You can fire your social media manager, this startup automates online marketing

The digital era descended on India a decade ago. Slowly but steadily, it became a matter of not choice but compulsion for businesses to look beyond print and television for advertising. Yet, lack of awareness and resources ensured that smaller players were held back, while the big names bolted forward with myriad ways facebook in online marketing.

Bhushan Patkar had finished school before all this happened. Born in Badlapur village outside Mumbai, Bhushan loved nothing more than cricket as a kid. He was not too keen to take up the science stream as his parents wished. But once he did a short-term diploma course in computer technology from Mumbai University, he knew what he loved. And quite a handful of small businesses in the country are thankful for that.

Bhushan Patkar, CEO, Dfizz.com

Bhushan went to Oxford Brooks University, UK, to do BSc (Honours) in Computing & Software in 2005. By the time he returned home, IT boom had matured in the country. Son of a national award-winning Corporation Mayor Nandakishore Ram Patkar, Bhushan was keen on e-governance. He foundedTopXS Solutions in 2008 and, among other ventures, carried out a three-year-long project that included mapping of property taxing for Badlapur Municipality.

Digitisation of data was becoming more significant for every industry. Once he figured that he wanted to take it up as a career, Bhushan flew off to San Francisco, USA, for doing an MBA from Hult International Business School, in 2011. When he came back in 2013, India’s online business industry had grown exponentially. Bhushan took a plunge and founded Arkbel Innovations for marketing solutions for real estate business.

Idea for friends

Bhushan’s friend Amit Zunjarrao runs a dhaba in Karjat, Maharashtra. Famous for its scenic beauty, Karjat was a favourite spot for tourists. But despite the marketing Amit did through Facebook, posters and portals like Sulekha.com and websites for travellers, he did not get the traffic he wanted at Aaji Cha Dhaba. In early 2015, Bhushan offered a solution to him – a template that will update the dhaba’s Facebook page with its website. If someone searches for ‘Aaji Cha Dhaba,’ Amit will get a notification on mobile and email, and can connect with them directly. “For the first year, we had little business except on weekends. But since we started marketing online, there has been 65-percent rise in the number of customers,” Amit says.

Dfizz development team

Instead of going to the metros – where clientele for online marketing is easier to get – Bhushan wanted to look at the sellers outside metros.

“I wanted to make digital marketing easy and accessible for startups and MSMEs [micro, small and medium enterprises] who do not have the exposure, knowledge or funds for it. It’s not just about money; I really wished to help them,” says Bhushan.

According to the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, there are 36 million small units that employ over 80 million Indians. Most MSMEs cannot afford hiring people by paying Rs.30,000-40,000 per month for online marketing. But with the rising Internet penetration, consumers in Tier II and III cities are also coming online. These consumers can access only the big companies that use technology strategically, whereas MSMEs are practically non-existent online – except a few manufacturers who sell on marketplaces.

According to a 2014 report, absence of exclusive marketing platforms is one of the challenges faced by the SMEs and the startup industry in India. More than 60 percent of both small and mid-market enterprises quote lack of awareness as an inhibitor to adoption of technology to aid marketing initiatives.

For the technologically-challenged

Newspaper ads do give a lot of leads to SMEs, but there is seldom follow-up. Dfizz’s integrated customer relationship management (CRM) software reports on which products get responses and sends bulk SMSes, emails etc., to customers for follow up. Their ‘virtual social media manager’ updates any addition on the original website on social media too, along with extra information on Internet. In fact, the likes of RedBus have used the strategy of engaging their customer with posts on travel rather than bore them with just ads.

Bhushan says: “Many MSME owners have iPhone6, but do not know how to leverage the benefits of online marketing. Our software makes them independent.” A major advantage is that the business owner can change the website on mobile.

Future prospects

The online marketing sector in India is fragmented, but competitive at the same time. There is hardly any entry barrier; digital ad agencies, traditional media, and even PR agencies are now doing this. Salar Mohamed Bijili, Founder and CEO of CueContent Marketing Services, says that the sector will grow with e-commerce. “A lot of online marketing is driven by price discovery platforms. More consumers coming online will only increase the demand,” he adds.

