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“I have told my story many times,” Nitin Godse starts our conversation jovially. Not surprising, considering this entrepreneur from Maharashtra has lived a richly layered life. Rising from abject poverty and a staggering lack of resources, Nitin went on to start one of the leading players in the field of high purity gas & chemical distribution systems in India.

For a man helming a business whose annual turnover exceeds ₹25 crore, Nitin — founder and CEO of Excel Gas & Equipments — is a picture of earnestness and humility.

Nitin was born in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, in a family of farmers. Earning a meagre income, his father struggled to make ends meet, between farming and selling vegetables. Nitin too plunged into earning his livelihood from a tender age — but while his need for money was certainly urgent, taking charge of a business gave the young entrepreneur great pleasure.

“I remember that when I was in class 2 or 3, I used to sell glasses of water in the local market, each serving at five paise,” recounts Nitin. “I have sold vegetables and local bakery products through my school years. I was too young to say if it was just about the money, but I liked doing business. Being able to run a business gave me immense satisfaction.”

The spirit of entrepreneurship heightened as Nitin grew and pursued his higher education. Leaving the family’s farming tradition behind, he sought out corporate jobs. After a few years of work, he completed an MBA course in 1996 from the University of Pune, where he also sustained himself with a variety of small business ventures.

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It was in fact a vegetable business that first propelled Nitin’s full-fledged journey as an entrepreneur. “There weren’t many malls in Mumbai back then and people turned to grocery shops for supplies,” he says. Drawing from his background — he was after all, a farmer’s son — Nitin procured vegetables and branded them in cleaned and cut varieties. “In those days, selling vegetables was considered an illiterate’s job, but I did very well selling up to 750 kg daily.” However, misfortune came calling at his doorstep. Nitin lost the business to his investment partners and was left without any profits. “Without any money or resources, I sank into depression,” he admits.

In 1999, on the day his oldest son was born, Nitin went back on the entrepreneurial path. And Excel Gas & Equipments was born.

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Nitin, in his early years[/caption] Excel Gas & Equipments offered turnkey solution in high-standard gas installation and distribution systems. Having worked in an industrial gas company for a few years, Nitin had has the background and knowledge for the business. It wasn’t, however, a journey devoid of challenges.

“As a first generation entrepreneur, one has many challenges, chiefly lack of money and resources,” says Nitin. “We build our future based on past experience, but that wasn’t available to me. The only way was trial-and-error, with higher probability of error. ”

Fraught with failures and challenges, Nitin’s never-say-die attitude led him past financial losses towards a steadily-profitable business. “I’ve made some very big mistakes, but I stuck to my convictions. I kept finding solutions to my problems. After all, problems without solutions have no meaning at all,” he says.

Today, Excel Gas & Equipments is a leading player in the field of high purity gas and chemical distribution.

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Nitin on the field[/caption] The company has offices across India and the Middle East, and the Excel gas team works around the globe offering their position. Its high-profile clients include the likes of Reliance, Qatar Petroleum, Pfizer, Cipla, BHEL and BARC among others. Nitin himself has become a familiar face and inspiration to many, his rags-to-riches stories often related in the media. Yet he has no plans of stopping. At least not for a while. As he puts so eloquently, “I am starving to see new horizons.”

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Ask about his future plans and Nitin elucidates his plan for the next decade. “My first leap is complete—I feel I have matured and my business is doing well,” he says, talking about his expansion in the chemical industry. “We are setting up chemical plans in Nashik and Aurangabad and have plans for 10 plants in the coming years. I am aiming for a turnover of Rs 600 crore in the next 12 years.” Nitin hopes to retire when he’s 55, devoting time to social causes and farming. He insists that he doesn’t want to force his children to join the business, and would rather empower them with education and a solid platform for whatever they choose to do. Though a successful story in every right, he is too humble to dole out advice on the go. But he offers an observation from his own experiences. “Many entrepreneurs give up because they can’t absorb the many errors they make,” he says. “But this is what I believe, your success depends on how firm your mind is. You will face problems, but you have to be firm.”

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As a child, Neha Murthy used to play many board games, and Ludo was one of her favourites. But little did she know then that she was actually playing a simplified version of an Indian game - Pachisi. Years later, she decided to take her love for board games further and presented five different board games on fabric as her final year project in college. “The thought was to revive ancient Indian games. But to do so, I had to create something visually exciting so that it catches people’s attention and they give it a second glance. The idea was to present ancient Indian games in a unique and quirky way so that it created curiosity among people to know what these games were and create interest to play them as well,” says Neha, who specialised in Textiles in her post-graduation.

So she worked on various themes around the games and then got each of them embroidered or/and appliqued with various India-inspired themes. The project, which she christened Pachisi, was a hit!

However, during her project research she found out that not many people were aware of old Indian games. Most knew how to play some of the more popular games such as chess, and snakes and ladders, but very few knew how to play games such as Pachisi and Goats and Tigers.

Which is why, she decided to make people, especially children, aware of ancient games and took up her college project as a full-time job. She started making more ancient Indian games on fabric.

“Digital games have displaced board games and it is about time we reach out to children and help them explore the world of board games. The aim is still the same, to revive old games and encourage people to play them. Initially, I was focusing on ancient Indian games, but now I have been exploring other ancient games as well,” says Neha, adding that Pachisi is all about creating games and presenting it in the most unconventional way.

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Her venture, she says, is a tribute to one of the oldest games of India, which has been part of the country’s mythology and history. “The game of dice in Mahabharata, that sends the Pandavas to exile, is known to be Pachisi. Even the kings and queens of India have played Pachisi. During the Mughal rule, Akbar played Pachisi with his slaves acting as pawns,” she shares.

Started in 2014, the Chennai-based venture has games such as Pachisi/Dayakattam, Chauka Bara, Goats and Tigers, Snakes and Ladders, Chess, and Rota, which is an ancient Roman game.

They also have have Ludo, Tic-Tac- Toe, and Memory Match. The price of the products range from Rs. 400-Rs 1,600. “Post my graduation; I could have done my board games on any medium. But I decided to stick on to fabric (I use khadi as my base fabric) because not only do they last long but they are eco-friendly too. I love the concept of embroidered games, and it helps my products to stand out in the market. From a customer’s point of view, these are very light to carry and consume very little space for storage,” the self-taught illustrator says. These games are available in a few stores in Chennai, Bangalore and Goa. To know more about Pachisi, you can check out the website here.

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My first introduction to iD Fresh was in 2015, when I’d first arrived in Bengaluru. My aunt, a capital dosa maker herself, casually pointed out that if I needed homemade idlis and dosas, all I had to do was pick up one of the brand’s green packages. With my enduring love for dosa, and rudimentary skills at making them, the packaged brand has often been my saviour. And I am not the only one.

Behind the natural foods company is PC Musthafa, a first-generation entrepreneur who once sold tidbits during his school vacations to make a living.

Born in Wayanad, Kerala, PC makes no bones about his humble beginnings. His father worked in a plantation, and his mother was a homemaker. Growing up in poverty, PC Musthafa found schooling difficult, even dropping out once in middle school. He went back to class only on the persistence of one of his teachers, and often spent his spare time helping his father. In fact, he attributes his success to his early years. “My situation contributed to my aims. During my summer holidays, I ran a makeshift shop for two months, selling small items like chocolates and lemon juice. My mother would make some of it at home and I would take them out for sale. At 10 years, it was my first business enterprise.” An entrepreneurial spirit endured in PC, even as he navigated his career through studying engineering and completing his MBA at IIM-B. He worked for companies like Motorola and Citibank, and spent a few years living in the UK and Dubai. On his return to Bengaluru, the thriving business of unbranded batter in local shops caught his attention.

“My cousin ran a grocery shop, which stocked batter made by a local vendor,” PC recalls. These were unbranded packs of batter, and there was no control over quality, hygiene or service standards. My cousin tried to fix these issues with the vendor directly before we decided to start our own venture. We began in a 50 sq. ft room with a target of selling 100 packs a day. It took us nine months to succeed—we gradually moved to a bigger kitchen and finally managed to get a decent factory in 2008.”

As with any first-generation entrepreneur, PC poured his own savings into the budget and made up for the lack of privileges with hard work. “I had a comfortable life and cushy job,” he says. “I quit and began from scratch.” He compromised on his family’s way of life, and persevered through years of frugal living.

In one decade, iD Fresh has become the go-to brand for packaged dosa and idli batter. Available in six Indian cities, the growth is estimated to be ten-fold every four years.

The brand stands out for its emphasis on freshness and durability. Packaged as it may be, the products are free of preservatives and chemicals. Though it remains a marketing challenge for the company, PC is determined to retain his brand’s homely appeal. “Packaged food is often unhealthy, but we stay away from it,” he says. “We use no flavours, preservatives or chemicals. We still go by traditional recipes that are hand-processed and authentic.” In keeping with ‘grandmother’s recipe’ philosophy of the brand, iD follows the same process as homemade recipes, aided by equipment. It is this old-world charm that has helped iD find a place in homes and hearths.

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In fact, PC calls his customers the custodians of the brand. “I believe that if the right product is packaged well and accompanied by good service, people will use and recommend the product to others,” he says. Today, the brand has expanded from Bengaluru to Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mysore and even Dubai. The company has largely subsisted on its natural USP and word-of-mouth publicity. In fact, it wasn’t until 2015 that iD rolled out its first outdoor campaign, transforming a wild patch of weeds in Bengaluru’s ITPL area into a small garden complete with the brand hoarding.

The brand achieved a turnover of ₹100 crore in 2015-16. This success has only made PC more determined to grow the business and contribute to progress.

iD Fresh has often been in the news for their policy of hiring employees from rural areas as well as their micro-entrepreneurial tendencies. Estimates suggest that enough batter is produced daily in all the company’s centres to make upto a million idlis. PC hopes that in another 10 years, his brand will be the most recognised food company for Indian food, made in India. “We are a fresh, natural brand—we will always be so,” he says. The entrepreneur, who has three sons and is a true blue MS Dhoni fan, hopes to use his brand and personal success to help the community. “I want to help make the world a better place,” he says, citing the example of iD Trust shops, a range of unmanned stores across the country.

“People can pick up anything they like, and drop the payment in the money box,” says PC. “We have 42 shops and they are largely doing well. It’s our way to promote goodwill among people who nowadays find it hard to have faith in each other. If someone leaves without payment, we hope they will remember the brand or come back to and pay another day.”

