Category Archives: Business & Economy

A shop of his own, a disease to win over

Business & Economy, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, Science & Technologies
Yogarasu Kumaran, along with two other young men, also recovering from mental illnesses, runs a vegetable shop at Villivakkam market, facilitated by Better Chances, an NGO working in the field of mental wellness -- Photo: K. Pichumani / The Hindu
Yogarasu Kumaran, along with two other young men, also recovering from mental illnesses, runs a vegetable shop at Villivakkam market, facilitated by Better Chances, an NGO working in the field of mental wellness — Photo: K. Pichumani / The Hindu

City NGO helps those with mental illnesses lead better lives, make a living

Until three months ago, K. Yogarasu Kumaran would sleep, wake up, eat, then go to sleep again, all day long, every day.

Diagnosed with schizophrenia, the 25-year-old had shuttled between private mental health facilities for years, but none, he said, had really helped.

Today, Mr. Kumaran, along with two other young men, also recovering from mental illnesses, runs a vegetable shop at Villivakkam market, facilitated by Better Chances, an NGO working in the field of mental wellness.

For a lot of people who are recovering or have recovered from mental illnesses, finding a job is a huge challenge. “This is what we wanted to address. Additionally, we also wanted to make them a part of community and ensure their illness is not stigmatised,” said Porkodi Palaniappan, director of Better Chances.

When Mr. Kumaran decided that enough was enough and that he wanted to change the way he lived, he joined Better Chances. “At first, I had anger issues every day. But over time, I began taking my medication again, and recently, I stood first in the screen-printing class at the centre,” he said.

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With vegetables sourced from Koyambedu market and space given to them by the owner of the premises S. Krishnan, the shop, called Roots, is bustling on Saturday morning.

Tomatoes, onions and greens line the front section, and Amul Raj, who was earlier treated for schizophrenia, calls out to customers.

Mr. Raj, said Ms. Palaniappan, thought at one point he would never get out of an institution. Now, he dreams of entering politics some day.

The tables at the shop have been made by a carpenter who has also recovered from a mental illness, said Ms. Palaniappan, and the two women who help out at the shop are mothers of children with Down Syndrome.

“The idea is to empower people — both those with illness and caregivers — with opportunities to work,” she said, adding she hopes to facilitate more such initiatives soon.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Zubeda Hamid / Chennai – October 12th, 2014

Four TN Firms Make It to Potential ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ List

Business & Economy, Records, All, World Opinion
V Chandrasekar, Secova co-founder, R Narayanan, chairperson, program committee, TiECON, Anup Bagchi, CEO and MD of ICICI securities and Ashwin Narashimhan, MD, Bank of America, at a press conference | r satish babu
V Chandrasekar, Secova co-founder, R Narayanan, chairperson, program committee, TiECON, Anup Bagchi, CEO and MD of ICICI securities and Ashwin Narashimhan, MD, Bank of America, at a press conference | r satish babu

Chennai :

Four of Tamil Nadu’s companies have been judged as potential ‘Billion Dollar’ concerns by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Chennai. Not one of these four potential ‘big billion’ firms though, are from the state’s manufacturing sector.

Seeking to showcase Tamil Nadu’s success stories and their potential to become truly big players in the global industry, TiE Chennai’s ‘Billion Dollar Baby’ program announced four winners on Monday – Cross platform, global digital magazine store Magzter, Financial services major Financial Software Systems, water processing giant VA Tech Wabag and technology services company Congruent Solutions.

With the four companies showcasing the strength of the Services sector, manufacturing was conspicuously absent on the list. When asked, CEO and MD of ICICI Securities Anup Bagchi, one of the two jurors who selected the companies, said the spectrum of entrepreneurship was very broad in the state and that the absence of a manufacturing firm in the top four was only a coincidence. “I was quite happy with the spectrum of entrepreneurship in the city. But we did not see it through any particular lens when judging the companies. It is only a coincidence that there aren’t any manufacturing firms,” he said.

