Getting advertisers on board.

L12 COVER

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

EDYOUNET

THE IDEA PROVIDING INTERACTIVE CLASSROOMS THROUGH THE INTERNET

Easy virtual learning B Y V EENA V ENUGOPAL veena.v@livemint.com

didn’t work well because of the low penetration of computers.

Past life

Eureka moment

Ram Mohan had been running Devki Infonet, a software company, for about 12 years. The company makes e-learning software that links students living in the US and UK with teachers in India. He tried selling this in India but it

Mohan, 42, decided to turn the challenge of selling e-learning in India into an opportunity. “Providing this software in India to only students who have computers was not a feasible idea. We figured out that the idea has to be community learning,” he says.

Community learning, where students would sit together in one classroom and share one screen, would take the pressure off individual students to own computers. The classrooms, which have large TV screens shared by multiple students, are run by franchisees. It costs about `5 lakh to set up a franchisee centre.

at least `18 lakh to set up. So Mohan looked at the Internet.

“We felt there was necessity that whatever the teacher writes should be displayed in front of the students. If the teacher has a PowerPoint presentation, video clipping or if they are teaching computer application—the desktop of the teacher should be visible to the students. So we had to incorporate all these features,” Mohan says.

On Edyounet, which started in October last year, students can talk to the teacher in real time.

They can also write on the board and have that made visible to the teacher and other students. The teacher can also write part of an equation and have a student in Chennai and another in Delhi write the remaining.

Genesis

Reality check

Once he firmed up the idea, Mohan got his team of software developers to work on it. There were several challenges. Existing virtual classrooms mostly used satellite technology. This had two disadvantages—the classroom wouldn’t be interactive, it would just have the teacher lecturing a bunch of students who had tuned in; and they were expensive too. A satellite-based studio would cost

The Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India, the Institute of Company Secretaries of India and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India are now offering classes through Edyounet.

It has 15 franchisees and an average of 20 students a centre. Convincing people and getting them to invest in a new idea has been difficult. Also, bandwidth providers couldn’t understand or believe in

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VINOD KARIMATT/MINT

In class: Mohan spent two years building the software.

KARIGARI DESIGN

the concept. “We had to create a custom-created real time connectivity. If it was one studio and multiple locations, it would have been easy. But here, the studios can be anywhere and the students can be in any number of places,” he says.

Mohan is trying to set up a studio in Dubai now. This will help set up language courses to be taught by native speakers. For example, a German national in Dubai could take German lessons for a student in a village in Andhra Pradesh.

“Can you imagine how this will transform education in non-urban India?” Mohan asks.

Plan B Mohan does not have a Plan B at the moment. On the contrary, he is confident that in a year’s time, the concept would have taken off and there would be a significant number of students enrolled for various classes. He is also converting the company from a sole proprietorship to a private limited company.

Starting capital

`5 crore

Raising the money Deployed earnings from the software business.

First customer A college professor. He was on board with the concept quite early. His students helped flesh out the idea.

Biggest difficulty Selling the concept, getting a bandwidth provider.

Secret sauce Using the Internet as a medium and then developing programmes on open-source Linux.

This helped slash costs to about a third of those in the satellitebased system.

THE IDEA AN AWARD­WINNING DESIGN HOUSE THAT THINKS OUT OF THE BOX

Designs that talk B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

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Past life Before she began churning out Cannes-nominated designs from a corner space in a stock Mumbai mall—packed between a travel agency and a clothes store— 30-year-old Neha Shah worked as an account director in Ogilvy and Mather.

The 2006 Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, graduate has had stints at Ogilvy, Lowe, and award-winning copywriter Pushpinder Singh’s advertising

start-up Saints and Warriors (where she was the first employee).

But that was to learn the ropes. The intention was never to go up the corporate ladder. “I never wanted to be a CEO of any other company but my own,” she says.

Shah comes from an advertising bloodline. Her grandfather set up Mercantile—one of India’s oldest ad agencies—around 55 years ago.

When she quit Ogilvy in 2008, it was to try her hand at what she calls the family business. But Mercantile worked with financial clients (“That’s where the money is,” she sighs), which offered her scant ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

creative opportunities.

Shah tried to develop her own design operations while at Mercantile till she was asked to leave.

“My uncle told me that I couldn’t go on using the office space for my start-up,” says Shah.

Sitting on one of the quirky angular shelves designed in-house are three tokens of design excellence that Karigari Design Inc., launched in early 2009, has already bagged—a Cannes Lions Design Finalist (2009), a One Show Design Bronze (2010) and a D&AD inbook nomination (2010). They’re all for a set of visiting cards that Karigari created for its third client—The Backpacker Co., a company that “guides” backpacking trips around the world. Karigari printed their visiting cards on easyto-carry-and-use soap strips!

Eureka moment “Being in the business of ideas, I have one every day,” says Shah.

While she’s long had goals to set up her own design space, seeing the landmark New York Times signage—a 110ft-long logo constructed at the paper’s New York’s headquarters in 2007—brought her up to speed.

Genesis

Calling card: Designing business cards for a backpacking company was Shah’s big break.

Shah set up shop with her personal savings of about `3 lakh.

She had no major material expenses and assumed that the modest seed money would cover rent and salaries.

She struck gold with a small assignment for the Union ministry of tourism. Shah’s team proactively pitched the idea for a paper bag for the Incredible India campaign.

The folks at the tourism ministry liked it enough to print 100,000 bags for internal consumption.

The exposure led to more work, bigger in scale. Karigari has designed the logo and merchandise for the Indian contingent of the Commonwealth Games 2010. The Backpacker & Co. came soon after.

Reality check Traditionally, advertising agencies took a 15% cut of their clients’ total advertising budgets. This is as low as 5% now. In this scenario, securing a stable financial future is a big challenge for Shah. “I’m not selling detergent, I’m selling ideas and the cost value is subjective,” says Shah, who recalls a local jeweller who gave her `10,000 in cash for a store design campaign and a lot of blessings in lieu of the full payment.