Eventually, PC hopes to replicate the trust shop model in schools — with different product variants — as an innovative means of instilling values among the future generation.

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In a cluttered marketplace, PC stands out with his brand on the basis of simplicity and the promise of natural, authentic values. Ask the entrepreneur about his secret of success and he says two things — focus and perseverance. “I get a lot of advice, like how to add enzymes in our products for fluffier idlis. But our conviction goes against it—and we stick to our focus,” he says. “For entrepreneurs, challenges are inevitable and one has to be prepared for it. I have given eight years of my life to this business, and had enough challenges to write a book on the subject. A journey like this is only possible with passion and complete belief in one’s venture.”

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“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” -Albert Einstein

Sanjay Gandate from Maharashtra’s Pardi Kupi village was well aware of this. And that pushed him to try something other than traditional farming, which was completely dependent on the weather.

A third-generation farmer from the village in Naxal-affected Gadchiroli district, Sanjay took a unique path to supplement his erratic earnings from the rice fields – pearl cultivation.

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Sanjay Gandate (Left) and a pearl cultured by him (right)[/caption] Sanjay’s grandfather as well as his father had always grown rice in their 3-acre ancestral land. As a child Sanjay would visit their farm located near the Wainganga River. There, he would find many shells by the river and was fascinated by stories his grandfather told him about the shells.

“My grandfather told me that pearls are formed inside these shells. He said that when the first drop of the first rain of the season enters the shell, it becomes a pearl. This theory sounded so interesting to me that I started researching on it,” says Sanjay, while talking to TBI from Gadchiroli.

After listening to many such traditional stories about the formation of pearls, Sanjay concluded that something has to go inside the shell when the oyster is alive to form a pearl. He also realized during his research that pearls are not originally white, shiny and round as shown in pictures. He kept collecting more shells from the river and found some of them filled with a pebble shaped thing covered with sand and dirt. Later, he realized that those were pearls. In 2000 when Sanjay was in class 11, he started with the next level of his experiments. He would get live oysters from the river and put a tiny pebble in it. He would then put the oyster in a bucket full of water and wait for days. Initially the oysters would not live long but this did not stop Sanjay from experimenting further.

After months of experiments, Sanjay found out that pearls are formed with the chemicals released by the oyster when it feels irritation due to any foreign body inside it.

Layers after layers of this chemical sticks to the foreign body giving it a shape of a pearl. And after almost 15 layers of this chemical, a pearl is formed.

“Just like our eyes releases tears if there is a foreign body inside it, similarly the oyster releases a chemical which sticks on this foreign body to form a pearl. However, this foreign body should not be so strong that the oyster dies and not so weak that it cannot sustain the chemical’s pressure and moves out of the shell,” informs Sanjay.

Once Sanjay got the results by experimenting on few shells, he rented a freshwater pond. He also gathered the tools from his own household to surgically implement mantle grafts and appropriate nuclei in the internal organs of the oyster.

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Iniially Sanjay rented a pond to cultivate pearls.[/caption] Once the setup was ready, he fished out almost 5,000 oysters, inserted the pebble-shaped mantle grafts designed by him into each one of them and placed them into the pond.

“It takes around 18 to 20 months to form a good quality pearl. But the conditions are that it should be reared in freshwater and the oysters should be alive till the pearls are formed,” says Sanjay.

To keep the pond clean, Sanjay added fish to it. These fish are also important to provide food to the oysters -the oysters live on the food left by the fish. For almost nine months Sanjay took care of these oysters like babies. The villagers laughed at him as none had heard about the idea of pearl farming before. But in 2001, at the end of almost 9 months, the oysters were killed by Naxalites.

“The Naxals here don’t like the idea of the locals trying something new. They killed my oysters when I could see the pearls forming inside them and hung them on a nearby tree,” says Sanjay.

“Though this was a major shock to me, it also gave me hope that I can do it. The pearls were formed and they would have been ready in the next few months. This meant that my experiment was successful,” he adds.

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Sanjay's first cultured pearls were destroyed by Naxalites by killing the oysters[/caption] For the next few years Sanjay focused on studies. He wanted to become a teacher and hence completed his graduation. But again during his break after graduation he started utilizing his time by fishing oysters and experimenting with pearls.

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In 2011, he again rented a pond and put thousands of oysters into it. However, this time too the oysters were stolen once the pearls were almost ready.

A determined Sanjay did not stop here. In 2015, he made his own tank in his house, and has grown almost 5,000 pearls last December.

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Sanjay with his oysters.[/caption] Sanjay has even found mention in the state revenue minister's address to the legislative council as an example for other farmers.

"The young generation of farmers needs to think out of the traditional farming system. I was stunned to know that Gandate was cultivating pearls to support his declining income from rice fields," said Revenue minister Khadse while talking on the issue of farmer suicides and drought-affected farmers.

Sanjay, who believes in gathering knowledge, is also a student of 4^th year LLB. He is additionally fulfilling his dream of becoming a teacher by conducting workshops and training for other farmers to grow pearls.

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Sanjay conducts workshops for pearl farming.[/caption]

“Everyone was opposing me when I started pearl farming again. My parents said that we are poor farmers and we must work on something that gives us cash everyday and not after a year and a half. But they are also happy now with the kind of profit I have made through pearl farming,” says the proud Sanjay.

So far, he has earned Rs. 10-12 lakh from the pearls. He says that this kind of farming requires minimal investment and high returns, but only if the farmer is ready to work hard. Sanjay has invested only Rs. 5,000 to build a freshwater tank in his house. The pearl farmer has also taken some basic training from a scientist at the government's Krishi Vigyan Kendra to polish his skills.

“I want to give a message to farmers that listen to your heart and mind. Try different forms of farming as well and have faith in yourself. If you work hard and have faith, you will definitely succeed,” concludes Sanjay.

To know more about pearl farming or to attend Sanjay Gandate’s Pearl Farming workshop, you can call him at 9689763821.

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Ramesh Babu’s office in Ejipura, Bengaluru is filled with miniature cars. There are mini Mercs, a Rolls Royce and even a few vintage models. “I have collected these from many cities and countries over 24 years and added some here when we started the office three years ago. My son has a bigger collection at home,” says the collector. Collecting model cars isn’t an uncommon hobby, but Ramesh isn’t just a regular collector. Lined outside his office are dozens of luxury cars — full-sized, not miniatures — some not even available in India, all part of Ramesh Tours & Travels, which started when Ramesh, a barber, invested in his first car in 1993.

His enviable fleet of luxury cars-on-rent, and his incredible story of success and determination has earned Ramesh the title of Billionaire Barber.

Born and raised in Bengaluru, Ramesh lost his father at an early age, in the year 1979, and found his family mired in conflict and poverty. “My father left a saloon in Brigade Road. My uncle took care of it and paid us ₹5 each day,” the entrepreneur recalls. Those early years weren’t easy, as Ramesh, his mother, grandmother and siblings struggled for even basic essentials like food and clothing.

“My mother took a job as a maid and earned perhaps ₹40-50 per month that was used for everything, including our fees, books, clothes, and everything,” he says. “We got new clothes once a year and we managed the rest with school uniforms and old clothes. Once I was sent back by my PT teacher because my trousers were torn, but I couldn’t afford a new one. We had only one meal every day in the afternoon from what my mother got from work. Getting a good meal during a festival was one of our happiest moments.”

Ramesh’s family had steady breakfasts, in addition to their single meal, for the first time when he took up a job delivering newspapers at the age of 13. He continued his studies while supporting his family, till his pre-university years when he took over the saloon, named Inner Space, from his uncle.

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Ramesh stepped into business with no resources except the determination to succeed. He used family savings to renovate the saloon and roped in two workers to run the place. Running the business wasn’t easy, as Ramesh dealt with multiple commitments and workers who rarely turned up at the saloon on time. It took three months of perseverance when a chance visit turned Ramesh towards hairstyling himself.

“One morning, while I was waiting for my workers, a gentleman came and asked me for a haircut. I said I didn’t know how to cut hair but he insisted that I try it,” He says. “So I cut his hair, and maybe he liked it because he gave me double the standard price. He is still my customer.”

As Ramesh took up hairstyling himself, the business began to flourish and a year later, he began to sign up for hairstyling courses to hone his seemingly natural talent. “I even went to Singapore and did a course with Toni & Guy,” he says.

It was the earnings from his saloon that led him to buy his first car and paved the way for a venture that has grown exponentially in two decades.

“I always wanted to buy a car,” says Ramesh, adding that his first vehicle — a Maruti van — was intended for personal use. To get a loan, he had to take his grandfather’s help and raise a mortgage on the family house. The purchase came with steep EMIs and Ramesh began to rent out his car to raise the amount. “I’d sit in my saloon and customers would often take the car on rent,” he says. He received his first business contract from Intel, through a family for whom his mother worked since he was a child. As he slowly but steadily gathered a sizeable customer base, Ramesh realised the potential of operating a high-end automobile rental service and began to build a fleet of cars.

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In the mid 2000s, Ramesh received a proposal from Mercedes India to buy a model. He had been eyeing the models for a few years and saw an opportunity. He put together his small savings and raised the rest of the amount through a bank loan. "The EMI rates were high and I was scared. But at that time, nobody else was investing in cars like these and I had an advantage,” he says. “The business did well and a year later, I bought a second Mercedes model.”

Today, Ramesh Tours & Travels boasts a fleet of over 400 cars next to models of BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar and the highly prized Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Ramesh recently became the third person in Bengaluru to buy the Mercedes-Maybach S600, which stands in his company garage. “Everything has been a journey of hard work. If my drivers weren’t around I’d drive the cars myself,” says the entrepreneur. Media reports often mention his love for his Rolls-Royce, but procuring the car landed him in one of his greatest challenges as a business owner.

“Running a business like ours can be scary when things come to a sudden halt. In 2011 I bought my Rolls-Royce — it was expensive and the government levied heavy taxes. I was almost bankrupt and even mortgaged my wife’s jewellery. People told me to sell the car. But I kept trying and one and half years later I finally managed to succeed again.

Contrary to popular notion, the Ghost ranks lower in Ramesh’s list of favourites. “My favourite is actually the Contessa,” he reveals. “It has been discontinued now, but it was the second car I ever brought.” Ramesh Tours & Travels now also operates in Chennai and Delhi, and the entrepreneur hopes to conquer Hyderabad and Vijaywada next. The team is also working on maximising the company's online presence. Along with a jaw-dropping fleet, his endeavours have earned Ramesh many awards but come mornings and over the weekends, you will still find him giving haircuts at his salon for ₹150. “It has been a tough journey, but everything has ups and downs,” says the man who has truly earned his title of billionaire barber. “I have always told myself to work harder and everything comes together.”

