Empressario August 2014 edition

...An Entrepreneurial Insight

August 2014

Vol. XV Iss. 1 IMT Hyderabad

Prarambh Speaks

…. (1)

Add-ons …. (14)

Team Prarambh

…. (15)

IMT - H | Prarambh Empressario | August 2014

Get Decent Service at your convenience—Autorickshaw ….(2) The Idealist – Sudha Murthy ….(4)

Anandi- Bringing about the Change

….(6)

AmbitionME: A unique online contest platform for students and

corporates

….(8)

Haptik – Instant Messenger to

chat with brands

….(10)

Out of the Box Start-Ups ….(12)

IMT - H | Prarambh Empressario | August 2014 | Page 1

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

-WALT DISNEY

In this edition of EMPRESSARIO, we bring to you the stories of personalities who have made an effort to-

wards bringing about a change through innovative entrepreneurial ventures. In recent years, our society

has witnessed the launch of many interesting business start-ups. Some of these sunk in the high tides of

risk and some went on to become exemplars of creativity and novelty.

These innovative entrepreneurs have shown the courage and nerve to think of out of the box ideas and

execute them in a manner that benefits them as well as the public economically and socially. Some of

these start-ups are exclusively aimed at upgrading and empowering the lower strata of the society who

do not have access to financial and other essential resources at large. A venture like ANANDI is a great

example of such a business idea. There is more to read about the company in this edition. Also, there are

businesses launched that have the objective of meeting the day to day requirements of the people who

are too busy in today’s fast paced world and therefore look for a third party to work for them. Some such

businesses are auto rickshaw services which are now only a call away from the public. These business ven-

tures seem to be of a relatively small scale but in reality they have proven to be a respite for the common

public.

We at PRARAMBH work with the vision of giving a new dimension to the entrepreneurial thought process.

EMPRESSARIO serves as a medium in realizing this purpose. We are grateful to the students for their con-

tribution to this newsletter. We hope to continue our work towards providing the budding entrepreneurs

a platform through which they can showcase their innovative ideas.

Happy Reading!

Team Prarambh


Get Decent Service at your convenience Autorickshaw

It has been said that "the difficulty in arriving at any achievement is encompassed by straightforward,

evident results that can drastically build the salary, power, impact and achievement." An ambitious

person having diverse vision and creative thought helps him/her to cross the stepping stool of trouble and

to achieve success.

The problem is, many don’t realize it. Except people who beg to differ - such entrepreneurs not only

recognized but acted upon.

As with the increase in use of technology,

clients have begun utilizing machines and

mobiles. They can do their shopping for

food and garments. Likewise, travel service

vendors are additionally accessible through

websites and customers can make orders

with just the click of a button.

One such an idea which came across entrepreneurs who wanted to create a business model by utilizing

e-commerce to leverage the usable mode of transport called "autorikshaw" is what we are here to discuss

about.

Attempting to change something that has been "the standard" for years is not a simple undertaking,

especially in the auto-rickshaw travel framework. An attempt to give comfort to clients and to enhance

shabby auto rickshaw framework in India is important and thus more than a valid point to enter the

market. Numerous business visionaries from diverse states of India have made a mark with such humble

ideas. For commuters who need to go to numerous

business gatherings/family visits on a solitary day,

an organized administration that facilitates on-hire

vehicles ranging from Easy Auto to Radio Tuk Tuk

to Autowalle would an ideal offering. An attempt

over Daily Pick up and Drop Service, where hiring of

an auto is extremely difficult in many metropolitan

cities due to traffic jams at busy hours. The service

is more advantageous for individuals who need

autorikshaws for extended periods of time on a


specific day. Likewise for vacationers who would need a guided city tour.

Few renowned services are:-

Auto Rickshaw on call in Gurgaon: Tuk Tuk service

Absence of open transportation framework in India's Millennium City – Gurgaon, has been a real test for

Gurgaon residents. One such Tuk Tuk company is tuning the need by gifting 24X7 dial-an-auto service to

people in general. The vehicles are fitted with GPS, panic button, mobile charger and also an auto fire

cut-off system to offer more safety and value.