According to Salar, not many products are sold in this sector in India. “Product adaption is very low in this sector. Evangelising the products as a sector as tool to grow is the future,” he says.

Online marketing is the only way to sell products in an international market. With the promise of a ‘Digital India’, entrepreneurs are hoping for government support in terms of tech innovations.

Bhushan is in talks with Union Minister for MSMEs Kalraj Mishra and Maharashtra MSME Minister Subhash Desai in this regard. The six-month old startup-for-startups is now a 12-member team and has 30 MSME clients.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/03/dfizz/

Punam Flutes – The story of how a master artist became a master craftsman

When a hobby turns into a profession, a professional expects to be able to find the superior tools of the trade, and if they are not up to the mark, he could complain, despair or look for more expensive, difficult-to-find alternatives. Yet, Subhash Thakur, a flautist by profession, did not succumb to any of those measures.

When he could not get the type of high-quality flute he needed, he did what few others would have, which is to make his own. What started off as a solution to a personal need slowly metamorphosed into the saga of Punam Flutes. Today, Thakur’s flutes are used by several artists, including the legendary Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, in India and abroad.

Thakur, who has an illustrious career playing a baansuri (Hindustani for flute), began learning under the tutelage of Ustad Fahimullah Khan in 1988 and then completed a master’s degree in music. After that, he began playing professionally, which earned him the status of a graded artist at Akashvani, Patna. “I then moved to Delhi and started a government job as a flute player with a monthly salary of Rs. 7,000,” he recounts, adding, “It was during this time that I realized good flutes were hard to come by. They were either very expensive or had to be imported. That is what prompted me to attempt making my own flute.”

That attempt was just the beginning of Punam Flutes. Many disciples of his current guru, Pt. Amarnathji, wanted him to make flutes for them too. In just a few months, Thakur realised it was more lucrative to make flutes as his income as a flute-maker began exceeding what he earned as an artist.

Thakur takes great pride in how he customises each creation, which is what distinguishes his work from mass-produced instruments. “I don’t just make any flute and ask people to buy it. For professionals and discerning artists, I study their style and make an instrument according to the range they desire.”

The Initial Days of Struggle

Thakur explains, “Flute-making is as serious and thorough of a process as is making any other musical instrument. First of all, you need to procure good quality bamboo, which is available only in North East India. Then it has to be seasoned for about three months. Following this, it has to be carefully crafted, because the position and the diameter of the holes is very important for proper tuning.”

Subhash Thakur with Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia

In the early days, he struggled at each stage of the production process. Tools for making the holes were not easy to come by. He had to search for them far and wide, and in the days before the Internet, that was a difficult task. He then had to import them from the U.S. and other countries, after paying a huge sum of money. He also needed a tuner to help him craft the flute properly.

Only in the last few years has technology been easily accessible, which has allowed him to buy good quality tools and also craft his own tools to make flutes.

Going online was the next logical step

Once you have a great product, the next step is to publicise and sell it. When it seemed like the whole world was shifting to the web to accelerate sales, it was Pt. Amarnathji’s son, who advised him to expand his business online. He helped Thakur register a domain name and create a website back in 2004. Another friend, also a professional flautist, helped design the site and now maintains it.

“If you are a manufacturing company, going online is the logical thing to do to increase the reach of your business. A .com domain name is the obvious solution if you want to extend your reach internationally,” says Thakur.

Punam Flutes has a good presence on social media too. His wife Punam, after whom the business is named, takes care of that aspect. The social media page and the website also feature messages to and from artists who use his flutes, including the likes of Prem Joshua and Naveen Kumar, who are noted for their ad jingles and the haunting theme from the movie Bombay.

“About 50 percent of our sales come from people who know me personally, artists and students, as well as those who have heard of my reputation. The remaining comes from purely online sales, of which nearly 25 percent is from foreign countries,” he explains, adding that he gets quite a few people from the U.S. and the U.K. who approach him for customized flutes.

Deeply focused on making high quality flutes available to passionate artists, Thakur never thought selling online would help the business the way it has. He finds the change in the Indian mindset quite remarkable: “Indians have taken to this ecommerce thing quite well. Of late, a lot of my sales are due to my website and being on platforms like Amazon andFlipkart.”