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With a view to encourage entrepreneurship in the country, the Government of India launched the Startup India Hub in 2016. The organisation that supports and provides resources for emerging business enterprises has come to the spotlight with the success of its newly-launched learning and development module for start-ups.

Since its launch this January, the Startup India Learning Programme has drawn the attention of start-ups, with over 31,000 users signing up in the first month.

Image source: Pixabay The L&D module is a free online programme launched in collaboration with UpGrad and developed by Invest India. The four-week long programme aims to introduce entrepreneurs to the fundamental concepts of running their own business. The programme is available in English and Hindi, and covers a plethora of areas, from finance and legal issues to pitching and funding. The mentors for the programme are founders or leaders of successful startups themselves, including the likes of Richa Kar, founder of Zivame, Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of Ola Cabs, and Deep Kalra, founder of Make My Trip. Film producer and founder of UpGrad, Ronnie Screwvala, is also part of the initiative

“With the objective that India must become a nation of job creators instead of being a nation of job seekers, we launched the StartUp India initiative in January, 2016. This initiative aims at fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation by creating an ecosystem that is conducive for the growth of Start-ups,” said Ramesh Abhishek, DIPP secretary. “"We hope that many budding entrepreneurs of India will benefit from this programme and get the right learning to start their dream ventures."

Users who have signed up for the programme also get the opportunity to interact with industry experts and each other. The digital model makes the learning experience accessible to a bigger user base; according to Inc42, over 800 applicants were reported to have completed the course in February. The Startup India Hub responds to queries from entrepreneurs via telephone, email and social media—in December 2016, the organisation’s status report claimed that they handled about 25,000 queries from startups across the country. To know more or enrol in the Startup India Learning Programme, click here.

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There are many volunteer-based programs in Bengaluru that are helping towards sustainable living and community building. However, what they may lack is proper structure, guidance and funds.

The University of Commons (UoC), a Bengaluru-based organisation, is helping citizens/communities, social innovators, engineers and volunteers connect to create campaigns, events and programs that would lead to social change.

Started by Prashant Mehra, a techie-turned-farmer, and Satyam Gambhir, who was actively working with neighbourhoods in Bengaluru to streamline a waste collection supply chain, the UoC’s aim is to involve young minds, aiming mostly at those under 30, in social projects. The initiative is backed by Mindtree, a technology consulting firm. Through tie-ups with schools and colleges along with giving out fellowships to those with ideas and projects for social change, it is looking at inculcating service-learning in education and promoting professionals to integrate their careers with community advancement.

As co-founder Satyam Gambhir explains in his blog, “For instance, if one wants to learn more about the techniques of sales and marketing, he/she can learn it by working with a waste-picker to set up business or by asking a neighbourhood to employ the waste-picker.”

Why ‘Commons?’

The project is inspired by Creative Commons, open source model and crowdsourcing, which adds up the power of individual effort to build an active community that functions on principles of sharing, collaboration and integration. Further, Commons refers to co-created and co-owned resources belonging to a community, something UoC aspires to do through its various departments.

“The UoC envisages engaged citizens and volunteers as community entrepreneurs. Armed with this new identity, they can re-imagine society and create a road map to achieve the change they wish to achieve,” writes Gambhir.

UoC has four curiously designed departments. The Department of Stories aims at creating social fiction, or stories that blend real and imaginative solutions to envision an ideal and futuristic society, the Department of Journeys will take you on a social adventure through curated paths that help you engage with yourself as well as the community as you travel, the Department of Engineering empowers social change with technology to get things done smartly and the Department of Entrepreneurship backs startups and social enterprises that work towards social change. UoC will be picking its first batch of fellows through the Communities of the Future Summit (COTF) Ideathon 2017. For more details on the event, visit the website here. (Written by Fatema Diwan)

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Lack of access to English language skills can be a severe restriction to higher education for many children of India. Pranil Naik, and his organisation Leap For Word, hope to remove this stumbling block by making English literacy accessible and sustainable on a large scale. Having benefitted from a professional education himself, Pranil Naik was moved when he realized that low-income children from vernacular medium schools have difficulty accessing higher education, because the majority of college degrees are conducted in English. Further, unlike urban children, rural children have hardly any exposure to the language itself. There aren’t any English billboards in their communities, very few English TV channels, and no one in the community actually speaks English, not even the English teacher in school. A vicious cycle is created whereby students cannot learn English simply because their community does not already know English. Pranil identified the main gap as the lack of high-quality English teachers in rural areas. To tackle this, he spent many years developing and refining a product that empowers any non-English speaking adult to teach children how to read, write, and comprehend correct English sentences within a couple of years. The English Literacy Program is built on top of a translation algorithm, a set of linguistic rules that translate English into any Indian regional language, and vice versa.

Because of this, English is no longer treated as a language but rather as a subject, which means it can be taught in any language that is common between the teacher and the student.

Leap For Word trains and certifies the newly-trained teachers and assists them in setting up language learning centres in their respective communities. Parents pay these certified teachers a small amount as teaching fees. This approach ensures more education choices for children in rural Maharashtra and provides empowerment to communities, both in the form of education and employment. So far, Leap For Word has trained a total of 1,500 teachers of various types, ranging from teacher entrepreneurs, government school teachers, and private school teachers to even tuition teachers. Leap For Word operates in around 80 villages across six districts of Maharashtra, and over 10,000 children have benefitted from accessing these English language centres. However, like many leaders, Pranil did not set out with grand dreams to create large-scale impact. He simply acknowledged that he had been privileged enough to have access to basic opportunities that sprung from being educated, and wanted to provide the same for others.

Pranil says, “I think I am an entrepreneur in hindsight. I started out wanting to do something meaningful outside of my daily job. There was no desire to scale or build an organisation. Just the desire to spend every free minute doing something that I felt was necessary and ought to be done. I spent 4-5 years doing just that. Eventually, the decision to put a structure around that effort came up, and that was perhaps when the organization took form and the entrepreneurial idea really set in.”

Pranil has come a very long way from the accidental social entrepreneur he talks about being. When he first founded Leap For Word, he found a source of support and guidance in UnLtd India, an incubator for early-stage entrepreneurs.

His greatest struggle at that time lay in figuring out how to sustain a non-profit organization.

Pranil remembers the importance of being surrounded by other entrepreneurs who were either dealing with, or had overcome, similar struggles. “At the early stages especially, it was extremely vital to have a community you could lean on. People you could use as a sounding board for questions, doubts, and fears,” he says. He firmly believes that entrepreneurs act as each other’s best guides and confidantes, even when it comes to more personal issues like balancing family needs and personal aspirations. Often, an incubator’s most successful and fruitful contribution involves making budding changemakers feel part of a network that can guide them through uncharted territory. Pranil’s struggles sometimes echo in the experiences of many younger entrepreneurs, and this makes his insights invaluable to them. Aman Sharma, Deepesh Nair, and Nasrullah Adamji are co-founders of TEACH, an organization that provides higher education and English language learning programmes for hearing-impaired youth. Part of UnLtd India’s newest cohort of Fellows, they met Pranil Naik at a workshop. Aman says, “Pranil reminded us to be thankful to the people allowing us to serve. It is important to never lose sight of that humbling fact.” Deepesh said that the most important piece of advice Pranil gave him was to “just let it come”. “I realized from talking to him that you cannot plan too much—it doesn’t work. When it comes, analyze it and work it out. This is important advice, especially coming from someone who has tried their hand at it. Their successes and failures are both learning points for us,” he says. Being an entrepreneur is often lonely and grueling, and being a social entrepreneur can amplify that isolation. Having a network for technical and moral support can be very valuable, at all stages. Pranil and many other senior Fellows regularly share their wisdom and experience with new batches of changemakers. They lead sessions on specific skill sets they have expertise in, or tell their always-interesting and inspiring stories.

Pranil himself is a valuable resource to entrepreneurs working on product development and delivery channels in the education sector.

[caption id="attachment_91427" align="aligncenter" width="900"]

Source: Flickr[/caption] Leap For Word is now busy working to create arguably India’s first English-literate village. One of its longest serving teachers, Shyamlal Pawara, is working in a village (Joyada) in the Shirpur district of Maharashtra. He is collaborating with the Gram Panchayat, the Zilla Parishad school teachers, and the Leap For Word team. Pawara hopes to make every school-going child in Joyada English-literate. This is a fairly tall task. There are close to 600 students attending five different Zilla Parishad schools in a 100 % tribal village. Additionally, not many parents there value the importance of education. However the challenge makes it exciting, and it is something that Pranil has personally waited to see for long. He says, “It’s been close to a decade in the field now, but there has never been a dull moment. To be able to contribute to such an exciting collective mission is a privilege that we remain grateful for.” Applications for UnLtd India’s incubation programs are now open! If you are a social entrepreneur with an organisation and want to apply, please fill in our eligibility form here. For more information on Pranil and Leap For Word, please visit their website.

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In 2016, Kanika Tekriwal made it to the highly coveted Forbes' 30 under 30 list. The year before, she was one of the seven Indians in BBC’s list of 100 most inspiring women. As one of India’s youngest entrepreneurs, Kanika has almost single-handedly stormed a male bastion and inspired millions with her personal story of grit and determination.

Kanika is the founder of JetSetGo, India’s first marketplace for chartered private jets, a feted entrepreneur, and cancer survivor.

The young entrepreneur made her foray into entrepreneurship early. “I belong to a typical Marwari family and entrepreneurship is in my blood,” she says. “I always knew from a young age that I would be running a business of my own at some point or the other.” Planes have fascinated Kanika since she was a child, who began working at 17 and has worked for a number of renowned aviation companies, including India Bulls Aviation and Aerospace Resources. An MBA in finance from Coventry University, UK also played a role in enhancing her entrepreneurial skills.

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As she was developing the plans for her path-breaking initiative, cancer came knocking at the door quite unexpectedly. Kanika was 22 when she was diagnosed and though early doctors didn’t offer hope, she did not give up till she found her way back to health.

“I have always shied away from talking about cancer and everything it entailed,” she says. “I don’t want to be a hero for a condition compared to which many people have suffered and continue to suffer a faith far worse than me. However, the nine months of cancer treatment served as a perfect break for my entrepreneurship ideas and from here the foundation of JetSetGo started.”