Chairman of the program committee of TiECon Chennai 2014 R Narayanan did admit that of the 12 companies that were shortlisted from the 50 nominations they received, only four were from the manufacturing

sector. “The conditions of the last few years have made it hard for manufacturing concerns to grow at the pace that the services sector has grown. This could be where the economy is headed,” he admitted. The four companies will be showcased at the TiECon Chennai 2014 conference which will begin from November 1.

source: http://ww.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Tamil Nadu / by Express News Service / October 14th, 2014

Samayapuram temple earns 1.8cr by selling tonsured hair

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Nature, Records, All

Trichy  :

Just the mere strands of tonsured hair offered by devotees brought windfall to Samayapuram temple, the second highest revenue generating temple in the state. The temple authorities sold the tonsured hair for Rs 1.89 crore during an auction on Thursday.

Every year during the day of Ammavasai and Poochoriyal festival, many people swarm the temple. It is visited by about 3,000 devotees from various parts of the state on a daily basis. Devotees offer their hair in order to please the deity and wash away their sins and get one step closer to nirvana.

The temple collects all the tonsured hair and at the end of every year hold an auction, for which numerous bids are received, and these are not limited to Tamil Nadu, bids are made from various dealers from different parts of the country.

According to temple authorities, about 3,638kg of hair was auctioned off on Thursday and the tender was officially closed a few weeks ago.

A dealer from Vellore district bagged the tender for a sum of Rs 1,80,62,500. The temple started off the auctioning on a yearly basis but in recent months the amount of tonsured hair has increased and so the temple authorities have decided to hold an auction for the tender every two months.

This decision also gives an insight on the belief and devotion that people have for the Mariamman deity and the hoards of devotees that the temple pulls in on a regular basis. The funds will be used by the authorities for infrastructural changes in the temple. The money from the auction will be used to provide devotees better facilities and Rs 26 crore would be invested to build a cloak room with 96 bathrooms and a two-storied hair tonsure centre to handle the growing numbers of devotees.

The temple also plans to build solar plants at three locations inside the temple.

Solar plants would be implemented at the Ammavasai mandapam, Mudimandapam and near the guest house, said the temple authorities. Several projects are underway to improve the amenities of the temple.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Trichy / TNN / October 10th, 2014

Ninja Army of Delivery Boys

Business & Economy, Science & Technologies

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A swanky building just off OMR is bustling with activity. Legions of men in uniform are constantly pouring in with huge bags on their backs and sheaves of papers in their hands; several take off on bikes, and there are vans and lorries queuing up to handle bulk shipments at E-kart logistics, a company that delivers Flipkart products.

These men are part of the e-tail army, the ones who zoom around the city on their two-wheelers, the ones who convert the few clicks from your laptop or mobile app to a product in your hands.

“We individually handle 40-50 deliveries a day. Around festival time, the number shoots to 70 and upwards,” say Ganesh and Mani, as they share and wolf down lunch from a stainless steel container. “Our shift starts as early as 7.30 am. Based on the orders, we split the routes and go about deliveries,” says Ganesh, rushing off to pick up his next consignment from the office after his brief lunch.

Ganesh is a field executive who drives a two-wheeler, while Mani drives a van. When orders are placed in bulk by companies, vans go out to deliver consignments, Mani informs.

Madhan is part of a team that does only one thing — reverse deliveries. That’s right, there are dedicated teams to pick up goods that are faulty, or those that don’t match the consumer’s specifications. “We get calls to pick up and return products for a plethora of reasons — the colour is different, the photo of the product shown on the web site is different and so on. We check it and take back the product,” says the lanky, soft-spoken 20-something.

“Sometimes, real mess-ups happen. Customers who returned the product get the same kind of product even the second time. That’s when we really face the music. But whatever happens, we stay calm,” he adds.

The executives are trained on how to speak to customers and are given firm instructions — no executive is supposed to call up a customer more than two times to check for an address. And the newbies are told to tag along with the more experienced ones for about 10 days to learn the ropes.

The number of products returned or exchanged, though, seems to be a touchy topic, with a source requesting anonymity while informing that if there are about 500 deliveries a day, about 80 of them — about 16 per cent of the customers — call back for a new product or to return them.

But Manigandan, Area Manager, says that they usually handle about 2,000 deliveries a day, but due to ‘Diwali spike’, they are now delivering 3,500 to 4,000 products a day. And that’s just from one hub alone. E-kart operates from seven branches in the city, so that works out to a whopping 14,000 deliveries in the city on normal days and double that during the festive season. Manigandan says that certain areas are ordering hotspots, such as those near SRM university in Kattankalathur and RMZ Millenia Tech Park in Taramani.

