This Gurgaon-based startup is working to build faith in auto workshops in India

Anyone who’s ever had their own set of wheels knows that getting it repaired is not an easy deal. Leaving your car in somebody else’s hands makes you feel jittery. There’s a huge trust deficit between car owners and workshops. Care owners feel they will be cheated at local workshops, and consider company-owned workshops to be expensive rip-offs. Eventually, in either case, the customer satisfaction stands nil.

Navneet Singh(L) and Abhijeet Singh(R)

Navneet Pratap Singh, a self-professed car lover, faced a similar dilemma every time he sent his cars for repair. He often wished for workshops that would give him a satisfactory service. When he shared the thought with his childhood friend Abhijeet Singh, his sentiments were echoed. They further pursued the subject and in their research found that they were not the exceptions; everyone worried for their vehicle while it is at the body shop. They then decided to build a platform that could offer a high quality repair service to car owners.

Navneet and Abhijeet, who had an experience in security, highways & utility management and retail & startups respectively, came together to offer a complete solution in the automobile repair segment. In October 2015, they launched GetCarXpert, a Gurgaon-based car service and repairs platform that claims to offer convenient, affordable and transparent service.

“We have come up as the best alternative to unreliable local workshops and authorised service centres. We address the core issues faced by car owners. There is a ready availability of fake and sub-standard imported parts in the market, and a lot of workshops use these parts, thus compromising on quality. It creates a sense of insecurity every time a car owner has to leave his ride at the local mechanic or the authorised service centre. GetCarXpert.com has been very selective in partnering with its service centres,” says Navneet.

He adds that there are three parameters that define the quality of repair: quality of workmanship, spares and parts used, and customer experience. The platform on-boards the best and most well-equipped workshops with only genuine parts having manufacturer’s warranty, and offers 1,000 km or 60-day expert warranty to its customers. It has partnered with 35 authorised workshops.

GetCarXpert recently concluded a deal with spare parts manufacturers like Bosch and Valeo.

“So, whatever the demand – running repairs, accidental repairs, scheduled service, batteries, tyres, car care and insurance – the GetCarXpert.com’s workshops will fix it by offering the convenience of multi-brand workshops and by maintaining the same service standards as authorised service centres. Quality workmanship is guaranteed, with our engineers placed at all workshops to monitor the customer’s vehicle,” adds Navneet.

Building business

The platform works on a commission-based model with workshops. It claims that in the past few months it has witnessed a steep growth. During December, it serviced 120 cars. In January, the figure rose to 170. This month, it expects to reach 300.

The company’s vision is to emerge as the biggest multi-brand service provider for the car industry. Over the next year, it plans to enter 10 new cities and develop a full suite of services that will be offered through a workshop model. It intends to create a full-service spare-parts supply chain and a viable service line for taxi operators. It will also endeavour to launch an express and mobile repairs platform and develop IOT technology to track the usage and maintenance patterns in every car, to suggest the best predictive repairs.

GetCarXpert has a buffer of $1 million from founders’ personal savings, which will be used to sustain the platform, till it raises funding.

Market and competition

According to CII-ACMA, in 2015, the automotive after-market servicing business in India is pegged at about $2 billion (excluding spare parts).

During 2013–14, the total turnover of the Indian automotive component industry was estimated at $35 billion. Auto ancillary exports fetched $10.2 billion in the same year. The total number of registered motor vehicles on Indian roads reached 172 million in March 2013, of which over 21.5 million were cars, taxis and jeeps.

Besides GetCarXpert, Cartisan, MotorExpert, Bumper and MeriCar are some of the players vying with each other.

MeriCAR.com has had two rounds of investments from My First Cheque and Rajan Anandan (personal investment). In July last year, Bengaluru-based automotive service marketplaceCartisan raised an undisclosed amount in its seed round funding from YouWeCan ventures, Global Founders Capital, TaxiForSure’s Aprameya R and others. Late-December 2015,Bengaluru-based Bumper secured $500,000 seed funding, in a round led by SAIF partners.

On competition, Navneet says that it’s the service he counts on to shine through. “We are very particular about the kind of service we promise to our customers. It will outstrip any other player in this category.”

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/02/getcarxpert/

How Chandra Shekhar and Salim Khan are making Mumbai healthier, one community at a time

With a growing population and increase in buildings, the last few years have seen a lack of public spaces for people to play, and meet at. This has resulted in people who are passionate about sports not being able to pursue it once they graduate from college.