A reluctant hero she might be, but Kanika’s story proves the age-old adage — where there’s will, there’s truly a way.

Often hailed as Uber of the Skies, JetSetGo is a digital platform enabling customers to reserve their own private jets and helicopters.

Founded in 2013, the company boasts the country’s largest fleet of private jets at its disposal as well as helicopters. Customers can avail the flight for a variety of purposes, from destination weddings to medical emergencies. Traditionally dominated by men, the aviation sector is not an easy place to break into. Glass ceilings abound and pre-conceived notions of women as air hostesses continue to thrive. For Kanika, however, the challenges of overcoming patriarchy are but minor hurdles in the path of offering customers a hassle-free, one-of-its-kind experience.

She says, “Initially it took time for people to take me seriously for the business I am in and I did receive remarks such as ‘you should take up baking cupcakes’ and the likes. Sometimes when I am assertive I am considered arrogant whereas a man being more assertive than me is considered passionate. But these are very non-consequential things.”

JetSetGo also boasts a line of star-studded investors, including cricketer Yuvraj Singh and businessman Puneet Dalmia. Needless to say, her work keeps Kanika breathlessly busy. “I don’t remember doing anything apart from working for the longest time. But I do enjoy running, painting and reading a lot,” she says.

JetSetGo operates in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Dubai and New York, and Kanika envisions a global presence for her swiftly emerging brand.

Breaking out in the aviation sector is challenging. Demanding as the job may be, it keeps Kanika excited. “It has all the elements that excite me—tech, finance and marketing,” she says about working in aviation. “No day is ever the same – I get to learn something new every day.”

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Every success has been important for Kanika, from receiving the first big contract for the company and signing their first aircraft, to winning the national entrepreneurship award and getting featured in the BBGC and Forbes lists. Her sights are now set on expansion into one region at a time.

“We will soon be the only travel platform for high-end domestic travel and experiences,” she says. “Our focus is to cater to the $18 billion rapidly growing in-bound travel market and to the travel needs of the Indian UHNIs who are expected to triple in number in the next 5 years. They have very different travel needs, which the current ensemble of online travel companies and startups can really not cater to effectively.”

Soaring to one achievement after another, Kanika holds that self-belief is the key to success. “Use every no as a stepping-stone to success. Turn every no into a yes through your journey should be your mantra.”

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Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat, is a thriving hotbed of commerce and trade. But nestled on the banks of its Sabarmati river, a unique weekly market reveals enticing new aspects to the city and its people. The residue of a city and its many processes, its living heritage and repaired items, often find themselves washed up on the shore of its flea markets. These remnants of lives led in the city, of used furniture and unused toys, well-worn books and fresh crockery, are put on display in these markets. One such bustling bazaar thrives on the east bank of the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad. This is the Ravivari. The name Ravivari means “that which happens on a Sunday”, since this ‘Gujari bazaar’, or second-hand market, is open to trade on Sundays alone. There is the most unlikely collection of wares on sale. From agricultural implements, household utensils, cycle rickshaws, electronic goods, domestic animals, and spare parts, to more exciting things like antique items, books, raw foods, and lanterns. Rummaging through rare and used books is a personal favourite. Here, by the shores of the Sabarmati, one can find a scholarly fisherman with a catch of time-worn books. The Ravivari is organised chaos. The area of booksellers comes after a series of stalls selling antiques, paints, and domestic goods. After weaving through narrow passages shaded by parasols, littered with the smell of nimbu-paani, daal-haleem, and sometimes assorted animal dung, one arrives at the booksellers. Instant vellichor! While there are about 7-8 different bookstalls, each with an assorted collection of irresistible finds, Mohammadbhai’s bookstall has always been unique. Perhaps this is because of the various bold yet beautiful signs and posters that annotate the space.

Maybe, it is the unabashed devotion of the bibliophile-turned-bookseller to the written word.

Mohammad Hussainbhai, the bookseller, fell in love with reading when he was a young boy, and the romance still continues. “My parents were illiterate. My Ammi would give me 4 annas as pocket-money, and I’d save it to buy books. A passion for literature led me to pursue BA, MA, and BEd degrees, and I became the principal of a school here in Ahmedabad. My parents weren’t educated, yet I taught 10,000 children as a school headmaster. That’s the power of reading! Yehi woh lagan, woh passion hai! (This is that love, that passion!)” he says. The entire riverfront market seems to thrive on the principle of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Quite literally, for our beloved bibliophile bookseller, who buys most of his stock from pastiwallahs (scrap-dealers). The books are bought by the kilo, sometimes from local dealers on carts, or from the chor-bazaar in Mumbai, where Mohammedbhai travels often. Commenting on our reading habits as a society, he says, “A husband buys books, and the wife gives it away to the scrap dealer! Samjhe? (Understand?) So, some very good, priceless books come my way because of people who don’t understand the value of those books!” Even in the midst of conversation, he keeps recommending several interesting items to various customers. “Take this Collected Histories of Poets, it has illustrations. Here, this is the book on dance I kept aside for you, behenji. No, there are no gossip magazines here!” Mohammedbhai has been a part of Ravivari since 2001. Over the years, he has understood the attitude of customers, and has learnt to brush away those who “don’t take reading seriously”. Thus, a wide range of signs and quotes have been collected over the years, as a response to haggling customers. He believes that one must buy books with love and openness, otherwise not.

Bargaining and half-hearted buying of books shall satisfy no one.

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For representational purpose only. (Source: Pixabay)[/caption] The variety of signs include, “Greedy eyes shall never have satisfied stomachs,” and “No comments. No photos. No bargaining.” However, almost every visitor to the stall asks for some concession or other, and soon the “Go Away Bargainer” board is displayed by Mohammadbhai. It seems that the guileless Amdavadi shopper is impervious to strong and rude signals to stop bargaining! To one design student who approaches him, bargaining over a book on architecture, Mohammedbhai reads out the following sign:

Love money and go to Hell. A certain miser has two houses well, One in Heaven, the other in Hell. His house in Heaven was offered a higher rent. Soon the good house had a rich and worthy tenant. Now to end the story and it’s moral to tell, Our miser friend went down to live in Hell.

For a first-time visitor, the aggressive ban on bargaining, and Mohammadbhai’s supposed irritability, might be a bit uncomfortable. However, spending time with this scholarly man reveals an extremely kind, humble, and incredibly patient side to him. He switches effortlessly from English to Hindi, Urdu, and Gujarati, reading out proverbs on “beauty” in one language, and reprimanding a haggler in another. In between reading the Gitanjali and discussing the nature of secularism in India, Mohammadbhai expands on his thoughts on the Ravivari. “This market is a museum.” There are so many interesting pieces of history here. One needs only to take a stroll around to understand the essence of this city. The unique aspect of this market is that it has something to offer for all sections of society. For the common masses, the items sold here are basic domestic essentials, sometimes luxuries. For travellers and tourists, the experience of the space can be more powerful and attractive than the items on display.

While the elitists may argue about the quality and authenticity of products sold and the overall crowded experience, such markets have long been the source of interesting articles for artists and designers.

With the jugaad mindset picking up, both in art and design, many designers nowadays source their raw material from the Ravivari in Ahmedabad, and the similar Shukravari in Baroda. Recently, the organisation of the market has undergone a change or “redevelopment”. Over the years, and after countless visits to the market, a dramatic shift is easily recognisable, in the form and structure of the place, and also in the mix of visitors. About this, Mohammadbhai says that many young people and students who visit the market out of curiosity engage in buying mostly educational or study-related books. Yet, perhaps genuine book-lovers are becoming a rare species, and even more so are readers of vernacular languages. The avid reader that he is, one wonders whether it is difficult for him to part with certain special books. He smiles, and confesses to his personal collection of books that he keeps aside. One can only wonder about the nature of this personal library—its contents, location, and size. On weekdays, you can find him at a stall near MJ Library, selling the same lot of books, but indulging visitors with different stories. “Come there. We can talk at leisure,” he says. It is refreshing and reassuring to find such passion for literature in this city of thriving commerce and industry. Ahmedabad is deeper than it seems, and its many layers unravel at this riverside market, on a sunny Sunday morning. Do you know stories of people that will help map your city better? Find out how you can contribute to The People Place Project here.

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Making informed decisions in governance becomes easier with access to accurate and easily understandable data. Richa Verma writes about how a new Fellowship hopes to enable entrepreneurs to make such data-driven decision-making easier and common. The Guardian Minister is scheduled to arrive just shy of midnight, at 11:30 PM. The Collector told us about the Minister’s visit earlier that day, and we’ve now been waiting four hours to show him our village development dashboard. At 11:30 PM, the door of the newly renovated conference room opens. Suddenly, we see a swarm of people flooding in the door, 10 times the size the room can accommodate. Despite the late hour, more than 200 people came to speak to the Minister about their issues. One hour filled with many happy faces walking by later, we hear, “Bhau sodoon aahe! (The Minister is leaving!)” The OSD (Officer on Special Duty) to the Minister comes running, telling us that we need to enter now to show the dashboard, or “Bhau” will leave. 10 minutes later, in a fully crowded room, I set up my laptop to present the dashboard on a color-inconsistent projector, hoping that red will look red and green will look green. The Minister looks at the dashboard, and he immediately says, “Take me to that village on your dashboard. Show me whether there is a school or not.” Then he asks to see another village and peppers me with questions. How many people are employed there? How many children go to school, and how many are girls? “We should ensure that these gaps are filled,” the Guardian Minister says, looking at the District Collector. “He atishay upyukt aahe. Aap ise istemaal kyon nahin karte? (This is very useful. Why don’t you use it?)” Experiences like these, and an uncountable number of meetings with ministers, joint secretaries, and district collectors have convinced us of one thing—if data is taken to the decision-makers at the right time, they will use it. But how can we make sure this data is available when decision-makers most need it?

How can we help decision-makers use data regularly to drive large-scale impact?

We launched the Data For Impact Fellowship to bring together some of the most enterprising people in India who are passionate about driving impact. Their goal—create scalable solutions to help make government decisions more data-driven. The problem of data-driven decision-making is quite complex. Some people see it as a data and technology problem, while others see it as a problem of capacity building. Some try to use data analytics to create planning and monitoring systems to bring about data-driven decision-making, while others feel that implementing tech products will drive better decisions. We think it’s a little of all of these things. In a nut shell:

Data-driven decision-making = f (data, technology, understanding the decision-makers, decision-makers’ motivations and knowledge, etc.)

