Chennai Startup - Great Minds Dicuss Ideas » Entreprenuership

Just Dial

chennaistartup — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:26:32 +0000

HAILING from a non-business family, VSS Mani is a born entrepreneur. He undertook his first business venture when he was in his tweens. “I had organised a paid video show of Bruce Lee’s ‘Fist of Fury’ for family and friends,” fondly recollects Mani, Founder & Managing Director of India’s biggest search engine, JustDial. The likes of JRD Tata, Dhirubhai Ambani and Verghese Kurien have inspired him to his grand vision to touch the lives of millions of people with an enterprise. And thus was born JustDial

When asked what made him choose this field, he replies, “While working for a yellow pages company in 1989, in a casual discussion with a customer, I conceived this idea of a 24×7 telephonic product and service search engine.” The first version of this concept saw an early demise as it was way ahead of its times. But he was determined to restart the service and transform it into a successful enterprise. In 1996 he launched the current version of JustDial, subsequently adding other avatars–web, WAP and print, which achieved huge success.

Mr Mani tried different ideas (including the concept of a wedding planner) to survive and save money so that he could start JustDial. Started with some borrowed furniture and rented PCs in a small (10×30 feet) hired garage, today JustDial has over 86,000 customers across the nation and employs over 3500 people with offices in major cities across India. In a very short time, justdial.com has become probably the most frequented local search website in the country. Recalling the 20 years of his journey, Mr Mani says, “So far it has been wonderful; I loved every bit of challenge the market threw from time to time. This exciting journey had no dearth of tests and trials, problems and solutions.” Moreover, he enjoyed proving all the naysayers wrong, those who kept discarding all his efforts by branding them trash.

“We believe in a philosophy of small and continuous improvement on a daily basis; so it is difficult to pinpoint the milestones of this journey. Every day, every decision we took and every effort we put in were milestones,” he asserts. However, if he has to identify a few, he considers the trust and faith shown by international investors in JustDial, the wide acceptance of its pan-India service on the single national number ‘69999999’ and the phenomenal success of Justdial.com as the highlights of his journey.

It wasn’t a cakewalk. He encountered challenges at every step. But he had evolved a game plan to overcome these challenges, which proved successful. “The major issues were raising capital and convincing the advertisers about the feasibility of our idea. We surmounted them through intelligent pricing strategies and innovative ideas,” he affirms. Mr Mani’s success mantra is conviction and passion. “Of course, a good measure of common sense and simple thinking also helps,” he adds.

His ambition is to take the company to new heights in the next five years. Leaving a global footprint, and becoming a world leader in local search services, is his ultimate aim.

As a concluding note, his advice to entrepreneurs is, “First ask yourself why you want to become an entrepreneur? If you have the fire in your belly, and a bright new idea, please go ahead, or else revisit your decision. Being an entrepreneur is all about belief, passion, perseverance and hard work. There is no substitute to passionate desire, will-power and sustained hard work.”

Don Norman

chennaistartup — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:35:09 +0000

Products do not stand in isolation. They exist in the real, complex world, with unforgiving people, continual interruptions, and an unforgiving environment. How to cope? Think systems. Don’t be too logical. Realize that everything is both a service and a product. Understand that the total experience is more important than functions, the memory of the experiences is more important than the reality, and emotions are more important than logic. It’s all about experience.

Don Norman is the author or co-author of fourteen books, with translations into sixteen languages, including: The Design of Everyday Things, Things That Make Us Smart, and The Invisible Computer: Why good products can fail, the PC is so complex, and information appliances are the answer. Business Week has called this “the bible of the ‘post PC’ thinking.” His latest book, Emotional

Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things, is available in 9 languages. This book marks the transition from usability to aesthetics, but with the emphasis on a well-rounded, cohesive product that looks good, works well, and gives pride to the owner.