Plan B “I put all my savings into this so there really was no Plan B,” says Shah.

Secret sauce Self-belief. “It really burns your heart when you have to write two cheques every day while you’re still not making any money...the only thing that keeps one going is a ridiculous degree of self-confidence,” says Shah.

Starting capital

`3 lakh

Raising the money Personal savings and shares.

First customer The Union ministry of tourism, whose officials were impressed by the young team and gave them a small chunk of the Incredible India business.

Biggest difficulty Design is a nascent industry and clients are satisfied with quick options and cheaper alternatives.

COVER L13

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

QUEER INK

THE IDEA AN ONLINE BOOK STORE FOR ALL LITERATURE THAT ISN’T MAINSTREAM AND A SITE FOR POTENTIAL AUTHORS

Not just straight talk B Y A RUN J ANARDHAN arun.j@livemint.com

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Past life Shobhna S. Kumar was already a well-travelled social entrepreneur—born in Fiji, raised in Sydney, Australia; worked a bit in the US—when she moved to India eight years ago.

It was when she broke her ankle two years ago and could not literally travel anywhere that she decided to become a businesswoman as well.

After 20 years in the development sector, during which she worked with a multiple strata of people, she wanted her life of “transitions” to make one more—with Queer Ink. She says about her partner, who does not wish to be identified: “We have been together

eight years, we both had lives prior to this. We used our retirement funds to start Queer Ink because we believe in it.”

Eureka moment Kumar found that a lot of queer literature in India was academic, but the number of publications were not representative of the number of queer people in India.

“My idea is to have a platform where all material, even in regional language, is available and to encourage people to write and publish,” she says.

Through her years of travel in India, Kumar realized that people could not find the books they wanted. People were just not comfortable going to a book store fearing unwarranted attention, which is how the idea of an online store germinated.

Then two years ago, laid up at home with a broken ankle and unable to go anywhere, the inability to find books that would help “keep my sanity” added to the frustration. Intensive research followed: talking to publishers, emailing people till it all came together in mid-2009 when they gave the first contract for the design of Queer Ink’s business identity. This followed a soft launch in April among friends and family, and from 2 July,the website could be accessed by anyone.

Genesis Kumar, 43, brings in the “nonprofit element” into the purely business venture but her partner, a corporate employee, adds the expertise of a businesswoman.

The site gets about 250-300 hits ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

a day worldwide—5% of these are orders. Kumar says they were not expecting any orders in the first six months. Now, they find that a higher concentration of people look at the site over the weekend, and then repeat the next weekend. By the third Sunday, there are orders.

“Before, you had to know somebody who knew somebody to get a photocopy (of a book or magazine that was either not available in book stores or people were too shy to buy),” says Kumar. “Now, you can own the book. I read somewhere that there were seven queer magazines in India but that’s not the right number. Local NGOs have their own magazines plus publications in other languages. They are all over the place.”

Queer Ink, says Kumar, is an online book store for all things queer, in India and South Asia.

She defines queer literature as anything that’s not mainstream, “anything which does not fit in that little box of society”. She says it does not have to be only sexuality based. Queer Ink, for instance, does not sell erotica, but it does keep romance novels.

Reality check An early problem was when one of the Indian payment portals refused the contract for the website because they sold queer books on it. “They did not like the content but liked the online business,” says Kumar. Queer Ink then went to an American company and now, after upgrading, has an Indian portal.

Starting capital

`8 lakh

Raising the money The couple’s retirement fund and other savings.

First customer Kumar remembers her first customer’s name: Sabina.

After the website link was sent to a few friends in April, the opening sale of `3,000 came within a few hours.

Biggest difficulty Developing the website www.queer­ink.com

Plan B The “store” functions out of the couple’s second bedroom in their suburban Mumbai home, with about 2,000 books worth `8 lakh stored in three cupboards.

“If it fails, it fails,” Kumar says of their business. They feel it would not be feasible to have a regular book store—not just because of Mumbai’s high rents, but also to be able to get enough visitors.

Secret sauce Kumar says she has spent considerable time on the selection of books, having read 80% of them, which are “sensitive to Indian cultural and society norms” while following all cyber laws. The site also encourages people to write, which has resulted in them being inundated with short stories they now want to publish. She says Queer Ink works because of its resource of reading material and the complete discretion that it offers buyers.

www.livemint.com

Out of the closet: Kumar realized that it was difficult to buy queer books in India; even Amazon would not deliver them.

PLUS, ONLY ON THE WEB Skyshade Technologies in Hyderabad channelizes sunlight without the heat to illuminate buildings.

TringMe in Bangalore makes voice applications for the Internet.

Read more about them at www.livemint.com/coolideas.htm

L14 COVER

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

YOUR IDEA MIGHT BE A WINNER, BUT THERE ARE SEVERAL COMMON MISTAKES YOU MUST WATCH OUT FOR TO ENSURE A SUCCESSFUL ENTERPRISE

10 common mistakes of start­up entrepreneurs B Y R OSALIND R ESNICK ···························· hen it comes to starting a successful business, there’s no surefire playbook that contains the winning game plan.

On the other hand, there are about as many mistakes to be made as there are entrepreneurs to make them.

Recently, after a workout at the gym with my trainer—an attractive young woman who’s also a dancer/actor—she told me about a Web series that she’s producing and starring in together with a few friends. While the series has gained a large following online, she and her friends have not yet incorporated their venture, drafted an operating agreement, trademarked the show’s name or done any of the other things that businesses typically do to protect their intellectual property and divvy up the owners’ share of the company. While none of this may be a problem now, I told her, just

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wait until the show hits it big and everybody hires a lawyer.