There is a cycle in common with all of these solutions—conceptualize, try, assess, and repeat. Ideally, this process repeats until you arrive at a solution that solves that individual problem, and also solves similar problems once and for all. That’s exactly what we want our fellows to do — be entrepreneurs in creating scalable solutions to help decision-makers across the Indian Government become data-driven. In fact, that’s the spirit with which our Policy and Governance Managers approach our deployments.

We understand the decision-makers’ problems, create multiple solutions, and gather feedback and data to see which works best.

Here’s an example. The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas asked us to help them figure out where to open 10,000 new LPG distribution centres, to target 50 million Below Poverty Line women across India. We decided to create a geo-clustering algorithm to figure out the best location for a new LPG distribution center in each district. However, we didn’t want to create an algorithm to just solve this problem. We wanted to solve it scalably, building a process that we could also use for opening new schools, ration shops, and other community service points. Once we created our initial algorithm, we sat with senior bureaucrats and ministers for several Sunday afternoons, clicking on every village to understand whether the locations predicted by our algorithm made sense or not. We got feedback, re-worked our algorithm, and kept going through more rounds of feedback. Once the senior bureaucrats approved, we also got feedback from state teams and other decision-makers to double-check that our methodology worked. Now we have a complete algorithm that will be used to open new LPG centres.

Plus, we also know how to solve any other targeted problem with geo-clustering algorithms.

The Fellowship is a platform for all entrepreneurs who believe in the power of data and technology for solving some of the world’s most critical problems. Our Fellows will be creating solutions that actually help decision-makers across Governments, all with a focus on iteration and scalability. A Fellow might be figuring out how to collect better data with existing government machinery, analyzing the most untouched government data sets to draw out the most useful insights, or working in a district directly to help even the lowest-level officials use data regularly. Every Fellow will pick up the problems that he/she is most passionate about and solve it in the most scalable, effective way possible. SocialCops will act as a support network for the Fellows, opening up our existing deployments and network of government officials, partners, and experts for knowledge and help. We will also kick-start their learnings and growth with workshops by experts, and access to tech and data knowledge. (The author is the Resident Entrepreneur at SocialCops — a data intelligence company.) Originally published at SocialCops. The Data for Impact Fellowship will create sustainable solutions for better governance. It also aims to train leaders with deep on-ground expertise and a knack for solving the sector’s problems. Are you game? Learn more or apply here.

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Few days ago, my friend who works in Cognizant called me. She was worried about the fact that her company was laying off almost 6,000 employees at once. Though she was far from figuring in this scary list, she could still feel the uncertainty of being in IT after this. Another friend had to rent out her own house and shift to a rented one herself, as she was tired of the two-hour commute, including the one hour of just being held up in traffic every single day. We all want to come out of this trap called the ‘city life’. We know the long lasting ill effects of breathing the polluted air or eating vegetables grown using harmful pesticides or having adulterated versions of almost everything that’s supposed to be healthy. But we don’t! And how would we… it is not as easy as it seems… isn’t it?

Santhosh Singh had a similar dilemma when he was working in Dell as an Analytics Advisor.

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Santhosh Singh[/caption] A hefty pay and a luxurious life was not giving him what he would get over a weekend of just staying in the arms of nature – Peace and Health.

“I loved to spend most of my weekends in nature. I would go camping, away from the city and always wished if I could stay there forever,” says Santhosh.

Like thousands of other IT professionals, he would get back to work every Monday and spend money on things he says were of no value to him in the long run.

“When I was in the corporate world I did most of the things because someone else was doing it. I would end up shopping or doing things just by aping others, which had no value for me,” he says.

Santhosh kept thinking about life spent nearer to nature, but the only question was of sustainability. He realized that he has to create a simple support system mechanism to earn a living as well as enjoy nature.

“To love something and to know if you can actually do it or not are two different things. I wanted to know if I can actually enjoy agriculture and so I started spending time with farmers and learning more about farming,” Santhosh says.

In June 2009, Santhosh finally quit his well paying job and decided to get into dairy farming, which, according to him, was the most feasible option.

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Santhosh quit his job and started experimenting with just 3 cows.[/caption]

“I decided to get into dairy farming, as this was a relatively stable and profitable business in the unpredictable world that is Indian agriculture,” he says.

Instead of starting off immediately, he took a break of few months and visited more farms. He then bought three cows and started his project. But he soon realized that there were lots of things he was still unaware of. He tried taking help from traditional farmers, but his confusion only increased.

“Different farmers gave different advice. Some would say you should feed the cow before milking and some would ask to feed after milking. They also had different opinions on the type of feed to be given to the cattle,” explains Santhosh.

It was then that Santhosh thought of seeking professional help. He attended workshops conducted by National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) in Bengaluru. The training helped him get his basics right about dairy farming. Santhosh was now confident to take up the 20-cow model dairy farming.

He started his farm, and called it ‘Amrutha Dairy Farms’, 40 km from Bengaluru in his 3-acre ancestral land in Doddabalapur.

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Amrutha Dairy Farm[/caption] With the learning gained from NDRI, and support from one of his brothers, Santhosh handled the farm really well and bought 85 cows in the next two years. However the coming year was a challenge for them as their village suffered from a severe water crisis. Water levels, which were around 200 ft, reached up to 1,000 ft, and Santhosh had to put in all his savings to deal with this situation. But this crisis led Santhosh to hunt for options. Research led him to a surprising fact -- dairy farming is not just about cows and milk. There are businesses related to dairy farming like selling fodder, transportation of milk, processing, selling cow-comforts like rubber mats and cubicles, selling medicines for the cattle, and the most profitable one --breeding of cattle. So Santhosh started breeding cows and selling them once they started milking.

“We buy 3- to 6-month-old calves, raise them for a year and a half, and then sell to commercial dairy farms in South India. We have a batch of 60-120 calves that are sold to new farms after two years,” he informs.

He also set up the first production unit of hydroponics, which enables growing of 1 tonne of green fodder per day in a controlled environment, serving as backup just in case the rains are a no-show.

[caption id="attachment_92678" align="aligncenter" width="500"]

Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. They have such a facility in the farm.[/caption] Meanwhile, a German company wanted to set up its processing unit in India. Santhosh offered his space for this and provided local consulting support, and during this period, learnt a little bit of cheese processing. He slowly started to understand the whole value chain of the Dairy Industry and realized great opportunities that exist currently. Visitors started coming to his farm and he would enjoy meeting and interacting with them. And then came the idea of training and counseling the budding entrepreneurs. From the past two-and-a -half years Santhosh is conducting workshops on two Saturdays of every month.

So far, he has trained 600 professionals to take up dairy farming in over 95 workshops held in more than 12 states of the country.

He has also helped setup over half a dozen dairy farms for his trainees who have hired him as consultant.

“We share everything that we have learned in the past seven years. This gives them a picture of what they can expect on the other side of their decision. The ‘One-Day Training’ that we conduct is the shortest format of Dairy Training that exists in the country. It is very encouraging to see sometimes CEOs, MDs and even senior citizens attending the one-day workshop. The training gives a 360 degree overview on commercial dairy farming practices. One can do a pilot project without quitting their job; something that doesn’t hurt their pocket or family or lifestyle,” Santhosh said while talking to TBI from his farm.

“Only 3% to 5% of people who attended the workshops took up dairy farming. Over 50% had complete clarity right after the workshop that it may not work out for them. Either they cannot do it or they don’t have the resources to do it,” he adds. Santhosh has developed a business model for those who want to start a pilot project and try dairy farming before they actually quit their regular jobs and go for it full time.

He calls it ‘the Urban Dairy Farmer’s model’ –

Capital required for the pilot project – Rs. 6 lakh You need to buy - 5 cows (pregnant for first time) plus 5 calves Land required – 1 -2 acres (you can also take on lease if you don’t own it) Labour required – 2 (preferably a farmer couple) Cost of 5 cows – Approximately Rs. 3 lakh Cost of raising 5 calves for 2years - Approximately Rs. 1.5 lakh(crossbred HF calves becomes cows in 2 years) Cost of infrastructure like cattle shed and labour house – Rs. 1.5 lakh In two years, the herd count becomes 10 cows plus six to eight female calves. The income generated from five cows can be used to pay just the salary of one farmer family, who manage the farm in cases where milk is being sold directly to unions. In case the promoter decides to directly sell the milk to consumers, the income generated could be used to pay the loans and EMIs, apart from salary paid to the farmer family as consumers pay a little extra when compared to milk unions. This way, in three years most of the loans availed would be cleared and the promoter would have a total of 12 cows and 10 calves,which could be valued at Rs. 5 lakh-6 lakh. In today’s scenario, if one has 10 cows, selling milk directly to consumers at a price of Rs.40-50 per litre can rake in about Rs. 30, 000 to Rs. 40,000 a month.

This way, one can continue their day job and try out remote management and learn for a few years before deciding to go into it full time.

There is subsidy provided by NABARD, it is called as Dairy Entrepreneur Development Scheme (DEDS), here 25% subsidy is provided if a person takes Rs. 6lakh loan from the bank. Most of the banks provide loans for this and also help people avail subsidy from NABARD. “The promoter has to bring in just Rs.60, 000 (10% margin money for Rs 6 lakh) and bank will fund the rest of the amount as a loan, which is about Rs 3.9 lakh apart from the Rs 1.5 lakh subsidy. So why take that big decision of quitting completely what you are doing in haste and end up with more problems when you can try the pilot project and learn while you earn,” suggests Santhosh.

When asked about what traditional farmers sometimes overlook, he says, “Farmers generally treat livestock as a non-essential commodity of their livelihood. The cattle get green fodder only when it rains and rest of the time they are fed with dry fodder. Whereas they can increase productivity by 20%, just by feeding silage (preserved green fodder) all year round.” Santhosh also suggests taking extra care of the hygiene of cows’ udder, which are sensitive and get infected, sometimes infecting the milk. Amrutha dairy farm is in the process of building more infrastructure so they can accommodate trainees for a week’s program where they can stay and experience the life of a farmer. You can visit Amrutha Dairy Farms at - Halenahalli, Madhure Hobli, Doddabalapur TQ, Bengaluru, Karnataka If you wish to attend Santhosh’s workshop then you can mail him at santhoshdsingh@gmail.com or call him at 098451 90600

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Only a few decades ago, eating out in India was a rare pleasure for families. Today, it is an everyday affair. With #foodcoma taking the internet by storm and restaurants opening (and closing) their doors every week, eating (out) can well be called a hobby now. Everyone loves a good meal, and people are willing to experiment with their taste buds more than ever before. Little wonder that along with restaurants and fast food joints, a culture of home chefs are also making their mark. Working out of their dining rooms and kitchens, Indian home chefs are catering to a variety of culinary needs—from offering office-goers nutritious food to showcasing little-known cuisines. But running a food business is not easy, especially for solo entrepreneurs. We spoke to five home chefs from around India about how they make a living in this competitive world.

