they have cozy, homely apart-ments with personal atten-tion to guests at competitive

rates, says c. sriram, new delhi-based head for retail assets recov-eries and cv sales at development credit Bank. sriram, who has stayed at 10 Blossoms hospitality services’ apartments in Ahmedabad thrice, describes the experience as ‘good’.

he is not alone: “their services are prompt, they have neat and good apartments in prominent locations, at reasonable rates,” says chetan tolani, who runs engineering and construction company tolani projects in Ankleshwar, gujarat. “i personally stay at their pune proper-ties when i visit pune once or twice a month. my colleagues have stayed at 10 Blossoms’ Ahmedabad proper-ties, too.” Adds madhura s. of Kotak mahindra Bank’s facilities manage-ment group: “the services, hygiene and food quality are decent, and the response by the caretakers is respectable.”

10 Blossoms is the brainchild of heena Kaushis, who shuttles between Ahmedabad and pune, to person-ally oversee the 23 rooms she has in six prime locations in the two cit-ies, with short trips to mumbai and delhi, where she has a strategic alli-ance for a dozen more. Kaushis has come a long way since she ran away from her rich and conservative mus-lim zamindari joint family in Alla-habad to marry a gaur Brahmin from Bhopal with whom she had fallen in love. “i had to sleep on the floor and borrow clothes from friends,” she says. “we were always broke; so, i started going for job interviews when our daughter was just 21 days old, and i had to take her to work when i went on night shift.”

Kaushis, who had first wanted to become a surgeon and joined Ali-garh muslim university; but at 17, she couldn’t stay away from home and dropped out. After a Bsc in

chemistry, she left home again to do her mba from nagpur. it was here that she met Kunwar Kaushis, and fell in love. Back in Allahabad, she took the decision: to leave home and marry him. life was tough for the newly-wed couple in 1999, earning less than `10,000 a month between them; but he got a better job and they shifted to Ahmedabad the following year – so a pregnant Kaushis had to quit her job.

nine years on, after a series of jobs

including good ones with a number of private banks, she got into service apartments – in a partnership they named hi5 – but “there were prob-lems”, and she was left in a mess. “my husband supported me and put in the money to get my cheques cleared,” she says. this support con-tinued: when she decided to carry on the same business on her own and launched 10 Blossoms, she found that she would have to pay a ‘crim-inal’ 17 per cent interest on a gold loan. her knight in shining armour, who was an officer in a bank then, took a loan himself, at one-third that rate, and gave her the money.

Identity verificationtoday, Kaushis says, safety is her biggest priority. “we do not take any walk-in guests; so, we have no unknown people staying with us,” she explains. “we take bookings only on e-mail, so we have an ip address. And we are strict about identity veri-fication. i have had some bad experi-ences in the past, which is probably what led to the split with my first business partner.” At 10 Blossoms, clients are mostly from the corpo-rate sector, nris, medical tourists and families on holidays and vaca-tion rentals. services include com-plimentary breakfast, wi-fi internet facility, electronic security and sur-veillance, daily housekeeping and room service, home-cooked food and laundry.

life as a new entrepreneur was tough, too, especially with the strict standards she was set on. “i’ve even scrubbed the toilets myself, to show my people how they should be!” she says. But the big plus was that she could spend time with her children, sakhi and Kautilya. “work-life bal-ance was horrible when i was in a job,” she grimaces.

having moved to pune when her husband was transferred, she set about establishing service apartments in her new home town, too. next on her agenda is a hospitality institute. “i’ve been a trainer myself, for insur-ance advisors and sales teams,” she points out. “so i can handle this.” she can.

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comfort stations

Kaushis has scrubbed toilets to show her people how to do a good job

A runaway girl now runs a chain of popular service apartments

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“traveling in india is pain-ful,” asserts gautam She-wakramani, 29, ceo of

audiocompass, a cultural informa-tion provider, which offers audio and multimedia tours for some of india’s most popular travel destinations. with many domestic traveling options and airports still sadly lacking in basic infrastructure, this statement may not be as hyperbolic as it sounds. how-ever, Shewakramani, a graduate of the mba programme at the Sloan School of management at mit, aims at improv-ing not the journey, but the tourist’s experience at his destination.

to this end, audiocompass, which was founded in may 2011, and began providing its first tours in august, has produced audio tours for the taj mahal, the agra fort, the Khajuraho temples and Sanchi stupas in madhya pradesh, and the historic district of mumbai.

Shewakramani, who completed his undergraduate degree in computer sci-ence and film from the university of notre dame, has always felt strongly about travel. after graduating, he worked at consulting and financial services firms in the united States, as well as a healthcare start-up company in thailand, before enrolling in busi-ness school. with his family owning and operating several hotels in and around mumbai, “i have close ties with the tourism industry,” he says. “i’m not surprised i started something related to tourism. i guess you could say it’s in my blood.” Shewakramani’s family funded the initial capital expense for audiocompass, though the company is in talks with several venture capital firms to raise funds. tours for the Salar Jung museum in hyderabad, and mumbai neighbour-hoods where many bollywood stars reside are in the pipeline. the team also plans to produce audio tours for other major cities, and hope to come up with one for delhi soon.

the audiocompass team, which includes employees chhavi Sachdev,

creative head, and V. bakshi, general manager, initially collaborated with the ministry of culture to produce their audio tour of the taj mahal, and fixed the price of this tour, available as a downloadable application for smart-phones and tablets, at $1.99, as per the ministry’s suggestions. this price seems to have worked for them, because all their subsequent tours have also been priced at the same amount, probably because “we want to capture the mass market.” today, if one were to visit the taj mahal, an official tour would prob-ably cost almost ̀ 1000, Shewakramani explains. the next best option is to purchase a readable guide of the mon-ument, which provides tourists all the necessary and interesting informa-tion, but also proves unwieldy when attempting to tour the monument and read simultaneously. audiocompass’s audio tour applications, on the other hand, aim to “complement the site, not compete with it.”

when compiling the tour, She-wakramani and Sachdev identify important points of interest, voices that would be appropriate for the narration of the tour, experts such as historians who could contribute

significant information regarding each site, as well as suitable textures and layers, such as music, that would “help recreate an era gone by.” “writ-ing for audio is a completely differ-ent animal,” says Sachdev, 35. “it needs to sound like someone is talk-ing to you, not at you.”

as ardent travellers themselves, Shewakramani and Sachdev saw the lack of “curated” travel content in india. with travel industry becom-ing increasingly dis-intermediated because of the rise in number of internet bookings, “success in the travel business is going to turn into not only about booking and organ-ising travel, but also about filtering and delivering content at the right time, in the correct format that’s rel-evant to the customer,” feels She-wakramani. it is the gap between travel agents and tour guides that audiocompass is trying to bridge.

The road aheadthe company has developed its own android-based tablet, the mX1, for tourists who are unable to down-load their tours, and has partnered up with retail establishments near rele-vant sites that can rent these devices to interested visitors. other proposed partnerships include those with larger travel agencies to increase visibility in terms of large-scaled sales and mar-keting campaigns. with an employee strength of 25, including those peo-ple who work at specific cultural sites, audiocompass is still a small con-cern. however, at the end of the fiscal year of 2011, the number of paying customers who had listened to their tours hit 50,000, and, subsequently, the figures have been 2.5 times the numbers for last year. Shewakra-mani hopes to have outside funding in place by the end of august or early September, and the company intends to use these funds to scale up, and expand business development. “one thing we’re awful at is presenting our culture in a tourist-friendly way,” Sachdev says, reiterating Shewakra-mani’s sentiments. “we’re planning to increase our inventory, and try to cover as many sites as possible. going overseas is a distinct probability.”