Another deterrent is the lack of sports facilities and network around people to find others with similar interests. Chandra Shekhar Panigrahi, 33, too faced this issue. He says,

Last year, I wanted to take a break from the corporate world. I am passionate about sports,so I wanted to enroll myself in a crash course for badminton, and participate in a few events happening in the vicinity. While searching online, I found out that information was either not available or scattered and incomplete, and I didn’t find local players to get connected to.

Chandra Shekhar got along with his friend, Salim Khan, 32, and started PlayersVilla in March 2015, Mumbai-based startup that helps sportsperson find coaches, facilities and playing communities around them.

Chandra Shekhar Panigrahi(L) and Salim Khan(R) – Founders, Players Villa

Prior to starting PlayersVilla, Salim worked with FoodPanda, while Chandra Shekhar worked with Wipro and UltraTech before he started PlayersVilla. At present, the team has six full-time people and three interns, with the co-founders looking after major sales and marketing.

Sports is something that is often not taken seriously in our country, so finding a market was tough. The biggest challenges was getting users for their platform, and their own misconception as they thought that recreational sports had not yet caught up as a category with people. However, once the team went on to do the market survey their apprehensions were laid to rest and people were highly encouraging of their venture. Initially, the team started with only 40-50 users on their platform but in the last one year have scaled up to over 600+ active users on their platform.

At present, PlayersVilla is spread across Mulund, Seon, Kurla, Ghatkopar, Andheri, Borivalli and Powai in Mumba iand planning to start in Pune and Bengaluru. It has received an angel round of Rs 25 lakh from a Dubai-based investor and is looking to raise the next round in the coming months.

How it works

PlayersVilla has a simple process to help people with their sports requirements. At present, it has basketball, football, badminton, cricket, carrom, tennis, table tennis, and zumba on the platform.

There are four offerings on the platform: finding a coach, booking a facility, participating in an event, and networking.

The company earns its revenue through multiple channels, including commission from coaches and academy for successful leads, apart from commissions from sports facilities for booking transactions and advertisements for PPC and CPM models.

At present, there are quite a few companies in this space:Bengaluru-based Playo, JoinMyGame and PlayYourSport are startups active in this sector. PlayYourSport raised $16,000 from Hyderabad Angels in January 2015. There will be more players coming up in this sector, with higher income groups and rising comfort levels. There is a huge promise for growth in the outdoor sports sector but it is still dependent on the amount of funding available.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/02/playersvilla/

A book review site of kids’ books, by kids, for kids: Ihavereadthebook.com is run by a Class IX Mumbai student

My first memory with a book was, in fact, one of me holding two books – a scrumptious Enid Blyton in one hand, and a chubby little Oxford dictionary in the other. Over the years, the dictionary found moments of peace as I read my novels with absolute ease, but I had to dust off the old companion every so often when I looked for literature – like reviews, analyses etc. – on the books I had read or wished to read. It was the darndest thing – the language of these reviews was often more complicated than the language of the book itself!

Atharv Patil, a Mumbai school student who has been moonlighting as a bookworm since the raw age of six, felt the same amusement. All he wanted to do was devour book after book, but the difficult part was deciding which book is worth his precious time – for he never found a review that was fit for a child or a young adult to read and understand. So, he took it upon himself to make amends.

Atharv Patil, like a boss

When the Teenpreneurship bug bit

Atharv is a Class IX student at Chembur’s St. Gregarious High School. “I have been reading books since I was six years old. The idea for Ihavereadthebook.com struck me in the summer of 2014, over a simple dinner-table discussion. I wanted to buy a book, and I asked my father if I can have a kind of a preview before that. He asked me to check on the Internet. I searched, and found that there were many book review sites, but none for children and adolescents. Goodreads was also for adults, in language that only adults would understand. I asked my dad if I could work on something that caters to just kids, in their language and style, on books they’d prefer,” says Atharv.

He was barely 13 at the time. But his father was not one to discourage his son’s sense of initiative, no matter how far-fetched the idea seemed in the face of juggling academics, and his existing extra-curricular interests. “Together, we decided to build a platform that would crowd-source book reviews on all kinds of books for children and young adults, written by children – students and avid readers like me,” explains Atharv.

Like a boss

The prodigy’s work began in a rather systematic manner. He started collecting data on all the schools in the country, and listed down the coordinates of almost 12,000 schools between June and December, 2014.

When his Christmas break came along, he sat down with his parents and charted a plan. “We decided to hire a website developer who built our website in a short span of three months.” Ihavereadthebook.com was in business! But the toughest part was yet to come – getting registrations.