Autorickshaw is now just a call away for Mumbaikars :

Mumbai city has a deficiency of autorickshaws and companies like Rickshawale is crossing over any

barrier between the client and the autorickshaw driver by giving the client a pick up from his/her location

and giving business to the autorickshaw driver. Such services are 24*7 available that empowers

Mumbaikars to call an autorickshaw at their entryway step. The telephone numbers have been given on

their site so as to book the rickshaw. Such companies have incorporated GSM/GPRS technology and are

ensuring that there is no refusal-of-service.

Through such cases, we can infer that India's young minds, with inventive thoughts have demonstrated

that uncommon innovations and thoughts could propel success and create more value. Notwithstanding

numerous stipulations - absence of instruction and extreme money crunch - majority of them have

succeeded in utilizing technology to build ingenious business models.

Written By:

Anu Kaushik

BVIMR, New Delhi

http://www.radiotuktuk.com


The Idealist – Sudha Murthy

The Chairperson of Infosys foundation Mrs. Sudha Narayana Murthy is

an Indian author and social worker. She is a member of public

healthcare initiative of Gate foundation. A prolific writer in English and

Kannada, she has diverse works to her credit ranging from novels,

collection of short stories, technical, non-fictional, books for children

and travelogues. Her books are available in all major Indian languages.

She is known for her philanthropic work.

She has founded several orphanages, had undertaken various rural

development efforts, and supported the movement to provide

computer & library facilities in all government schools of Karanataka.

She was born in 1950 in Shiggaon in north Karnataka. She is the daughter of famous Dr. R. H. Kulkarni.

She was raised by her parents and maternal grandparents, and her mother Vimala Kulkarni was a home

maker. Her childhood experiences form the historical basis for her first notable work entitled “How I

taught my Grandmother to Read” & Other Stories.

She pursued electrical engineering (B.E) from B.V.B College of engineering & Technology, Hubli. She was

one of the brightest students of her class who stood first in state & received gold medal from Chief

Minister of Karnataka. Later, she went on to complete her masters in computer science from Indian

Institute of science, Bangalore. She was the first female engineer hired at India’s largest auto

manufacture TELCO (TATA Engineering and Locomotive Company; now TATA Motors), Pune as a

Development Engineer. She lived in Pune from 1974-1981, and then moved to Mumbai. Later she joined

Walchand Group of Industries, Pune as Senior Systems Analyst. In 1996, she started Infosys Foundation

with her husband, the visionary software industrialist, Mr. N.R. Narayan Murthy & till date she has been

the Trustee of Infosys Foundation & a visiting Professor at the PG Center of a reputed college of

Bangalore University. Mr. Murthy proudly mentions the fact on several occasions that it was her saving

of Rs.10, 000 that was implemental in the founding of Infosys.

On November 19th, 2004, she was awarded by Sri Raja Lakshmi Foundation, Chennai in recognition of

her spectacular contribution to social work. In 2006, she was honoured with the Padma Shri, the fourth

highest civilian award from the Government of India and received an honorary doctorate from

Sathyabama University. In 2011, Mrs. Murthy was conferred honorary LL.D (Doctor of Laws) degrees for

her contributions to promote formal legal education and scholarship in India. She has been awarded

with the ‘Attimabbe Award’ – for her literary work for the year 2011-12 by Government of Karnataka.

Sudha Murthy is prolific writer and has written many books, which reflect the common lives, her views

of donation, realisation and hospitality. Listed below are some of them:

How I Taught My Grandmother To Read

The Old Man And His God: Discovering the Spirit of India

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka


Gently Falls The Bakula

Thailibhar goshti

The Accolades Galore

The Bird with Golden Wings: Stories of Wit and Magic

Dollar Bahu

Wise & Otherwise

Punyabhumi Bharat

Mahashweta

Grandma's Bag Of Stories

The Magic Drum And Other Favourite Stories

House of Cards

Man ni Vaat

Matti ke tare

The wide spectrum of Sudha Murthy’s social work covers sectors of

education, healthcare, art and culture, empowerment of women,

poverty alleviation and public hygiene from the grassroots level.