Coming back two or three times to deliver for customers who are not at a specified address, getting lost and driving through pothole ridden roads and even walking down lanes where bikes are too narrow to even enter, these delivery men accomplish what is no mean feat — 70-80 deliveries a day during festival season works out to a lightning fast 10 every hour, or 1.6 deliveries every minute. Mind boggling, ain’t it?

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> TamilNadu / by Varun B. Krishnan / October 13th, 2014

DISAPPEARING TRADES – The sheen’s gone out of eeya paathram business

Business & Economy
Very few people prefer to use tin-coated vessels in the age of non-stick and stainless steel — Photo: K.V. Srinivasan / The Hindu
Very few people prefer to use tin-coated vessels in the age of non-stick and stainless steel — Photo: K.V. Srinivasan / The Hindu

Tin and tin-coated vessels, once seen in every household, are increasingly a thing of the past

‘Velli eeya paathram’… does that ring a bell?

The vessel that is ubiquitous with lip-smacking rasam is called eeya paathiram — eeyam meaning lead — but is actually made of vellieeyam, or tin.

Until a few decades ago, vessels made of this material could be found in every household. But now, stainless steel and non-stick have come to stay and the eeya paathram is rarely seen even as that unique rasam slowly recedes into memory.

“Tin melts at 250 degrees Celsius and can be placed on the gas stove only if there is water or rasaminside. Earlier, people would use charcoal-fired stoves that gave out less heat, and so, they could use tin vessels,” says R. Venkatakrishnan of A. Srinivasa Aiyengar & Son, Kumbakonam Vessel shop, opposite the Sri Parthasarathy Swamy Temple in Triplicane.

The shop has been in existence since the 1920s and was started by Mr. Venkatakrishnan’s great-grandfather. It stocks eeya paathrams weighing between 300 grams and one kg. “When the shop was founded, it primarily sold eeya paathrams which were used by people from all walks of life,” he said. “Today, a few customers who still use eeya paathrams, including families living abroad, continue to come to us. We make special, stainless steel vessels with lead lining and flat bottoms that can be used on induction and coil stoves,” he said. To make a tin vessel, a sheet of tin is taken and, using a mallet, slowly beaten into the required shape.

Two doors away sits M. Sampath, who has been working at M. Mani and Sons for 47 years now. The store is known for coating copper and brass vessels with tin and is called an eeyam poosara pattarai.

“As far as I know, apart from establishments in Kumbakonam, the Aiyengar store and ours are the only two places where the eeya paathram is sold and eeyam poosu is done,” said A.R. Muthu, who runs the store.

“The metal costs Rs. 2,500 per kg. Only the highest quality metal from Malaysia is used. We usenavacharam and tin and coat vessels. Some people prefer this as the coating is cheaper. But, our customers are dwindling by the day,” he says.

Apart from making rasam, people also store rice overnight in these tin vessels as the food does not get spoilt fast. Curds don’t turn sour very easily in such vessels.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Deepa H . Ramakrishnan / October 08th, 2014

Buy Online, Get Delivered by Post

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Science & Technologies

Chennai :

Even as the Internet era has upset the fortunes of India Post, the postal department in the Tamil Nadu circle is trying to merge emerging technology with its ubiquitous presence in the nooks and corners of India to make inroads in e-commerce as well as financial segments.

The department, which is in the red now, is vying to establish a major presence in the e-commerce segment, Chief Postmaster General of Tamil Nadu circle T Murthy told Express. “We already have a tie-up with Amazon and an online supermarket in Chennai and are currently negotiating for a tie-up with Flipkart,” Murthy said.

“Currently we deliver around 50,000 parcels from the supermarket chain alone and 5,000 from Amazon,” said Murthy.

He says India Post’s plans to have a tie-up with Flipkart have reached an advanced stage. “We have heard reports that they are opening godowns here in Chennai,” he said.

Through the tie-up with e-commerce firms, their products will be delivered to every corner of the State as the department has a vast network that no one in India has, he said.

India has close to 10 million online shoppers and the numbers are growing at an estimated 8-10 per cent annually.

Electronics and apparel are the biggest categories in terms of sales.

The postal department is also planning to have Internet connectivity in all its post offices located across Tamil Nadu. “This is likely by the end of the financial year,” said Murthy.