In May 2015, he decided to write to all these schools and had to dispatch 12,000 letters. “Children from the neighbourhood came to help out, inserting the letters and sealing the envelopes. Our house was a sea of paper, everywhere you looked! But, it was completely worth it. The response was amazing; almost all the schools registered with us, and got the word out amongst their students. That’s how I got my first set of writers,” he says.

Atharv had created a platform such that the writers could all sign up and access the backend themselves, to upload their reviews. Once the reviews were in, the founder and editor would begin his screening process. “I run a plagiarism check on their work with a free software. If there is any review with less than 60-percent originality, I send an e-mail to the student to rewrite the review. If we do not get the response within 15 days, those reviews are removed from the system. As we encourage the students to write the reviews in their own words, we do not change a single word from the review written by the student,”Atharv says.

So far, he has published 463 reviews from students across the map. At the start, he would work almost 10-12 hours a day monitoring the student registrations, sending them e-mail links if they are stuck up in the process,and answering queries. Now that the system is working perfectly he spends anywhere between two and three hours each day and four hours on the weekends, to keep the website updated.

Work-life balance has never been easier!

Get to know the man on the chair

In spite of this rush, Atharv hasn’t forgotten about his first love. He puts pen to paper himself every chance he gets, and writes reviews fairly often. Work-life balance has never been easier!

While he seeks the best of both worlds for himself, the worlds are giving them their best too. What made Atharv’s whole journey worthwhile, he says, is when he woke up to an email from a certain gentleman in Bengaluru. “He wrote to me saying he wanted to congratulate me for having the courage to start out so young! He told me how kids today rarely have the reading habit, and how my website would encourage them to pick up a book. And there’s so much more that I love about my life, right now. It’s been such a great experience for me – I’ve already met the CEOs of Scholastic, Crossword,” he says while smiling from ear to ear. He also won the Teen Tycoon title at IIT-B’s E-Summit 2016 last month, which saw participants from 250 nationwide schools.

Currently, they are earning modest revenues from the venture. The website is affiliated withAmazon and Flipkart. So, if anyone makes a purchase on Amazon or Flipkart from the Ihavereadthebook site, the website gets a 10 percent cut on it.

“My aim is to make this website self-sustaining, and we will chalk new revenue models on the road ahead,” Atharv says, adding, “And while I keep this website going, I also want to be a writer or a scientist someday!”

The ‘teenpreneur’ may work like a seasoned entrepreneur, but the lessons he has learnt are through a fresh set of eyes, and will teach you a thing or two about perhaps uncomplicating things, taking a step back, and simply going back to the basics. “In the last one-and-a-half years I have learned many things from my venture. Time management has to be on top of that list. I have to manage my time between studies and my website. My priorities are in line now. I have also understood the value of money, and how much it takes to earn it. It is so important to be able to make decisions, and follow your heart while doing so,” the wise youngster concludes.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/03/ihavereadthebook/

How this man from a small town in Karnataka is helping kids build robots

How will you visualise the future of a five-year-old boy when you see him tinkering and meddling with gadgets and toys? Sandeep C Senan (32) loved to spend his spare hours learning TV and radio repairs in a neighbour’s shop when he was in Class V. The passion eventually led him to design refrigerators, talking machines and coffee makers. A native of Bhadravati in the Shimoga district of Karnataka, Sandeep, by the time reached Class X, had decided to pursue engineering in computer science at Visveswaraya Technological University.

The curiosity about gadgets followed Sandeep to his later years as well and made him explore ideas on how a school-goer can convert an idea into a working model. This led to BIBOX in 2012, a programmable electronic platform that helps students from Classes V to X build smart machines, robots and other real-world gadgets.

BiBOX Team

Sandeep says, Headquartered in Bengaluru, BIBOX (Brain in a Box) is a hardware and software solution tailored for kids. It is like an electronic brain, which can be operated by a kid on a tablet, smartphone or PC using a graphical software. A kid can put these logical thoughts into BIBOX to create different accessories, from toys to lights to TV.

Sandeep has technological expertise in embedded systems, IoT, robotics, virtual reality and haptics. He has worked in Bangalore Endoscopic Surgical Training Institute (BEST) and done MBA at Edith Covan University, Australia in 2009. He then worked with Thinkinsoft Solutions where he had the opportunity to teach children about future technology in an assignment for Times Group (NIE).

Reconnecting to passion

During his second year of engineering, Sandeep rekindled his old passion to create things. Alongside engineering, he completed projects like virtual reality simulators, artificial intelligent systems, robotic machines, and more. A couple of his final-year projects were also picked by DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation).

Sandeep then started guiding juniors in college through workshops that later morphed into workshops for school students.