Here, in my experience, are the top 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs make when starting a company:

1. Going it alone It’s difficult to build a scalable business if you’re the only person involved. True, a solo public relations, Web design or consulting firm may require little capital to start, and the price of hiring even one administrative assistant, sales representative or entry-level employee can eat up a big chunk of your profits. The solution: Make sure there’s enough margin in your pricing to enable you to bring in other people. Clients generally don’t mind outsourcing as long as they can still get face time with you, the skilled professional who’s managing the project.

2. Asking too many people for advice It’s always good to get input from

experts, especially experienced entrepreneurs who’ve built and sold successful companies in your industry. But getting too many people’s opinions can delay your decision so long that your company never gets out of the starting gate. The answer: Assemble a solid advisory board that you can tap on a regular basis but run the day-today yourself. Says Elyissia Wassung, chief executive of 2 Chicks With Chocolate Inc., a Matawan, New Jersey, US, chocolate company, “Pull in your (advisory) team for biweekly or, at the very least, monthly conference calls.

You’ll wish you did it sooner!”

3. Spending too much time on product development, not enough on sales While it’s hard to build a great company without a great product, entrepreneurs who spend too much time tinkering may lose customers to a competitor with a stronger sales organization. “I call (this misstep) the ‘Field of Dreams’ of entrepreneurship. If you build it, they will buy it,” says Sanjyot Dunung, CEO of Atma Global, Inc., a New York software publisher, who has made this THINKSTOCK

mistake in her own business. “If you don’t keep one eye firmly focused on sales, you’ll likely run out of money and energy before you can successfully get your product to market.”

4. Targeting too small a market It’s tempting to try to corner a niche, but your company’s growth will quickly hit a wall if the market you’re targeting is too tiny. Think about all the high school basketball stars who dream of playing in the NBA. Because there are only 30 teams and each team employs only a handful of players, the chances that your son will become the next Michael Jordan are pretty slim. The solution: Pick a bigger market that gives you the chance to grab a slice of the pie even if your company remains a smaller player.

5. Entering a market with no distribution partner It’s easier to break into a market if there’s already a network of agents, brokers, manufacturers’ reps and other third-party resellers ready, willing and able to sell your product into existing distribution channels. Fashion, food, media and other major industries work this way; others are not so lucky. That’s why service businesses such as public relations firms, yoga studios and petgrooming companies often struggle to survive, alternating between feast and famine. The solution: Make a list of potential referral sources before you start your business and ask them if they’d be willing to send business your way.

6. Overpaying for customers Spending big on advertising may bring in lots of customers, but it’s a money-losing strategy if your company can’t turn those dollars into life-time customer value. A magazine or website that spends $500 (around `23,300) worth of advertising to acquire a customer who pays $20 a month and cancels his or her subscription at the end of the year is simply pouring money down the drain. The solution: Test, measure, then test again. Once you’ve done enough testing to figure out how to make more money selling products and services to your customers than you spend acquiring those customers in the first place, roll out a major marketing campaign.

7. Raising too little capital Many start-ups assume that all they need is enough money to rent space, buy equipment, stock inventory and drive customers through the door. What they often forget is that they also need capital to pay for salaries, utilities, insurance and other overhead expenses until their company starts turning a profit. Unless you’re running the kind of business where everybody’s working for sweat equity and deferring compensation, you’ll need to raise enough money to tide you over until your revenue can cover your expenses and generate positive cash flow. The solution: Calculate

your start-up costs before you open your doors, not afterwards.

8. Raising too much capital Believe it or not, raising too much money can be a problem too.

Over-funded companies tend to get big and bloated, hiring too many people too soon and wasting valuable resources on trade show booths, parties, image ads and other frills. When the money runs out and investors lose patience (which is what happened 10 years ago when the dotcom market melted), start-ups that frittered away their cash will have to close their doors. No matter how much money you raise at the outset, remember to bank some for a rainy day.

9. Not having a business plan While not every company needs a formal business plan, a start-up that requires significant capital to grow and more than a year to turn a profit should map out how much time and money it’s going to take to get to its destination. This means thinking through the key metrics that make your business tick and building a model to spin off three years of sales, profits and cash-flow projections. “I wasted 10 years (fooling around) thinking like an artist and not a business person,” says Louis Piscione, president of Avanti Media Group, a New Jersey company that produces videos for corporate and private events. “I learned that you have to put some of your creative genius towards a business plan that forecasts and sets goals for growth and success.”

10. Over­thinking your business plan While many entrepreneurs I’ve met engage in seat-of-the-pants decision making and fail to do their homework, other entrepreneurs are afraid to pull the trigger until they’re 100% certain that their plan will succeed. One lawyer I worked with several years ago was so skittish about leaving his six-figure job to launch his business that he never met with a single bank or investor who might have funded his company. The truth is that a business plan is not a crystal ball that can predict the future. At a certain point, you have to close your eyes and take the leap of faith.

Despite the many books and articles that have been written about entrepreneurship, it’s just not possible to start a company without making a few mistakes along the way. Just try to avoid making any mistake so large that your company can’t get back on its feet to fight another day.

Rosalind Resnick is the founder and CEO of Axxess Business Consulting Inc., a New York consulting firm that develops business plans and financial projections for startups and early stage companies. She is also the author of The Vest Pocket Consultant’s Secrets of Small Business Success.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010

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Travel

LOUNGE

PERCY FERNANDEZ

TREKKING

To the lost lakes

Top Top of of the the world: world: Nearly Nearly 1km 1km in in length, length, the the spectacular spectacular Kanasar Kanasar lake lake is is one one of of the the largest largest high­altitude high­altitude lakes lakes in in the the region. region.

Garhwal’s delightful and awe­inspiring hidden water bod­ ies are a well­kept local secret, but well worth the effort to discover

B Y M ANINDER K OHLI ···························· t had been seven long days of steady climbing, stumbling over fields of rock and snow, crossing high passes and camping out in the extreme cold. Sleepy villages had given way to alpine meadows carpeted with flowers of every colour; and past the snowline, to a forbidding rock and snow-strewn terrain.

