Inspiring Business Stories

H.A.

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Where do you live? Maybe you should consider a trip to Bangalore, meet this man and get advice while getting your hair cut!
Unfortunately I am not from Banglore and with no plans in the near future of visiting there...
 

vikaskumar11233

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Hi,I think you got these stories from the Rashmi Bansal's book connect the dots,it has all these guys stories.But the thing which matters here is these stories are really inspirational .You missed one man P.Ganpati who has now restaurant chain under the name of DosaWala.He is illiterate and now he is a millionare.This shows that education is sometime surpassed by your talent.Books are not everything,they can be our guide but not make our destiny.

cbse previous year question paper
 

nrj

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Rs 40,000 to Rs 1200 cr: Story of Rakesh Malhotra's Luminous inverters

An engineering degree automatically qualifies one for the odd handyman's job at home. At least it did in my household. My father was an IAS officer and the south Delhi locality we lived in was prone to frequent power cuts. Our overused inverter would crash time and again, and my mother expected me to rectify the problem. Thankfully, machines fascinated me and I loved to tinker with them. It did not take me long to realise that this enjoyable pastime had the potential of becoming a successful business idea.

Inverters were very expensive in the early 1980s and cost around Rs 50,000 a unit. So, in between my corporate jobs, I conducted research on power inverters and tried to develop a cheaper version. After graduating from Jadavpur University in 1983, I had job hopped from Allen Bradley in Kolkata to Nelco and, finally, to Siemens Energy. In 1985, when I felt sure that I was on to a good thing, I decided to quit my job and set up my own venture, which would manufacture UPS (uninterrupted power supply) or battery-powered back-up systems. However, it wasn't till 1988 that I finally launched my company.

Since the concept of UPS was new, my father was apprehensive about my decision, but my mother supported me. Despite his doubts, my father helped me raise a seed capital of Rs 40,000 from his savings, which helped me lease a 600 sq ft space in south Delhi and employ four people. That's how Luminous Power Technologies was born.


Within 15 months, my inverter, priced at only Rs 15,000 a unit, was ready for marketing. I managed to offer the low rate because all the parts were procured locally. My first client was Modi Xerox, which placed an order for 28 units. The size of the deal was Rs 4.2 lakh, so we were off to a good start. I left nothing to chance, going myself to pitch for the deal instead of sending an employee. Before long, other deals started materialising, and by the end of the first year of operations, Luminous posted a turnover of around Rs 8 lakh and increased its headcount to eight employees. It helped that very few companies were in the UPS business at the time, but it was the strength of the product that ultimately helped me crack the market.



I am proud of the fact that my company was a pioneer in making inverters visually appealing. Since the other products in the market were very ungainly, people would keep them tucked out of sight. We, however, made innovative covers and designer trolleys that looked aesthetic, and as a result, our customers were able to install their units even in their drawing rooms. It was in keeping with our objective of selling a unique product that was also easy on the eye.

That's not to say it was smooth sailing all the way. I faced a big challenge within a few months of starting out because I had not conducted proper research before launching the product in the market. The inverter developed a defect and it resulted in a lot of complaints from clients.

However, I took care of these by visiting every client personally, bringing in the faulty products, fixing the problem and delivering them back. This not only helped meet the customers' expectations but also gathered a lot of goodwill.

Today, we supply products to 34 countries, including China, where we have also leased a factory outlet. In fact, Luminous has deliberately tried to stay asset-light by relying exclusively on the leased model for all its offices. In 1994, we started diversifying and took interest in other businesses, such as telecommunication infrastructure, knowledge process outsourcing and renewable energy, and there has been no looking back.