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Simplifying travelAudioCompass launches audio tours for Indian tourist sites

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Kolkata-based ritman full-mark inks private limited (a part of the ritman group) has

launched an initiative called ‘easy-fill’, which aims at economic empow-erment of indian women through clean efforts. co-founded by pra-teek bansal and parag majmudar, research for the project started in late 2011. “ritman, during the last 18 years, has primarily been into real estate, before deciding to diver-sify, about four years back,” say the co-founders. “after much thought, we came to the conclusion that green is the way ahead,” they then launched a host of projects including eco-friendly textile printing chem-icals, led lights, easyfill and green construction technology.

majmudar owns the `40 crore ritman group, while bansal, whose father is a friend of the former, came on board once he decided to diver-sify. it was only when Singapore-based fullman came into the picture that the duo decided to give easy-fill a serious thought. “fullman was looking to come to india,” informs bansal. “they have been in the print-ers’ consumables industry since 1966 but have never partnered with any-one. they had won a prize for funi-vac – their vacuum refill technology – which they wanted to promote inother countries.”

easyfill promotes cartridge refill

and reuse. the company already has four stores in Kol-kata and aims to have 300 by the end of the financial year. “it is estimated that a cartridge can take up to 500 years to biodegrade and about 450 million cartridges ends up as waste in landfills globally every year,” says bansal. the social angle was added later, when the found-ers realised that this was something which required an investment of less than a lakh of rupees. “we saw in our research that the market is grossly unorganised (95 per cent). within the organised sector too, the options of entering are expensive. So, we created a model where anybody can easily open an easyfill station,” says majmudar.

Women participationthe company provides all neces-sary resources under the easyfill Sta-tion programme (cartridge refilling station), so that a woman can suc-cessfully run an independent busi-ness. the programme is designed to enhance participation of women towards the development of the local community.

“we are giving out licences only to women, as the package has been especially created for them. we give them everything – training, equip-ment, branding and marketing sup-port. moreover, this business can be

started out of really small real estate spaces, including existing ones such as xerox booths. a 2 ft x 3 ft space is all that is required. we encour-age women, who are already in the service industry. our company also helps them find finance through ngos, etc,” says bansal.

india consumes about 4 million laser and 8 million inkjet cartridges a year and this is growing by 30 per cent annually. easyfill says it wishes to educate the consumer on the benefits of reusing cartridges.

“easyfill has the latest printer refilling technology as well, wherein they use vacuum technology which

not only gives higher qual-ity but is price-competitive too. the unorganised sec-tor refills manually. our turnaround time is 15-20 minutes, whereas the oth-

ers traditionally pick up the cartridge and drop it back

the next day. we encourage our team to refill the cartridge in front of the customer, so that they can see how much ink has gone in,” says bansal, adding that all their inks are iso certified.

currently, only 30 per cent of the population is refilling. most don’t even know that they can refill their cartridges instead of buying new ones. “people think refilling will harm their computers, as the car-tridge refill industry is nascent in india. we charge only `60 for up to 5 ml of black ink refill and `70 for colour, after which we charge `10 for every additional 1 ml. we offer only inkjet and not laser print refills, as they are environment-friendly,” says bansal.

women who open an easyfill coun-ter/shop can expect to make `5,000-15,000 per month. ownership of all stores can only be either with us or the women, who have taken up the shop. they can, of course, hire male employees, if they wish to. “last year alone, over 10 million cartridges were imported into india. we are posi-tioning this programme to become a csr initiative for corporates. overall, the industry has immense scope,” concludes majmudar.

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use and reuseNew green initiative empowers women

Majmudar and

Bansal: clean effort

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po, the dragon warrior in Kung Fu Panda, and his passionate fetish for food are what come

to mind when one hears of food-panda. there couldn’t have been a more apt name. After all, aren’t we all like po when hungry – with noth-ing but food playing on our minds?

inspired by online food order-ing networks such as seamless and grubhub (which started as online portals and then also launched rele-vant mobile apps), Akhilesh Bali and Amit Kohli decided to launch a sim-ilar platform in india called food-panda, to leverage on the increasing influence of social media and online platforms. the platform eliminates the need of dialling and ordering food. one just needs to click to order delectable Chinese dimsums, irre-sistible punjabi chhole kulche or the aromatic prawn malai curry.

foodpanda (www.foodpanda.in) has a tie-up with over 1,000 restaurants in six cities including delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Chan-digarh. the transaction is simple – just visit the web-site and select your area. Check out the restaurants that deliver in your area and place the order after brows-ing through the menu and

choosing the payment mode. there’s even an option of filtering the results according to discounts. once you have placed the order, an sms will confirm the same, apart from sharing with you the expected delivery time.

funding from Rocket internet, a european investor, helped them launch foodpanda in india, which incidentally is also a global venture with operations in over 15 countries. this, as the india chapter, is separate.

Bali and Kohli, at the moment, do not wish to share the quantum of investment or the number of visitors availing the site’s services. “However, our Alexa.com ranking (a website that compares e-commerce portals based on relevant trafiic), in india is within the top 1,000,” says Bali, co-founder of foodpanda and an alum-nus of indian school of Business, Hyderabad. interestingly, Bali’s ear-lier venture, MithaiMate.com, too was related to food. the dessert gifting

portal was essentially an online aggregator of indian sweets, with a network spanning 10

brands and operating in 150 cities. Bali, a funding

partner in the venture, isn’t operationally involved in

it but does look after alli-ances and crm.

“india has a huge potential for online food ordering. Based on the response foodpanda has received from customers in the first six months of operations, the propensity to rely on a service that can get their food delivered in a hassle-free, quick and reliable way is high. even the restau-rants we have enrolled in our network see the potential value of the online food ordering system and, hence, have been keen to come on board,” adds Kohli, the md & co-founder, foodpanda. An iit delhi alumnus, he

was working with Mckinsey, before taking the entrepreneurial plunge.

foodpanda’s immediate plan is to be present in the top 10 cities in india in the next three months

and become the largest food order-ing portal in india. “we are working towards it and the target looks achiev-able,” says Bali. the company has also launched a mobile application to reach out to the customers on the go. their venture has 50 employees.

Others in the clanJusteat.in, another such portal, might give some clues. Ritesh dwivedy, an erstwhile techie, had launched Hun-gryzone in 2006, out of sheer irrita-tion. well, after all, it is not easy for anyone to tolerate the high-decibel tones of colleagues trying to place an order for food on the phone. Back in 2006, it had just 15 restaurants on board. two years later, the ven-ture received its first round of fund-ing from indian Angel network. over time, Hungryzone became Justeat.in with a network of 2,000 restaurants and 300,000 registered users. the site also runs a customer loyalty pro-gramme and allows visitors to book tables at restaurants as well.

A contemporary of foodpanda is dineout, except that it specialises only in booking tables at restaurants. A venture started by four friends about a year back initially had 75 res-taurants in its network. the num-ber has since risen to over 200, with a majority of them offering discount deals. now, it’s even available on the Android and iphone. Clearly, as these ventures prove, hunger does seem to feed ambition generously.

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Hunger busters

The food ordering space just underwent a makeover of sorts

Bali and Kohli:

ambitious plans

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as sales manager for Johnson & Johnson and later brand man-ager for cadbury india, Kiran

murthi had a fair share of dealing with small and medium enterprises, which were struggling to expand their consumer base, but hampered due to financial constraints of adver-tising through traditional medi-ums like print media, billboards and television. “india is now at a digital inflexion point,” says murthi, who is now director of the recently devel-oped getitbazaar.com. “today, sell-ers and buyers both are looking at a rapidly shifting online, namely onto technology-powered platforms, which will enable them to scale up their business.”

murthi is talking of india’s 47 million small and medium enter-prises, which people commonly refer to as mom-and-pop stores, which sell a variety of products for daily use that is not available on large e-com-merce websites. and he knows what he is doing. according to a report prepared by google and ficci, only 5 per cent of the smes in india have websites and those who use the inter-net fare much better than those who do not. web-enabled smes boast of 51 per cent higher revenues, 49 per cent more profit and 7 per cent broader customer bases than their offline-only counterparts.

realising this, murthi has decided to set up a platform that helps small sellers and businesses from across the country find new buyers. So, while a buyer had to rely a printed telephone directory and a circular dial phone as the medium of transaction, murthi now guides them to use digital access, such as mobile apps, websites and voice-inbound calling.