He says currently the Tamil Nadu circle is facing a loss of 30 per cent as its market has been eaten away due to the Internet revolution.

The postal department is planning to capitalise on its vast infrastructure by investing Rs 5,000 crore in core banking services and other financial services, he said.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by C. ShivaKumar / October 04th, 2014

Samba Ryots Stick to Tradition

Business & Economy, Green Initiatives/ Environment, Nature

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Nagapattinam :

Ever tried traditional rice, the one that looks brownish-red? It may taste a bit different but it has immense health benefits. In fact, the biggest consumers of traditional rice breeds are private super specialty hospitals across major cities, which cater to dietary needs of patients, predominantly diabetics.

Besides health benefits, the breeds – Maapillai Samba, Kavuni, Garudan Samba, Thanga Samba and Samba Mosanam – are said to be drought-resistant and can also survive excessive rainfall. That works like an insurance cover, isn’t it?

To cater to the growing demand, farmers here this year have expanded the acreage under traditional rice by about 600 acres. While the last season witnessed about 1,200 acres of traditional rice cultivation in Nagapattinam district, the figure would go up to 1,800 acres this Samba season.

Farmers say traditional paddy breeds do not seek high amounts of water, as they utilise moisture content in the air for growth.

According to Jayaraman, State coordinator of Save Our Rice campaign, “Thalainayar, Valivalam and Thirukuvazhai localities of Nagapattinam district have witnessed farmers opting for traditional paddy varieties. Since there is good demand for traditional rice such as Maapilai Samba, farmers are comfortable cultivating them.” About 20 kg of seeds are required per acre for traditional paddy cultivation for harvesting as much as 1,500 kg. Traditional rice fetches a market price of over Rs 62 per kg, which is decidedly more that the conventional rice you normally consume at home. It is the higher value for effort that draws farmers towards its cultivation.

Just as Maapilai Samba faces a huge demand from diabetics, the ‘Kavuni’ breed is supposed to fortify the immune system. “Super specialty hospitals at Chennai and Tiruchy are procuring traditional rice varieties from us. It is the hefty procurement prices that encourages other farmers to take up traditional paddy cultivation,” Jayaraman adds.

While cultivation cost for traditional paddy per acre is around Rs 6,000, it is about Rs 15,000 per acre for conventional paddy such as CR-1009 and other ADT paddy varieties. Traditional crops also keep weeds in check, as they grow taller than weeds, thus depriving them of sunlight.

As many as 63 traditional varieties, including Poonkar, Maapillai Samba, Kavuni and Thengapoo Samba are cultivated in the delta districts. Farmers say they get seeds for traditional paddy through links with their counterparts across the delta districts.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Tamil Nadu / by S Deepak Karthik / September 29th, 2014

Coimbatore textile unit gets export award

Business & Economy, Records, All, World Opinion
Veejay Lakshmi Textiles Ltd of Coimbatore bagged the export awards for 2013-2014
Veejay Lakshmi Textiles Ltd of Coimbatore bagged the export awards for 2013-2014

Coimbatore:

Veejay Lakshmi Textiles Ltd of Coimbatore is one among the two export houses in Tamil Nadu that bagged the export awards for 2013-2014 instituted by TEXPROCIL (The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council of India).

The exporters from the state won the bronze medals/trophies for the highest global export category. This year, Texprocil distributed 71 awards based on 29 criteria, including the coveted gold trophy for the highest global exports.

Highlighting the challenges in the sector, chairnman of Texprocil Manikam Ramaswami said, “Indian textile industry, however competitive it may be at present, needs cotton at less than or equal to international prices and needs a level playing field when it comes to tariff barriers to perform to the best of its potential.”

He pointed out that despite India being a cotton surplus country, every year cotton prices go above international prices from February onwards until the new season and this severely impacts competitiveness.

Texprocil has already articulated a revenue positive solution to the ministry and hopes that it will be implemented soon, he said. On the tariff front, India needs to have agreements with the European Union, Canada and Australia, favourable duty in China similar to Pakistan, Bangladesh, who have negotiated reciprocal benefits with China.