In June last year, the company hived off 74% of its equity holding to French energy major Schneider Electric for Rs 1,400 crore, and since then I have been trying to take a backseat in its operations. Though I am still the chairman, I have delegated the responsibility of its day-to-day running to the newly appointed managing director. I'm now devoting time to my new baby, Ncubate Capital Partners, which was founded in November 2011 and is looking at providing venture capital to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

In India, the number of companies funding small enterprises is minuscule. Moreover, they do not provide strategic or operational talent. Most venture capital or private equity firms have industry and sectoral knowledge and the experience of funding, but they do not necessarily have the operating depth. So Ncubate was set up with the aim of exploiting this gap and providing capital, along with expertise, to the early-stage profit-generating companies. We have invested around Rs 250 crore so far and have 40 employees to handle the new venture. In the next three years, we plan to fund around 13-14 new companies.
How Rakesh Malhotra's Luminous Power Technologies exploited market's need of low-cost inverter
 
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H.A.

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In 1976, during lunch time at Delhi Cloth Mills, DCM, a group of six young engineers in the office canteen were discussing their work woes at DCM's calculator division.

Despite them all have having jobs that paid them well, they were an unhappy lot -- they wanted to do more, riding on their own gumption. They decided to quit their jobs and start a venture of their own.

The man who was fuelling the ambitions of his five other colleagues at that canteen was a 30-year-old engineer from Tamil Nadu, Shiv Nadar. And this is how the story of Hindustan Computers Limited, HCL began.

Nadar and his five colleagues quit DCM in the summer of 1976. They decided to set up a company that would make personal computers. They had gathered enough technical expertise at DCM's calculator division, but like for all start-ups, getting funds was the problem.

However, Nadar's passion for his new dream company and the support of his enthusiastic colleagues soon made the task very easy.

Founder, Chairman and CEO, HCL Technologies, Shiv Nadar told CNBC-TV18, "The first person I met was Arjun and he was also a management trainee like me. He was a couple of batches junior to me. . . We became very good friends and we are still very good friends. Then, the rest of them all worked for DCM and we all are of similar age, so we used to hang out together, crib together, have fun together, work together.

Nadar would first have to gather cash to give wings to his idea of manufacturing computers. He floated a company called Microcomp Limited -- through which he would sell teledigital calculators. This venture threw up enough cash to allow the founders to give shape to their ultimate dream to manufacture computers in India, at a time when computers were just sophisticated cousins of the good old calculator but support also came from the Uttar Pradesh government.

Finally, the founders put together Rs 20 lakh (Rs 2 million) and HCL was born.

The year after HCL was floated, the Indian government reigned in the ambitions of the foreign companies in India. This pronounced the death knell of companies like IBM and Coca-Cola while bells began to ring for Indian entrepreneurships like HCL.

Managing Editor, The Smart Manager, Dr Gita Piramal says, "Few Indian businessmen were happy when George Fernandes became industry minister in 1977, when the Janata Party came to power. Foreign businessmen were even less happy that Coca-Cola and IBM left India. IBM's leaving, left a major vacuum and this was the vacuum in which Shiv Nadar spotted an opportunity. He stepped in and customers began to trickle in."

HCL started shipping its in-house microcomputers around the same time as its American counterpart Apple, and took only two more years to introduce its 16 bits processor.

By 1983, it indigenously developed a relational data based management system, a networking operational system and client-server architecture, almost at the same time as its global peers. The road to the top was now in sight and HCL took it a step further by exploring foreign shores.

HCL's first brush with international business came about in 1979 when it set up a venture in Singapore; it was called Far East computers. HCL was only three years old and its net worth was around Rs 3 crore (Rs 30 million). Shiv Nadar set up an ambitious target for the venture and notched up sales of Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) in the very first year.

Co-Founder, HCL Technologies, Ajai Chowdhry says, "We discovered that there was a good opportunity to enter Singapore with our own hardware we had manufactured in Singapore. But the strategy was very clearly around selling computerization rather than computers and so we actually took the whole idea of hardware, software solution and service and packaged it and presented it as computerization."

Even as it was basking in its success in Singapore, HCL planned a whole new area of expansion and it tapped into a territory that was lying unexplored in the country - computer education. Sensing the increasing demand for computer training, HCL set up NIIT in 1981 to impart high quality IT education in India.