Common platform“askmebazaar is an extension of the same principle of connecting seller and buyer into transactions,” says murthi. “here, we have built a

common distribution, logistics, pay-ment and settlement infrastructure for all our 6 million plus sellers on the getit platform.”

replicating a typical india bazaar, online, getitbazaar.com allows cus-tomers to purchase anything from anywhere in india. the only differ-ence is that, unlike ebay or flipkart, the sellers are small and medium enterprises, with products divided into two groups – consumer dura-bles (electronic goods, apparels, home furnishings, appliances, décor, games, jewellery, handicrafts, etc) and industrial products (switches, motors, transformers, switchgear, chemicals, dyes, rubber, etc).

thanks to getitbazaar.com, today, distributors in every city are witness-ing activity. in towns as spread out as Jodhpur to aizwal, 8,000 odd mer-chants are on the platform now and the tally is likely to touch 200,000 by december 2015.

but due to the reach – the national infrastructure and the local seller networks – murthi has been wit-nessing transactions in altogether new product categories, which have

traditionally not been transacted on the online-retail medium. even home entrepreneurs are now using this plat-form to sell their products, ranging from ‘plant and crop care’ products such as trishul and arjun, which help in increasing crop yield to urja Saur sunpower solar lantern and wipro Smartlite classic 15 watts cfl bulb.

“internet is the vehicle of the future, which will now explode with the growth of smartphones, which will benefit e-commerce in a big way,” says rajan anandan, vice-pres-ident and managing director, google india. “smes are waking up to the power of the internet and e-com-merce will be extremely beneficial to the economy in the long run.”

what is helping getitbazaar.com is the fact that a large number of sales is coming from small towns, which are generally ignored by large e-com-merce platforms. currently, a free ser-vice for any merchant in india who wishes to open his online store and list as many products as he wants, the only cost is a simple transaction fee of `100 (or 2.5 per cent of a suc-cessful transaction) that is charged, though heavy and bulky items may be charged extra. with the prom-ise of delivery within 24 hours, get-itbazaar.com helps customers, who are otherwise completely ignored by other larger players, who depend on courier networks for distribution and payments.

to help the consumer, getit- bazaar.com has joined hands with buying iq to launch a new service ‘easybuy’, which offers online pric-ing with the convenience of buy-ing locally, including home delivery, warranty and installation. also, with 99 labels, a pioneer in online deals, it has launched a new service called dealguru, which will collect prod-uct deals across categories from smes and brands across the country, so that buyers can find a large variety of deals to choose from in one place.

“three factors – mobile as a com-munication device, mobile as an access point to services, and mobile as an identity – have changed the way e-commerce works in india,” says murthi confidently.

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Small is beautifulgetitbazaar.com helps even kirana stores expand their business

Murthi: connecting buyers and sellers

GetitBazaar.com

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imagine a railway employee whocan’t understand a shunting order

he gets from a station master, in eng-lish. He connects a bogey or engine to a train on the wrong track – and crash! That will no longer be the case, with the Centre for Railways information services (cris) having implemented a sap system to print shunting orders in Hindi as well. “We localised it,” says atul Tulshibagwale (left), chief execu-tive officer, Linguanext, headquar-tered in san Jose, us.

The biggest business for the start-up is banking, says president and chief operating officer Rajeevlochan Phadke, who set up the Pune-based imagepoint Technologies which Lin-guanext acquired late last year. “One hundred per cent of the enterprise market for application language is with us,” he says. “Rather than list-ing clients, it’s easier to name the few that are not!”

Phadke, who quit the Centre for development of advanced Comput-ing (c-dac) to venture out on his own, hit an air-pocket as soon as he started imagepoint, in 2001: the it bust, and he got into the red. He finally began product development only in 2005, focussing on the domestic banking sector. Linguanext, which Tulshibag-wale set up in mid-2009, was in a sim-ilar business in the non-indian mar-ket. “There’s even a need to translate us english to uK english, depending on the vertical in which a particular word is used,” he explains.

Prominent markets abroad are the us, the Middle east, africa and europe. Linguanext has no direct

competition, as the technology is highly innovative and has not been achieved by anyone else in the world “that we know of”, There are two main sources of competition. Ven-dor supplied local-language capability achieving this is difficult and main-taining such local-language capabil-ity becomes hard for the vendor, as successive versions of the product are released). Third-party localisation services they achieve this by modify-ing the source code of the original software, and sometimes providing semi-automated tools to discover and possibly modify the software.

Linguanext’s big success story was with what they refer to only as ‘asia’s largest bank’, obviously state Bank of india, with more than 16,000 branches as of 2009, eight associated branches and a presence in 32 coun-tries, with a history of more than 200 years. a leading multinational software and services company had failed to solve the localisation chal-lenge in nine months, as had a cou-ple of third-party vendors over the following year.

BreakthroughLinguanext brought in its ‘sPeed’ suite – and voila! in six months flat, 200,000-plus users across all the branches were conducting transac-tions in Hindi and eight regional languages. The software, named for its ability to separate the trans-lation of screen, print and docu-ment output from the application, doesn’t affect users who don’t need localisation. “after three years of

deployment, we are now into our first major upgrade,” Phadke says.

Most of the other public-sector banks followed. Private banks have just begun to get into local languages, Phadke points out. insurance compa-nies have also started using indian languages. along the way, the com-pany tied up with sage software, a part of the £1.4 billion sage group, to work with banks in the Middle east in languages. “Linguanext worked with us on a key initiative for saudi arabia,” says a ‘satisfied and happy’ Vikram suri, managing director, Middle east & india. “Their flexibil-ity and willingness to work together brought us closer. The models that we put in place were win-win.”

at tcs, with which Linguanext participated in the core banking and passbook printing implementations for Bank of Maharashtra, ashutosh Gulanikar, vice-president, e-serve domestic collection and customer service, says: “There was no competi-tion... to their solution for building multilingual capability in our core banking solution application.” tcs, which is ‘very satisfied’ with the so-lution, is now looking at expanding the relationship.

Tulshibagwale points out that about 95 per cent of the economy is domestic – especially agriculture. “so, if most people are comfortable transacting in the local language, it should enable that. You can’t lever-age it to increase your business if it’s not available in your language. it’s an obvious value proposition for private companies, too.”

With close to 100 people and rev-enues of about `10 crore, Linguan-ext is now looking at the increasing importance being given to e-gover-nance. (The company has been prof-itable and growing for the last four years; they’re reluctant to quote a fig-ure, but indicate a net of 30 per cent.) “it’s the new emerging market this year,” says Phadke. With documents like death certificates vital to claim inheritance over land, it’s necessary to make these understandable to the people who need them. as e-gover-nance grows, the scope for more such players will obviously expand, too.

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LinguaNext indifies banking applications and others

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not only has india added as much wealth in the past seven years as it had in the

first 60 years of independence, but the total individual wealth in the country is also expected to double to `179 lakh crore in the next four years – up from the current `92.26 lakh crore! these figures, thrown up by the recent India Wealth Report 2012, must be music to the ears of abhishek dadlani, founder & ceo, lushescapes.

and why should it not be? dadlani’s enterprise lushescapes spe-cialises in offering customised luxury travel experiences to the discern-ing. think of watching a polar bear game in alaska, staying at a wilder-ness camp in the jungles of uganda, seeing the northern lights in scandi-navia, an expedition to antarctica, a sit-down dinner hanging above the skyline of las Vegas or renting a pri-vate island in the Bahamas. luxury travel is all about crafting experiences that are exclusive, different, bespoke. however, above all these factors, feels dadlani, is the aspect of service deliv-ery. in fact, it was this realisation that prompted him to launch lushescapes five years ago.