Mansi Kapoor, Delhi

Image source (food): Facebook Founder of Awadhi Season, Mansi grew up in Lucknow and has been a foodie all her life. While she was exposed to many cuisines, she retained a soft spot for Awadhi cuisine. When she moved to Delhi, her biryani and kebabs were huge hits among family and friends. They encouraged her to start a home catering enterprise and begin a new culinary journey. Working independently, she takes her challenges in a positive light.

She says, “I have small children, and can devote limited time. Though there are a few helpers, I do most of the cooking myself and request clients to give me a few days’ notice. But the small-scale also makes it an intimate affair and I can look after all the details myself. My recipes are authentic—even the meat for kebabs is hand-pounded—and I don’t use artificial colours or preservatives. With my children around, working from home also keeps me at peace.”

Her menu is limited, and she avoids recipes like Kakori kebab, which require specialised equipment. But the encouraging review of her food and quality keeps this home chef going. She hopes to invest in a bigger kitchen space in the future.

Reetha Balsavar, Mumbai

Image source: Facebook Reetha has been making salads for 40 years, but her stint as home chef and founder of Tossed and Dressed is only a 6-month-old affair. It all started when a friend asked her to cater the salads for two days during Raksha Bandhan last year. The success moved her to launch Tossed and Dressed, which offers a daily changing menu of healthy, organic salads and also caters for events.

“My challenges are very logistical—deliveries, how to stop the leaves from wilting etc. I researched and found a delivery person. I have nobody to help me, so I get all the supplies myself, start prepping the night before and get everything ready by 8.30 every morning for deliveries. I offer two salads every day, and most of my clients are young professionals and some of them take both, one for lunch and another for dinner.”

For Reetha, innovation and collaboration goes a long way for home chefs. Known for her preservative-free dressings (like a yummy amla dressing), she has begun bottling the durable ones for sale in Mumbai. She also collaborates with four other home chefs in the city to do pop-up events. Each of them specialise in their own area, and together, they offer a full meal experience.

Anne Cherian, Chennai

Image source: Facebook A retired professional, Anne runs her much-loved home catering unit, The Saturday Kitchen, simply based on her love for food and the desire to use her time productively. “We are focusing on Malayali cuisine, and the food is essentially what we eat at home,” she says. “I even procure my supplies from my regular vendors, and I cook on wood fire.” Anne is assisted by her family cook, who has been around for 40 years. Together, they cater to small groups and parties, delighting them with a variety of home-cooked recipes. “I started the business when I was two year younger and I began with making meals on Saturdays but I ended up making a lot of stuff. It was very tiring.”

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She changed her operation to an event-catering model instead, and prepared meals for small groups. With advance notice, the two-woman crew can even put together delicacies for 50 people. With home chefs thriving, Anne is acquainted with many others in the area. She makes her delectables from family recipes, and while catering keeps her busy, she still makes small meals on Saturdays for few single residents.

Saiprasad Vishwanathan, Mumbai

Image source: Facebook Mumbai has many an Udupi restaurant and the city’s fan following for Mysore Masala Dosa only keeps growing. Yet, some of the other South Indian cuisines remain elusive in the city. Sai, founder of Southern Food Trails, is addressing the gap with his unique offering of Iyer marriage food. “I loved cooking since I was in school,” he says, adding that he did a regular job for about eight years before he turned to home cooking. “I had neither the experience nor the money to start a restaurant, so I thought why not start something for a small group at home instead,” he says. Every weekend, Sai hosts one lunch in the afternoon for a group of 8-10 people, giving them an authentic experience of his specialised offerings.

“I spend most of the week promoting the event on social media, and get a lot of response. Demonetization affected my business a little, but we have started other means of payment too.”

As a small home-run business, Sai considers marketing his biggest challenge. Having recently quit his full-time job, he is now in the process of spreading the word and planning to stabilize and scale up his venture.

Mamma’s Kitchen, Bengaluru

Image source: Facebook Located in Kamanahalli, home to some of the Garden City’s most fabulous restaurants, Mamma aka Najma Abdullar runs her Kitchen, specialising in Kerala and Mopalah delicacies. A mother of three, her stint as a home chef started thanks to her daughter’s colleagues. “I used to pack my daughter’s lunch and her colleagues began asking me to cook for them as well,” she says. Their appreciation was encouraging and Najma, who found herself with a lot of time in hand once her children had grown up, decided to start a small venture.

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“I started with my daughter’s office sending them biryani, pickle etc,” she says. “Delivery used to be a major issue for me, but three years earlier or so I’d put up a stall and I received help from a delivery startup. Now I prepare the food, and they manage the delivery." Her children help her whenever possible, but other than that she manages everything on her own with one assistant. “My husband lives in another town, and my children are out all day. So I have a lot of time in hand,” says the entrepreneur, lovingly called Aunty Najma, for whom no obstacle is big enough. As she says, “Cooking is my passion.” To get in touch with all the home chefs, please click here.

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Vasant Rao Kale from Medhpar village of Bilaspur district, Chattisgarh, was a government employee all his life. When he retired from his job, he wanted to pursue his long-loved passion, which was farming. However the usual challenges faced by a farmer were quite enough to make him apprehensive. Vasant’s grandson, Sachin, would often visit him at the village and was fascinated by the stories of farming told by his grandfather. However, like many middle class families in India, Sachin’s parents also wanted him to become an engineer or a doctor. Sachin loved studying too, so he fulfilled his parents’ wishes by completing his mechanical engineering course from REC, Nagpur (now called as VRCE) in2000. A profound learner, Sachin also finished his MBA (finance) course just after his engineering and he is also a law graduate.

Sachin started his career by working with a power plant and rapidly grew to the top of his career over the years.

Sachin Kale In 2007, Sachin also started his PhD in developmental economics. This was when the spark of entrepreneurship ignited in his mind. Thoughts like why he was working for someone else and not for himself kept disturbing him while he was still climbing the ladder of success in his corporate life.

“While thinking about options for entrepreneurship, I came to the conclusion that the food industry is the most important yet the most ignored one by us. That is when I recalled the lessons given by my grandfather about farming,” says Sachin, while speaking to TBI from his farm.

Sachin’s grandfather would often tell him how one can survive without earning money at any given point but one cannot survive without food. So if you know the art of growing your own food, you can survive at any condition. He would also take Sachin to their 25-acre ancestral land and talk about how it was his dream to revive the entire land into a farm someday.

Among various lessons that his grandfather gave him, Sachin focused on this one issue: the availability of labor.

Photo Source - Wikimedia

“My grandfather would encourage me to take up farming but at the same time he would warn me that it was a risky business and the biggest problem was labor. ‘You won’t get labor unless you help them earn more than what they are already earning,’ he would say,” recalled Sachin, who lost his grandfather last month.

Sachin started thinking about how he could benefit the farmers, but he knew that to become an agripreneur, he would have to first learn farming and set an example by drawing more profit.

In 2013, Sachin left his luxurious life in Gurgaon, where he was working as a manager for Punj Lloyd, getting a hefty salary of 24 lakh per annum, and shifted to Medhpar to become a farmer.

Sachin started tilling his land alone.

Talking about challenges, Sachin says: “Everything was a challenge, as I had absolutely no clue about farming. I had to learn everything from tilling the land to sowing the seeds.”

Sachin invested his entire provident fund of 15 years and decided that he would go back to the corporate life if he’s unsuccessful as he had a family that was dependent on him. But his hard work, determination and skills paid off -- he set up a model where his farm was useful all year round and gave maximum profit. Now the next target was to benefit the farmers from whatever he had learnt. He started researching about contract farming and was convinced that it could benefit the farmers with a sustainable source of earning. Thus in 2014, Sachin launched his own company, Innovative Agrilife Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which helped farmers with the contract farming model of farming. Sachin also hired consultants from the Agriculture College at Bilaspur to teach the farmers new technology and the right way of farming. The basic fundamentals of contract farming is very simple and profitable. Contract farming involves agricultural production being carried out on the basis of an agreement between the buyer and farm producers. The buyer helps the farmers with funds and all means required for farming. The farmer in turn has to produce the crop suggested by the buyer and according to the buyer’s method. The minimum selling price is predefined and the buyer buys the entire crop on that price even if the market price is low. The farmer gets a share of the profit in case the prices are high in the market -- a win-win situation for both the buyers and the farmers.

“It was difficult in the initial two years as no one trusted a young urban man telling a 70-year-old farmer about farming. But when I discussed the financials on papers, they started taking interest,” says the 36-year-old.

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Sachin also continued to grow paddy and seasonal vegetables in his own 24-acre land. In time, he found that the farmers there grew only paddy, which was a matter of three to four months and the land remained idle for the next eight months. He then introduced to them a farming model where after harvesting paddy, they grow seasonal vegetables all year round. The farmers were impressed by Sachin’s farming techniques and started partnering with him.

Today, Sachin’s company is helping 137 happy farmers working on 200 acres of land and drawing a turnover of approximately Rs. 2 crore.

Sachin works with the latest technologies at his farms.

“I don’t buy their land, that way they lose the ownership. I just buy their produce and directly sell it to the retailers, which gives a very good margin. I also share a part of the profit with them,” informs Sachin.

Sachin’s wife Kalyani, who has a Master’s degree in communication, takes care of the financial part of the company. When asked if she misses the city life, she says, “Yes we do miss going to the mall and the metro ride sometimes but more than that we enjoy the time we spend together. When Sachin was in a corporate job he would travel for 20 days a month. Moreover, we love the fresh air here and know that we are eating absolutely healthy food unlike in the city.”

Sachin dreams of seeing his company at the Mumbai stock exchange some day and making farming and farmers a major part of the economy.

Sachin and Kalyani Kale. If you wish to know more about Sachin’s venture you can call him at 9425530260 or mail him at infoagrilife@gmail.com

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Today, 62-year-old Usha Dalmia is well-known as the chef and founder of Tingle Your Taste Buds, a cookery website that offers a number of recipes and tips for food connoisseurs around the world. Till a few years back, Usha, my mother, was a housewife, the backbone of her family and a favourite among her friends.