Finally at the far end of the Panchodar valley, as we trudged over a hill, we got the first tantalizing glimpse of our destination.

At first the vast, semi-frozen lake, surrounding by jagged crags of snow, looked like a mirage. But

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as we edged closer, disbelief gave way to awe at the size of the lake, which at its widest stretched out for nearly a kilometre; and then delight, at being the first hikers to visit the Kanasar lake in western Garhwal.

The lake, which derives its name from two small islands that rise from a corner of its eyeshaped expanse, is just one of the many undiscovered lakes in this area. Even though western Garhwal is one of the most popular trekking destinations in the country, these glacial lakes had remained a secret, known only to a few local shepherds. If it weren’t for them I would never have

found them.

In 2005, on a trek to the popular Har ki Doon valley, I’d mentioned a desire to explore the area to Surinder, a shepherd from Kasla village who was moonlighting as my guide. I then forgot all about it until a few months later, when he called with news of a lake known locally as Baraadsar.

That started off a series of treks to three hidden, high-altitude lakes—Baraadsar, Maldaru and Kanasar.

The lakes, and the journeys to them, are spectacular. En route I’ve stumbled across stunning peaks such as the 5,400m-high Ranglana, the sheer face of which

remains unconquered despite five attempts; worshipped at intricately carved wooden temples festooned with shields won by the local cricket team; and eaten what have got to be the best apricots in the world.

MANINDER KOHLI

As told to Akshai Jain.

Maninder Kohli is an avid trekker, and head of the Delhi chapter of the Himalayan Club. He will be talking about his travels to the lakes at 6.45pm on 18 September at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

MANINDER KOHLI

TRIP PLANNER/GARHWAL Baraadsar lake

Netwar Mori

Sema Har ki Doon

Maldaru lake Kanasar lake

GARHWAL Navgaon To Mussoorie

Dehradun

UTTARAKHAND To Delhi

When to go: The best time for these treks is May and June, and from mid-September to mid-October.

Difficulty: The trek to Maldaru lake (4,200m) is moderately difficult, as is the trek to Baraadsar lake (4,400m). The Kanasar (4,400m) lake trek, however, is somewhat more demanding.

Baraadsar lake: A 6-hour drive from Mussoorie takes you to Netwar, located at the confluence of the Rupin and Supin rivers and the starting point of the Tons river.

Baraadsar, at a height of 4,400m, lies between the Rupin and Supin valleys. From Netwar, a short drive of 10km takes you to Dhaula village in the Rupin valley, from where the trek starts. On Day 2 of the trek the trail leads you to the top of the ridge dividing the Rupin and Supin valleys. It takes another two days to reach the base of the final ridge leading to Baraadsar lake at Dhalke Dhar (3,600m). From this point an 800m climb takes one to the top of the ridge, from where Baraadsar lake is visible lower down in the distance. The return trek can be done through the Supin valley and a walk down to Jakhol village over the next three days, making it a circular trek.

Maldaru lake: At 4,200m, the lake is located east of Seema village in the popular Har ki Doon valley, which can be accessed by a 7-hour drive from Mussoorie. While the shortest access to the lake is from Seema village, the route is very steep. A route starting out from Taluka, lower down in the valley, is a lot more interesting as it traverses areas that are rarely visited. It takes four days of gentle walking to reach a camp located 3km short of Maldaru lake. From this point a walk over moraine leads to Maldaru. From Maldaru, a short walk takes you to Baiya meadow, 4,000m above the confluence of the Supin and Ruinsara rivers, and offers spectacular views of all the prominent peaks in the area.

Kanasar lake: Kanasar lake, at 4,400m, is (as the crow flies) just 5km from Baraadsar lake. A high ridge running between the two lakes, however, makes it almost impossible to take the short route. The more feasible option is to approach the lake from Nalgan valley, which is east of the Rupin valley. An interesting route to the head of the Nalgan valley is though the Nalgan Pass.

This trek starts from Sangla in Kinnaur, which is a day’s drive from Shimla. It takes three days to cross the Nalgan Pass and reach the head of the Nalgan valley.

From this point you need to take the Panchodar valley, a prominent side valley off the Nalgan valley. A two-day uphill walk brings you to Kanasar. You can return via the Nalgan valley that leads back to Netwar. From there Mussoorie is a 6-hour drive.

What to take with you: Hat, UV-protective sunglasses, woollen cap, warm waterproof gloves, woollen scarf, base layer clothing, windproof outer shell (preferably breathable), fleece jacket, rain pants, a good pair of trekking shoes, sleeping bag with a temperature rating of –10 degrees Celsius, flashlight, walking pole, sun protection cream and some basic medication.

Preparations: You must be moderately fit before the treks—5km walks five times a week for a month before the treks should do the trick. Yoga and special breathing exercises are useful and help to acclimatize to the high altitude.

GRAPHIC

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

ASHWINI BHAT

Heavenly abode: (clockwise from above) The approach to Kanasar lake remains snow­bound through the year, forcing trekkers to slow to a crawl; the only people who frequent the high­altitude lakes of western Garhwal are shepherds who take their flocks to graze in the meadows surrounding the lakes. They head up in mid­June and descend by mid­August; and the Rashi campsite (3,600m) on the trail to Maldaru lake is one of the most stunning campsites in the area, giving panoramic views of the Har ki Doon valley.

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010

Culture

LOUNGE ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

SPOTLIGHT

The mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik makes the Mahabharat thriller­like—another successful attempt at articulating big mythological ideas B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA sanjukta.s@livemint.com

···························· s chief belief officer for the Future Group of companies, Devdutt Pattanaik has to ensure the management knows how to offer its employees what he calls “LSD”—monetary incentives (Lakshmi), intellectual and creative growth (Saraswati) and protection (Durga).