Nadar explains, "We knew many people in IIT and Indian Institute of Science. We formed an advisory panel and asked them, can you help us navigate this whole thing and they were very enthusiastic about this and they of course shaken up a little bit when they saw that we started advertising in Bombay -- selling education as a commercial project."

From calculators to IT education, the first five years of HCL was a combination of growth and expansion riddled with uncertainty but the company was now gearing up to set a much bigger target for itself and an announcement from the government would help it takeoff to those soaring heights.

In 1984, the Indian government announced a new policy that would change the fortunes of the entire computer industry. The government opened up the computer market and permitted import of technology. With new guidelines and regulations in place, HCL grabbed the opportunity to launch its own personal computer.

The demand for personal computers was slowly but surely mounting in the Indian market. Most banks were shifting to the UNIX platform. A few companies approached HCL for personal computers, so, the founders flew all over the world to bring back PCs they could take apart, study and reproduce and indigenously upgrade. Their first innovative personal computer was ready in three weeks' times and soon they launched their first range of computers, and they called it the Busybee.

Chowdhry says, "In a lot of ways, it opened up the market because one thing was that, you no longer had to develop basic stuff in India - like operating systems but on the other hand it opened new opportunities like banking because as per government policy, all banking computers must be UNIX based. So, feverishly we set out creating a UNIX based computer and we bought the UNIX source code and created that product out of nothing."

In two years, HCL became one of the largest IT companies in India. The founders now went to different corners of the country to set up sales and marketing offices and it now needed the brightest minds to take it to the next level of competition.

Campus recruitment in management and technical institutes began in full swing and HCL grabbed some of the best talent by offering pay packages that outscored some of the best companies of the time -- Rs 2,000 per month to start with.

The adrenaline rush of the first half of the 1980s and the rapid expansion strategy soon caught up with HCL. A turning point came in 1989, when HCL on the basis of a report by McKinsey and Company decided to venture into the American computer hardware market.

HCL America was born but the project fell flat on its face. HCL had failed to follow a very crucial step necessary to enter the US market. A big disappointment was on its way.

Piramal says, "For every entrepreneur, the US will always remain the dream market. It's the biggest market in the world and Shiv Nadar obviously was drawn to it but he really didn't know what he was getting into. The computers he made didn't get environmental clearances. In fact, HCL probably turned into his biggest mistake but HCL and Shiv himself, he is a very strong person, he understood he was making a mistake, he saw that Infosys and Wipro are doing really well in software and he was not too proud to change gears and finally HCL did enter the software market."

It didn't take too long for HCL to brush off the disappointment in the US. Its first failure in the US was set aside in 1991 and HCL entered into a partnership with HP (Hewlett-Packard) to form HCL HP Limited. It opened new avenues for HCL and gave opportunities to firm up its revenues.

In three years, another new possibility came knocking at its door and in 1994, HCL looked beyond PCs and tied up with Nokia cellphones and Ericsson switches for distribution.

Chowdhry explains, 'In 1991, when India didn't have enough foreign exchange. We were in the hardware business and we didn't have enough funds. That's the time when a clear thought entered our minds - that we should globalize and in the very early days, we actually created a joint venture with Hewlett-Packard.

In 1997, HCL was already a multi-dimensional company spun off HCL Technologies Limited to mark their entry into the global software space. It made up its mind to focus on software development, which was twenty years behind its entrepreneurial journey, Shiv Nadar was now ready to take on global competition with all his might.

From 70s to 90s, the HCL story was one of steady rise but in the face of its rapid expansion and continuous flow of achievements, Shiv Nadar didn't anticipate that he would be in for a rude shock and that it would come from someone very close.

In 1998, Arjun Malhotra, Shiv Nadar's comrade and friend decided to leave the company to start his own TechSpan, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. He was also one of the largest shareholders in HCL Infosystems at that time. For Shiv Nadar, it was time to think afresh.