India has US dollar 34 billion deficit with over US dollar 12 billion imports taking place at less than 5 per cent duty. Hence, the country should bargain reciprocal benefit for textiles. China exports US dollar 20 billion of textiles and India can improve exports by a huge amount if they get a level playing field, he said. Emphasising the need for implementation of the export incentive policy, he said, “Export of textiles is the only way forward.”

source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> Nation> Current Affairs / DC Correspondent / September 23rd, 2014

Startup city in focus – Chennai: 9 startups to watch out from Chennai

Business & Economy, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features

Chennai has always been known for its automobile and IT industry. The cultural capital of the south sees a presence of a major part of India’s automobile industry. In terms of IT export, Chennai is ranked second in India. It is often seen as the secondary financial hub following Mumbai. One of the fastest growing cities in the world, Chennai is home to more than 20 Indian companies that have a net worth of more than USD 1 billion.

In terms of legacy startups, Chennai has given us Bharatmatrimony. Founded in 1997 by Murugavel Janakiraman, who later met his wife through his own matrimony site, the company has 130 offices in India, with offices in Dubai, Sri Lanka, United States and Malaysia to cater to its customers beyond India. BharatMatrimony is one of India’s largest and most trusted matrimony brands. They were the pioneers in matchmaking and have been early birds in the mobile space with their matchmaking apps on almost all major platforms.

According to software products thinktank iSpirt, at least five Indian product companies have crossed or are on track for a $1 billion valuation, and the list includes one from Chennai. Can you guess the name?

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The startup that is currently making waves and is an inspiration for many product companies emerging out of Chennai is Girish Mathrubootham co-founded Freshdesk.Girish is not prominently visible in startup meetings but does a lot of activity that directly benefit startups, such as investments and mentoring. He even gives space to startups to work as part of his office space. The provider of SaaS-based customer support platform for enterprises, has secured $44 million in funding till date which includes a $31 million in a Series D round of funding by investors Tiger Global Management, Accel Partners and Google Capital.

And talking of legacy and inspiration for startups, how can one miss Sridhar Vembu co-founded Zoho that takes on two giants simultaneously – Google and Salesforce.com. First, it speaks volumes on the founders behind it and the ability of the organization to move at the speed of its market or stay ahead of its competition. Zoho was born in the Valley but its developer team is in India. And if you couldn’t guess, the answer to the question mentioned in the beginning of the article is Zoho.

If you begin talking about Vembu, you need to stop somewhere. His incredible energy and focus to build a world-class product company and focus only on that, makes him a rare breed among product entrepreneurs. His guts just overawe you. He has built a unique bootstrapped company and has turned down acquisition overtures from Salesforce.com. This story has acquired some sort of a legendary status in itself as an anecdotal reference to Sridhar’s ability to shrug off naysayers and believe in himself.

Another startup from Chennai that has captured global attention is Indix. Founded by Sanjay Parthasarathy and Sridhar Venkatesh in 2012, Indix is a big data startup that is building a catalogue of over 1 billion consumer products from all over the world. Their intention is to help brands to be able to compare their prices, thereby assisting them to make crucial business decisions. In simple terms Indix is personalizing the results for product search that you get if you google it, all the while itself being neutral. Indix already has a database of over 200 million products and plans to scale to over 1 billion listings in the next two years. Till date, the startup has received four rounds of funding totaling $15.9 million.

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Chennaites, listen up. TechSparks, the flagship event of YourStory is coming to your city this Friday (September 19). Get ready to listen and engage with Sridhar Venkatesh, Co-founder, Indix. Get your tickets here.

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First let us take a look at a few older startups which can now be termed upstarts.

OrangeScape – A company with two platform software. Visual PaaS – a cloud application development platform and KiSSFLOW a workflow-as-a-Service platform. OrangeScape has marque enterprise customers include the likes of Unilever, Citibank, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and its KiSSFLOW is the #1 in its category and used by 9000+ companies across 108 countries.

BankBazaar.com – Started by Adhil Shetty, Arjun Shetty and Rati Rajkumar, this online financial marketplace lets you search across all top financial institutions of India and get instant customized rate quotes on loans and insurance products. They raised Rs.80 crores in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital and existing investor Walden International in early 2014. While most online financial portals operate on a referral mode where they capture phone numbers and sell them to different banks and agents, BankBazaar.com offers real time approval for loan applications. Presently, they offer services of nine banks. They also have a mobile product accessible on smartphones.