“BIBOX started as a toolkit that kids could use and then later became a full-fledged curriculum where kids are taken through a journey to become innovators to solve real-world problems in any field,” explains Sandeep.

Getting noticed

Sandeep got funding from Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) for his prototype model. The idea then made its way towards Department of Science and Technology (DST) and he received funds from there as well.

In April 2013, Sandeep met Madhusudan Namboodiri (48) who joined BIBOX as co-founder. He brings two decades of experience in the field of education, health, retail and telecom. Prior to this, Madhusudan was a consultant for Greycells 18 Media Ltd, where he created a niche space in schools for selling K12 content alone.

Sandeep C Senan and Madhusudan Namboodiri

The duo first approached Mumbai Angels in August 2013, and in early 2014, they raised angel fund of Rs 1.5 crore from Narendran K, a former Vice President of Infosys, Anirudha Malpani of Mumbai Angels and Manish Gupta, former MD of Rare Enterprises. Recently, it raised Rs 3.5 crore from Ravi Krishnamurthy, MD of Bengaluru-based Shadeflex India. Till now, the startup has raised a total fund of Rs. 6.5 crore in multiple rounds.

How to build smart machines, robots and gadgets

The mentors at BIBOX conduct 80-minute sessions in schools where kids are given tools and materials required to complete the project or innovation. According to Sandeep, traffic lights, automatic locking doors, smart room lights, water throwing alarm, drip irrigation system, asthma detector, vibratory blind stick, interactive bobcat and robotic arm for lifting things, controllable boats and smart cars are some of the working models created by students at different schools in Bengaluru, Kerala, Coimbatore and Delhi.

BIBOX has currently tied up with 18 schools in Bengaluru, 21 in Kerala, spread across Muvathupuzha, Kottayam, Kollam, Angamaly, Ernakulam and Calicut, and four schools in Ghaziabad and Noida.

Sandeep states that 10,000 students have been benefitted from his programme so far.

Students experimenting with the tools and materials of Bibox

Tying up with 120 schools

The startup charges Rs 2,500 to 6,500 per student for an academic year. In the last one year, Bibox has grown by 3x in terms of revenue and expects to quadruple the growth this year.

Currently, it has 75 employees and is present in Bengaluru, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and New Delhi. By the end of 2016, BIBOX is planning to tie up with 120 schools and come up with BIBOX-based products for kids.

India has witnessed a growing concern in the quality of science, maths and technology education imparted in schools and colleges. According to a Manpower report, by 2020, the shortfall of engineers is expected to range from 1.5 to 2.2 million putting India’s economy at risk.

As an angel investor, my bet is always on the founders. Sandeep’s passion for helping children to be creative by allowing them to tinker using BIBOX is infectious, and he is a great example of an innovator who thinks out of the box. His partnership with Madhu is a winning combination, and together they have been able to craft a winning business model around a very cool product,” says investor Dr. Malpani.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/02/bibox/

4 organisations that help women restart their career after a break

Women have been closing the gender gap when it comes to education. Research shows 45.9 per cent of all enrolled undergraduate students as well as 40.5 per cent of all enrolled PhD students in India today are women. On the other hand, the labour force participation rate of women has been falling – from 37 per cent in 2004-05 to 29 per cent in 2009-10. In 2011-2012, women comprised 14.7 per cent of all urban workers, a small increase from the 13.4 per cent in 1972-73. To give a clearer view of the larger picture, if India can increase women’s labour force participation by 10 percentage points (68 million more women) by 2025, India could increase its GDP by 16 per cent.

Many organisations have been working towards helping women join as well as re-join the workforce. Employers are also recognising the importance of diversity and at the same time, are seeing women who are getting back to work after a break as a viable group when it comes to hiring. When women have had a break after having a baby or for taking care of an elderly family member, the organisations mentioned below act as mentors and help them step back into the corporate space.

It has been a year since Bengaluru-based JobsForHer was founded by Neha Bagaria with the vision to reverse female brain drain from within the Indian workforce. JobsForHer has organised a mega Diversity Drive from March 7th to March 11th to coincide with this Women’s Day. Top companies across India like Sapient, Target, MakeMyTrip, Reliance, Mindtree and Mantri developers will be participating in the drive. With this drive, JobsForHer is also opening up its portal beyond Bengaluru and moving to a pan-India mode with a focus on Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

JobsForHer.com is currently seeing a traction of 50,000 visitors per month with approximately 2.50 lakh monthly page-views. In its first year in lean-startup mode and operating out of Bengaluru, JobsForHer is already associated with more than 750 companies, including Citibank, Future Group, GE, Godrej group, Kotak Mahindra Group,SnapDeal, Unilever and several other SMEs as well as startups. They offer job opportunities ranging from full-time, part-time, work-from-home, to freelance opportunities and also work with companies to provide returnee internships.

