Kochi : India can solve its poverty only through entrepreneurship, said Infosys founder and mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy here on Tuesday.
N.R. Narayana Murthy.
He was speaking at a function, organised by DC Books on the occasion of the release of the Malayalam translation of his book ‘Better India, Better World.’ Read more
Source : deccanchronicle.com
G.S. Bhalla, 39, of New Delhi, founded a distribution company in 1996 and followed it up with a business process outsourcing (BPO) firm in 2000. Now he runs yoghurt chain Cocoberry
Shisodia, Bhalla and Khimji are a new breed of serial entrepreneurs. It has been a well-established trend in the information technology world for entrepreneurs to start afresh after tasting success in one venture, and that’s now spilling over to other business segments as well.
Exploring spaces: Sameer Shisodia, co-founder of hospitality chain Linger Leisure, plans to set up 15 retreats in two years. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint
Raman Roy, who started Spectramind, has founded Quatrro Global Services Pvt. Ltd; Rajesh Jain sold IndiaWorld, a collection of India-centric websites, and started Netcore Solutions Pvt. Ltd; and Samir Bodas, former president and chief executive of Aztecsoft Ltd, co-founded Icertis Inc. after Aztecsoft was acquired by MindTree Ltd. Ashok Soota, co-founder of MindTree, has started Happiest Minds. Read more
Source : livemint.com
What will India look like in 2025?
Formal-sector job growth has been strongest in regions and industries that have exhibited high rates of entrepreneurship and dynamic economies. Reuters
The optimistic outlook is that India, which accounts for 80% of the South Asian regional economic output, is headed towards double digit growth rates. South Asia too will grow rapidly, primarily due to India. Read more
Source : firstpost.com
Health clubs, restaurants, e-commerce sites, coffee shops, renewable-energy producers, spas. The entrepreneur gold rush is on.
Pictured, Ms. Ruia in her health studio. Courtesy of Madhuri Ruia
But India isn’t making life easy for entrepreneurs, as The Wall Street Journal detailed in a front-page story about a Mysore-based medical equipment startup. That hasn’t stopped a wave of ambitious Indians – some more savvy and skilled than others – from starting up businesses in recent years. Read more
Source : blogs.wsj.com
Bhubaneswar: SREI Sahaj E village limited (SSEVL) celebrated the success stories of the Village level Entrepreneurs.
SSEVL has been in forefront of E-governance sphere not only in Odisha but five other states of India. It started its operation in September 2008 in the state with an objective of transforming rural Odisha by bridging the rural-urban digital divide and in these three years the company is proud to be able to provide a sustainable business model to over two thousand rural youth. Read more
Source : orissadiary.com
In India, according to the World Bank, approximately 400 million people are without access to reliable electricity and an estimated 100,000 villages are without access to the national grid and receive no electricity. In these cases, the use of coal, kerosene, and other “dirty” fuel sources for power, cooking, and lighting provide energy with intermittent quality and reliability, as well as serious health and environmental concerns.
The lack of reliable light at night affects young students’ ability to study and these find it difficult to concentrate on their studies for an extended period of time, due to irritation and pain in the eyes caused by smoke and heat produced from kerosene lamps. These unsafe sources of energy also cause long-term lung conditions. Read more
Source : solarfeeds.com
In modern day India, one can easily visualise educated urban youth sitting in well-equipped Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centres in cities like Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi, and serving clients living in America, UK etc.
.jpg)
Bold initiative: Narayan Bhide set up the BPO in his village to provide jobs to the local youth (Photo courtesy: The Sunday Indian)
Can one, however, imagine not-so-well-educated rural youth doing the same thing sitting in a remote village of India? Read more
Source : theweekendleader.com
Rambabu Gupta is a slum dweller from Ratu Road in Ranchi. A father of four children, he took home just Rs. 100 after a day’s hard work, selling pani poori as a roadside vendor.
Changing lives: Rambabu Gupta, a street vendor, who used to earn about Rs.100 daily, now takes home Rs.1000 per day,thanks to Streets India
He used to be beaten up by the local goons, who demanded illegal levy from him. The police was not helpful, as he was not a licensed vendor. Read more
Source : theweekendleader.com
Bhubaneswar: Professionalism in agriculture is must for securing future growth rate opined Chief Secretary Bijaya Kumar Patnaik while presiding over a high level meeting on prospects and development of agri-entrepreneurs held in the secretariat conference hall recently.