Thakur’s advice to anyone who wants to start a business and take it online is to focus on the fundamentals: “You need to understand everything about your line of work in depth, and you should be aware of every aspect of production and sales. Only then will your company prosper.”

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2016/03/punam-flutes/

Why change is the only thing constant for your business

We have come to an age where organizations catch up to each other within a few months. The only way to keep your competition at bay is to innovate and change. Change your product offering, its price, service quality, etc but do not change the core identity. In business, it is vital to realize that when you are a market leader, you have to be at least 6 months ahead of your competition and when a market follower, you should aim at catching up with the market leader within 3 months.

The business landscape in today’s world is characterized by changing trends and events which keep happening every now and then. This at times, takes several business leaders by surprise. Technology giants have been burned to the ground simply because they did not change with time. The greatest example being of Kodak, which at one point of time was the market leader of the Camera and peripherals industry. They did not adapt towards digitization and felt the emergence of digital imaging was just a momentary phase. Soon came the wave of Digital Cameras and emergence of companies like Cannon and Nikon, which took the industry by storm. Eastman Kodak’s failure is because of its leaders who refused to adapt to the change in technology. It truly was an entrepreneurial failure.

Another aspect one must consider, is to realize the need to upgrade it. Several businesses in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) space adapt by means of change of packaging, seasonal discounts, charm pricing and so on. Why do you think several app developers often offer updates to their consumers? They are not always bug fixes but at times are major changes that keep them glued to the app. The famous “Ping Ping” brand Blackberry is one such brand that did not change and did not offer its patrons a more user friendly, open-source version of the operating software like Android. Within no time, major players like Samsung emerged and entered from the backdoor and dethroned the once considered Smartphone giant. Samsung not only became the market leader but also left Blackberry so far behind that they are still figuring out how to change for the better.

The future belongs to those who are quick on their feet and embrace change. They are innovators like Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page who are constantly innovating and changing what they offer without deviating from their USP. Facebook still continues to be a Social Media platform but with a twist of offering several new features every now and then. Likewise, Google continues to be a search engine which has gone on to change the way we market our products now. As a business owner, you can either choose to embrace change or perish like the ones we have mentioned above.

Just like Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”

If you too have entrepreneurial dreams, you need to have faith in your Chatur Idea. You will always wonder who will fund this idea and from where will you find investors. In that case, you can participate in the #BeAChatur Contest and not only be mentored, but also stand a chance to win a whopping Rs.10 Lac funding for your dream startup idea.

Reference:https://www.chaturideas.com/our_blogs/Why_change_is_the_only_thing_constant_for_your_business#sthash.rJGsKJNg.dpuf

Meet the 31-year-old who is celebrating 29 days of February, each dedicated to one Indian state

Jubanashwa Mishra is celebrating the 29 days of February, with each day dedicated to a state of India. Amidst times when the ideas of nationalism, dissent, and diversity are ferociously debated, Jubanashwa is running a national integration month on Instagram, posting photos from the 29 states of India that he has travelled and explored. Under the campaign #Feb29Days29States, Jubanashwa is planning to showcase the real spirit of India which is unity in diversity.

Image: (L)- Instagram; (R)- Jubanashwa Mishra

The photos reflect his thoughts too. While Sikkim represents Buddha, West Bengal represents the life of sculptors who work day and night to create the idols of goddess Durga. Manipur represents a child carrying a toddler on his back, while Uttar Pradesh is represented by Varanasi’s inextinguishable cemetery.

Earlier in 2013, Jubanashwa had undertaken a campaign called ’28 jobs 28 weeks 28 states’, under which he toured the country, took up different jobs, and captured his experiences using his camera. The jobs he took up included that of a cleaner in Himachal Pradesh, a rafting trainee in Jammu & Kashmir, a movie marketing trainee in Mumbai, a tattoo maker in Goa, among others.

Follow Jubanashwa on Instagram here. Below are a few of his photographs which fascinated us.

To stay updated with more positive news, please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Reference:http://social.yourstory.com/2016/02/jubanashwa-mishra/

A 19-Year-Old has developed an app that can detect developmental disorder in a child in 45 secs.