Mrs. Murthy’s vision of a library in each school has come about in the setting up of nearly ‘50 thousand’

libraries so far. Her contribution in helping our rural areas in building several hundred public toilets is also

remarkable. Mrs. Sudha Murthy is one of the trustees of Infosys Foundation (public charitable trust),

which is founded in 1996. Through Infosys Foundation, she has built almost 2300 houses in flood affected

areas. She extended her support and helped people during the national natural calamities like drought in

Karnataka and Maharashtra, tsunami in Tamil Nadu and Andaman, earthquake in Kutch – Gujarat, floods

and hurricane in Andhra and Orissa.

Written by:

Deepali Gaikwad

MMS 2014-2016

SIMSREE, Mumbai

Anandi- Bringing about the Change


In his maiden Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced his concern over the

poor condition of sanitation in rural India. Though the government has allocated more than £1billion to

address this issue, not much improvement has been witnessed. This poses great problems for the

villagers, especially women. During menstruation, the problem becomes worse for them. They use

cloth, old rags, sand and ash and this can lead to many health issues such as pain, illness, infection,

cancer etc. In villages where women work for an earning, they cannot afford to leave even a day’s work,

as that would mean losing the day’s wage for their family. The kind of embarrassment that these

women often go through during menstruation days at work is unimaginable.

The founders of Aakar Innovations work towards providing

freedom from this situation to the women in rural areas. They

are the manufacturers of affordable, high quality and

compostable sanitary pads under the brand name ‘Anandi’.

The founders Jaydeep Mandal and Sombodhi Ghosh have

witnessed the plight of these women first hand during their stay in rural India. Their experience in these

villages inspired them to come up with this idea. They produce sanitary napkins in small,

women-owned, energy efficient, mini-factory, set up in the village or slum areas. The cost of these nap-

kins is around Rs. 1.50 and it is sold at Rs. 2-2.25. These napkins are sterilized and adhere to the Bureau

of Indian Standards. Moreover, these napkins are compostable too, thus causing no harm to the

environment.

Aakar Innovations has not only worked towards providing women with low-cost sanitary napkins but

has also addressed the problem of unemployment in rural India. The machines which have been

developed by them are sold to a group of women for a price of Rs. 2.5 lakhs and the women themselves

work in these units to produce the napkins. The founders believe that if the women have a stake in

owning the machine, they will work hard to run it.

However, there are certain challenges associated with this project. Even after providing affordable

napkins to women in the remote areas, the firm faced and is still facing many hindrances in the

distribution of the product in these areas. Some of the issues are retailers unwilling to stock the product

due to low demand, etc. The firm is overcoming the challenges in its way and is working hard towards

attaining its mission of empowering and improving the standard of living of underprivileged women by

providing them with quality menstrual hygiene products at low prices.

Our former President, Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam had once said, “grass-root innovations can make an impact

only when they have a chance to be commercially viable”. In this case, Aakar Innovations has been

fortunate to have had the opportunity to transform the lives of many Indian women but there are many

innovators who are still struggling. Their untold stories need to be voiced and heard in order to create an

impact on the society.

Written by:

Shaily Agarwal

IIM, Raipur



AmbitionME: A Unique Online Contest Platform for

Students and Corporates

AmbitionMe is a venture started by three IIM Calcutta graduates, who left their well-paying comfortable

jobs to enter into an uncharted territory. The enterprise’s playing fields are career development, brand

marketing and recruitment spaces. It is trying to create its niche by combining these three aspects

through innovation and hard work.

There are a number of online contest platforms in

India and many job search- based websites too.

What makes AmbitionMe different is that it

combines both of these and provides a unique and

robust solution to ease the pressure on corporates for recruitment. In addition to this, it makes jobs and

internships easily accessible to students. In this era of globalization, all the corporates want the best

talent to work for them. However, it is not possible for them to access each and every corner of the

country for recruitment purposes. It is here that AmbitionMe comes to the rescue and helps the

recruiters. One may say that the same can be done through job sites like Monster.com, internshala.com,

etc., but the fact remains that the process is faulty to a certain extent. The above mentioned websites

do provide a platform for the corporates to capitalise their opportunities but at the same time they do

not provide a robust mechanism for evaluation. Hence, problems like lack of infrastructure,

cumbersome recruitment process sometimes lead to the scarcity of good candidates and some of the

good candidates lose out due to the lack of CV points.