Taking forward the principle decision of the Govt to improve agricultural operation through creation of professional groups and introduction of modern machineries, Sri Patnaik has outlined major areas of agricultural operations to be taken up at the initial stages. Read more
Source : orissadiary.com
Bangalore : In 2007, when Nitin Gupta, an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and engineering degree holder from IIT-Delhi came to India from the US ending his association with some technology start-ups, what he had with him was an idea. An idea that came out of his personal as well as societal requirement to have a proper mechanism to dispose of obsolete electronic goods. He captured that idea through PowerPoint presentation and some Excel sheets. Along with younger brother Rohan, a BTech in Chemical Engineering from REC, Jaipur, who was working with SAP Labs at that time, he started his dream venture Attero Recycling.
Attero, which means ‘waste’ in Latin, thus, took birth with initial funding from NEA-IndoUS Venture. But to address an unorganised sector like e-waste management where a vast majority of the recycling is still done by the unorganised players was not an easy task. Gupta knew that given the enormous amount of electronic waste India was expected to produce with the growth of the economy, there were bound to be a huge space created for organised players. He started working to fill that vacuum. Read more
Source : business-standard.com
Desi Power provides off-grid electricity to villages using biomass as fuel.
Until some months ago, Shivnarayan Mondal used diesel to run the pumps that irrigate his farm at Baharbari village. It used to take an hour and a half each time. With electricity, Mondal says, pointing to the lush fields ahead, he finishes the job in just 30 minutes. That isn’t the only transformation power has wrought in this Bihar village close to the Nepal border. Now there are mobile phones and DTH connections. Mondal hires a television whenever he wants to catch a film since power is affordable: for lighting three CFL bulbs, he pays Rs 3 everyday. “We even go to the cinema hall now. Life has changed,” he smiles.
Soumik Kar
Tellingly—and perhaps unfortunately—none of this transformation can be credited to the government. The change at Baharbari is the work of a Bangalore-based company that builds and operates off-grid electric power plants using sustainable, renewable sources such as biomass, biofuel, hydro and solar power. Desi (Decentralised Energy Systems India) Power is the brainchild of HN Sharan, a well-known power engineer, and Ashok Khosla, a leading environment and sustainable development expert. Nearly 80, Sharan’s enthusiasm is still as strong as it was when he launched the company in 1996. Read more
Source : business.outlookindia.com
Tables out of old cycle rims and penstands from used colouring pens—who’da thunk it?
Nilotpal Baruah
He doesn’t look old enough to be out of high school, and in true schoolboy-fashion, he’s loves getting his hands dirty and mucking around in trash. But there’s nothing kiddish about Suren Vikhash U’s interests. Rather, his two-year-old company Thunk In India is a great example of how one man’s junk can be made into another man’s treasure, that too for a profit: it takes everyday waste materials—juice cartons, biscuit and chips packets and soft drink caps, among others—and transforms them innovatively into things like CD cases, rugs and handbags.
The 25-year-old Suren has been elbow-deep in dirt for some years now. His graduation project at Bangalore’s Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology was on creatively addressing waste management. Apart from interacting with waste experts in the city, he also interned with Daily Dump, a local company that helps households manage their waste by converting it to high-quality compost. The project and the internship were “eye-openers”, says Suren. “When I visited land fills, I realised that basic segregation between dry and wet garbage doesn’t actually take place. The whole process of the life of a waste material was also a revelation,” he recalls. A lot of the waste that ends up in landfills isn’t biodegradable, which means it spends years leaching chemicals and harmful substances into the soil before finally decomposing. Plastic bags, drink cartons and bottles remain the biggest concern. “These have a very long life,” explains Suren. His brainwave: use the residual life of this trash in a creative way. “There was a lot that could be done with the waste—but wasn’t being done. This made it a big business opportunity,” he says. Read more
Source : business.outlookindia.com
KNIDS Green helps farmers brand veggies and builds recall value for their produce.