A 19-Year-Old Harsh Songra has developed a mobile app ‘My Child’ which helps parents in early diagnosis of developmental disorder among their children. Bhopal-based Harsh has developed this app with the help of his childhood friends and now his Co founders Aafreen Ansari and Shreya Shrivastava. Something that's more intriguing than a 19-year-old making a revolutionary app in healthcare section is the fact that, Harsh himself is a victim of the problem he’s addressing today. Harsh was diagnosed with Dyspraxia when he was 11 years old. Dyspraxia which is a form of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a disorder that affects fine and/or gross motor coordination. He made the app in order to raise awareness as well as diagnose the symptoms of developmental disorders as early as possible, right from the 24th month of the childbirth. 

In India, 13 to 14 percent of all school children suffer from one or the other kind of learning disability. And like most of the parents, Harsh’s parents were also unable to identify problems in their son’s development.

However, Harsh Clarifies, that this app is not trying to replace doctors, but is meant as a reference point about disorders from which the child may be suffering from. He adds that the idea behind the app is to empower parents with technology and also to ease the burdern of doctors.

Harsh is currently in his second-year computer science engineering and is a huge admirer of Elon Musk Founder of Tesla Motors. In India, he regularly interacts with Shashank N D of Practo, Lalit Mangal of Commonfloor and Ravi Gururaj, a serial entrepreneur, a business mentor and chair of the Nasscom Product Council who is also apparently mentoring the child prodigy.

The app collects data from parents like height, weight, etc. And then asks a series of questions with Yes or No option. The entire process takes 45 secs and based on the response it recommends possible areas of concern for a child and also recommends the actions to be taken.

At present, ‘My Child’ app has a 4.2 rating on Google Play with 5000 downloads.

Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg recently put the teen on the world map by applauding him and his startup on the social media. Harsh has already enrolled for the FBStart Program which is a program designed by Facebook to help early stage mobile startups build and grow their apps. Sheryl Said, "We're supporting developers like Harsh who have great ideas but can't always access the resources they need."

Pankaj Jain, Partner, 500 Startups says, “Getting information about developmental disorders and details on whom to speak with on a simple mobile app just by answering few simple questions is transformative.”

At present, My Child team has total five members and ironically the teams average age is also 19. My Child recently secured $100k in a seed round from a group of Angel Investors in India led by 500 Startups including Samir Bangara, Anisha Mittal, Amit Gupta, Pallav Nadhani, Lalit Mangal, Arihant Patni, Dr. Ritesh Malik, Deobrat Singh, Saurabh Paruthi and Singapore Angel Network.

Harsh states that funds will be used to improve the technology and the entire development of the app. He has plans to make the app into a preventive tool and as a go-to guide for parents.

Harsh is our true inspiring chatur and what he has accomplished in such a young age will inspire many young entrepreneurs in improving the quality of human life and health care sector overall.

The global statistics of children suffering from such developmental disorder is alarming, what's even more threatening is little empathy and understanding on the subject. Harsh also wants his app to transform into a help guide for the mother during pregnancy to prevent her child from unexpected disorders he wishes to empower the parents with the ability to track their child’s development easily by getting all the red flags on time. We are proud that we have young entrepreneurs like Harsh Songra in our country.

Reference:https://www.chaturideas.com/ic/A_19YearOld_has_developed_an_app_that_can_detect_developmental_disorder_in_a_child_in_45_secs#sthash.jFY26ew9.dpuf

The Team Which Has Created More Than 10,000 Affordable Computers From Scrap!

We all are slaves of technology, we want a new gadget as soon as it is out in the market. We don’t even think twice before replacing our phone just because it is a bit dated. While a lot of people are busy buying new things, there are a few people who believe in re-using what we already have.

Mukund BS is one such person. A 33-year old young entrepreneur, he truly believes that job satisfaction should be the priority and money eventually follows. An electronic engineer and an IIM graduate, Mukund was travelling with his uncle once when the idea of selling affordable computers struck his mind. That is when Renew It comes into picture.

Incorporated in 2009, Renew It started operations in 2010 with much research and hard work. “Initially I was the only one to do all the work including, marketing, managing finances, meeting clients, etc.,” Mukund says.