“i am quite passionate about trav-elling,” says 30-year-old dadlani, a former banker. “though i used to spend $15,000-20,000 on a vacation, i never got the services that befit that spend. there was a huge need gap

waiting to be filled in and i decided to take the plunge. the idea was to ensure flawless delivery.”

the immediate trigger for the enterprise perhaps came from his stay at an ultra-luxe resort in the maldives during the 2007 new year’s holidays. to his surprise, he didn’t come across a single indian there. the opportunity was clearly visible. a self-confessed ‘impulsive’ person-ality, dadlani, armed with a desktop, started the enterprise from the sec-ond room of his house. the tell-tale signs of a start-up were all there.

Customer satisfactionfinancially, the plunge trans-lated into an investment of `1.69 crore of personal savings. Backed by year-long intensive research, he began with a portfolio of six desti-nations in 2008… the conviction paid off and the capital break-even came in just two year’s time. most of the capital investment went into establishing direct links with the service providers, such as hotels and tourism boards.

lushescapes, portfolio has since expanded to cover unique travel experiences across 45 destinations and its client base has increased to 1,000 people, 20 per cent of which are repeat customers. growing at 35 per cent year-on-year, the enterprise has already clocked in an annual

turnover of over $1 million. the underlining philosophy of increas-ing customer satisfaction led to increased yield.

dadlani, an alumnus of the indian institute of foreign trade (iift), delhi, now divides his time between the india and dubai office. he set up the latter about 10 months ago and has already generated 300 custom-ers from the region since, 60 per cent of them are indians! his team now includes five business development executives in dubai and an equal number in india.

“i chose dubai because it is at the cross-roads of lux-

ury,” explains dadlani. “the feedback has been quite good. we are plan-ning to set up brick & mortar offices in other

regions now. the going has been good so far and we need to sustain it. india is a nascent market and,

hence, the need to branch out. in the next 18 months we should mark our presence in moscow (to cater to cis and russia) and hong Kong (that’ll also cater to mainland china),” he adds. meanwhile, lushescapes’ online platform will continue to play a vital role as the “cost of acquiring a customer through the medium is low”.

having displayed commendable resilience in the face of economic turbulence, the emerging markets of india and china are undoubt-edly the focus of luxury vendors such as &Beyond, Quintessentially, abercrombie & Kent. according to a recent report by Euromonitor, india is set to overtake china as the world’s fastest-growing market for luxury goods in 2012. driven by an explo-sion in the number of rich people, it will grow at an average rate of 22 per cent a year over the next five years to reach $7 billion in value by 2017. china, during the same period, will grow by 15 per cent. here’s a case in point: harrods, london, recently launched a dedicated mandarin lan-guage app for its chinese shoppers.

yes, some more music for dadlani’s ears…as also for his fraternity.

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selling experiencesLushEscapes is harnessing the demand for luxury travel in India

Dadlani: ensuring flawless delivery

LushEscapes

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when 25-year-old arjun gadkari and 35-year-old abhay Jaiswal set out

to scope business opportunities in the indian market a few years ago, it didn’t start out with the inten-tion of setting up their own chain of f&b outlets. both from diverse back-grounds, gadkari had just completed his graduation in italian and linguis-tics from oxford university in the uK, where he was brought up, while Jaiswal, who holds an mba from the london School of business was work-ing as a management consultant at pwc in london, catering to clients in the financial services sector such as goldman Sachs, deutsche bank and ladbroke’s, among others.

their interest and passion for all things culinary, combined with doing something entrepreneurial in the indian market brought them together to discuss various busi-ness ideas. “whatever we brain-stormed about invariably led us to the food industry,” says gadkari, co-founder & president, nilgai foods – right from food processing ventures to packaged and ready to eat foods. “the market had great potential,” adds Jaiswal, co-founder & ceo, nil-gai foods. “what we noticed was the lack of upscale take-away joints, targeting the corporate crowd and offering packaged and ready-to-eat, fresh foods and meals. Something along the lines of a prêt a manger,

Sainsbury’s or even carluc-cio’s in the uK for instance, which retails its own brand of packaged foods,” they add.

in early 2011 the duo experimented with their flagship brand, café pico, serving up bistro fare at the le mill store in South mumbai. alongside, they also set up pico express, which served up a variety of meals on the go, (desserts, salads, coffees, wraps & sandwiches, etc) in convenient pack-aging, with the first outlet in nir-lon Knowledge park, goregaon. “we felt we could replicate a similar busi-ness model in india with the scope to retail our own packaged products and combined this under one con-cept with pico,” says Jaiswal. pooling in resources amounting to a “few mil-lion dollars” (the duo hasn’t divulged exact figures) and backed by the gad-kari family, (his father Vilas gadkari, is a successful hedge fund manager in the uK) they formally established nilgai foods in march 2011.

while the second outpost of café pico at phoenix marketcity in mum-bai got them critical acclaim, they tasted commercial success with pico express. “and that’s where our focus is going to be,” they say, referring to the growth plans they’ve chalked out for the brand. their central kitchen in goregaon despatches food daily to the five pico express outlets across the city. plans are on to increase this number to 10 by the end of the year.

“we’re focused on being present in corporate parks, corporate cafete-rias, kiosk formats and the like,” they say, adding that scaling up is easier considering that the concept doesn’t call for heavy investments with the minimum being around `7 lakh for 120 sq ft or more.

the duo is now focusing on their line of gourmet food products. while they currently retail products like jams and sauces at their outlets as well as stores like godrej’s nature’s basket and gourmet west, they are looking to expand their product line with a variety of salad dressings, chilli sauces, condiments, choco-

lates, cookies, biscottis and more under the brand name pico; 16 of these are made in-house while the remaining three products are outsourced.

Raising fundson the agenda are plans to place these products in modern retail stores across cities like delhi, pune, bangalore, Jaipur and mumbai. “over the next three months we should be placed in about 700-1,000 stores. over a year’s time we hope to be in 25-30 cities across 7,000-odd stores,” they say. while the business hasn’t broken even yet, (they say that around 50 per cent of funds have gone towards product development) they expect to break-even by some-time next year. over time around 70 to 80 per cent of revenues could come from the processed foods business.

the scalability however will require external funding, talks for which are currently ongoing, they say. Jaiswal points out that they could well be looking at a few rounds of funding. “we’d be looking to raise around `15-20 crore in the first round which will be used for growing the distribu-tion chain. in 5-7 years’ time we could even be looking at an ipo,” he says.

getting into the e-commerce business is something they envision doing over time. the prospect of franchising is also being considered where, “we could look at franchis-ing 40-50 pico express stores in more markets in india.” the foodie trail has only just begun for this duo.

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on a foodie trail

Although in early stages of

expansion, Nilgai Foods is betting

big on the Indian F&B market

Jaiswal and Gadkari: looking to expand

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much of the investment bank-ing world was surprised when Falguni nayar quit

Kotak mahindra bank at the peak of her career as head, investment bank-ing to strike out on her own. “beauty consumption is growing very rapidly in india,” says nayar, founder and ceo, nykaa.com. in beauty, she sees “a market that’s going to be massive”, what with india’s burgeoning middle class. e-commerce has been balloon-ing as well, and nayar says that she wanted to be at the intersection of the two sectors.