AmbitionMe addresses this problem by providing the

corporates a platform through which they can screen

candidates and hence, evaluate them in a better way rather

than only using their resumes for the same. Moreover,

neither the students nor the corporates have to travel for

the same. With clients like foodpanda, Mint, Adianta &

Oriflame trusting them, they are definitely in for a long

journey. Another added benefit for the students is that these online contests are relevant to what they

want to do in the future. The contests are based on the various domains like marketing, finance,

technology, communication skills, aptitude, general awareness, etc., which the users can usually easily

connect to.

Corporates can also use the platform to connect with students and market their companies to them. For

Prashi Agarwal, Varsha Sarkar, Vishal Haria

Founders of AmbitionME

example brands like Lonely Planet and AC Nielsen floated contests on AmbitionMe to connect with the

student base of AmbitionMe which approximately numbers at around 20-25k. One of the biggest benefits

for the corporates is that everything (publicity, logistics, contest creation, etc.) is handled by AmbitionMe

for a very modest fee.

Apart from the contest platform, AmbitionMe also has a blog where insightful and “hatke” articles are

published on a regular basis. It also creates informative info graphics from time to time to award its

frequent and new users. Attractive opportunities from other external sources are also updated on a

regular basis.

AmbitionMe is a cool & hip start-up which honestly attempts to add value to a student’s career and to a

corporate’s marketing/hiring strategy in an era where everyone is looking for new ways to progress.

Written by:

Siddharth Chowdhary

IIM Shillong



Haptik – Instant Messenger to Chat with

Brands Are you tired of calling customer care by responding to the mundane automatic customer support

machine? Then Haptik is there for you.

Haptik makes use of instant messages; the most used service in a mobile, to provide customer support.

Whatever information you need - details about trains currently leaving from your station or price of

ticket in the nearby movie theaters or auto part dealers for your car, Haptik will provide you with the

most recent & relevant details. If you have any query, just download the app and send your query as an

instant message; Haptik operators will get back to you in few minutes. Shortly, Haptik is a WhatsApp to

chat with brands.

Launched 6 months ago, Haptik has tied up with 200 Indian companies in 12 different sectors to provide

customer care service. The sectors range from automobiles (Maruti Suzuki, BMW, Tata Motors etc.) and

banking(HDFC, ICICI, SBI etc.) to telecom(Vodafone, Airtel, BSNL etc.) and DTH(Sun Direct, Tata Sky

etc.).In the past 6 months, Haptik has scored 10,000+ downloads in Android PlayStore.

With 15 member team, Haptik is maintaining its average response time to customer queries as 1 to 3

minutes. With the recruitment of 100 more members, Haptik is on its way to reduce the response time

to less than a minute.

Pricing strategy:

For Users: Customers get the product totally free. To promote the product among customers, Haptik has formulated marketing strategies through social media, content and advertising.

For businesses: Prices will vary based on the volume of messages sent per company. It will vary from INR 25,000 to INR 100,000/month.


Potential Competitors:

Instant Messengers (IM) like WhatsApp, Line, Viber and WeChat are potential competitors of Haptik. So, what Haptik is planning to survive and supersede them? Most of the above mentioned messengers are already offering services similar to that of Haptik. But they are rarely known to people. Actually, Haptik made use of this white space and created a sub category in Instant Messaging at the cost of other chat service providers.

Justifiers for Companies:

Specialization: With the Haptik, now businesses could focus more on their other strengths apart from customer care services.

Identification of needs: Since customer’s opinion collected through Haptik is unbiased, the data could be used to determine the pulse of the users accurately. Hence, companies would be able to offer the products based on the market needs.

Low cost: Customer care service would be handled at a cheaper cost.

Justifiers for Users:

Speed: No need to wait on the line listening to the monotonous customer support voice “Your call is important to us. Thanks for waiting on the line. We will get back to you in few minutes”.

Wider reach: Users can reach to 200 different companies’ customer care with a single app. Unbiased response: Experts, answering the queries, wouldn’t belong to the company.

Hence, they will provide an unbiased solution.

Now, what is your choice? Are you still searching for customer care contact no.?

Written By:

Maruthappan S

IIM Ranchi


Out of the Box Start-Ups

History and Jobs Cut Off: The Global Economic Crisis 2007-08 led to the collapse of financial institutions

and downswing of stock markets, all over the world. This crisis, further, resulted in the global recession of

2008-12. Furthermore, the acute difficulties faced in doing business in India due to rising rates,

depreciating rupee, unemployment and low capacity could be attributed to the crisis of housing bubble.