On Sunday mornings, when most of his peers from IIM are relaxing in their urban homes, Kaushlendra leaves Patna on his weekly trip to the villages around Nalanda in Bihar. He covers 40-80 km on his travels, meeting and urging an average 150-200 farmers to band together and sell their produce in urban centres via Knids Green, his commercial enterprise of noble objectives. So far, Kaushlendra has been able to convince 3,000 farmers to sell their vegetables in Patna under the aegis of Knids Green. Direct linkages with the growers fetch higher profits for them; the consumers benefit from cheaper prices.
Here’s how Knids Green works—small farmers are grouped together at the village level. One among them is chosen to lead the effort, collect vegetables on a daily basis and send them to Knids Green’s processing centre in Patna. At this centre, vegetables are sorted, graded and packaged with a bar code et al, and then sold under the brand name Samriddhii. Read more
Source : business.outlookindia.com
Gram Mooligai has helped group medicinal plant gatherers in Tamil Nadu into a corporate structure.
About 40 km out of Madurai and on the road to Tuticorin lies Sevaiyoor. It looks like any village in Tamil Nadu—large, green fields edged by trees and many, many farmers. Life has a certain level of tranquillity and there is not very much to complain about. The name Sevaiyoor (meaning place of service) isn’t very old, but then the village itself isn’t very old. Until not too long ago, this land was classified as waste. “We have created a manmade forest on a 200-acre area. We also gave it a name,” says a proud N Muthu Velayutham, Founder, Covenant Centre for Development (CCD).
RA Chandroo
The forest and the farmlands inside it are at the heart of three initiatives started by CCD—Aharam, Adharam and Gram Mooligai. While CCD is a not-for-profit organisation, Gram Mooligai (GMCL) is a public limited entity whose shares are owned by the primary producer groups of medicinal plant gatherers and cultivators who work out of Sevaiyoor. “We have a variety of herbs being cultivated in this farm,” says Velayutham as he bends to examine a stack of dried leaves of Eclipta prostrata (commonly known as bhringraj or false daisy). “We produce 55 tonnes of this each year here,” he adds. What the 11-year-old GMCL does is simple: it provides assured market support to its shareholders by taking orders for medicinal herbs from ayurvedic companies, extract makers and the like and passing them onto the primary producer groups. They grow the herbs and send them off after sorting, drying, crushing and packing them properly. Read more
Source : business.outlookindia.com
Unemployment, disincentivized entrepreneurship, corruption and the conflict in Kashmir are all very intricately linked. Ikhlaq Qadri brings us the highlights of an intense exercise suggesting ways out for the youth population of Kashmir.
Fostering the growth of 200 youth enterprises across Kashmir valley, the first phase of the SKYE project’s research agenda -The “Youth Entrepreneurship in Kashmir: Challenges and Opportunities” report was released on July 25 in the University of Kashmir. Read more
Source : kashmirlife.net
Jorgama village in the floodravaged Madhepura district of Bihar is a transformed place now.
The fund provided an initial grant of Rs 25.2 lakh
And the credit for this goes to Care Today, an India Today initiative, which selected the village that had lost 32 of its residents in the devastating Kosi floods of 2008. Read more
Source : indiatoday.intoday.in
Bhubaneswar: Orissa Government announces to built house for 12,000 Anganwadi centre, Uniform to all Anganwadi workers. This was announced by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the conference of Child Development and Protection Officers (CDPO) at Bhubaneswar on Tuesday.
The Government will also provide free uniforms and study materials to kids coming to the Anganwadi centres in the age group of 3 to 6 years. The Chief Minister, while highlighting the various welfare programmes being implemented by the State Government for women and children, also announced that all the Anganwadi Centres would have their own buildings and the State Government in the first phase would construct new buildings for at least 12,000 Anganwadi Centres during the next six months. Read more
Source : orissadiary.com
BANGALORE: The government has reacted strongly to the practice of manual scavenging in Kolar Gold Fields (KGF), highlighted by The Times of India on Wednesday. Urban development and law minister S Suresh Kumar on Wednesday said it should be wiped out by the time he visits the district soon.
"I will go to the district in 15 to 20 days. By then, manual scavenging should be completely erased there," he wrote in a letter to deputy commissioner of Kolar Manoj Kumar Meena. Read more
Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com
VARANASI: Though there are provisions for poverty alleviation in urban areas, a number of urban poor and slum dwellers in Varanasi are bound to face financial hardships. However, officials claim things are improving with the implementation of programmes.