“the main thing we’re trying to achieve is to create an engagement with our audience,” explains nayar. nykaa, a subsidiary of fsn e-com-merce Ventures, owned by nayar and her husband sanjay, who is the ceo of kkr india, is only around two months old. it is already getting 1,800 vis-itors and 25 orders per day, and has 42,000-odd ‘likes’ on its Facebook page. the website has an online mag-azine, the Beauty Book, which features pieces on various beauty regimens, makeup tutorials and more.

“i don’t want to be a compre-hensive solution to all your needs”, but a “one-stop beauty destination” like us-based independent beauty retailer sephora, says nayar. she cites the examples of travel sites such as tripadvisor, which “have become so powerful” through their user-based hotel ratings, and hopes for nykaa to emulate them. to this end, the web-site features expert advice from nutri-tionists, cosmetologists, etc, and also allows for customer reviews of the products. soon, the website will also feature brand videos, so she aims for it to be continually optimised to ade-quately support these.

nayar compiled a list of 300 brands that she wanted to make available, and means to be an official retailer of all these brands, as opposed to some other websites that simply buy these products, and resell them to

customers. many of these offer steep discounts, but nayar has chosen not to do so for nykaa. moreover, unlike many e-commerce websites, she does not provide free shipping on all products, only on orders above `700. if a company has its own scheme, or discount, then she intends to offer it to her customers, but, she says, “i’d rather sell a shade of lipstick that is right for you,” than offer one that is simply cheaper. she has convinced brands such as the body shop, which has its own website for india, to come on board. “the problem with a product website is that only a convinced buyer will go to it,” nayar states, whereas a consumer will visit a third-party retailer like nykaa not for a particular brand or product, but for a category, such as anti-dandruff shampoo, or lotions for dry skin. “there is a lot of clutter in beauty,” she opines. “customers need a lit-tle more hand-holding in the area of beauty purchasing.”

margins in beauty products are not very high, only around 20 per cent, says nayar, who is aiming for

nykaa to break even in the next 12-18 months. she is hoping to reach 100 orders per day within the next cou-ple of months, and 300-400 orders per day soon after that. “sixty per cent of the demand on e-commerce websites come from category b and c towns,” says nayar. “i get people visiting from 20-30 cities.” she does not believe in “artificially target-ing” customers who might be more inclined to buy higher-end beauty products. despite the segmentation in the market, a consumer might pur-chase a varied basket of products. For example, “they may not buy a luxury soap, but may buy a luxury skincare cream,” she elucidates.

Consumer marketingshe is planning to engage in market-ing for special occasions, such as the upcoming Valentine’s day, and is cur-rently utilising google and Facebook marketing. right now, hits to her website comprise 50 per cent from the paid search category and 30 per cent from Facebook, while the rest are organic, i.e. people simply typing ‘nykaa’ into their search engines.

when asked about her move from banking to e-commerce, nayar explains that she has always dreamt of being an entrepreneur, and that her background in finance has helped her concentrate on consumer market-ing and general management, while outsourcing things like the compa-ny’s legal and accounting functions. nykaa’s headcount, currently around 14 people, is focussed primarily on the website. having worked on ipos for various large companies over the years, she says she has built the cred-ibility necessary to leverage these relationships to nykaa’s advantage.

the name nykaa comes from the word ‘ashtanayaka’, or the ‘moods of the actress’, and nayar says she morphed it to make it more unique, and easy to trademark. while wom-an-centric, the website also has a section for men, and nayar also has plans in the future to create a sis-ter website, similar to a travel web-site, with curated content regarding recommendations for spas, fitness centres and the like.

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beauty is not skin deepNykaa is positioning itself as a one-stop-beauty-shop

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Falguni: beautiful business idea

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founded in 1921 as a firm man-ufacturing only cinema chairs, pen workers seating co has

successfully expanded and is now the country’s leader in the field. however, it faces tough competition from china, as the 93-year-old com-pany emerges as a leading exporter in the asean market, looking for its next stage of growth.

pen workers, now run by Anmol Kashmiri, a fourth-generation entre-preneur who joined the family busi-ness in 1989, looks to capitalise on their vast experience in manufactur-ing seats, coupled with their quick adaptability and customisation skills, to deliver a quality final product, as the company looks to capture growth in the asean region with its tagline: ‘our effort is your comfort’. Accord-ing to Kashmiri, “there is dearth of a good brand that represents quality and innovation in the export mar-ket,” where pen workers competes with cheap chinese products.

“china is cost-effective in furni-ture manufacturing,” says Kashmiri, while, “we don’t compromise with quality.” pen is the quality of wood with which cinema chairs are made and company has been named after the people who work on pen wood.

business at pen workers has been lopsided, depending on market con-ditions as it grew steadily during 1921-80, primarily making cinema hall chairs, with some orders also coming in for auditorium chairs. “the worst phase was during 1980-95, when vcr was growing; business had collapsed totally and cinemas were closing down,” adds Kashmiri.

from 1997 onwards, as the busi-ness slowly picked up momentum, pen workers captured the opportu-nity to expand into the manufactur-ing of chairs for stadia, class rooms, waiting areas and home theatres. “when the multiplex concept came to india and auditoriums were given

importance due to cultural reasons, the business again started to grow. the transformation from a company making seats for cinema halls to one providing public seating, took place around 1997,” adds Kashmiri.

pen workers make chairs that require installation. “we can adapt and customise to the requirements of any customer needs, as we are fully into manufacturing”, says Kashmiri, adding that, “these days, many are becoming traders by importing and selling, but, we want to retain the identity of a manufacturing concern, as it gives us advantages in terms of flexibility, quality, adaptability, speed, customisation and pricing”. A 20,000 sq ft factory in goregaon, mumbai, makes 30,-35,000 seats every year. All pen worker seats carry a five-year war-ranty against manufacturing defects. “pen workers seats stand for quality and innovation,” adds Kashmiri.

pen workers’ target audience is not retail, though the trend today is for recliners. they have a lot of demand coming from retail customers, who want recliners for home theatre, the prices of which range from `20,000 to `40,000. “we’ve been growing at an average of 10-12 per cent in the last 10 years. it’s not a high margin business, the gross margin being about 20 per cent,” adds Kashmiri.

the average turnover for the

company is `12-15 crore. out of the 2,500 projects that

pen workers have com-pleted so far, more than 2,000 (80 per cent) have been for cinema halls. A r&d division is not

required at pen workers seating co. “every cus-

tomer provides r&d assis-tance to us,” says Kashmiri, as

customer (the architect, in this case) takes care of the customisation/r&d required. “we’re the first option for leading architects in india, which also helps us understand world trends,” adds Kashmiri.

Banking on exportsrecent projects of pen workers seat-ing co include orders from the national sports club of india (audi-torium: 3,300 seats); r city mall (cinema: 2,500 seats); subroto roy sahara stadium (45,000 seats); edu-cational institute (svkm college: 1,100 seats) and cine star shah rukh Khan’s house mannat in mumbai (60 seats). pen workers has also worked on the stadium for commonwealth games in delhi in 2007-08. “seats are installed in the end and i’m the last guy to leave the cinema or proj-ect ready,” adds Kashmiri.

employees work on either contrac-tual or payroll basis. there are 70-80 employees in manufacturing, 15 in marketing and 30-35 employees in teams of five each to manage instal-lation of seats. when big orders are to be delivered in a short span of time, contract workers are hired and that is one of the major challenges. cur-rently, pen workers is working on seat orders for 7-8 theatres, all of them opening on 8 August. “the work is time bound. logistics and hr are two critical parts of this business,” says Kashmiri, as delivering and installing seats at the site on time is crucial.

“we’re confident about the next 5-10 years, as we’re also looking at increasing exports,” says Kash-miri, talking about growth targets and plans. “on the basis of the export opportunities, we’re targeting to double our revenues in the next 4-5 years.”