Mukund (Left) and Raghav, co-founders of Renew It

Renew It collects scrap computers from corporates and sells them at affordable rates to the needy people after the required repair and maintenance.

Started with a team of two which included Mukund and his cousin Raghav Boggaram as co-founders, Renew It has now grown to a team of seven technicians and sales persons.

How it works?

The business model is very simple. We tie up with the corporates and take all their scrap computers. The team of technicians work on it to convert the scrap into a working machine. The process of buying the computers from these corporates is often a long procedure and can take as long as six months.

“The system is not organized, people often tend to sell the scrap at per kg rates which is not a good idea in case of computers,” Mukund says.

The team makes sure that they provide computers to the needy at an affordable price.

After getting the scrap, the team of technicians start working on it and convert it into a working machine. The process takes around 2-3 weeks depending on the efforts required to fix the old machine.

The organization has sold 10,000 computers so far in a span of five years. “We were lucky that we had our family’s support so it wasn’t hard to arrange for finances,” Mukund says.

The challenge

Mukund elaborates on this aspect: The biggest challenge or should I say fear is that I don’t know what will be the way forward, say, 5 years later as technology is completely evolving.

When he first started working on the idea of Renew IT, computers held an important place in the society as the smartphones weren’t there. “Now when I see people doing most of their work on their phones I don’t know how useful computers will be in future,” Mukund says.

Another challenge which Mukund faces is the unavailability of right type of scrap. Also, uninformed customers is yet another issue. “Some people in not so developed areas don’t know how a computer works. So sometimes they wouldn’t handle it properly which reduces the life of a machine,” he says.

The team has successfully sold over 10,000 computers so far.

Scaling Up

The company which started in Bangalore has now extended to Hyderabad and Mumbai. They also provide after-sale services to their clients for free for one year. Started with the initial capital of around Rs. 20 lakhs. They have grown to a capital of around Rs. 50-Rs.60 lakhs.

Mukund says: “All we want to do is good work, money will eventually follow”

Lessons learnt “One thing I have learnt in this journey is patience, you just sometimes have to wait for things to fall into the right places,”says Mukund.

He also believes, “You don’t always have the answers to everything. You will make mistakes. Money is always the by product. You do the right thing, it will come.”

Reference:http://www.thebetterindia.com/10460/christel-house-india-bangalore-slums-children-education-jobs/

These Amazing-Looking Motorcycles Are Made Exclusively with Bent Spoons

American artist James Rice has become an internet sensation for creating beautiful motorcycle sculptures using nothing but bent spoons. Photographs of his unique creations have gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. He also sells his figurines on Etsy from time to time, each priced in the range of $3,000 to $4,000.

Spoons are an unusual art medium, and Air Force veteran Rice would probably never have used them if his wife, Jeny Buckley, hadn’t erroneously ordered them for wedding favors. “I had a lot of spoons I erred on, but didn’t want to throw them away,” she said. “I asked Jim to make something cool for me.” Rice, who has always been a good artist, immediately thought of motorcycles.

“I was good in art,” he later revealed. “I could draw, but I really liked taking things apart and putting them back together. I made my own bikes. I restored cars, built motors. In middle school, I built a mini bike. Anything that had a motor in it, I was intrigued.” 

So a few hours later, Rice had built his very first sculpture – a basic motorcycle made of spoons and wheel bearings for tires. “That was before I went 100 percent spoons,” he said. After that, he kept building more models, each one more detailed and intricate than the last. And he stopped using other materials, focusing only on shaping each detail with stainless steel spoons.

Over time, Rice has come up with ways to bend and shape spoons without the use of heat or hammering. So he’s able to give them the shape the desired shape without spoiling their original beauty. “Jim flattens, bends, twists, and shapes the spoons by hand,” the description on the Etsy page reads. “Everything on his chopper is spoons; engine, wheels, tires, gas tank. He truly sees how to make the unassuming spoon into something most of us would have never thought of.”

Now that Rice has used up all the extra spoons lying around the house, he and Buckley spend their free time looking for more spoons at thrift stores and yard sales. And their friends regularly bring over spare spoons as well. Buckley, who names the models after animals they remind her of, revealed that it now takes Rice months to complete each one. “The Wasp took him about nine months,” she said. “That’s when he made some custom tools to bend and shape them without hammering. The Owl took about four and a half months. They wouldn’t take as long if that was all he did, but he usually works around 60 hours a week at his regular job.”