Chennai-based Avtar I-Win was the pioneer in the field of organisations that help women restart their careers, having been set up in 2005. Dr Saundarya Rajesh, Founder of Avtar I-Win, believes that equality often does not work in the gender space in corporates, due to the various unique issues that working women face in India. They facilitated the hiring of around 450 women employees for the Future Group way back in 2006. Saundarya says,

Forty-eight per cent of Indian working women under the age of 30 take a break, 60 per cent in STEM (science technology engineering and math) jobs take a break in the first 10 years of their career. These women often struggle to restart their career. When it comes to labour force participation of women, other Asian countries, for example Sri Lanka, do better than India.

Sairee Chahal co-founded Noida-based SHEROES.in in January 2014. SHEROES curates corporate jobs as well as flexible and work-from-home jobs for women in India. SHEROES has been building a community of working women, helping them find mentors and resources. They focus on helping women who are seeking a career along with maintaining a work-life balance.

SHEROES had raised Rs five crore of funding in an angel round and offers a diverse and large range of opportunities for women to pick from. These include opportunities with women-friendly employers, flex-friendly formats, mompreneur programmes and partnership programmes. The SHEROES Community gets access to career resources while SHEROES Mentors engage actively to help women attain career success on their own terms.

Her Second Innings

HerSecondInnings was founded with the principle that just helping women find a job is not enough and women professionals have to be empowered at all levels. Often when a woman is getting back to work after a long break, there is a lot of confusion in her mind about the best fit for her skillset and experience. Women might also prefer to shift to a more attractive or appropriate field at this point due to personal interests or convenience. Over 2,000 women have been accessing the portal for job options as well as for coaching to help develop their skills as well as better understand their options. There are e-coaching sessions as well, which women can attend online.

Founded by Manjula Dharmalingam and Madhuri Kale in November 2014, HerSecondInnings has presence in Bengaluru and Mumbai, and offer ‘work from home’ options, temporary assignments, permanent jobs, projects and consultancy and entrepreneurial opportunities. HerSecondInnings also help organisations improve their diversity and inclusion programmes. This includes diversity and inclusion assessment survey and women leadership programmes.

Reference:http://her.yourstory.com/organisations-helping-women-restart-career-0228

You can fire your social media manager, this startup automates online marketing

The digital era descended on India a decade ago. Slowly but steadily, it became a matter of not choice but compulsion for businesses to look beyond print and television for advertising. Yet, lack of awareness and resources ensured that smaller players were held back, while the big names bolted forward with myriad ways facebook in online marketing.

Bhushan Patkar had finished school before all this happened. Born in Badlapur village outside Mumbai, Bhushan loved nothing more than cricket as a kid. He was not too keen to take up the science stream as his parents wished. But once he did a short-term diploma course in computer technology from Mumbai University, he knew what he loved. And quite a handful of small businesses in the country are thankful for that.

Bhushan Patkar, CEO, Dfizz.com

Bhushan went to Oxford Brooks University, UK, to do BSc (Honours) in Computing & Software in 2005. By the time he returned home, IT boom had matured in the country. Son of a national award-winning Corporation Mayor Nandakishore Ram Patkar, Bhushan was keen on e-governance. He foundedTopXS Solutions in 2008 and, among other ventures, carried out a three-year-long project that included mapping of property taxing for Badlapur Municipality.

Digitisation of data was becoming more significant for every industry. Once he figured that he wanted to take it up as a career, Bhushan flew off to San Francisco, USA, for doing an MBA from Hult International Business School, in 2011. When he came back in 2013, India’s online business industry had grown exponentially. Bhushan took a plunge and founded Arkbel Innovations for marketing solutions for real estate business.

Idea for friends

Bhushan’s friend Amit Zunjarrao runs a dhaba in Karjat, Maharashtra. Famous for its scenic beauty, Karjat was a favourite spot for tourists. But despite the marketing Amit did through Facebook, posters and portals like Sulekha.com and websites for travellers, he did not get the traffic he wanted at Aaji Cha Dhaba. In early 2015, Bhushan offered a solution to him – a template that will update the dhaba’s Facebook page with its website. If someone searches for ‘Aaji Cha Dhaba,’ Amit will get a notification on mobile and email, and can connect with them directly. “For the first year, we had little business except on weekends. But since we started marketing online, there has been 65-percent rise in the number of customers,” Amit says.