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sitting prettyPen Workers, leader in cinema hall seat making in India, now plans to export its products

Kashmiri (inset): delivering quality products

Pen Workers

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Outdoor advertising may still not be a preferred medium of choice for many a brand

and agency, given how its contin-ued lag behind mediums like radio and new media. even today, ooh (Out of home) makes up a small percentage of the total media reve-nue pie. but harjaap singh mann, founder ceo & md, proof of per-formance data services, is hoping to bring some change to that situa-tion. mann, who’s been an entrepre-neur for most his life, began looking towards outdoors for additional rev-enue streams, when he was working around physical security for gated complexes in delhi. that’s when the idea for his venture, proof of perfor-mance, came about.

“the market was disorganised and fragmented,” says mann, referring to the business plan he then drew up in 2010 around data analytics in out-door advertising to participate in the et power of ideas campaign. “even today, it continues to lack structure owing to barely any accountabil-ity and measurement of roi”. this was selected among the top 15 plans submitted from 16,000 such appli-cations. following an incubation workshop at the iim-ahmedabad campus, where his venture was seed-funded by the centre for innovation, incubation & entrepreneurship (ciie) for about `20 lakh, pop was finally off the ground.

the real challenge, though, was convincing brands to increase their expenditure towards ooh. a lot of the brands we met had minimal investments towards outdoors, he points out, owing to factors such as revenue leakages and barely-there scientific measurement. it was only after pursuing brands with real-time information, using their data analyt-ical tools, that the business started gaining some traction.

what pop does is to capture and

create an archive of real-world data on the cloud. the cloud platform then analyses this data to extract information for various industry sec-tors. vehicle mounted infrastruc-ture is used to capture real time videos spanning more than 12,000 km every month, after which a data mining algorithm extracts informa-tion from these videos and annotates the data within the video as per the client’s requirement. brands, media owners and agencies can then use this data to plan, monitor and anal-yse their campaigns. “today, we can offer information right from which brand is using which billboard and where, costs involved, share of visi-bility and expenses, the average dis-tance between the billboards used by a brand and its competition, among other aspects,” says mann.

the company tracks an inventory of about 60,000 hoardings across 30 cities in india, with mumbai and delhi, making up the biggest chunk. it has also grown the business with three product lines, which include a planning tool, comparative analytics

and compliance audits. it has also added on a clutch of clients, includ-ing star tv, itc foods, dabur and the bhartiya Janata party in delhi. bjp has enlisted the use of pop’s tools to analyse the congress’s outdoor activ-ities for the upcoming delhi state elections. what’s interesting about these tools, says mann, is that the demand for such analytics is com-ing from non-outdoor users as well as such as radio, or even vc firms for that matter.

Going internationalmann admits that it’s still an uphill task when it comes to convincing brands. this year too spends on out-door seem to be restricted. according to ficci-kpmg’s Media & entertainment report 2013, ooh is expected to grow at a cagr of 8.3 per cent during 2013-17, while digital and transient media are expected to drive this segment, going forward. estimates indicate that the current market size stands at about `2,000 crore. mann points out that at the moment, there is a lot of inter-est from real estate, fmcg, e-com-merce and bfsis in the outdoor space, but the real strength lies in the tier ii and tier iii cities, where more and more brands are looking to engage with consumers.

pop is also in talks to go inter-national. On the anvil are plans to enter bangladesh as well as canada. the previous year saw them raise an undisclosed amount in fund-ing from YourNest angel fund, an early stage vc firm. this year also saw advertising industry veteran p. v. Narayanamoorthy come on board as a director. while the busi-ness hasn’t broken even yet, mann says that, with most of the invest-ments going towards building their tools, the company expects to break even sometime next year. it is tar-geting a turnover of `6 crore by the end of this year. “the proof of our performance then will lie in how we are able to grow this industry, going forward,” he signs off.

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breaking through the clutterThis relatively new start-up hopes to change the game in the outdoor advertising space

Mann: hoping to change the situation

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pune-based software professional ankit Khandelwal finds sheep-stop’s t-shirts ‘quite good with

witty designs’, good to wear at work, home and outside. a regular cus-tomer for the past three years since he discovered them through twitter, he finds the tees and badges ‘trendy’, besides making good gifts. “i usually go for tees that express my thoughts, my beliefs and my likes,” he says. “i buy them once or twice every couple of months, or when i find one that is too irresistible.”

pallavi chibber, who works for an online portal, goes one step further than just liking sheepstop: “i am practically in love with it,” she says. she too has bought tees from the online portal at least once every two months since she discovered it two years ago on twitter. “what sheep-stop has done brilliantly is brought the warmth and the human touch to an otherwise impersonal space.”

sheepstop founder bhagyashri dixit says she was always interested in art – she even won a painting award from the president, when she was still at school. at hyderabad’s indian school of business, where she stud-ied in 2005-06 after an engineering degree with information technology and the mandatory two years’ experi-ence in an erp firm, she was president of the art and craft society. “i always wanted to pursue art, but i thought it would be only a hobby – it is not a profession in india, unless you are a husain!” she says. but after she went to the us, then returned to mum-bai and moved to pune following her marriage, she got the support of her husband parag – a ph d in mechanical engineering – to set up her business.

true to us lore, it is a garage start-up – literally, with their car parked outside in the compound of their bungalow. dixit picked up a few other things from the us: organic clothing and online marketing. “the excitement of shopping online

was missing in india,” she explains. when she launched sheepstop.org, she had no experience of design, so she went in for yet another ameri-can import: crowd-sourcing. “all our designing is done by artists outside,” she says. “their names are printed on the tags, so customers can follow their work and check if they have any new designs they like.”

after online marketing came the ‘bets’ – which customers can dou-ble when the designs they suggest are selected. says Khandelwal: “the twbid (sheepstop’s social media experiment) auction that they organise around their birthday week in september is a wonderful event where you can get your favourite tees put up at your bidding price. i wait for it every year.” adds chibber: “the best feature of sheepstop is they have the best material for t-shirts, the designs are amazing – but their ser-vice is what stands apart.” she also describes a ‘heart-warming’ incident when she had stopped being active on the site. “they reached out to me asking how come they don’t see me around any longer. i told them that i had been hospitalised for almost a

month after a paralytic stroke. a cou-ple of days later, there was a beautiful ‘get well soon’ card at my doorstep.”

dixit explains how sheepstop’s tees are really organic: “we buy only cotton that has been grown with biofertilisers,” she says. “the dyes we use are also azo-free and certified ecotex 100 (that they do not have any red, brown, or yellow acidic or basic dyes derived from amino compounds). and our efflu-ent is treated with reverse osmo-sis before discharge.” her target crowd, youth, appreciates all this. “Organic, promoting artists, great feel of the t-shirt as it breathes bet-ter, cool crowd sourced designs, envi-ronmentally responsible dyeing and printing are the features i like,” says pavan iyengar, a project fellow with iiser (indian institute of science, education and research), pune.

Amazing responsegeetika, a lawyer by qualification and the brains behind pyjama party – agrees that the ‘organic’ factor is“most definitely the best part” about sheepstop. “i love the fact that they promote an eco-friendly lifestyle and people can do their part by just buy-ing a tee,” she says. at retail store chemical locha, however, promoter pooja mayee, says organic is not that important for her customers. “i would say the designs and the price are the best feature,” she adds.

sheepstop delivers all over india, as well as to 17 international desti-nations, including australia and new zealand, a number of european coun-tries, hong Kong, the uK and the us. while shipping is free in india, it pro-vides customers with the best inter-national shipping deals at the first checkout stage. dixit, who has now started holding exhibition-sales in stores and at company events, has found the response ‘amazing’: “i didn’t anticipate such participation and appreciation,” she says. “it’s very satisfying.” currently selling 1,000-plus t-shirts a month with a turn-over of ̀ 60 lakh last year, she wants to make eco-friendliness a part of daily life. “the youth of today will take this to future generations!” she adds.