Indian IT firms slashed their budget and led to layoff of the employees. Export sector faced merely 10%

growth resulting in loss of the jobs of even the competent individuals. According to a survey, 109513

skilled people lost their jobs. This frustration, due to increasing unemployment among highly educated

and proficient people, urged them to setup their own businesses.

Motivational Factors: Some people wanted to change the world in their own way and to leave behind

their impact in such a way to make the universe notice them. This led to the generation of the new

ventures that, we call up today, as “Start-ups” of

the Modern age.

Unconventional Thinking: Aspired people and

brilliant minds of India have astonished the world

by their phenomenal actions in every domains

and innovations viz. Development Sector,

Telecom/IT, Education and Training, Data

Analytics, E-commerce, Online Travel, food,

automobiles etc.

Zomato: Indian Foodies used to be confused about the fine dines and food joints, that serve the

delicious foods. This inconvenience of the people generated an unconventional idea in the mind of an IIT

Delhi Alumnus, who quit his easygoing job at a consulting firm and started a totally new consumer service

firm called Zomato, where anyone can search for a restaurant in his area and can step in after reading the

menu and the users ratings, making Zomato a valuable and guaranteed platform for the good food joints.

Stayzilla.com: The Indian tourism contributes 5.9% the GDP. This figure was good enough for some

brilliant minds to come up with an online site, where the domestic travelers can look for the reasonably

priced hotels and browse for the facilities, as per their requirement, from anywhere with a click on the

screen. To anyone’s surprise, the company is growing at an astonishing rate of 400 percent per annum (25

times more than Indian Tourism growth rate).


Mettl Inc: One of the major concerns and spending of the globally established Indian companies is on

the accurate assessment of the various skills possessed by the candidates. This 10x grown startup

provides solution in the form of an online assessment of the technical, aptitude and psychometric skills of

the potential candidates. The

organization has changed the

traditional approach of training by

360 degrees.

Goonj: The need for clothing, one of

the three most basic human needs,

often gets eclipsed by the other needs

in the society. The purpose of this

social service startup firm is to

provide the discarded clothes of Urban Communities for constructive use in the rural India. It is an

Opportunity not Charity. It offers clothes, as a motivation, in exchange for the development works like

bridge building, school building, roads and ponds cleaning. Goonj also won the Japanese Award for the

most Innovative Development Project “Cloth for Work”. The firm is making revenues of over 3 crore,

apart from providing a tremendous social service, as an NGO.

(Excerpts from www.goonj.org)

Conclusion: The most inspiring thing, that I feel urges a brilliant mind to startup his own venture and out

of the box thinking is:

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old (Peter F.Drucker)

Written by:

Sovit Khurana

Welingkar, Mumbai

Readers’ Corner

Got any comments? Would you like to contribute to the newsletter?

Get back to us at: [email protected].

Your comments/views and articles would be published from the next

issue. A few things to be kept in mind:

Articles/comments should not be demeaning / damaging in nature.

Articles should be to the point and of around 500 words.

The decision of selecting the articles to be featured and the number

of such articles rests with the faculty mentor and editor of the news-

letter.

So put on your thinking caps and show us your intellect side.


Technical and Design

Pushkar Ghatole

Deeptanshu Pande

Technical and Design Support

Ayush Agarwal Prakash Thakur

Faculty Mentor

Dr.M.Sivagnanasundaram

Core Members

Manish Agrawal

Prakash Jeswani

Suhas Vaitla

Sahiba Pahwa

Saketa Pingali

Editors

Shreya Dasgupta Sarang Pious Neeli Sravya


Vol. XV Iss. 1 | Empressario | August 2014 | Prarambh | IMT Hyderabad

Institute of Management Technology, Hyderabad

Survey No 38, Cherlaguda Village

Shamshabad Mandal, RR District, Hyderabad—501218 (Telangana State)

Tel: +91-40-30461662 Fax: +91-40-30461655

E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.imthyderabad.edu.in

Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/ecell.imthyd

Write to us: [email protected], [email protected]

Documents

Empressario August 2014 edition