Chargebee – Founded in June 2011 by Krish Subramanian, KP Saravanan, Thiyagarajan T and Rajaraman S, ChargeBee is primarily a subscription and recurring billing solutions for businesses across different industries. With its plug-and-play capability, businesses can automate billing, invoicing and leverage transactional emails to improve communication with their customers. The company had raised its first round of $350k from private investors in December, 2012. Earlier this year it raised another $800k from Accel Partners.

Stayzilla – In 2006, Yogendra along with his backbencher friends at college, Sachit Singhi and Rupal Surana, believed that the fragmented ‘stay’ market could be brought online and made structured. It was 2005-06, when India was going through the Internet revolution but still wasn’t quite internet savvy as today. They started under the name of Inasra.com but then they rebranded it to StayZilla – stay in every ‘zilla’ (district) — in 2010. As of today, it has more than 15,000 stays listed in a network of more than1100 cities in India. They clock more than 500 bookings per day. The company is funded by Matrix Partners prior to which it had raised its angel round from IAN.

vakilsearch – Founded by Hrishikesh Datar in 2010, vakilsearch is a web-portal that provides legal services on the internet. Services provided by vakilsearch includes, legal advice support, documentation services including will, rental agreements, non-disclosure agreements, incorporation of companies, Limited liability partnership firms, intellectual property registration and advice, tax filing and accounts related services. The information needed for creation of basic agreements are collected through simple questionnaire online and supplemented through telephonic calls, if needed and the document is delivered through postal services.

Caratlane – Founded in 2007, the portal has helped customers go beyond local family jewellers for their needs and tap ‘the world’s largest collection’ of solitaire gems and innovative contemporary designs via the Net. Earlier, Tata’s Tanishq had transformed India’s jewel market via a trusted name in branded jewels. CaratLane sources directly from vendors, eliminating inventory and real estate costs. It educates customers about jewellery designs, hires gemologists in the sales team, forms partnerships with banks for outreach, and targets male as well as female shoppers.

Contus – Contus is a leading mobile app development company that fulfills web and mobile app requirements. Apptha, the powerful marketplace of Contus is a storehouse of all themes and extension needs for different platforms like Magento, WordPress, and Joomla. Mobecommerce of Contus is another notable marketplace delivering mobile-based products cost-effectively. Founded in 2008, Contus serves more than 40 countries all around the globe.

Unmetric – Founded by Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan, Kumar Krishnasami and Joe Varghese, Unmetric works with leading brands and agencies across the world and provides them competitive intelligence 10,000+ global brands across 30 industry sectors. Brands use this intelligence to then comprehend and calibrate their social media efforts. The company has worked with global brands like Subway and Toyota.

Now, let us look at 9 promising startups from Chennai that you should watch out for. These are in no particular order and the list has been curated based on the team, innovation, market size and their current execution stage.

Turing Research Labs Pvt Ltd, Frilp

Frilp is an application focused on connecting users with local services and businesses through recommendations from friends and colleagues. From the business owners’ perspective, Frilp helps the 40 million SMEs and consumer facing businesses to get an online presence where they are recommended by their happy customers. Ex-Goldman Sachs analyst Shyam Anandaraman started Frilp and he was joined by Senthil Kanthaswamy. The startup secured $500,000  in angel funding from a group of individuals including Girish Mathrubootham, co-founder and CEO of Freshdesk Inc last month.

Demach Software India Pvt Ltd, Konotor

Started by Srikrishnan Ganeshan, Vignesh Girishankar and Deepak, Konotor is basically a two-way communication channel for app developers to allow their users to interact with the app. Konotor integrates with an app and has a WhatsApp-like appearance which blends in with the app interface. Users of the app get a separate tab or icon via which they can reach out to the app developers, who in turn can take in feedback, answer queries, etc. It received USD 125k in funding from Qualcomm Ventures and Accel Partners in May earlier this year.

ContractIQ

Founded by Ashwin Ramasamy and Visalam Ramakrishnan, ContractIQ takes requirements of buyers of services (80% of them for mobile apps) and from its database of “devshops” (small, independent businesses providing mobile app services, product development, software development, or others) suggests potential matches for the buyer. The devshops (vendors) are charged a fee for bidding for the prospective client and only three of them can bid for a particular project. The vendor base consists of trustworthy developers validated by ContractIQ so that the buyer can confidently seek. It ultimately becomes a win-win for buyers and developers.