Dfizz development team

Instead of going to the metros – where clientele for online marketing is easier to get – Bhushan wanted to look at the sellers outside metros.

“I wanted to make digital marketing easy and accessible for startups and MSMEs [micro, small and medium enterprises] who do not have the exposure, knowledge or funds for it. It’s not just about money; I really wished to help them,” says Bhushan.

According to the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, there are 36 million small units that employ over 80 million Indians. Most MSMEs cannot afford hiring people by paying Rs.30,000-40,000 per month for online marketing. But with the rising Internet penetration, consumers in Tier II and III cities are also coming online. These consumers can access only the big companies that use technology strategically, whereas MSMEs are practically non-existent online – except a few manufacturers who sell on marketplaces.

According to a 2014 report, absence of exclusive marketing platforms is one of the challenges faced by the SMEs and the startup industry in India. More than 60 percent of both small and mid-market enterprises quote lack of awareness as an inhibitor to adoption of technology to aid marketing initiatives.

For the technologically-challenged

Newspaper ads do give a lot of leads to SMEs, but there is seldom follow-up. Dfizz’s integrated customer relationship management (CRM) software reports on which products get responses and sends bulk SMSes, emails etc., to customers for follow up. Their ‘virtual social media manager’ updates any addition on the original website on social media too, along with extra information on Internet. In fact, the likes of RedBus have used the strategy of engaging their customer with posts on travel rather than bore them with just ads.

Bhushan says: “Many MSME owners have iPhone6, but do not know how to leverage the benefits of online marketing. Our software makes them independent.” A major advantage is that the business owner can change the website on mobile.

Future prospects

The online marketing sector in India is fragmented, but competitive at the same time. There is hardly any entry barrier; digital ad agencies, traditional media, and even PR agencies are now doing this. Salar Mohamed Bijili, Founder and CEO of CueContent Marketing Services, says that the sector will grow with e-commerce. “A lot of online marketing is driven by price discovery platforms. More consumers coming online will only increase the demand,” he adds.

According to Salar, not many products are sold in this sector in India. “Product adaption is very low in this sector. Evangelising the products as a sector as tool to grow is the future,” he says.

Online marketing is the only way to sell products in an international market. With the promise of a ‘Digital India’, entrepreneurs are hoping for government support in terms of tech innovations.

Bhushan is in talks with Union Minister for MSMEs Kalraj Mishra and Maharashtra MSME Minister Subhash Desai in this regard. The six-month old startup-for-startups is now a 12-member team and has 30 MSME clients.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/03/dfizz/

Punam Flutes – The story of how a master artist became a master craftsman

When a hobby turns into a profession, a professional expects to be able to find the superior tools of the trade, and if they are not up to the mark, he could complain, despair or look for more expensive, difficult-to-find alternatives. Yet, Subhash Thakur, a flautist by profession, did not succumb to any of those measures.

When he could not get the type of high-quality flute he needed, he did what few others would have, which is to make his own. What started off as a solution to a personal need slowly metamorphosed into the saga of Punam Flutes. Today, Thakur’s flutes are used by several artists, including the legendary Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, in India and abroad.

Thakur, who has an illustrious career playing a baansuri (Hindustani for flute), began learning under the tutelage of Ustad Fahimullah Khan in 1988 and then completed a master’s degree in music. After that, he began playing professionally, which earned him the status of a graded artist at Akashvani, Patna. “I then moved to Delhi and started a government job as a flute player with a monthly salary of Rs. 7,000,” he recounts, adding, “It was during this time that I realized good flutes were hard to come by. They were either very expensive or had to be imported. That is what prompted me to attempt making my own flute.”

That attempt was just the beginning of Punam Flutes. Many disciples of his current guru, Pt. Amarnathji, wanted him to make flutes for them too. In just a few months, Thakur realised it was more lucrative to make flutes as his income as a flute-maker began exceeding what he earned as an artist.

Thakur takes great pride in how he customises each creation, which is what distinguishes his work from mass-produced instruments. “I don’t just make any flute and ask people to buy it. For professionals and discerning artists, I study their style and make an instrument according to the range they desire.”

The Initial Days of Struggle

Thakur explains, “Flute-making is as serious and thorough of a process as is making any other musical instrument. First of all, you need to procure good quality bamboo, which is available only in North East India. Then it has to be seasoned for about three months. Following this, it has to be carefully crafted, because the position and the diameter of the holes is very important for proper tuning.”

Subhash Thakur with Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia

In the early days, he struggled at each stage of the production process. Tools for making the holes were not easy to come by. He had to search for them far and wide, and in the days before the Internet, that was a difficult task. He then had to import them from the U.S. and other countries, after paying a huge sum of money. He also needed a tuner to help him craft the flute properly.