Rice’s latest creation, named ‘The Bagger’, is 21 inches long and weighs a little over seven pounds. After winning three awards at Washington State Fair’s Fine Art Show, it is now available for sale on Etsy, priced at $3,899.99. His work has also been covered by CNN, Buzzfeed, and Seattle’s Q13 Fox News. But what baffles Rice the most is that a photograph of ‘The Wasp’, featured on the Facebook page of motorcycle movie Why We Ride, was shared a whopping 130,453 times. “I never thought that would happen,” he said. “People are loving it. Not just the biker crowd, everybody likes it.”

“And that’s what I wanted, he added. “I wanted some kind of legacy. Something to be remembered for.”

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/art/these-amazing-looking-motorcycles-are-made-exclusively-with-bent-spoons.html#more-50673

Youngsters buck the trend to startup in textile: The rising duo behind ‘Maku’

Startups are the craze and people starting up straight out of college aren’t a very big shock anymore. The internet wave has set in and it has given an opportunity to many starry eyed youngsters to dream big and build their own fortune. And this is the sector which gets most of the attention in media as well. In this process, offline businesses get sidelined sometimes and the value they’re creating doesn’t get enough light.

One such example is the story of Maku Textiles- a designer brand that originated from the slow fiber movement which encourages the use of hand woven cloth. Weaving is a dying art and the government is initiating numerous projects for the upliftment of these communities but hardly anything trickles down to the people for which it is meant.

Santanu Das and Chirag Gandhi

Santanu Das, a designer from NID Ahmedabad was aware of this situation and wanted to do something via which the weavers can be helped directly. Chirag Gandhi, an engineering graduate from Nirma University joined forces with Shantanu to startup Maku and it has been almost an year since they started full-fledged operations.

So, what they do?

To explain in layman terms, the duo makes designs and gets them woven from the weavers in West Bengal and Kachchh, GUjarat and then they sell it in the markets. But there is a far deeper story here.

The middlemen rule

The textile industry is huge in terms of the amount of money involved and the scale at which it operates but the people controlling it are few. A close knit clan at the top which then widens up hugely at the bottom and the biggest role that is played in this business is by the middlemen. The ‘hand woven textile’ industry is formed by the weavers at the bottom with a local middleman who manages them and delivers to the textile firms or individual dealers. And then it sold at exhibitions or boutiques. The markups are huge and a cloth which is sold at expensive price points hardly 5 % goes to weavers.

And the change

This set rule is what Maku and a few others in the market are trying to change.

“We want to create a better ecosystem for these weavers so that the craft is not lost and it is a fair deal for everyone in the game, from the weaver to the middleman to the end customer,” say the duo. Other brands in the hand woven textile market started out in a similar fashion but eventually there is a greater coincidence that happens.

Santanu and Chirag have started out with the motto of anti-fashion which doesn’t allow them to showcase their garments at fashion shows and they want to keep themselves as pro-weavers but the model is still shaping up. The duo had started up with some money from their parents and their own savings. They have now managed clocking in average revenues of around INR 1 lakh a month. Their main sales happen via exhibition in different cities in India, stores and direct sales via their FB page and other connections.

The Road Ahead

Currently based out of Ahmedabad, Maku is shifting base to Kolkata and is also hiring people to expand their business. VC funding is not a conventional route for such startups and hence they’d be looking at getting a loan from a bank in the near future. This designer-engineer duo is on an ambitious trail and the possibilities for Maku as a socially conscious brand is huge.

Reference:http://yourstory.com/2013/08/youngsters-buck-the-trend-to-startup-in-textile-the-rising-duo-behind-maku/

Organic PC - Nature and technology coming together in a very unusual way

I’m sure most of you know pumpkin is great material for pie and Halloween lanterns, but how many of you knew it makes a great PC case? Yup these photos prove that parts can be easily mounted in a big, orange pumpkin and still function perfectly. Original idea and great craftsmanship, my hat’s off to the guys who worked on the project, well done!