This is how he explains, over chai and orange juice, his role in the company.

Pattanaik has a way with words. For many years now, he has articulated complex ideas from Indian, mostly Hindu, mythology with ease and much drama. He writes a column for the tabloid Mid Day, and has written a few books which include Myth = Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology, a novel, The Pregnant King, and his latest, Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata.

In the new book, written in short chapters with illustrations, he makes the ideas inherent in all the episodes of the epic lucid, without making them simplistic.

Each chapter describes events as they happen, and a box below has bullet points on the meaning and context of characters and events. In the chapter called Eklavya, for example, about the forest dweller who was forced to cut his thumb by Drona, the teacher of the Pandavs, Pattanaik explains: “Vyasa portrays Arjuna as a highly insecure and competitive youth. Eklavya’s cut thumb mocks his position as the greatest archer in the world.

Through the tale Vyasa demonstrates how greatness need not be achieved by being better than others; it can also be achieved by pulling down others who are better.” He devotes many chapters on what follows the coronation of Yudhisthir after the war of

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The Leftist interpretations of Krishna have made him, Pattanaik says, ‘a scheming little playboy’

Kurukshetra—is he, and in turn, the virtuous, truly victorious after defeating the Kauravs?

Apparently not.

Pattanaik speaks with urgency and passion—about jaya as opposed to vijaya; how the West is limited by finiteness and Hindu thought stresses the infinite; why Krishna is not just a fascinating “human being”, as some would like you to believe. Think of Pattanaik as a mythologist who performs his knowledge. About a year ago, I saw Pattanaik speak at a seminar on mythology in Indian cinema at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. He was part of a panel that also had a couple of directors who have made mythological films, and actor Kamal Hassan. You can’t not listen to this pop mythologist.

Pattanaik gesticulated a lot, went shrill as well as baritone, and finally convinced the audience that the success of Jai Santoshi Maa speaks more about Indians than any other Indian film can. At the end of his talk, Hassan said, “I am not a tippler by day, but after hearing you speak, I could do with a stiff one.”

Pattanaik says there is an element of performance to what he does. “I have read so much and found so much that I have this almost desperate desire to share these stories and ideas. And I use all the tools I have to express them,” Pattanaik says.

Two years ago, Kishore Biyani

Epic touch: Pattanaik (above) and an illustration from Jaya.

Jaya: Penguin, 349 pages, `499. of the Future Group hired him as part of his think tank with the intriguing designation in order to inculcate ideas from scriptures in the corporate ethic of the group.

“I had a tough session with some of the employees, sorting out some issues they have. They are like my children,” Pattanaik says.

More than a corporate guru, he sounds like a shrink when he talks about his day job.

Pattanaik, 39, spent his childhood and student days in Chembur, Mumbai. “My father is an MBA but MBA was never a choice for me. Either a doctor or an engineer. I was a nerd kind of a child, I think, always had an interest in mythological stories and knew how to tell stories,” Pattanaik

Mind the gap Inequality is the big idea behind this show of Indian art in London B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· wo large art shows featuring works by Indian artists have been held in London in the past one year. There was Indian Highway at the Serpentine Gallery in 2009 and The Empire Strikes Back at the Saatchi Gallery earlier this year.

Yashodhara Dalmia is the curator of the forthcoming show Indian Sub(Way), which will also be on view in London, and she feels it can be viewed in the context of its two predecessors. Featuring 18 artists from India, this show is more modest in scale and, according to Dalmia, revolves around the familiar subject of two Indias—the shining and the not-so-shining.

“We are on a highway, but a curvilinear highway,” she says,

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referring to the stark inequalities that characterize Indian society and that the post-liberalization era has thrown into greater relief. “This is what the artists are engaging in—the binaries of new India.”

The works, she says, “are non-didactic but critiquing the lack of attention being paid to the deprived”. An obvious example of this critique is the variation by Ravinder Reddy on his familiar female head sculptures. Painted a deep shade of blue, this one has the trademark large eyes, geometrical nose and thick lips, but there is a large sack resting on it, which could very well be from a construction site. Dalmia describes another work with an explicit focus on the contradictions of present-day India—Subh Labh by Anita Dube, which features Mayawati and her infamous garland made out of `1,000 currency notes.

“There is melted wax on the (painting’s) surface, which makes it look like war-torn territory,

says. He chose medicine and became a doctor, all the while pursuing his reading on epics, scriptures and mythological stories. “There was a point when I realized I could identify patterns in mythological ideas, be it Christian, Hindu or Islamic. Mythology is nothing but fantasy or representation.” He began writing about stories in his language, and this eventually led to the books.

His forte, Hindu mythology, is a subject he has been studying for about a decade now. Over the years, Pattanaik’s writing has evolved. Initially, his approach to the Puranas, the epics and the Vedas was starry-eyed. Now, he says, he can see their layered complexity for what it is. Some artists and writers such as playwright Girish Karnad, while dramatizing many episodes of the epic, have humanized Hindu gods—diluting, to some extent, their religious and philosophical meanings. Pattanaik does not attempt to do so, but urges you not to worship those texts

and gods blindly, or be fearful of them: “Look at the idol, watch its eyes and limbs and understand what it stands for, instead of bowing down with your eyes closed. It’s ironic that one of the most common words Hindus use to describe a temple visit is darshan!”

Pattanaik believes Krishna is not a “Machiavellian figure or superhero” but a god who could control the outcome of a world dictated by various shades of evil: a world where “a daughter is a prize in an archery contest” and “a husband lets another man make his wife pregnant”. The Leftist interpretations of Krishna have made him, Pattanaik says, “a scheming little playboy”. He rues about Leftist interpretations of the Mahabharat, at the same time reasoning that saffron parties could probably not understand a storyteller’s point of view.

The audience Pattanaik wants now is children. He is working on his first book for children called Dumb Charade with Shiva.