Imprimatur Print Services Pvt. Ltd, Stickystamp

With StickyStamp’s in-house printing infrastructure one can create personalized merchandise, stock in their state-of-the-art warehouse and drop-ship to customers in any part of the world. The concept in itself is not new, but the startup has been getting rave reviews on Social Media for its high quality execution and has a great line-up of clients including Freshdesk, HackerRank, HasGeek, Myntra etc. Co-founded by Isaac John Wesley and team in May this year, this startup has already broken 7-digit revenues in slightly more than four months and has shipped 1000+ shipments in this period.

SkillAngels

Sarav Sundaramoorthy believes that every child has some innate talent that can be and must be nurtured in the right way. With SkillAngels, a startup that he founded in 2013 along with Kalpana Murthy and Parimala Vageesan, Sarav is trying to break the rut of education system and redefine the learning process for children by focusing on cognitive skills development (comprising of memory, visual processing, focus & attention, problem solving & linguistics), life skills and social skills development. SkillAngels is a digital platform that fosters the aforementioned five areas of brain skill development by gamifying the learning process.

MyEasyDocs

Founded by Avira and Thomas Tharakan, MyEasyDocs was incubated at IIT Madras Research Park. It mainly consists of two portals for online document verification; myeasydocs.com and directverify.in. DirectVerify.in enables background screening agencies and employers to verify employees’ educational credentials without any online registration. MyEasyDocs.com allows users to store, verify and share the verified documents online to whomever concerned.

Avaz App

The app has been built to help kids with autism, cerebral palsy or communication disorders in general. Through the selection of pictures representing certain words or phrases, the user is able to articulate his need or emotion, using a mobile device. Once a sentence is formed using the different pictures, the app then speaks it out loud, helping the user communicate as well as learn from the process. It also allows you to track the child’s progress. The app also has an integrated keyboard which allows the child to alternate between selecting pictures and typing text.

Mad Street Den

Mind Abled Devices dabbles in artificial intelligence. Co-founded by Anand Chandrasekaran and Ashwini Asokan, the couple aims to build machines that can replicate certain human elements, making them more ‘intelligent’ and relevant. It offers a cloud-based MAD stack that can be incorporated into existing or upcoming applications. The idea is to build certain AI pieces and make them readily available to the world, saving a developer (or other users) a large amount of time and infrastructure that would otherwise be invested in building it.

Bode animation

Bode Animation works for crafting explainer videos for depicting businesses and their services. They offer 6 different styles of videos starting from 2D animation, stop motion, handcraft motion, 3D, whiteboard and blackboard. They work for informative, humorous, interactive, any kind of video that suits your startup’s personality. They also work with number of data visualization tools to generate infographics and other data based stories.

There are several other startups from Chennai. The list above is intended to be neither a ranking of Chennai startups nor an exhaustive list of all startups. 

A walkthrough of the Chennai startup ecosystem

The earliest ecosystem driver for product companies in Chennai was a product showcase event called proto.in. This was where many companies made their first product presentation or showed their prototype to an audience consisting of their peers, experts, and investors. Run by a team, of which Vijay Anand was a part, proto.in eventually did not achieve scale like many product companies until it folded after making intermittent appearances around 2011. Many product companies that later started are sure to vouch for the fact that proto.in acted in many ways as their inspiration to startup.

The next major arrival on the scene was Chennai Open Coffee Club, kickstarted by Siddarth and Vaithi. The weekly Sunday meetings drew huge crowds of as much as 100 at the beginning in 2009 for an informal meetup of entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs, and those generally interested in startups.

The Startup Centre is another incubator which was started by Vijay Anand and acts as an incubator to several startups. Bangalore-based Eventifier was incubated there.

TiE Chennai is another institution which has taken up the startup cause in helping entrepreneurs find feet in Chennai. Its annual flagship event TiECON Chennai, which enters its eighth edition this year, has become very popular among entrepreneurs for the variety fare it dishes out. Through the year, TiE Chennai runs several entrepreneurship-related events.

The latest on the startup scene is the filterkaapi mafia, a closed group of product entrepereneurs who believe that entrepreneurs can as a community help each other.

At YourStory, we are bullish about Chennai and are sure that it will grow into a very big startup hub.