Norman is cofounder of the Nielsen Norman Group, an executive consulting firm that helps companies produce human-centered products and services, Professor at Northwestern University, Prof. Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, and co-director of Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute; founded by Crate & Barrel creators Gordon and Carole Segal. He has been Vice President of Apple Computer and an executive at Hewlett Packard. He was President of the Learning Systems division of UNext, an early, online education company.

RECESSION – Reinventing Ourselves in Times of Trouble

chennaistartup — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:43:59 +0000

By Rajiv Vij – Life and Executive Coach

In the background of how the current economic and financial crisis is impacting individual lives and families, a leading Indian newspaper had recently asked me to write a short piece on some thoughts around reinventing ourselves in such challenging situations. The same is reproduced below.

Every time we are faced with a real personal crisis — loss of job, onset of a terminal illness, divorce or financial crisis — some of the questions that cross our mind are: Why did this happen to me? Will it ever get better? How will this impact my social position? It is only natural to start feeling down and feel anxious about the future. However, people who have weathered such storms, and whom I have had the opportunity to meet during my corporate career and my life coaching practice, usually say that the crisis was the best thing that happened to them. It made them to get off their treadmill of maddening activity and do some real soul searching towards creating a better and happier future.

Drawing from those experiences, it may be useful to look at ways of dealing with such crises in multiple dimensions.

First, it is critical to maintain a healthy sense of optimism about the future — not because we want to psyche ourselves into positive thinking but because things do get better from points of high pessimism. Surveys of people faced with a personal crisis demonstrate that the same people generally feel much better about themselves and life in general just a year after the initial event. It is equally important to have a strong sense of self-belief — the belief that not only will things get better, but that I will also have a meaningful role to play in it. As Graham Bell said, “When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

If the crisis involves some form of financial impact, it may be useful to also reflect on our needs and wants. In today’s consumerist society, we constantly want more — a bigger house, a flashier car, a new cellphone. Very often, unfulfilled wants may be the biggest source of disappointment and stress in our lives, and this is accentuated during adverse times. It may be pertinent to ask ourselves whether we need all these gadgets. In most cases, our needs are usually much simpler than our unending wants.

Further, crisis tests the strength of character. What differentiates the outstanding from the ordinary is not how well they do in good times, but how resilient they are through a crisis. As Albert Einstein said, “Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” Committing to living with core personal values in all aspects of our life builds character, which provides us with the inner strength to keep forging ahead, and the courage to see our failures as mere stepping stones in the quest for larger goals.

As they say, the Chinese characters for crisis mean both danger and opportunity. Indeed, a crisis may be an opportunity for unparalleled personal growth. We can easily spend a disproportionate amount of time ruminating over our losses or being anxious about the future. The question is when things do get better, will we be well prepared to take advantage of the new opportunities? Adversity offers the luxury of time to learn and hone new skills — enroll in hobbies or educational courses we always wanted to pursue but never had the time for, perhaps reflect on our true passions and give them shape — this may mean anything from starting a new business or community initiative to discovering latent writing skills.

Finally, such times also provide us with a unique opportunity to reflect on what’s most important to us—who am I and what is the purpose of my life? Am I pursuing a job, a career or my true calling? Do I want that investment banker job because of its lucrative prospects or because I find true purpose in that work? Engaging in our calling can inspire us to operate at a much higher level and away from the delimiting struggle around external success and recognition. As Patanjali, the great Indian sage, said, “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

Bad Economy and Startups / Entrepreneurship

chennaistartup — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:47:50 +0000

Excerpts from Paul Graham

Paul Graham

If we’ve learned one thing from funding so many startups, it’s that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders.

Which means that what matters is who you are, not when you do it.If you’re the right sort of person, you’ll win even in a bad economy. And if you’re not, a good economy won’t save you.

Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible.

So maybe a recession is a good time to start a startup. It’s hard to say whether advantages like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn’t matter much either way.

It’s the people that matter. And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now.