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good grazingAn infotech graduate is making organic clothes more meaningful

Dixit ‘imported’ some US concepts

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sandeep aggarwal (39), founder & ceo, shopclues.com, has had a cerebral-driven career in

the internet technology space. as an equity and internet analyst on the wall street, aggarwal provided research coverage on global internet giants such as google, eBay, ama-zon, yahoo!, Microsoft, expedia, priceline, netflix, digitalriver, gsi commerce, etc. prior to wall street, aggarwal used to work with technol-ogy giant Microsoft at its headquar-ters in seattle and also ran strategy planning for schwab.com in san francisco. Before moving abroad, aggarwal had worked with Kotak Mahindra and was co-founder of a small boutique investment banking firm called savitri financial services, set up in his home town chandigarh in the early 1990s.

But what hit him most was that, in 2010, makemytrip.com became a listed entity on the nasdaq. “i noticed that india had arrived. it was ready for e-commerce,” explains aggar-wal, a frequent traveller between the us and india. this development gave birth to the idea of setting up shopclues.com in mid-2011.

founded in silicon Valley, shop-clues.com’s operations moved to india when aggarwal shifted back a few months after its soft launch. By January 2012, shopclues.com was fully active here. since then, shop-clues has emerged as one of india’s fastest growing e-commerce destina-tions. “when we entered the mar-ket we were the 35th entrant in the indian e-commerce space. now, we have risen to be among the top five destinations,” affirms aggarwal. currently, shopclues handles over 150,000 transactions a month, with over 6 million monthly visitors. its current annualised revenue works out to `175 crore and it aims to cross `350 crore in the current year.

shopclues.com’s business model is simple. it acts as a fully managed

marketplace that connects buyers and sellers online, giving them a trusted and safe online shopping experience. “with our customer centric approach we provide the online shopping expe-rience to our customers – starting from the great selection, low price, ease of use and fast delivery. we do not carry inventories like flipkart and others, but we handle the shipping and logistics part,” explains aggar-wal. shopclues has some 10,000 mer-chants enrolled, of which 95 per cent are from the sme sector.

last month, it also launched offi-cial brand online stores, with close to 200 of them on board. an official brand store includes brands having their own online store at shopclues.com or a dealer/distributor specially authorised by the brands to run offi-cial brand store at shopclues.com. some of the brands having their offi-cial brand store at shopclues are sony, toshiba, nokia, panasonic, hcl,

Kingston, arrow, htc, philips, sun-flame, Jaipan, inalsa, jbl, Kent ro, whirlpool, Videocon, Morphy rich-ards, Videocon, alcatel, giordano, sieko, Vox, swipe telecom, park ave-nue, galileo, cavinkare, ferns n pet-als, Maxima, titan, citizen, etc.

Silicon angelsBesides his own investment of $250,000, aggarwal has so far raised over $15 million in funding. the first round of $2 million came from a group of marquee angel investors from silicon Valley. this was followed by investments from venture capital firms. in a tough market, in March 2013, the company has raised close to $10 million (`54 crore) from helion Venture partners and nexus Venture partners. nexus Venture partners had previously led the series a investment in the company in february 2012.

“we believe that the time is ripe for smaller businesses to jump onto the online retail bandwagon, given the deep entrenchment of online shopping among indian consum-ers. in fact, smaller businesses may lose their share of the marketplace, if they do not have an online strat-egy in place. this is why shopclues.com is relevant, and the platform has already proved invaluable to numer-ous merchants. the growth we’ve seen in this company is proof of its leadership and vision,” says sanjeev aggarwal, senior managing direc-tor, helion advisors, who joined the shopclues board last year.

“we have been impressed with shopclues.com’s differentiated approach to e-commerce that is highly scalable and capital-efficient. the team at shopclues is single-mindedly focussed on execution and is solving fundamental issues for e-commerce by bringing india-centric innova-tions, based on their global learning,” adds anup gupta from nexus.

even as online retail comes of age in india, with over 10 million users, there are several small and medium businesses in the country that strug-gle to garner a toe-hold in this grow-ing marketplace. this is exactly what companies like shopclues.com wants to address.

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a vital shopping toolShopClues.com is changing the face of e-commerce in India

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Aggarwal: Internet savvy

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the list of participating com-panies might as well be a list of top indian corporate enti-

ties. hdfc bank, mahindra group, wockhardt, tata steel, marriott hotels, godrej, cipla, Vedanta and deutsche bank are there, along with anz, toyota, bloomberg, sony and others. they may not be com-peting in their businesses in this arena, they are vying to be the ‘most active company’.

the arena is stepathlon, a virtual platform that urges participants to walk 10,000 steps – active or even incidental – a day for 100 days. “the previous edition of the 100 day race witnessed participation from 31,000 stepathletes from 210 companies,” says ravi Krishnan, ceo, stepathlon. “we have exceeded 60,000 this year from approximately 300 companies. stepathlon is therefore actively pro-moting an ecosystem of health and wellbeing leading to better produc-tivity at the workplace. Our language is steps.”

Krishnan and partner shane bils-borough founded stepathlon as a race around the virtual world, in a fun, team-based way for employees to stay active. the specific number of 10,000 is the minimum number of steps recommended by health experts to ensure a positive health benefit to anyone. a hundred days is good time to form a habit, he explains. every stepathlete is given a pedome-ter – called budd-e, which counts the number of steps they take in a day. the initial seed money for the proj-ect reportedly was `9 crore, which came from personal funds from the two partners, along with ‘an undis-closed private investor’.

Krishnan points to the huge cost of health-related issues in india. “indians, including indian corporate houses, have traditionally focused on illness, not wellness. we need to address health in a holistic way.” he

points out that the corporate houses have been facing high levels of absenteeism due to sickness arising from a sedentary lifestyle. “a health-ier employee is much more likely to cost a company less in terms of insurance, and be more productive for the company, he points out. “i do not see this as a discretionary spend for companies.

he says that as the need for healthy living increases in a rather stress-ful atmosphere, and the health ben-efits stepathlon offers makes it very appealing. he credits the fast growth of stepathlon as it has a commu-nity approach. “when you are doing something in a group, research shows you are better motivated to do well. also it as much an engagement tool as a fitness tool.” the cost, a nominal `2,220 per person a year, is another attractive plus, and some companies

even bear some of the cost.such has been the success of this

programme that most corporations have been requesting a year long pro-gramme, says Krishnan, former head of img in india. “this year, we have commenced a 12-month programme which includes the 100 day ‘vir-tual race’. this consists of nine sci-entifically tailored ‘stepping stones’, designed to help individuals reach their health goals in a simple, fun and engaging manner.” the step-ping stones provide content, activi-ties and expert advice on nutrition, health and well-being, as stepath-letes are motivated to continue their journey to health and happiness well beyond the race.

Impressive growthcorporations seem to be happy too. “people who are participating were able to bring exercise, fitness and activity into their daily lives and reorganised their work to suit that,” says priya paul, chairperson, park hotels.

even though the company is new, growth has been impressive. in 2013, the company had approximate reve-nue of `6 crore, a growth of 46 per cent from 2012. “in 2014, the reve-nue will grow by 70-80 per cent,” he says. “we expect to break-even/ turn profitable next year.”