COURTESY VADEHRA ART GALLERY

Aspirations: (left) Sutar’s The High Performance Intellect; and Scaria’s Face to Face. with pitted black wax all over,” says Dalmia.

A similar sense of irony—almost a given when artists from the comfortable middle class choose the rich-poor divide as their subject—can be seen in many other works that will go on display. Gigi Scaria’s digital print shows a foreign city’s impressive skyline resting on the incomplete spans of a bridge that is clearly

part of the Delhi Metro construction project. “The skyline happens to be that of Shanghai,” says Scaria. “It could have been any other city.” But the choice of Shanghai is telling, introducing as it does our large, overachieving neighbour to the East into the picture; one that is constantly held up to us as an example, especially in the field of urban infrastructure.

Urban shortcomings also figure in Atul Bhalla’s striking photographic composition titled Khari Baoli I. The baoli, or a step well, used to be a source of water for people but as Bhalla points out, it no longer exists in this particular Delhi neighbourhood. In its place we have the pyaou, or a water fountain, in a degraded and unclean environment that has been captured in the work.

Water is Bhalla’s chosen subject and his other work, titled Water Gods, is a more meditative and painterly composition that plays on the image of women worshipping the sun along a riverbank.

This work is more about time-

less India than inadequate India, and that could be said about some of the other works too—they represent the artists’ take on life and surroundings around them and only loosely adhere to the curatorial brief.

One example would be the suite of Gandhi watercolours by Sudhanshu Sutar, one of which shows him as a gardener. Dalmia says Sutar grew up in a village in Orissa and the local hero there was a gardener who caught hold of Nathuram Godse after he shot Gandhi. In Sutar’s imagination Gandhi and the gardener become conflated in the work titled The High Performance Intellect. As a symbol of India, Gandhi here transcends any ideology or viewpoint.

In these and other works by artists such as G.R. Iranna, Riyas Komu and Jagannath Panda, the scope and subject is often not restricted to the Indian condition, as it were.

Indian Sub(Way) will be on view at the Grosvenor Vadehra gallery in London from 21 September-9 October. For details, log on to www.vadehraart.com

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Q&A | SARITA CHOUDHURY

MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

Spice girl

The actor known for her roles in ‘Mississippi Masala’ and ‘Kama Sutra’ talks of her debut in an Indian film

B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· lmost two decades after she made her screen debut in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala with Denzel Washington, actor Sarita Choudhury appears in the emotional drama For Real.

Directed by debutante Sona Jain, the film features original music by tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain.

Choudhury has acted in two other films by Nair: Kama Sutra and The Perez Family, as well as several other American indie films and television serials. But For Real will be her first Indian production. Born to an English mother and a Bengali father, and educated in Italy, Canada and the UK, Choudhury has appeared in movies such as John Cassavetes’ Gloria, Andrew Davis’ A Perfect Murder and M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, and shared the screen with the likes of Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas.

She tells Lounge about her early experiences of working with Nair, her new film, and all that transpired in between.

Edited excerpts:

A

Tell us more about your role in ‘For Real’.

I play a mother of two who gives up her singing career in London

to move to Delhi and be a housewife. Her static life leads to such a change in her character that her six-year-old daughter begins to believe that she is an alien. It’s interesting in the sense that kids often find recourse in fantasy when things are wrong.

It’s a domestic drama with a thriller undertone.

After the three films with Nair, you’ve played everything from a Chilean to an Arab and an Israeli. Was this role interesting because it was closer to your own heritage?

On one level, I didn’t have to tweak my British accent for this one! But this character is so restrained that she’s not me at all. Mira and I are always trying to make something work, but after those early films she’s either needed a “parent” or a “next-gen” character and I haven’t fit into either.

You’ve had your hands full with independent films, television and theatre. What made you take up an Indian film after all these years?

I’ve always wanted to do an Indian film but I didn’t want to come to India and pretend that I could play an average Bombay girl. It was about finding the right kind of role, and when I read Sona’s script I was impressed by its maturity and nuance.

Tell us about your first meeting with Nair.

I was 23 and just out of film school and it was the first audition I was ever going for.

We hit it off so well but I was totally sure that I wouldn’t get the role. Then, after an intense three-day audition, she told me I had the role. I moved to America and she became my mentor. It was like seeing myself in the future. As a half-Indian in a white society you don’t see an example of yourself and I’d never had anyone like her around me visually.

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH

MASS TO CLASS AND BACK

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an Anjaana Anjaani hold its ground in the post-Dabangg world? Will audiences who have hooted their hearts out at Dabangg’s unabashed gimmickry care for a privileged and beautiful couple who set out on a road trip across a pothole-free and floodunaffected foreign country?

Among all the things being said in praise of Dabangg, the assertion that it has gladdened the hearts of the so-called “chavanni class” is the most interesting. According to the theory, single-screen audiences have been neglected of late by movies that play out in London and Toronto masquerading as New York City. Unlike the boring multiplex viewers, who demurely chew on their caramelized popcorn and open their mouths only to answer phone calls

during screenings, the mostly male single-screen audiences are vocal about their appreciation for the on-screen antics of the stars, whistling their approval and adding their own comments to the audio track.

The truth is that Dabangg, and Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai before it, are deliberately designed to grab both the heartland and the metropolis in one single action.

Tackiness is a virtue in masala films, where the joy isn’t in seeing how nicely the hero has been lit or what clothes he is wearing, but in his attitude and his actions. Wanted, which gave Salman Khan a new career choice—playing the Hindi version of the macho southern hero—didn’t try to get too clever about lighting or production design. Dabangg, on the other

THOSE WESTERN VALUES

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Set: Choudhury (above) makes her Indian debut in For Real (top, left).

Were you intimidated shooting with Denzel Washington?

Hell, yes! He’d already won an Oscar for his role in Glory. I barely talked to him. We stayed in touch for a while after but I didn’t really pursue it. He’s married with kids now and I don’t want to be the actress who calls up her co-star to say “Hello”. I don’t want people to assume that I need them in my career so I go to the opposite extreme and don’t keep in touch.