This new dimension to my mother’s personality happened a bit by chance and a lot by hard work and persistence.

Home chef turned food blogger Usha Dalmia. Source: Facebook Living in Vishakhapatnam, my mother is a very artistically inclined woman with immense talent in many art and craft forms. Her culinary skills were always appreciated by everyone, and she felt happy cooking meals for anyone. She always fostered the dream to open her own restaurant but like many women of her generation her dream remained unfulfilled. She was a Hindi teacher at a school but left the job after my birth in 1982. I also have an older brother, now 40 who lives in the USA. My mother was content taking care of her family and giving her all to us.

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Once we grew up, I started sensing that my mother, in the process of ensuring a great life for us, never really got a chance to do anything for herself. I began to understand my mother's passion for cooking, while my own passions were pulling me towards them. I live in Hyderabad, and decided to quit my well-paying job at Infosys to pursue my own passions and help my mother pursue hers. I launched a venture with a friend and became a professional dance instructor/choreographer. I also began volunteering with an NGO and worked on rehabilitating those rescued from human trafficking victims.

Opening a restaurant for my mother was tough due to finance and logistical issues. So we began with a Facebook Page titled Tingle Your Taste Buds in April 2012.

A summer thandai from Tingle Your Taste Buds. Source: Facebook My mother was not technology-savvy then; for her to enter into this sphere was a challenge. She was also worried that no one really has time today to cook meals and a bit jittery to start something new at this stage in her life. But we were all encouraging and supportive, and that helped her take the plunge. However, we lived in different cities, and in the beginning it was a challenge to post recipes on the page. Through various discussions on phone and emails intermediated by my father, she communicated the content to me. I would then take care of all the technical aspects and marketing on the Facebook page. We got good response from friends and family and that boosted my mother’s confidence. The next challenge was to increase the reach beyond friends and family. We wanted it to be organic and hence came up with many strategies to encourage people to visit the page like contests and other activities. Once someone would visit the page, in most cases they would start following it too.

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A year after the launch, we had thousands of followers which encouraged us to take this forward. The next step was to have our own website for greater reach and versatility, and to eventually make money from the venture through advertisements. We wanted to completely own and be flexible with the website, and hence didn't hire anyone to create it. Along with my husband, I spent months doing research and created and designed the website all by ourselves. However there are a number of cookery websites today and we knew we had to take a different approach. In the meantime, my mother worked on her photography skills to ensure good quality photographs for the website.

We launched the portal on April 2014 to mark the second anniversary of the brand. There has been no looking back since.

Usha and Anupama, the mother-daughter duo who make cooking look easy The strength of our brand lies is in the simplicity of the recipes without compromising on the taste. Our mission is to ease the process of cooking, because we believe there is a chef in everyone. What started as a small Facebook page is today a website with lakhs of visitors and a dedicated subscriber base. We also contribute to food websites and magazines, and were recently finalists in the "Best Food Blogger of the Year" category at the Orange Flower Awards. Today, my mother has learnt a lot about technology and is dedicated to her work. Recently, when she sent her recipe to a website, they requested for an image with different resolution. By then, the dish was finished but my mother immediately made it again, in 15 minutes instead of buying more time, because she never misses a deadline. She is passionate about spreading joy through food and loves to personally read all the feedback.

She says, "I never thought I will be able to become an entrepreneur at this age. But thanks to the immense support of my family, especially my daughter who made this possible for me, I am what I wanted to be. I overcame all my fears to learn everything I thought I cannot. All you need is passion and dedication. I hope my story inspires everyone to not hesitate to pursue their passion at any age. Go for it!"

Over the next few years, we aim to widen our reach and have more collaborations. We are also planning to come up with a cookery book. (Written by Anupama Dalmia-Barnwal)

About the author: Anupama Dalmia-Barnwal is a professional blogger/writer, dance master, social activist and mother to a two-year-old. She lives in Hyderabad.

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“Food for children in India looks almost medicinal, like that somehow has the doctor's seal of approval. But why do we need to do that?” Shauravi Malik and Meghana Narayan found themselves wondering about the approach to children’s food as they struggled to find the perfect balance in taste and nutrition for their own kids. When their quest for healthy edibles turned up no satisfactory results, the duo turned mompreneurs with their own batch of nutritious treats.

Shauravi and Meghana are the co-founders of Slurrp Farm, a made-in-India organic food brand offering health and yummy treats for babies and kids.

Meghana and Shauravi showcasing Slurrp Farm products. Photo by Ashwani Nagpal Before they plunged into the packaged food business, Meghana and Shauravi were super achievers in diverse fields. Armed with an MBA from Harvard Business School, Meghana—a computer science engineer by training and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University—led the public health practise at McKinsey India. Shauravi, a St. Stephens and Cambridge University alumni—has worked for Sir Richard Branson’s Group Holding entity at the Virgin Group and JP Morgan in London. The two met when one of Shauravi’s friends asked her to go for Meghana’s Diwali dinner. Their meeting turned into a long friendship, as the two women bonded over food, laughter and fun business ideas. As mothers, Shauravi and Meghana felt invested in raising awareness for healthy eating among children. They also wanted busy parents, like themselves, to find readymade options which are as nutritious—and delicious—as homemade food.

“We decided to make the baby cereals organic because we feel at that age group it's critical to ensure that children eat organic,” they say. “We want to build and educate a sizeable group of parents in terms of eating organic and healthy, and then look at more varieties of shorter shelf life and seasonal snacking stuff, once our own customer base grows.”

To expand their kitchen adventures into a business was no cakewalk. Meghana and Shauravi invested time and energy into extensive R&D and understanding the nuances of what went behind conventional packaged food production and what Slurrp Farm could do differently. The two have spent their last three years sourcing on organic sourcing from various parts of India, interacting with experts in the field and also learning from their mistakes. Following a long process of trial-and-errors, success and failures, including a batch of apple puree and palm sugar cookies that turned out to be neither affordable nor durable, Meghana and Shauravi emerged with Slurrp Farm a small but thoughtful kids food label.

Slurrp Farm presently offers cereals for babies and cookies for children, made from organic ingredients.

Slurrp Farm's wholewheat ragi and chocolate cookies and wholewheat, maize, rice, mango and banana with milk-cooked cereals The recipes are delicious enough to make even grown-ups drool—ragi and oats-based cereals are elevated with apples, bananas, honey, tomatoes and dried spinach while wholewheat cookies pack an extra punch with cheese, chocolate or fruits and nuts. The sugar used in the products is organic brown sugar and the maida content is minimal to none. Emphasizing on a clean mix of ingredients, the team has stayed away from transfats (dalda, edible vegetable oils or hydrogenated fats), palm oil, invert/golden syrup and high fructose corn syrup, ingredients that have become a staple in regular packaged products.

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The products are adapted from family recipes, and the team finalises the proportion of ingredients in consultation with industry specialists, nutritionists and paediatricians. In developing the cookies, the team sought help from Mandakini Gupta, owner and chef of Smitten Bakery, who edited and narrowed down the range to seven recipes. For final testing, Shauravi and Meghana headed to a playschool where 200 children tasted the products and helped them zero on the final three flavours. Incidentally, the founders’ favourite cookies was turned down by the children.

The brand has also relied on using vibrant colours, original characters and storytelling narratives to appeal to children (and those who are kids at heart).

Cookies from Slurrp Farm are made from natural ingredients One of the biggest challenges for the brand has been to reach out to customers, without an extravagant marketing budget. Social media and word-of-mouth recommendations have helped them create brand awareness and receive real-time feedback. The team also undertakes sampling activities and interactive sessions in schools and organises Slurrp Farm picnics with lots of kids. “There is simply no substitute for meeting in real life, forming real bonds and understanding our customers,” they say.

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The brand is currently available in stores across New Delhi and uses online platform to reach customers around India. They hope to launch in other metros in coming months. Meghana and Shauravi have learnt from their own experiences that once children develop the habit of healthy eating, they take it forward themselves. Case in point: their own children are addicted to the brand’s chocolate ragi cookies. So are other kids—a recent picnic, resulted in a jostling match among the kids for the ragi cookie box. “We were so happy!” gush the founders.

Between expanding the scope of their products, Meghana and Shauravi are constantly engaged in researching and developing newer products.

Shauravi and Meghana with their kids Interacting with other mothers have enabled Meghana and Shauravi to focus their effort on breakfast and snack items for future products. They also plan to create products for prenatal and postnatal women and the elderly. The two are of the firm belief that taking a slow-and-steady approach will help their business ethos in the long run. The duo admits that costing makes their work hard and sometimes compels compromise. For instance, they used real butter for the cookies as sourcing organic butter would make the supply erratic and also raise the prices.

“The thing is, people need to ask why is junk food SO cheap, not why is good food seemingly expensive,” they say. “We are convinced that with time people will change their mindset wherein they are happy to pay the doctor for a disease down the road, but not eat well and prioritise their health.”

Not just for children, Meghana and Shauravi believe that everyone must change the way they eat, at a fundamental level. These two mompreneurs aim to change the game by showing that healthy food need not come at the cost of taste. As they say, “Food should be about fun, and stories, and colourful things. And we want to bring that back!!” For more information on Slurrp Farm, head to the official website.

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Every night, Charu Shah steps out to feed dozens of stray animals in her vicinity. The Mumbai resident is devoted to animals, and it was her love for animals that set her on a singular journey as an eco-friendly entrepreneur. “I had a paralysed kitten, and he would drag himself on the floor. I was very worried that he would end up licking the chemical-based floor cleaners,” she says. “So I started making my own natural substitutes.”

From that humble floor-cleaner, Charu has broadened her horizons to make an array of natural, fragrance-free and vegan products for her label Saattvikaa.

Before she made her foray into natural home and skin products, Charu led a wholly different life. An architect by training, she spent years building homes in Mumbai. “I realised that unfortunately, far too many people chose luxury over being eco-friendly,” she says. “While on one hand I loved trees, on the other hand I’d cut them down to make big homes. It was leaving me a little upset.” Her wish to do something more sustainable and conscious combined with her worry for the kitten led Charu to work on using essential oils for her household needs.

“I used to always read up and try herbal products for myself. But I’d never thought about making them on a larger scale. I took help from friends who work with essential oils, read up extensively, used social media groups for discussions and joined webinars to learn more. I started with a natural floor cleaner, using hydrosol instead of essential oil.”