Only in the last few years has technology been easily accessible, which has allowed him to buy good quality tools and also craft his own tools to make flutes.

Going online was the next logical step

Once you have a great product, the next step is to publicise and sell it. When it seemed like the whole world was shifting to the web to accelerate sales, it was Pt. Amarnathji’s son, who advised him to expand his business online. He helped Thakur register a domain name and create a website back in 2004. Another friend, also a professional flautist, helped design the site and now maintains it.

“If you are a manufacturing company, going online is the logical thing to do to increase the reach of your business. A .com domain name is the obvious solution if you want to extend your reach internationally,” says Thakur.

Punam Flutes has a good presence on social media too. His wife Punam, after whom the business is named, takes care of that aspect. The social media page and the website also feature messages to and from artists who use his flutes, including the likes of Prem Joshua and Naveen Kumar, who are noted for their ad jingles and the haunting theme from the movie Bombay.

“About 50 percent of our sales come from people who know me personally, artists and students, as well as those who have heard of my reputation. The remaining comes from purely online sales, of which nearly 25 percent is from foreign countries,” he explains, adding that he gets quite a few people from the U.S. and the U.K. who approach him for customized flutes.

Deeply focused on making high quality flutes available to passionate artists, Thakur never thought selling online would help the business the way it has. He finds the change in the Indian mindset quite remarkable: “Indians have taken to this ecommerce thing quite well. Of late, a lot of my sales are due to my website and being on platforms like Amazon andFlipkart.”

Thakur’s advice to anyone who wants to start a business and take it online is to focus on the fundamentals: “You need to understand everything about your line of work in depth, and you should be aware of every aspect of production and sales. Only then will your company prosper.”

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/03/punam-flutes/

Why change is the only thing constant for your business

We have come to an age where organizations catch up to each other within a few months. The only way to keep your competition at bay is to innovate and change. Change your product offering, its price, service quality, etc but do not change the core identity. In business, it is vital to realize that when you are a market leader, you have to be at least 6 months ahead of your competition and when a market follower, you should aim at catching up with the market leader within 3 months.

The business landscape in today’s world is characterized by changing trends and events which keep happening every now and then. This at times, takes several business leaders by surprise. Technology giants have been burned to the ground simply because they did not change with time. The greatest example being of Kodak, which at one point of time was the market leader of the Camera and peripherals industry. They did not adapt towards digitization and felt the emergence of digital imaging was just a momentary phase. Soon came the wave of Digital Cameras and emergence of companies like Cannon and Nikon, which took the industry by storm. Eastman Kodak’s failure is because of its leaders who refused to adapt to the change in technology. It truly was an entrepreneurial failure.

Another aspect one must consider, is to realize the need to upgrade it. Several businesses in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) space adapt by means of change of packaging, seasonal discounts, charm pricing and so on. Why do you think several app developers often offer updates to their consumers? They are not always bug fixes but at times are major changes that keep them glued to the app. The famous “Ping Ping” brand Blackberry is one such brand that did not change and did not offer its patrons a more user friendly, open-source version of the operating software like Android. Within no time, major players like Samsung emerged and entered from the backdoor and dethroned the once considered Smartphone giant. Samsung not only became the market leader but also left Blackberry so far behind that they are still figuring out how to change for the better.

The future belongs to those who are quick on their feet and embrace change. They are innovators like Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page who are constantly innovating and changing what they offer without deviating from their USP. Facebook still continues to be a Social Media platform but with a twist of offering several new features every now and then. Likewise, Google continues to be a search engine which has gone on to change the way we market our products now. As a business owner, you can either choose to embrace change or perish like the ones we have mentioned above.

Just like Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”

If you too have entrepreneurial dreams, you need to have faith in your Chatur Idea. You will always wonder who will fund this idea and from where will you find investors. In that case, you can participate in the #BeAChatur Contest and not only be mentored, but also stand a chance to win a whopping Rs.10 Lac funding for your dream startup idea.

Reference:https://www.chaturideas.com/our_blogs/Why_change_is_the_only_thing_constant_for_your_business#sthash.rJGsKJNg.dpuf

Meet the 31-year-old who is celebrating 29 days of February, each dedicated to one Indian state

Jubanashwa Mishra is celebrating the 29 days of February, with each day dedicated to a state of India. Amidst times when the ideas of nationalism, dissent, and diversity are ferociously debated, Jubanashwa is running a national integration month on Instagram, posting photos from the 29 states of India that he has travelled and explored. Under the campaign #Feb29Days29States, Jubanashwa is planning to showcase the real spirit of India which is unity in diversity.