The revenues were shrinking from the hardware sector and Nadar now decided to redesign HCL. The company once again needed funds to grow and this time around, Nadar decided to look at the capital market. An initial public offer (IPO) was made on the Indian Stock Exchange in 1999, which was a stupendous success.

President, HCL Technologies, Vineet Nayar says, "The shareholders supported us and then I think we started with Rs 580 an IPO and went up to Rs 2,800 or something like that. So, it was a dream run, I think the shareholders bought the argument we were making, they liked the articulation of the strategy, they liked the management team and they liked the vision we were painting and they supported the stock full time and that was a turning point for HCL."

Shiv Nadar now put aside his dream of becoming a global hardware major and venture into software with an open mind and a clean slate. Technology was opening up vistas of opportunities in the software sector and HCL now wanted to build new businesses.

Global business became a priority, so, now they started a BPO in Ireland in 2001. His partner in this ambitious venture was British Telecom.

The years that followed saw HCL in an expansion mode. In 2005 alone, HCL signed a software development agreement with Boeing for its 787 dreamliner programme. Next came a venture with NEC, Japan.

It even brought out the joint ventures Deutsche Bank and British Telecom's Apollo Contact Center. In the same year, HCL Infosystems launched it sub Rs 10,000 personal computer and joined hands with AMD and Microsoft to bridge the digital divide.

The successes of 2005 spilled over into 2006 and the company now produced over 75,000 machines in a single month, with more parallel joint ventures growing on its list. But in spite of this overwhelming success, Shiv Nadar would not rest. There was a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and perhaps not having exploited its full potential that still drove Nadar and the company to achieve much more.

Thirty years after starting his company, Shiv Nadar really does not have much to complain about. Hindustan Computers Ltd today is an empire worth $3.5 billion with staff strength of 34,000.

But then dissatisfaction has been the quintessential factor that has made Shiv Nadar the visionary that he was and continues to be. Dissatisfaction once drove him to quit his job at DCM and it is that same quality even today, that is driving him to achieve much more when he can quite easily rest on his laurels.
 

H.A.

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Hi,I think you got these stories from the Rashmi Bansal's book connect the dots,it has all these guys stories.But the thing which matters here is these stories are really inspirational .You missed one man P.Ganpati who has now restaurant chain under the name of DosaWala.He is illiterate and now he is a millionare.This shows that education is sometime surpassed by your talent.Books are not everything,they can be our guide but not make our destiny.

cbse previous year question paper
Yes, Rashmi Bansal's book was the key to this thread....however she has not covered all of them.

P Ganapati's story Dosa Plaza has been posted on the forum under a different thread.
 

H.A.

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Moser Baer

All of us, at some point in our life, have read the story of King Bruce and the spider -- the disappointed king who took heart from the spider, which fell many times to finally complete the Web.

Deepak Puri, chairman and managing director of Moser Baer, is one such Bruce of the modern times.

He never complained or looked for excuses; he tried to find solutions. If he had problems at the Indian ports, he set up his own supply chain. If he had problems with power shortage, he did not crib. He just went on to set up a captive unit.

He faced a series of setbacks in the 40 years of his business life, but he never quit.

A masters in mechanical engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, UK, Deepak started his business career from Kolkata.

His first factory -- Metal Industries Pvt. Ltd -- manufactured aluminum wires and pipes and AC conductors. But, labour militancy -- this was when the trade unions in Bengal ruled the roost -- forced him to shut down his factory.

This did not deter him. He started a second business -- this one was about manufacturing time recording devices for the banking industry. But, before Deepak could even settle down, the militant labour union members stormed into his unit and poured acid on some of his machines. Both his attempts to do business had come to a naught.

His wife and wholetime director and promoter of Moser Baer, Nita Puri recalls the tough times. She says, "In spite of all this, he fought all the way. He did not buckle. He was gheraoed at his plant but it didn't bother him. Only when they actually gheraoed our home that we decided to move out."

