SPECIAL MENTION
The Next-Best Ideas
Four entrepreneurs who did not make it to the final list, but deserve mention because of their interesting concepts
20 March 2009
In the process of selecting the five most promising entrepreneurs, some early favourites inevitably fell by the wayside. These were people who had made the first shortlist because they had either interesting ideas or seemed to be getting their execution act perfectly well. However, when all the different parameters were considered, they got edged out by the final five. Though they failed to make the final cut, there were four companies and entrepreneurs that we thought were interesting enough to mention here.
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Vaatsalya’s Ashwinikumar Naik
(Pic by Gireesh G.V.) |
Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions
Set up by two young doctors who have returned from the US with a dream of providing affordable healthcare, Vaatsalya is hoping to meet a great medical need in the smaller towns — and make money in the process. The essential idea is simple enough. Vaatsalya plans to set up 50- bed hospitals in towns with 200,000 population or thereabouts. It plans to provide some basic surgical services and also general medical services. The prices will be fairly low — to attract the kind of clientele that cannot afford to go to a bigger corporate hospital such as Fortis or Apollo, but which also does not want to use the overcrowded and basic government facilities on offer.
The basic assumption Dr Veerendra Hiremath and Dr Ashwinikumar Naik, the co-founders, are making is that these people are willing to pay some amount for the convenience and guarantee of better medical facilities. So far, the two have raised quite a sum of money — Rs 27.5 crore — and have taken over six hospitals in Karnataka. But they are bleeding money, and that was what finally went against them. The big question mark was whether they can actually sustain this business and whether they can scale up. If they can, of course, they will have created not just a decent business, but one that helps the country’s healthcare needs.
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BrainMatics’s products and business
head Sharad Singh
(Pic by Subhabrata Das) |
BrainMatics Solutions
In the initial shortlisting process, BrainMatics made the cut because it was again trying to provide a solution that is desperately needed, but not always available, to businesses in India. Set up by a group of five — some engineers, others mathematicians or management graduates — BrainMatics uses quantitative techniques to provide risk-management solutions. At the moment, it offers several services ranging from customer retention management in the retail industry space to stress testing of investment portfolios. One reason that BrainMatics did not make the final shortlist was that it was primarily structured as a consultancy. That apart, there were worries whether the idea itself was really novel — there are a number of other firms that do offer quantitative solutions. Despite not making the final cut though, BrainMatics is a company worth keeping an eye on.
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CareWale’s Mohit Dubey
(Pic by Subhabrata Das) |
CarWale
It is hard to dismiss CarWale.com as just another automobiles portal vying for the car hunter’s attention, even though that may be your first impression on visiting the website. It may have started out as just another automobile website, but has quickly matured into hand-holding the potential buyers through the research on cars, their prices and features till delivering a test ride, getting a competitive quote from the dealers and getting online loan approvals, all from the comfort of his home.
Monetising this capability, though, is CarWale’s biggest challenge right now. The site has a few more USPs. It offers onroad price of a car in over 300 cities and offers over 400,000 pages of car research. CarWale promoters, including CEO Mohit Dubey, were among the few serial entrepreneurs shortlisted by the jury. Their first venture in telemedicine and e-governance in 2003 failed because of their inability to scale up and create a sustainable business model. The promoters have tried to overcome that constraint by backing up CarWale with nearly Rs 5 crore of funding from friends, family, angel investors and VC firms. While telemedicine never took off, the e-governance business could not mature even though they did a few projects in central India. The promoters believe that the most significant learning from the failure was: focus on just one domain.
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Printo’s Lalana Zaveri
(Pic by Satheesh Nair) |
Printo
Bangalore-headquartered online and retail printing chain Printo may seem like it is aping rivals such as the US-based Staples that offer personalised and quick printing solutions, but promoter Lalana Zaveri, it seems, has different ideas. Not only is Printo planning to go mass with 250-plus stores, it also offers the widest portfolio of printing options ranging from business (business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, certificates or conference kits) — to personal (personalised photo calendars and diaries, photo T-shirts and mugs, personalised invites, personalised greeting cards, photo cards, bookmarks, keychains and coasters).
Though firms such as Snapfish offer personalised printing through orders placed on Snapfish.com, Printo is among the few that offer print-on-demand for the entire range. More importantly, it offers these services in the neighbourhood so that people can walk in with a request and walk out with their products. Online print orders may take between two-five days for delivery. Since it launched with its first store at Koramangala in Bangalore in 2006, Printo has grown into an 11-store organisation. A funding of over Rs 5 crore through a network of Zaveri’s friends, family, angel investors and venture capital firms have ensured that Printo can continue to expand its network.
— Team BW
(Businessworld Issue Dated 24-30 March 2009) |
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