Visit for full article - www.paulgraham.com

Praveen Travels – Rs.50,000 to Rs.120 Crores

chennaistartup — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:45:28 +0000

Praveen Travels

Read this amazing growth. Parveen Travels, which opened shop with just over Rs 50,000 in the bank in 1980, did business worth Rs 120 crore last year.

As a 14-year-old, Afzal enjoyed going on rides in his father’s lorry. Often on these trips, the boy would dream of owning a fleet of cars and buses. Afzal’s father, Allah Baksh, ran a taxi service out of a small office in Purasawalkam, with a few cabs and lorries to transport cargo.

Afzal graduated with a bachelor’s degree in zoology and joined the family business.

“I was not keen on expanding the lorry business. I felt passionate about the transport industry and wanted to do something innovative,” he reminisces.

In 1981, the company purchased its first bus. “We were not keen on seeking financial help as we knew the bankers would not support us. So, we explored options that were within our limits, based on how much we earned in a given year,” recalls Afzal. To purchase new vehicles, the company put in half the amount and got loans for the remaining.

Later on introduced night service or point-to-point operations.

A Logistics division was added in the late 80s. Cargo was initially transported on the roof of the vehicles and later in cargo trucks, when the company bagged sufficient number of orders.

Parveen today owns and operates 1,000 vehicles, of which 750 are buses

The company also prides itself on its “accidentfree transportation” and swift replacements if a vehicle breaks down. “If the bus is within city limits, we replace it with one of our own vehicles within 30 minutes. All the buses are fitted with GPRSbased vehicle tracking devices.

They introduced online ticketing four years ago, allowing passengers to print their own tickets.

Despite its success, the family is wary of investors. “Many investors had approached us. But once an outsider comes, they will have their own ideas about running the business. We may not be able to take decisions on our own,” he says.

The company employs 2,000 people, 37 branches. As part of its employee welfare activities, Parveen Travels runs an institute for its drivers in Madhavaram where they are trained in driving skills, fitness, yoga, and undergo regular eyetests. Every year, the top three performers among the children of company drivers are provided financial support.

A tailor weaves homespun dreams by becoming Wal-Mart’s chosen supplier

chennaistartup — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:01:06 +0000

Venus shines over Punjab sky

WHEN Venus Garments bagged Wal-Mart’s ‘Supplier of the Year’ award in 2007, Anil Jain wasn’t surprised. What perhaps flashed in front of his eyes were images from the past when he used to run a 20*20 sq.ft. pigeon hole in Ludhiana’s congested Dal Bazar. Today, Anil Jain’s Venus shines bright with more than 6 lakh sq ft and eight units across the country. There’s an air of satisfaction too—of having gone it alone, when he lost his father at the tender age of 12. And entrepreneurship came easy from his school days when he bunked classes to stitch clothes for the neighbourhood. That’s when he made his first nickel, and apparel got entrenched in his mindscape.

Few would have imagined that from these such humble beginnings, the company would venture into direct export in 1992 and now even plans to start the company’s own retail outlets. “Time management and bringing out the most from every cloth was the only thing in mind. I could even make undergarments by cutting wastage left after stitching armymen’s vests. I used to sell these for rupees three a dozen in 1969,” says the 54-year-old businessman.

When ET caught up with Jain at his Venus Garments factory on GT road in Ludhiana, he ambled in sporting a black trouser and a navy blue shirt. Through the conversation, he gave due credence to his elder brothers Komal of Duke Group and Nirmal of Neva Garments, for his success story. “When we started the company, we had two workers and only second-hand sewing machines. My mother also used to work on machines till late night. Today, Venus Garments is providing direct employment to about 6,000 people and indirect employment to many more.”