Deepak was down but not out and he was ready for the third attempt. "It was pure chance. I knew nothing about floppies, those days" confides the chairman and managing director of Moser Baer, adding, "Actually, I went to Mumbai to a friend's office. Those were the days of power shortage in Mumbai and people used to practice self-regulated power shedding. They switched off their electrical power voluntarily in their offices and houses."

"When I entered his office, he was fanning himself with a newspaper. So, I picked up the first object I came across to fan myself with -- an 8-inch square black object. But before I could begin fanning myself with it, my friend grabbed it back! It was a floppy disc. Believe me, I knew nothing about it or its data storage capacity."

Deepak had just spotted a business opportunity.

Wasting no time, he flew to California to talk to Xidex, then the largest manufacturer of data storage media in the world. India was not a known country at least on the technology front, those days. But the enthusiasm and conviction that Deepak brought to the table impressed Xidex to partner with him.

Thus Moser Baer came into being in 1983.

The company, which started with 8-inch and 5.5-inch disks today, ranks among the top three optical and magnetic storage (which includes CDs, DVDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs and Lightscribe CD-Rs in the world.) Moser Baer stands for technology that matches the best in the world.

In R&D, it has set many industry benchmarks. It is the lowest cost optical media manufacturer in the world and has a human resource pool that is proud of every disk that leaves its facilities, with the 'Made in India' stamp, flashing proudly on it.

What makes him tick?

So, what keeps them at the head of the line and prevents them from stagnating? Listen to what Raghavendra Rao, an analyst from Frost & Sullivan, a leading business consulting firm that offers market research and analysis, says: "They keep on attempting to improve themselves. When their products start maturing or declining, they are ready with the next one. When the floppies went out, they moved onto CDs, and when CDs were in the mature phase, they moved onto DVDs, which are now in the growth phase. When the DVDs go into the nest phase of maturity, they will be ready with the next product."

And Deepak Puri knows that the fun has only just begun. To this day, Deepak keeps on trying -- this time to make Moser Baer an all-encompassing technology company, which will last 100 years from today.

His grit and business sense should make this a easy goal to achieve! Truly, he's King Bruce for the modern age.

The amazing Moser Baer story
 

H.A.

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Business is a journey where you are bound to meet challenges and road blocks, it does not matter whether your are educated at an Internationally reputed college or a local municipal school or have no education.

It is the sole ability to overcome the challenges put forward, is what differentiates between a loser, just a businessman and a successful businessman.
 

H.A.

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Esha Media Research: How R S Iyer made it into a Rs
22 crore news monitoring agency