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 Chennaites, listen up. TechSparks, the flagship event of YourStory is coming to your city this Friday (September 19). Get ready to listen and engage with our keynote speaker Sridhar Venkatesh, Co-founder, Indix. We have four informative sessions and super-useful workshops lined up for you as well. Seats are getting sold out fast. Get your tickets here.

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source: http://www.yourstory.com / YourStory.com / Home> by Abhash Kumar and Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy / September 16th, 2014

The sweet addition

Business & Economy
THEY MEAN BUSINESS M. Murali with his daughters / Photo: R. Ravindran / The Hindu
THEY MEAN BUSINESS M. Murali with his daughters / Photo: R. Ravindran / The Hindu

From Coimbatore to Chennai, from father to daughters… the Sri Krishna Sweets story continues as M. Murali’s children give a new twist to the business

If the Sri Krishna Sweets store on Venkatanarayana Road in T. Nagar is abuzz with activity, the tiny office at the back is quiet except for managing director M. Murali’s voice giving orders. The room is painted white, making it seem smaller than it already is and in it sits Murali clad in a white shirt. The garlanded pictures of gods that adorn the walls lend a little colour to the room.

The soft-spoken Murali recalls the opening of his first shop in Chennai in 1996: “There was a steady crowd from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in front of the shop; it gave me a lot of energy, confidence and faith that made me realise that I can turn my dreams into reality.” And they have indeed, with 42 outlets in the city that include restaurants specialising in South Indian cuisine.

“You walk into a fast food outlet and you just pick up a pizza or a packet of French fries or a burger, you hardly give food like kozhukattai or the boli a thought. What we’ve done is give these a twist. For example, the Bolizza is our take on the pizza and has both sweet and spicy versions,” he explains. “Simply put,” Murali says, “we’ve taken their concept and incorporated our culture.” They also plan to offer bondas and kara appams as alternatives to French fries, and mor kali instead of pastries. According to Murali, their idea is to show that Indian foods can also be suited to fast living and that the notion of fast food merely indicates the time it takes to prepare and not the origin of the food itself.

Speaking about appealing to youngsters, Murali’s face lights up when he talks of his two daughters joining the family business. “I’ve been in the business since I was 11 or 12; it’s similar for them since they were brought up in the same atmosphere.”

Twenty-one-year-old Sneha Murali describes herself as “not bookish. My father always encouraged me to focus more on work than on education; but both were equally important while growing up.” The younger of the two girls, she says that working with your father has its pros and cons, “Most of the time work becomes dinner-table conversation,” she laughs and adds that it’s tough on days when you’re mad at both your father and the boss. But all that doesn’t come in between what she’s learnt from her father. “He taught me that it’s alright for two people to disagree on something. And he still listens and respects any idea irrespective of the size of it or the person who offers it,” she says.

Sneha remembers when she’d gone to Berkeley for a summer programme and came back brimming with new concepts, especially a store-in-store, “it’s like a food court where you can buy podis, sweets, kaarams and more. It’s a work in progress at Sri Krishna Sweets,” she says.

Shruthi, the older daughter who looks after the Food Products Division, has a quiet aura about her, much like her father. She talks about how joining her father in business was a natural course of action. Shruthi reveals that she is passionate about making traditional sweets appealing to her generation.

“We go out often to eat and I realise that youngsters prefer something that’s light on the stomach, healthy but tasty and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’ve launched something called Cashew Bites that’s like soan papdi and we’re planning to bring out a halwa made using ragi,” she says. For someone who has been working for two years with her father, Shruthi, a graduate of the Cass Business School in London, says that she still has so much to learn from him and the biggest lesson he has taught her was to “criticise a person’s performance rather than the person himself.”

Murali couldn’t be happier that his daughters have joined him, “It’s the hospitality business and I believe that women bring strengths to the table such as good values and a knack for personalisation.” And it’s not just the daughters who are learning from the father. Murali says it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with them: “They bring systemisation and in five-six years there will be more opportunities for them.”

Sri Krishna Sweets was started by his father N.K. Mahadeva Iyer in 1948 to overcome the absence of a standalone sweet shop that offered pure ghee sweets in Coimbatore.

“Our goal is to be a part of the customer’s family and so our concept is ‘engellam sandosham irukko,angellam Sri Krishna Sweets irukkanum’ (where there is happiness, there will be Sri Krishna Sweets),” he says.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus > Society / by Apoorva  Sripathi /Chennai – September 11th, 2014