Reference:http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/organic-pc.html#more-1612

Ramya Sriram – Turns on the tap of creativity to create visual stories

“I think my biggest blessing in life is that I was allowed to pursue whatever crazy idea I got into my head. My focus kept shifting, with periodic obsessions — one day I would want to be a zookeeper, another day I would want to recycle the paper in the house. I took these ambitions with utmost seriousness, and being encouraged to do so led to many interesting experiences,” says Ramya Sriram, Founder of The Tap, which according to her is, “a storehouse for stories that originate from my wandering mind and pondering pencil.”

The Tap stands for simplifying life into comics. It is about using visual vocabulary to break the barriers language presents. Ramya allows her imagination run free to create visual stories.

She had never thought she would end up drawing comics. But her random drawings of friends on Facebook (using a laptop touchpad), posted for fun got her the first break. A friend asked her to run a comic strip for his magazine. “The first order I got for a custom comic made me think perhaps this could be more than a hobby. I started taking my work seriously, putting more thought into it, finding different ways to express different stories, and playing with formats. I really enjoy the process of having to think for someone else and translate that into an illustrated story,” says Ramya.

At school in Hyderabad, Ramya was inclined towards extra-curricular activities like arts, crafts, music, and dance, always preferring piano lessons to PT classes. In spite of having the freedom to decide what she wanted to do she was not sure what academic path to choose once school was over. She ended up studying engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore.

Again, after her graduation, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do next. She found herself frantically applying to a variety of colleges, companies, and taking entrance exams. Eventually she settled to work as an editor in a publishing house, a job that she stuck to for over five years.

Working at the publishing house helped Ramya understand herself: “I edited books at work; and went home and drew comics. I proofread academic books; and went home and wrote travel stories. And that’s when I realised that drawing and writing were my constant companions, and my calling! It happened by chance.”

Ramya founded The Tap as a space to hoard stories:

I found myself sitting in client meetings itching to draw comics, itching to know what would happen if I had more time to devote to The Tap. So I finally took the plunge.

Ramya Sriram

She turned all her complete attention to The Tap. Ramya feels that given the humungous support she enjoys from her family and friends; it is unfair to call her a one-woman army. “I have very supportive family and friends whom I can count on to holler at visitors at flea markets to buy my stuff, to help me understand excel sheets, or tell me when my drawing of a cow doesn’t look like a cow,” says a grinning Ramya.

Despite the love and support Ramya enjoys, she has had to buckle up and face the challenges that come hand-in-hand with entrepreneurship. “I’m terrible at saying no. Earlier, I would beamingly take up each and everything that came my way, sometimes at ridiculously low prices, without realising how much time and energy I was putting into it,” says Ramya. But later she understood later that it wasn’t a healthy way to work. “When you’re doing something you’re passionate about, you invest a lot in it. And it’s best to keep track of this investment, not only the monetary kind,” she says.

She is not very good at delegation, but it is something that she is working on now. Also to ensure that she did not run away from planning (which she is not good at) Ramya attended a course on entrepreneurship and developed little strategies for herself. Says she, One of the things that really influenced me was the concept of opportunity cost. So, I apply that to big and small things alike. Every decision I make, I ask myself — what will I lose? And the lucidity of my answer to that question makes or breaks my decision.

As an entrepreneur Ramya loves the freedom of working on a variety of projects that involve ideation and creating content. She enjoys not being boxed into a routine. Though she does miss the chai/coffee breaks with colleagues and the liberty of taking leaves and running off to the hills – a few thrills of a full-time job.

As an entrepreneur she has realised that despite being a very ‘go with the flow’ person, laying some ground rules and setting small targets really helps. It keeps things real. Another important learning that she has had is: “I understood that it’s really okay to experiment with various things till you find something that you are comfortable with, not something someone else wants you to be comfortable with. Once I accepted that, things got much easier.”

The future beckons Ramya as she looks forward to more projects, more challenges, more drawings, and more stories! And she adds: “I also plan to expand The Tap merchandise range and add more to the online store.”

Here is a story from Ramya-

Story of Ramya Sriram

Reference: http://her.yourstory.com/ramya-sriram-the-tap-0523