My entrepreneurial journey began purely by chance,
when I happened to accompany two of my friends to
their meetings in 1998. It led me to stumble upon
my business idea, which has translated into India's
premier, full-fledged news monitoring agency, Esha
Media Research.
Before 1998, I had no inclination or intention to
start my own venture. I belong to a Mumbai-based,
middle-class family, which places great stock on a
good job. So, after completing my education in 1987
—an electronics engineering degree, followed by a
two-year management course, both from Mumbai—I
bagged a job at a local electronic service centre.
I quickly became bored with it, and three months
later, I took up marketing-related jobs for
multinational companies, where I worked for the
next 11 years. It was while I was with Videk, an IT
solutions provider, that a friend asked me to
accompany him to a company that was liquidating its
assets. It had been involved in commercial spot
monitoring, which means checking if a particular
advertisement was shown at the allocated time slot
on a given channel.
Since it was shutting down, its video recorders were
on offer at dirt cheap rates. The next day, I
accompanied yet another friend to the Doordarshan
centre at Worli, Mumbai. In those days, there was no
concept of 24-hour news channels. Even the news
on Doordarshan was restricted to fixed time slots,
and several production houses would book their
segments to showcase their programmes.
In September 1998, a new 10-minute business
segment, Business Plus, was introduced on
Doordarshan. My friend and I learnt that the
producers of the show were looking for someone to
record the programme on VHS tapes—a third party
could recording for free, but could charge others
for copies of the bulletin.
I decided to take on the challenge and immediately
bought the used video recorders that were on sale,
deploying my entire savings and picking up two for
Rs 5,000 each. I quit my job the following day and
began recording Business Plus at my Chembur home.
I called my venture Esha News Monitoring Services
Private Limited.
Nothing happened for the first few days, but I
continued recording the data. Finally, five days later,
I got a call from a press relations agency, asking if I
could provide a clipping of a particular news item
that had been aired on the first day of my setting up
shop. I delivered the VHS tape to the customer,
charging nearly Rs 350 for it. This included the cost
of the tape, which was around Rs 100.
Before the end of the first month, I notched up 30
more transactions. I became more proactive about
generating business, starting by familiarising myself
with the client list of some of the PR agencies I was
dealing with. I began reaching out to them,
suggesting news interviews that might be of interest
to them. My network began to grow rapidly and I
could no longer manage it alone.
By December 1998, I had hired two people to record
the news programme, edit the tapes and log the
data, and another person to make deliveries to
clients. The booming business prompted us to shift
into our first office—a leased 250 sq ft garage at
Chembur— in February 1999. By this time, more
news segments had started airing, so I bought more
video recorders and TV sets to expand the business.
In the first year of operations, we posted a turnover
of Rs 50,000. The next important year was 2000,
when new channels like Zee TV launched in India.
This gave Esha a shot in the arm and prompted us to
computerise our operations. My friends from the
Videk days developed a software program to keep
track of the data, which was a blessing because the
basic Excel sheets could not handle the data load. In
2004, we shifted to a 3,500 sq ft leased space at
Chembur. During this period, we also started phasing
out the VHS system due to problems with video
recorders. The tapes would have fungus growth and
could not be reused. Besides, a lot of space was
needed to store the tapes and machines, both of
which were becoming obsolete. So we began to
adopt the CD/VCD infrastructure. In the past 13
years, we have invested `7 crore in developing
systems and purchasing the latest computers, servers
and editing machines.
In 2012, we went in for a reverse merger with a
Hyderabad-based print ink manufacturing company,
Laser Dot. As the firm was in the red, we took over
its liabilities and paid debts worth Rs 3 crore.
Eventually, we got listed on the BSE as Esha Media
Research Limited. Today, we track nearly 140
channels covering news, sports and entertainment,
but 60 per centof our business comes from the
business channels.
We have 500 corporate clients, including HDFC Bank
and Reliance Industries, as well as 125 PR agencies,
besides 2,000 individual customers. We also help the
police and Vigilance Department by providing them
data free of cost. Our 110-employee firm now plans
to launch products to push up the current turnover
of Rs 22 crore by 300 per cent. We intend to enter
segments like print and social media, as well as
research reports and the rating business.
(As told to Amit Shanbaug)

Esha Media Research: How R S Iyer made it into a Rs 22 crore news monitoring agency - The Economic Times on Mobile
 

pmaitra

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CNN Heroes Tribute: Bhagwati Agrawal

This video is about harvesting water in the deserts of Rajasthan. IIRC, a similar scheme was implemented in TN. Perhaps someone can confirm?

 

Jameson Emoni

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Baba Ramdev! He is a simple Yogi who is worth $3B.

---

ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

In recent years, as a holistic healing system, ayurveda has witnessed evolution in the form of ayurvedic products and services. Rising awareness about the importance of a healthy lifestyle, increasing preference in favour of chemical-free natural products, as well as favourable government initiatives have led to the expansion of the Ayurveda market in India.

Market insights:" data-reactid="20">Market insights:

The Ayurveda market in India was valued at INR 300 Bn in 2018, and is expected to reach INR 710.87 Bn by 2024, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~16.06%, during the forecast period (2019-2024). In 2018, around 75% of Indian households used ayurvedic products as against only 67% in 2015. Of late, manufacturers have been using herbal ingredients in the production of personal care products like lotions, oils and shampoos. Players in the food processing industry are also making use of herbal ingredients in manufacturing products like packaged juices and nutritional supplements.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ayurveda-market-india-expected-reach-165500496.html
 

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