Initially, he started out by stitching for players like Bhandari Hosiery, Grateway, Nagesh Hosiery, Jainson Hosiery and Addi Industries. “Our first year sales were approximately Rs 13,000. At that time, we had a target to grow the business. As I started with nothing, so even 0.1 million was very encouraging and valuable,” he says. Jain points out that he actually made his first million in 1976 when he bought a second-hand Fiat. The businessman now enjoys the comfort of a Mercedes car and his son drives a BMW.

One of the few companies that did not shift or close operation during terrorism days in Punjab, Venus stands tall as an epitome of optimism. “We did not plan on shifting anywhere. Rather, we planned and made our knitting and dyeing factory during that period,” he says.

The Rs 230-crore company was breezing along when the first gust of capital struck in 1992 when on Jain’s request, a buying agent gave the company a small order of 10,000 pieces of knitted tees for a US chain store. That, in a way, was the springboard for Venus when its product quality started weaving a chain of prospective international buyers. “Wal-Mart and Mexico, Old Navy (owned by Gap Inc), Tom Tailor, The Children’s Place, Sam’s Club and Suburbia are today my major buyers. I would not be surprised if the American clothing brand, Abercrombie and Fitch, becomes my buyers soon,” he says.

Registering a turnover of Rs 230 crore in 2007-08, the company is targeting an annual growth of 30%. It has had a CAGR of 48% over the last three years. Venus is a vertically integrated group encompassing yarn dyeing, fabric knitting, fabric dyeing, finishing, rotary printing, garmenting, garment washing, printing and embroidery. Its range of products includes polo, T-shirts, jogging suit, sweatshirts, thermal wear, and sweaters for men, women, kids and infants.
The company’s two units in Tirupur and another six units in Ludhiana have a capacity to manufacture 2 million pieces a month. “We are planning for backward integration. Setting up of a spinning unit with 25,000 spindles spread over 60-80 acre and an investment of Rs 70 crore, is my immediate concern. Apart from it, I see a huge market in domestic retail. By the end of the year, we will open 10 stores, with the first store under our own brand name in Punjab,” says Jain. The man who could not pursue higher education for want of time and money, now wishes to open a polytechnic college in Punjab in collaboration with a German institution.

ANIL JAIN Founder,Venus Garments

Thanks Economic Times

Celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship – Rs.5000 to 2000 crores – Suguna Chicken – Soundararajan Success Story

chennaistartup — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:06:56 +0000

HE COUNTS HIS EGGS BEFORE THEY HATCH

UNSEEDED HEROES

Celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship in Tamil Nadu

Soundararajan borrowed Rs 5,000 from his parents to start a poultry farm. When the industry faced a glut, he refused to chicken out. Today Suguna is a Rs 2,000-cr company. M Allirajan tracks the travails behind the rise of this poultry giant who preferred raising hens to attending college

BSoundararajan’s first brush with business was anything but a success. His fledgling feed trading business almost came unstuck even before it took off. Suguna, the firm he started with Rs 5,000 he borrowed from his parents in 1984 at Udumalpet, a town near Coimbatore, ran into trouble following the glut in the poultry industry.

Soundararajan had hoped that he could cash in on the demand from poultry units. But in a few years, the industry, unable to take the excess supply, went into a tailspin.

“Prices came down drastically and many farmers stopped operations. They were not in a position to pay for supplies,” he reminisces. But Soundararajan was shrewd enough to see an opportunity in this threat. “Suddenly, we thought why not invest working capital and manage these farms? Farmers also wanted stability. We supplied the inputs and they (farmers) became converters,” he says.

The crisis helped Soundararajan transform a small poultry feed trading firm into a multi-billion-rupee enterprise. The Rs 2,018-crore Suguna Poultry Farm is now one of the largest integrated poultry companies in the country. From 200 birds and a few hatcheries in the ’80s, Suguna now has 15,000 farmers under its contract farming model across 11 states in the country and produces 80 lakh birds (out of the country’s 450 lakh birds) a week employing 4,200 persons.