Krishnan is already looking ahead. “we focus on creating, curat-ing and distributing relevant content that is both useful and usable to our target audience. we take our position as thought leaders and influencers seriously and are committed to cre-ating awareness that leads to action. we are also exploring office events, e-commerce and alternative versions of the ‘virtual race’ to extend and expand both engagement and par-ticipation.” his aim for 2017-18 is reaching 250,000 people.

stepathlon has the potential to be the facebook of wellness. given its rate of growth, this prediction may not too off the mark!

u s u m a n t a r a f d a r

stepping up, corporate styleA record number of Indian corporate citizens are expected to be Stepathletes this year

Krishnan: health in a holistic way

Stepathlon

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last month, talentedge owned by lumis partners, a private equity fund has launched the

‘cloud campus’ with its massively online open courseware (mooc). it offers certification courses from iim, Kolkata and acca, uK as well as live lectures ‘direct-to-desktop’ plat-form across its centres. “this online teaching opens a big market for us. we have a few more ivy league insti-tutions in the pipeline,” explains aditya malik, ceo & md, talentedge. the company is creating a business model in partnership with educa-tional institutions and universi-ties. while the latter would will be responsible for content, assessment, teaching etc, talentedge will do the marketing, infrastructure and ser-vicing of students. this is similar to global companies like coursera and edx that offer mooc.

the company’s cloud campus is already conducting classes on the internet with hd clarity at home bandwidth for both individuals and enterprise segment while taking live lectures to individual students using the direct-to-desktop mode. “this direct to desktop (d2d) delivery model will be a game-changer and one step in repositioning talentedge with a difference,” promises malik who has been a banker with ge and bank of america, prior to joining lumis.

to start with, lumis partners’ initial entry into the company has been as an investor, when in 2008 it took a stake in karroX technology, an it training company. then in february 2012, lumis acquired 100 per cent stake.

karroX was essentially known for it which has lost its sheen and lumis was keen on education as a whole, hence in march 2012, the name was changed to talentedge. “we first looked at the accounting, changing various policies. after studying the

industry and the international scene, we hired new people, restructured the company with a new multiple product line addressing multiple cus-tomers, looking at it as well as dis-tance learning as our go to market strategy,” adds malik, recognising the fact that education is a challenging sector. the macro level picture shows there is a big opportunity but on the ground few are making money. india is on its way of emerging as the larg-est nation with youngest working-age population. nearly half the additions to the indian labour force over the period 2011-30 will be in the age group of 30-49, even while the share of this group in china, South Korea, and the uS will be decreasing.

The next levelcompared to a start-up, talentedge has a two-decade-old history of kar-roX which was providing education for employability and career advance-ment in the it sector. it boasts about having productive relationships with over 300 blue chip corporates like bank of america, capgemini, wipro,

novartis, to name a few, providing them corporate education programs. So, for lumis it was easy to rationa-lise and scale up.

with this head-start, malik’s road map to go to the next level was two-pronged, to grow the traditional brick and mortar (point of presence) and the cloud campus route. in just over a year, talentedge has got 27 physical class rooms all over india of which six are company-owned and the rest franchisees. “their areas of expertise particularly in it train-ing and partnership with key soft-ware development players made it an obvious choice for us to tie up,” says abhishek poddar, director of the Jaipur-based Kamala poddar group of educational institutions which has since april become a franchisee to talentedge. Similarly, tata amc has outsourced the training to be given to investors to talentedge. “we (tal-entedge and tata amc) have prepared a course material for those investors who do not possess capital market knowledge. talentedge then identi-fies these investors and imparts the training. it is part of the amc’s sebi obligation to educate investors,” explains Surendra Kudav, avp – sales training at tata amc who heads the investor awareness programme.

post lumis takeover, through its multiple product line, the com-pany offers a bouquet of learning programmes like individual learn-ing programmes, campus learning programmes and corporate educa-tion programmes. the company also offers management and graduate programmes in partnership with multiple universities like ignou, smu and mgu and partners like microsoft and hp. talentedge also offers diverse distance education – mba, bba, bca, b.com, and placement enhancer programmes.

finally, by 2014 through the fran-chisee model malik plans to take the numbers up to 65 centres and dou-ble to over rs40 crore in terms of the topline. internationally, talentedge is presently in six african countries and in Vietnam. malik has trained his eyes on other countries across South asia and middle east.

u l a n c e l o t J o S e p h

anywhere learningTalentedge is taking the traditional classroom to the virtual campus in the Cloud

Malik: big market

TalentEdge

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what do you get when you put two management stu-dents, both self-taught

coders together? A four-year-old software company that, earlier this year, claims to have received an offer of `150 crore. founded in 2009 by brothers raghav Aggarwal (26) and Abhinav Aggarwal (22), Tru-tech web Solutions has grown rap-idly, developed an enviable client base and is recognised by nasscom as one of india’s 50 most innovative it companies.

raghav and Abhinav describe how they first picked up coding in school, working after hours on “small hacks, website building” and the like. The brothers pursued undergradu-ate degrees in management studies. Abhinav is also a chartered account-ant, and raghav is a certified finan-cial analyst. Still, software was their career of choice. “To build something really quick, and see your product out there is something we really enjoyed,” enthuses Abhinav. it’s “the industry we thought we could have maximum impact” in, adds raghav. And, they feel that their business and account-ing background has been invaluable, especially when it comes to things such as valuations and taxes.

They first developed a now-de-funct platform to share exam papers, and have remained interested in

education. Trutech has developed a complete lms (learning management system) for several schools across the country. “There was no real good cloud-based solution in terms of some-thing that was a low capex model for them,” says Abhinav. Trutech’s edu-cation platform includes an online infrastructure for sms and e-mails, data storage, class notes, surveys and an alumni network. Today, they have 2 lakh students on the platform, ranging from pre-school to universi-ties. The total cost of the platform per year can range from `20,000 to `3-4 lakh, depending on the applications to which the school subscribes.

On the forefrontAs Trutech grew, they found it “tough to get it talent, especially in Bombay,” says Abhinav. Today, it has a team of 20 people, but this dearth is “how the iLiftoff platform was born”. it “helps companies test before they recruit.” Tests can be general aptitude or skill-based, and can be created by choosing questions from an existing database, be embedded into a company’s own website. clients on this platform include deloitte, mumbai University, Justdial and rediff among others. A single test can cost between `120 and `400. Thus far, 5 lakh tests have been taken, and the Times group has bought 5 per cent of iLiftoff, which

is a separate entity from Trutech, at a valuation of `20 crore.

“we found that mobile was a pretty exciting space,” says Abhinav, referring to their recently released private beta version of their app Sharemonster, which allows users to share the books they are read-ing, and links them to purchase plat-forms such as Amazon. however, their most thrilling product was just launched in delhi alongside intel’s fourth generation processor. called The fluid motion, it is a gesture rec-ognition platform, and is with infra-

red cameras. Users can stand several feet away, and use just the motions of their hands to flip pages and slides onscreen, enlarge or contract images,

and view things in 3d. “Ges-ture recognition technology is

fairly nascent,” says Abhinav. So why would anyone need it? “it’s the most natural way of interacting,” opines raghav, citing how users’ move while playing video games involving driv-ing, tilting their bodies into turns, for example.

The brothers say they hope to launch one new product every year, and reveal that it takes around a year-and-a-half for each product to break even. The products have a profit mar-gin of 35-40 per cent. “The cycle is so quick in technology,” says Abhinav. “we’d rather be on the forefront of each new technology than just focus on one area.” “The very first reac-tion most people have, when a new technology is introduced, is to safe-guard against it.” instead, Trutech intends to “embrace everything new that’s coming.” possibly it is this phi-losophy that landed them first place at the fame Techcrunch hackathon in new York last year. Both brothers have been accepted to postgraduate management programmes; raghav attended iim-Ahmedabad for three months last year before dropping out, and Abhinav has deferred his entry into the indian School of Business in hyderabad. “Business is too exciting right now,” declares Abhinav. “Two years in mba would be two years away from this,” observes raghav. “You have to be where the action is.”

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cracking the code

Trutech’s success mantra is ‘embrace everything new’

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Abhinav and Raghav Aggarwal: maximum

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TruTech

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