Beginning with her own needs, Charu expanded her skills as requests poured in from family members, friends and acquaintances and established Saattvikaa around May 2016.

Today, almost a year later, Charu has developed close to 30 products, from multi-purpose cleaning liquids to sunblocks for babies.

All the products are homemade and Charu takes care of every detail, from conceptualising the product to packaging and dispatching. She makes sure that each of the Saattvikaa products are made only on order and is happy to research and develop new products based on request.

“Most of my products are based on my own needs or request from others,” she says. “For instance, I made an eczema cream for myself. When I tried it and saw it worked, I gave it to friends and users to try out. Each time I make a product, I try it first on myself.”

The line of products developed by Charu includes soaps, toothpaste, hair and body oils, talcum powder, cleaning agents, insect repellents, shampoos and conditioners and pet products. Her latest creation is an aloe vera-based sunblock that’s suitable for both adults and babies.

In keeping with her love for animals, all the products from Saattvikaa are cruelty-free.

Charu says, “There are a lot of natural and organic brands but they are not vegan. We have very few options, and imported vegan brands can be very expensive.” She also emphasizes on keeping baby products fragrance-free, using cold-pressed oils, organic herbs, natural clays and organic essential oils and hydrosol (distilled floral water). “It’s interesting to learn about new things while making my products,” she says, adding how creating the sunblocks helped her learn about the harmful effects of titanium oxide conventionally used in sunscreen. For her product, she opted to add the SPF with non-nano uncoated zinc oxide.

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Some of the ingredients like hibiscus, lemongrass and curry leaves come from her herb garden, a patch filled with plants and beautiful birds. Incidentally, though she can’t afford discounts, Charu offers to plant a tree for customers on placing big orders and sends them a certificate for it. “I’ve worked with an organisation called Grow Trees, and I choose new places each time. I sometimes work with farmers, others in forest; I recently planted a lot of trees in Sundarbans. When my clients ask for a discount, I suggest this concept and most of them love it,” she says.

With increasing takers for Saattvikaa, Charu hopes to continue her work and enjoy learning new things in the process of new product development.

An independent brand owner, Charu tackles a number of obstacles from sourcing the right ingredients to keeping prices affordable. She sources from organic companies, but not everything is accessible. She says “I know about great ingredients that are not available in India. I ask friends and acquaintances to carry the ingredients for me, and they have been very sweet about it.” Keeping prices in check can be a huge challenge, especially for products like the sunblock. “I had to source the ingredients from abroad and that made the product costly,” she says. She is conscious about price tags, and shares specific reasons for her more expensive products on her page.

Currently selling through her Facebook page and stalls at Mumbai’s monthly farmers market, Charu hopes that she will be able to develop a website for her products in the next year. She also wants to expand her herb garden and take greater control of her ingredients. Her endeavour, Charu hopes will not only encourage people to try eco-friendly products but also be comfortable in their own skin.”Unfortunately, I get too many requests for fairness products. I wish that people would learn to accept themselves for who they are and realise that a little effort can go a long way when it comes to your skin,” she says. Buy Saattvika products on the brand's Facebook page. To get in touch with Charu, click here.

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Meet the 22-year-old who is popularising traditional, ethnic Assamese food through his food startup, while also creating jobs for rural youth in Assam.

A follower of the philosophy that healthy food equals healthy living, Vinayak Gajendragad switched careers to become a natural farmer and health-food promoter.

If you have a dream, they will help you follow it.

For a man helming a business whose annual turnover exceeds ₹25 crore, Nitin — founder and CEO of Excel Gas & Equipments — is a picture of earnestness and humility.

In 1999, on the day his oldest son was born, Nitin went back on the entrepreneurial path. And Excel Gas & Equipments was born.

Today, Excel Gas & Equipments is a leading player in the field of high purity gas and chemical distribution.

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So she worked on various themes around the games and then got each of them embroidered or/and appliqued with various India-inspired themes. The project, which she christened Pachisi, was a hit!

Which is why, she decided to make people, especially children, aware of ancient games and took up her college project as a full-time job. She started making more ancient Indian games on fabric.

Started in 2014, the Chennai-based venture has games such as Pachisi/Dayakattam, Chauka Bara, Goats and Tigers, Snakes and Ladders, Chess, and Rota, which is an ancient Roman game.

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Behind the natural foods company is PC Musthafa, a first-generation entrepreneur who once sold tidbits during his school vacations to make a living.

In one decade, iD Fresh has become the go-to brand for packaged dosa and idli batter. Available in six Indian cities, the growth is estimated to be ten-fold every four years.

The brand achieved a turnover of ₹100 crore in 2015-16. This success has only made PC more determined to grow the business and contribute to progress.

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A third-generation farmer from the village in Naxal-affected Gadchiroli district, Sanjay took a unique path to supplement his erratic earnings from the rice fields – pearl cultivation.

After months of experiments, Sanjay found out that pearls are formed with the chemicals released by the oyster when it feels irritation due to any foreign body inside it.

Once Sanjay got the results by experimenting on few shells, he rented a freshwater pond. He also gathered the tools from his own household to surgically implement mantle grafts and appropriate nuclei in the internal organs of the oyster.

“Though this was a major shock to me, it also gave me hope that I can do it. The pearls were formed and they would have been ready in the next few months. This meant that my experiment was successful,” he adds.

A determined Sanjay did not stop here. In 2015, he made his own tank in his house, and has grown almost 5,000 pearls last December.

Sanjay, who believes in gathering knowledge, is also a student of 4th year LLB. He is additionally fulfilling his dream of becoming a teacher by conducting workshops and training for other farmers to grow pearls.

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His enviable fleet of luxury cars-on-rent, and his incredible story of success and determination has earned Ramesh the title of Billionaire Barber.

It was the earnings from his saloon that led him to buy his first car and paved the way for a venture that has grown exponentially in two decades.

Today, Ramesh Tours & Travels boasts a fleet of over 400 cars next to models of BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar and the highly prized Rolls-Royce Ghost.

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Since its launch this January, the Startup India Learning Programme has drawn the attention of start-ups, with over 31,000 users signing up in the first month.

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The University of Commons (UoC), a Bengaluru-based organisation, is helping citizens/communities, social innovators, engineers and volunteers connect to create campaigns, events and programs that would lead to social change.

Why ‘Commons?’

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Because of this, English is no longer treated as a language but rather as a subject, which means it can be taught in any language that is common between the teacher and the student.

His greatest struggle at that time lay in figuring out how to sustain a non-profit organization.

Pranil himself is a valuable resource to entrepreneurs working on product development and delivery channels in the education sector.

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Kanika is the founder of JetSetGo, India’s first marketplace for chartered private jets, a feted entrepreneur, and cancer survivor.

Often hailed as Uber of the Skies, JetSetGo is a digital platform enabling customers to reserve their own private jets and helicopters.

JetSetGo operates in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Dubai and New York, and Kanika envisions a global presence for her swiftly emerging brand.

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Maybe, it is the unabashed devotion of the bibliophile-turned-bookseller to the written word.

Bargaining and half-hearted buying of books shall satisfy no one.

While the elitists may argue about the quality and authenticity of products sold and the overall crowded experience, such markets have long been the source of interesting articles for artists and designers.

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How can we help decision-makers use data regularly to drive large-scale impact?

We understand the decision-makers’ problems, create multiple solutions, and gather feedback and data to see which works best.

Plus, we also know how to solve any other targeted problem with geo-clustering algorithms.

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Santhosh Singh had a similar dilemma when he was working in Dell as an Analytics Advisor.

In June 2009, Santhosh finally quit his well paying job and decided to get into dairy farming, which, according to him, was the most feasible option.

He started his farm, and called it ‘Amrutha Dairy Farms’, 40 km from Bengaluru in his 3-acre ancestral land in Doddabalapur.

He also set up the first production unit of hydroponics, which enables growing of 1 tonne of green fodder per day in a controlled environment, serving as backup just in case the rains are a no-show.

So far, he has trained 600 professionals to take up dairy farming in over 95 workshops held in more than 12 states of the country.

He calls it ‘the Urban Dairy Farmer’s model’ –

This way, one can continue their day job and try out remote management and learn for a few years before deciding to go into it full time.

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Mansi Kapoor, Delhi

Reetha Balsavar, Mumbai

Anne Cherian, Chennai

Saiprasad Vishwanathan, Mumbai

Mamma’s Kitchen, Bengaluru

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Sachin started his career by working with a power plant and rapidly grew to the top of his career over the years.

Among various lessons that his grandfather gave him, Sachin focused on this one issue: the availability of labor.

In 2013, Sachin left his luxurious life in Gurgaon, where he was working as a manager for Punj Lloyd, getting a hefty salary of 24 lakh per annum, and shifted to Medhpar to become a farmer.

Today, Sachin’s company is helping 137 happy farmers working on 200 acres of land and drawing a turnover of approximately Rs. 2 crore.

Sachin dreams of seeing his company at the Mumbai stock exchange some day and making farming and farmers a major part of the economy.

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This new dimension to my mother’s personality happened a bit by chance and a lot by hard work and persistence.

Opening a restaurant for my mother was tough due to finance and logistical issues. So we began with a Facebook Page titled Tingle Your Taste Buds in April 2012.

We launched the portal on April 2014 to mark the second anniversary of the brand. There has been no looking back since.

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Shauravi and Meghana are the co-founders of Slurrp Farm, a made-in-India organic food brand offering health and yummy treats for babies and kids.

Slurrp Farm presently offers cereals for babies and cookies for children, made from organic ingredients.

The brand has also relied on using vibrant colours, original characters and storytelling narratives to appeal to children (and those who are kids at heart).

Between expanding the scope of their products, Meghana and Shauravi are constantly engaged in researching and developing newer products.

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From that humble floor-cleaner, Charu has broadened her horizons to make an array of natural, fragrance-free and vegan products for her label Saattvikaa.

Today, almost a year later, Charu has developed close to 30 products, from multi-purpose cleaning liquids to sunblocks for babies.

In keeping with her love for animals, all the products from Saattvikaa are cruelty-free.

With increasing takers for Saattvikaa, Charu hopes to continue her work and enjoy learning new things in the process of new product development.

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Sanjay, who believes in gathering knowledge, is also a student of 4^th year LLB. He is additionally fulfilling his dream of becoming a teacher by conducting workshops and training for other farmers to grow pearls.