The company made its first bank borrowing of Rs 18,000 in 1987-88 paying an interest of 20%. “Getting loans was a tough task then. We had pledged our farm lands to borrow funds,” he recalls.

On an average a farmer earns up to Rs 15,000 per month under the Suguna model. Apart from constructing a shed for the farm, the company gives farmers day-old chicks and feed worth Rs 6 lakh that would be used for the six-week cycle for producing a broiler (live bird). Suguna’s success is largely because of its ability to make the necessary linkages.

End of middlemen
Soundararajan’s contract farming model eliminated middlemen and reduced the number of players in the poultry value chain to just three — farmer, company and the retailer. “Until then the middlemen took away around 10% as commission. As a result, costs increased by 25%,” he says.
The progress in the 80s though was rather slow. It took Suguna 14 years to reach Rs 7 crore in revenues. Between 1990 and 1995 the company patiently tried perfecting the model. Soundararajan acknowledges the company had no big plans till 1995. “We somehow wanted to run the show and survive.”
All that changed post-1995 when the company took the model to the rest of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh andMaharashtra. Suguna now has a pan-Indian presence in broiler chicken with 15,000 farmers under contract farming.
“He has a strong focus on processes and even when work is done manually errors are few,” Prasad Gopalan, head, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Chennai.
IFC, the commercial lending arm of the World Bank, committed $ 30 million (then valued at around Rs 130 crore) in Suguna in 2006. The company now has close to 18% market share in the Rs 12,000-crore organised broiler chicken market in the country.
The success has spurred Suguna to look beyond broiler chicken. Despite being a late entrant the company has managed to grab close to 10% market share in the layer segment (the company gives day-old chicks for hatcheries which produce unfertilised eggs).
But Suguna has not always got it right. Rail Road, its food retail venture that was modelled on the lines of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), failed to take off. Though he lost money, Soundararajan was smart to wind it up early.
“He recognises the need to balance long-term views and short-term tactics. Despite his background (of not going to college) he knows how to keep people motivated,” says Gopalan of IFC.

Looking outward
In the late 90s, the company again saw erosion in capital when it invested heavily in the Tamil Nadu market. “We had overgrown in TN. The market took our products at a lower cost,” Soundararajan acknowledges. Overproduction and dependence on a single market hurt, but it also ensured the company made the much-needed course correction.

“We realised that we had to de-risk,” he says. Starting with Karnataka in 1999, Suguna launched every year in each state and became a pan-India player in a few years.
But its foray into newer geographies was anything but smooth. Stronger, wellentrenched rivals made it a tough task and in Maharashtra the race for market share turned ugly at times.
Industry insiders describe them as ‘street fights’. The battle never came out in the open but there was enough heat generated making the climb for Suguna all the more difficult.

To his credit, Soundararajan emerged out of all this rather unscathed making a mark in all the new markets. He capped his effort by diversifying into producing day-old chicks for hatcheries in 2007 taking Venkateshwara Hatcheries, a near monopoly in the segment, head on.

Challenging road ahead
His biggest bet now is ‘Suguna Daily Fressh’, the processed meat retail venture. The company would open 100-150 stores in Tamil Nadu and Kerala before the end of the fiscal. Suguna expects the share of fresh, processed and value-added chicken to go up to 15-20% from the current 2% in the next 3-4 years due to fast changing lifestyles and higher disposable incomes. All the good work over the years has shown results. But commodity price inflation is a threat. Suguna, which produces 80 lakh broiler chicken a week, needs 7-8 lakh tons of maize a year. Maize prices have shot up to Rs 12,000 a ton from Rs 5,500 a tonne. Cost of producing a kg of broiler has increased from Rs 30 per kg a year ago to Rs 45. The retail prices of chicken have gone up but margins are coming down. Operating profit margins are hovering around the 5% mark now. Whatever is the answer to the proverbial question of which came first the chicken or the egg, Soundararajan is one man who will never chicken out.
Source – Times of India