Image: (L)- Instagram; (R)- Jubanashwa Mishra

The photos reflect his thoughts too. While Sikkim represents Buddha, West Bengal represents the life of sculptors who work day and night to create the idols of goddess Durga. Manipur represents a child carrying a toddler on his back, while Uttar Pradesh is represented by Varanasi’s inextinguishable cemetery.

Earlier in 2013, Jubanashwa had undertaken a campaign called ’28 jobs 28 weeks 28 states’, under which he toured the country, took up different jobs, and captured his experiences using his camera. The jobs he took up included that of a cleaner in Himachal Pradesh, a rafting trainee in Jammu & Kashmir, a movie marketing trainee in Mumbai, a tattoo maker in Goa, among others.

Follow Jubanashwa on Instagram here. Below are a few of his photographs which fascinated us.

To stay updated with more positive news, please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Reference:http://social.yourstory.com/2016/02/jubanashwa-mishra/

A 19-Year-Old has developed an app that can detect developmental disorder in a child in 45 secs.

A 19-Year-Old Harsh Songra has developed a mobile app ‘My Child’ which helps parents in early diagnosis of developmental disorder among their children. Bhopal-based Harsh has developed this app with the help of his childhood friends and now his Co founders Aafreen Ansari and Shreya Shrivastava. Something that's more intriguing than a 19-year-old making a revolutionary app in healthcare section is the fact that, Harsh himself is a victim of the problem he’s addressing today. Harsh was diagnosed with Dyspraxia when he was 11 years old. Dyspraxia which is a form of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a disorder that affects fine and/or gross motor coordination. He made the app in order to raise awareness as well as diagnose the symptoms of developmental disorders as early as possible, right from the 24th month of the childbirth. 

In India, 13 to 14 percent of all school children suffer from one or the other kind of learning disability. And like most of the parents, Harsh’s parents were also unable to identify problems in their son’s development.

However, Harsh Clarifies, that this app is not trying to replace doctors, but is meant as a reference point about disorders from which the child may be suffering from. He adds that the idea behind the app is to empower parents with technology and also to ease the burdern of doctors.

Harsh is currently in his second-year computer science engineering and is a huge admirer of Elon Musk Founder of Tesla Motors. In India, he regularly interacts with Shashank N D of Practo, Lalit Mangal of Commonfloor and Ravi Gururaj, a serial entrepreneur, a business mentor and chair of the Nasscom Product Council who is also apparently mentoring the child prodigy.

The app collects data from parents like height, weight, etc. And then asks a series of questions with Yes or No option. The entire process takes 45 secs and based on the response it recommends possible areas of concern for a child and also recommends the actions to be taken.

At present, ‘My Child’ app has a 4.2 rating on Google Play with 5000 downloads.

Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg recently put the teen on the world map by applauding him and his startup on the social media. Harsh has already enrolled for the FBStart Program which is a program designed by Facebook to help early stage mobile startups build and grow their apps. Sheryl Said, "We're supporting developers like Harsh who have great ideas but can't always access the resources they need."

Pankaj Jain, Partner, 500 Startups says, “Getting information about developmental disorders and details on whom to speak with on a simple mobile app just by answering few simple questions is transformative.”

At present, My Child team has total five members and ironically the teams average age is also 19. My Child recently secured $100k in a seed round from a group of Angel Investors in India led by 500 Startups including Samir Bangara, Anisha Mittal, Amit Gupta, Pallav Nadhani, Lalit Mangal, Arihant Patni, Dr. Ritesh Malik, Deobrat Singh, Saurabh Paruthi and Singapore Angel Network.

Harsh states that funds will be used to improve the technology and the entire development of the app. He has plans to make the app into a preventive tool and as a go-to guide for parents.

Harsh is our true inspiring chatur and what he has accomplished in such a young age will inspire many young entrepreneurs in improving the quality of human life and health care sector overall.

The global statistics of children suffering from such developmental disorder is alarming, what's even more threatening is little empathy and understanding on the subject. Harsh also wants his app to transform into a help guide for the mother during pregnancy to prevent her child from unexpected disorders he wishes to empower the parents with the ability to track their child’s development easily by getting all the red flags on time. We are proud that we have young entrepreneurs like Harsh Songra in our country.

Reference:https://www.chaturideas.com/ic/A_19YearOld_has_developed_an_app_that_can_detect_developmental_disorder_in_a_child_in_45_secs#sthash.jFY26ew9.dpuf