"It is difficult to manage household expenses for people like us," said Gopal, a daily wager. Like him, there are a number of people living mostly in slums in the city. The district has 227 slums, including 210 in the municipal limit of Varanasi Nagar Nigam (VNN). According to records, the total population at these slums is about 4,53,222, which constitutes about 37.69% of the total population of the city. The report prepared under Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) suggests that the average income of a slum household is Rs 100-150 per day with average household size of eight members. Read more
Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com
SURAT: Soon, the paanwallas, fruit vendors, food joint stalls etc. will get a new identity -- micro-entrepreneurs. Thanks to the national policy on urban street vendors - 2009 of Government of India, which has been implemented in Gujarat, Surat Municipal Corporation ( SMC) has decided to carry out a survey of street vendors in the diamond city.
As a first step, a survey will be conducted to enumerate the number of street vendors in order to regulate street vending in the diamond city. Read more
Source : articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com
BANGALORE: Urban Development Minister Suresh Kumar distributed money amounting to `40 lakhs in the form of welfare schemes in his constituency Rajaji Nagar on Friday.
Corporators of all wards coming under the constituency lauded his efforts to bring visible change in Rajaji Nagar while residents thanked him for distributing the money after a rather long wait. Read more
Source : ibnlive.in.com
Mumbai : A young engineer with the vision of leveraging technology to improve the lives of people finds ways to make conventional robots more intelligent. In 2007 he founded Gridbots which develops robots with a solution-centric approach. They consume only a fifth of the power consumed by conventional robots, and weigh only a third of their weight. Audio- and video-based analytics technologies make them more intelligent than conventional ones. We bring you the case study on Gridbots’ venture into robotics in an exclusive arrangement with India Brand Equity Foundation. This is the first in a five-part series from IBEF’s Innovations from India: Harbingers of Change. The series focuses on the innovation-driven entrepreneurial spirit of Indian companies.
Source: business-standard.com
Noida’s real estate boom is bouyed by small entrepreneurs, but marred by controversies over execution and land acquisition.
Since 2008, residents of the National Capital Region (NCR) have had to contend with a very annoying problem: Endless text messages about yet another upcoming real estate project in the Noida and Greater Noida region. Read more
Source: moneycontrol.com
Soon, the city would be running on biogas. The Delhi government, in a joint venture with the Swedish government, plans to convert biogas from Keshopur sewage treatment plants to CNG.
The CNG will in turn be used in state-run buses. The project, a first for the city, will see biogas generated at sewage treatment plants being converted into CNG. Delhi at present has the largest fleet of CNG-run buses in the world. The biogas produced by the sewage treatment plants has a 60 per cent concentration of methane. For CNG, it has to be concentrated up to 90 per cent. Read More
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
MUMBAI: The much-awaited new industrial policy will ensure that not only Maharashtra retains its premier position in foreign direct and domestic investment, but that it halts migration of new entrepreneurs to neighbouring states.
"We are giving finial touches to the new policy. We have drafted it after carefully studying industrial policies of at least half a dozen states. Our policy will be entrepreneur-friendly, as such new industrialists will abandon their plans to set up their units in neighbouring states," Sachin Ahir, minister of state for industries, told TOI on Tuesday. Read more
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Ahmedabad: One of the oldest supermarkets of Ahmedabad, ANPM, has finally closed down owing to rift between partners. It had been running operations successfully for more than a decade. Located in one of the most posh areas of the city near Judges Bungalow road, ANPM was the only supermarket in the city that sold frozen non-vegetarian items. Its closure has left residents of nearby areas in a fix.
Before ANPM, Pyramid, Spencers, India Bulls, Subhiksha and other retail chains have closed down in the city. Read more
Source: daily.bhaskar.com
|
Dehradun: The rural industries programme (RIP) in the Pauri district of Uttarakhand is attempting to create new entrepreneurial skills in areas ranging from beauty parlours to printing presses among unemployed youth in the state’s mountainous areas. With migration plaguing the hill state, the RIP began in September 2008 with the aim of setting up 200 small units in three years. A little over 150 units have been set up so far. Read more Source: business-standard.com |
Recent Comments