Did you have a lot of offers to play Indian roles after ‘Mississippi Masala’?

There were no Indian roles and I had no offers. (Casting agents) were really trying to figure what to do with me. I’d have a Latin American bit role here and there.

That’s why I took off to study theatre because unlike film, it is colour-blind. After a two-year stint at Cheek by Jowl theatre company in London, I put all my energies into breaking into New York’s theatre scene. It took me eight years to build enough to play lead roles. A few years ago, I got cast as a white boy in an off-Broadway play. So not only was it colour-blind, it was gender-blind as well. That would never happen in film.

From 1991 to now, do you

find that there are far more roles for South Asian or mixed-ethnicity actors in the US? People are always asking me if the industry is changing and my answer is always that it is changing only as much as we are. Many South Asian actors complain about being pigeonholed into playing terrorists and cab drivers but it’s time that we stop talking about it. The industry will always say “No” till we have enough to convince them. I do have the advantage of having a flexible British-American accent and “mixed” looks but the truth is that most South Asian actors in the US have that too.

What are your plans ahead of this movie?

I go back to do an indie film in October. But the plan is to watch a lot of the new wave films from India. I’m fascinated by the work of directors such as Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj.

Things have reached a standstill in the US but there’s something new going on here. I feel that there is room for roles for someone like me.

hand, is a carefully spiced concoction that hopes to please the taste buds of both single-screen and multiplex audiences. The masses who reject most movies because their stories or stars are far removed from their own lives have embraced Dabangg’s brash populism. Multiplex regulars who think they’re out of touch with the so-called real India can also feel proud that thanks to Dabangg’s fake-real aesthetic, they have rediscovered their cinematic roots.

The divide doesn’t seem to be

between authenticity and pretentiousness, between the multiplex wallahs and the chavanni class, as much as it seems to be between good films and bad films. Jab We Met and 3 Idiots prove that there is still a vast audience for feel-good movies that marshal star power to tell good stories. Films such as Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai and Dabangg have shown a way of repackaging outdated material. The masala film, with its black and white morality, handsome stars, catchy songs, spectacular

For Real released in theatres on Friday.

or a nation with the wealth of art forms and musical genres that India has, it has never shown too much concern for the preservation of its artistic heritage. Or for creating channels of dissemination for the traditional art and music that has survived against the greatest odds.

I apologize if my statement offends some, but this is not about individual efforts or the efforts of a handful of organizations that have struggled to preserve diverse forms of traditional music. It is about the general apathy with which we continue to let many musical forms and genres fade away while we often blithely blame paschimi sanskriti or Western culture for their disappearance.

Not for a moment am I considering joining hands with the brigades of buffoons and goons who—in the name of upholding Indian culture—bash people up in parks for holding hands or indulging in a bit of necking. I am merely suggesting that it might be a good idea to emulate paschimi sabhyata now and again, especially when it comes to the organized manner in which the West preserves musical and artistic heritage.

Take a look at this site set up by the Smithsonian, which is among the most prestigious museum complexes in the world: http://www.folkways.si.edu/ The record label Smithsonian Folkways Recordings was set up by the Smithsonian Institution in 1948 to preserve and document the world of sound in all its diversity. The label’s mission statement, as articulated on the website, says: “Through the dissemination of audio recordings and educational materials we seek to strengthen people’s engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others.”

Are the goons listening, please?

When I searched for music from India on the Folkways site, my search results revealed collections and albums that ranged from Drumming Traditions of Kerala to Folk Music of Kashmir, released in 1962. Registered visitors to the site can buy tracks or full albums in three formats—cassette, CD or download. Other intriguing albums include Indian Love Rites: Durga Puja and Kali Puja in Calcutta and Dr B.R. Deodhar Presents the Ragas of India. Extensive liner notes accompany many of the albums and can also be downloaded as PDF files.

I registered and bought a download of Marathi Songs from the Arnold Bake Collection sung by Madhumalati and Sneha ROBIN WEINER/SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION/BLOOMBERG Dhopeshwarkar, released in 1938!

Bake was a Dutch scholar who spent several years studying and documenting music in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. He was also appointed lecturer in Indian music at the School of Oriental and Saviour: The Smithsonian in Washington, DC. African Studies, University of London. Among his students was Nazir Jairazbhoy, an authority on the folk and classical music of South Asia.

The Marathi song album from Bake’s collection contains three tracks: a Palna, Mangalagaur Arati and Hadga. There aren’t any accompanying detailed notes, and yet there is enough information to give an idea of the content of the tracks as well as the recording techniques used. None of the tracks would make it to the charts today. Far from it, no record company in the country today would agree to release such content in its unpretentious, simple, documentary form. Thank heavens, therefore, that someone from the much-maligned paschimi sabhyata thought fit to travel the seven seas to record this material and deposit it in the archives for posterity. Incidentally, the album found its way to the Folkways catalogue through the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (Arce), of the American Institute of Indian Studies. Next time we go paschim bashing, we may want to pause and think a bit.

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

dances and lashings of comedy and action, continues to survive in the Tamil and Telugu industries and, in an extremely watered down form, in Bhojpuri cinema. Dabangg may inspire me-toos, but it’s unlikely to result in a return-to-roots rush.

After all, multiplexes are also coming up in several tier II cities. Viewers will never stop wanting lavish-looking and fantasy-laden films that take them as far away from the contradictions of contemporary India as possible. Sunny Deol and Suniel Shetty aren’t likely to get their jobs back.

The masala movie died for a reason. It will return only if irony is thrown into the mix—something that both the front-bencher and the multiplex regular know all too well.

Anjaana Anjaani releases on 24 September.

Nandini Ramnath is the film critic of Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).

Road trip: Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra in Anjaana Anjaani.

Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

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Baprola’s babyface Newly crowned world champion wrestler Sushil Kumar talks about his journey from Haryana’s mud pits and claustrophobic hostel rooms to the Olympic medal and international stardom PHOTOGRAPHS

B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA rudraneil.s@livemint.com

··························· ushil Kumar is sitting barechested on his bed as Arvinder Pal Singh, the Indian wrestling team’s physiotherapist, carefully tapes his injured calf muscle. “It’s just a minor tweak,” Kumar says, “(need to) keep the muscle warm.” Kumar’s younger brother Amardeep enters the room holding a red T-shirt with a printed picture of Kumar pinning down an opponent in a tangle of limbs. It’s an iconic photograph, at least in wrestling circles, because it shows Kumar winning the bronze medal fight at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“That’s a good one brother,” Kumar says, before turning his attention to us. “What will you drink? Lassi?

Have you eaten?

Do you want breakfast?”

We are at the Sports Authority of India’s residential training centre for elite wrestlers in Sonepat on the outskirts of Delhi, a place Kumar calls home, and he is adamant that we eat and drink everything that is available at the canteen. His room, which he shares with three other wrestlers and his younger brother, is tiny, with barely enough room to stand next to the beds.

A small TV is perched on top of a steel cupboard, and jars of protein powder take up all the space on top of the solitary table.

It’s not the kind of room you expect India’s first Olympic medallist in wrestling since 1952 to stay in.

“You should have seen how we stayed before I won the medal.” Kumar says in Hindi. “It was a hot, claustrophobic place with 20 people to a room. We

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King of the mat: Kumar says his achievements are finally giving wrestling the impetus it needs.

‘The next generation will benefit hugely from the improved infra­ structure,’ he says.

hardly had enough space to lie down and sleep.”

The 27-year-old wrestler from a small village called Baprola in Haryana is the toast of the international wrestling community after becoming the first Indian to win a gold medal at the World Wrestling Championship in Moscow on 12 September. A win, Kumar himself says, that is bigger than his Olympic medal.

“Wrestlers, officials and journalists from around the world came up to me after the final,” Kumar says. “They knew it was historic. I had beaten world champions, Asian champions and Olympic champions. There was a lot of celebration.”

A look at Kumar’s route to the final shows the extent of his domination—a 6-0 routing of Greece’s Akritidis Anastasios in the second round, a 4-1 triumph over Germany’s Martin Sebastian in the pre-quarters, a 9-1 thrashing of Mongolia’s Buyanjav Batzorig in the quarter-finals.

A few months before the World Championship, Kumar had won gold at the 2010 Asian Wrestling Championship in similar fashion. From a bronze medallist at the 2008 Olympics, Kumar is now the undisputed champion of his category.

But before Kumar’s Olympic medal, wrestling was a sport that hardly crossed the boundaries of the village akhara, the traditional mud pits where heavily oiled wrestlers grapple across rural India. In the two years since Beijing, wrestlers have their own dedicated training centre in Sonepat complete with a state-of-the-art gym, and imported Olympic-standard mats have become ubiquitous at akharas across the country.

“My father was a wrestler who did it the traditional way. And even I began my wrestling in mud pits,” says Kumar. “But these changes were highly needed. Now that all these improvements have begun, our juniors will truly benefit from it.

Now we will churn out international-level wrestlers.”

Kumar’s wrestling career began when he was just 12 and had gone to see his father Diwan

Singh fight in a wrestling bout during a village festival. Kumar was so excited that he repeatedly tried to trip his father after the bout. “I was a pest,” he recalls, “but from the next day my father started training me.”

By the time Kumar was 14, it was evident that he had a gift for the sport, and his father took him to the akhara run by legendary Indian wrestler Satpal Singh at the Chhatrasal Stadium in Delhi.

“That was my introduction to the lifestyle of a wrestler, where you sacrifice everything for the sport, and where your guru and the akhara are the only truths of your existence,” says Kumar.

“Do you know, I’ve never even watched a movie in a theatre?”

Satpal Singh, who coached Kumar through most of the wrestler’s career, says Kumar’s success comes from his singleminded focus and his intensity in training. “He was quite a phenomenon even when he was really young,” says Singh. “If we told him to run a kilometre, he would do five. He would take on senior wrestlers without flinching. He could sustain himself bout after bout without getting demoralized or tired.”

Attributes you can still see clearly when Kumar trains. It’s so intense it’s painful—500 push-ups just to warm up, then 500 squats. Kumar hardly breaks a sweat before he grabs a 20ft rope and starts climbing up using only his arms. He does it quickly and efficiently, his torso rippling with muscles. Then he’s on the mat with a fellow wrestler, grappling, pushing, twisting

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PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

and falling in quick succession.

He is built like a truck, but falls and recovers like a cat.

“Sushil’s success did not come overnight,” says Indian wrestling team’s chief coach Jagminder Singh. “He was the world cadet champion in 1998, the Asian junior champion in 2000, he won a bronze in the 2003 Asian Wrestling Championship. So it has been a long, successful road.”

Despite the long list of successes, it was only after the Olympics that Kumar burst into the limelight. When he landed in Delhi from Beijing, he was stunned at the reception he got.

“I have read of people dying in stampedes, but as a pehelwan I’ve always thought ‘I can’t die, I’ll just push my way through.’” Kumar chuckles.

“But that day I felt fear—I realized even a wrestler can die in this kind of a crowd. This time, when I came back from Moscow, I was prepared.”

Kumar went straight back to training after returning triumphant from the World Championship, without even a day’s rest. Over the weekend, he says, he will go to his village to spend a day with his family.

“But every time I go to my village, everybody I meet—older people, younger people, groups of women—will come and tell me ‘you must work hard’. It’s such a bother!” Kumar says with a laugh. “But I’m glad the Commonwealth Games are in Delhi.

Finally all these people in my village will be able to come and see me fight.”