As far as Leo will be on his duty, sincerely, everyone would feel contented and alive being around him. He will soon be everyone’s hot favorite and cool friend.  Codleo consulting came up with a blissful thought of making this cheerful being who is few months old Rottweiler, as Chief  Happiness Officer.  He has been assigned with the serious task of spreading happiness, light, love, and life amongst employees, with policies, actions, and of course, his presence. His job profile will also include infusing energy and enthusiasm in the air, unapologetically!!

Alexa might bring happiness to you at home, but Leo will be taking the charge of your happiness when you are at work. Happiness guaranteed!!

While pouring his thoughts regarding the newly appointed Chief Happiness Officer, Mr. Maan says, “Unfortunately, happiness is not a part of India’s work culture. We talk endlessly and do write reams about Nirvana, which in simple terms means a place of actual peace and happiness, just like heaven.”  He believes that happy employees are productive employees who help the company grow and  Leo would be the torchbearer for showing the light and make everyone feel better about themselves at their workplace. The one and only, Leo, Chief Happiness Officer of Codleo Consulting would be a symbolic representation of bliss and open-minded nature, the two golden qualities which every individual should aspire for.  He further adds,  “People do work in stressful environments with looming deadlines, fear of losing the job and working with random strangers.  The 21^st-century workplace is a bubbling pot of mental health issues and dispirited employees. It’s time to change it, and change has to happen now and should come from the top”.

Codleo Consulting is known for keeping its employees at the heart of its planning and operations. They focus on adopting the best practices over the globe and injecting the happiness factor in the work environment by introducing this loyal & happening soul would surely add good vibes wherever he would go! Codleo Consulting is all set to bring in a  PAWWFECT remedy for happiness and will soon witness its employees in a merry pin at their workplace.

The post Codleo consulting appoints young dog Leo as Chief Happiness Officer appeared first on Startagist.

Bangalore-based interior designs company De Space started its journey almost nine years ago when entrepreneur couple Dev Vig and Akshata Menon Vig sensed a huge potential in the market. To date, De Space has completed close to 300 projects, and is now in an expansion mode.

Startagist talked to the couple to know more about their business and the interior designing market in India.

Edited excerpts:

Who are the people behind De Space? What is the problem you are trying to solve?

Dev: De Space was founded in 2010 by myself and my wife Akshata Menon Vig. I am an MBA from Symbiosis, whereas Akshata is an architect from Vastukala Academy Delhi.

The journey began when we bought our own home in 2009 and Akshata worked on its interiors. People who visited our house talked highly about it, and inquired if we would take up their home interiors too. It was then that we decided to start our interior designing firm. While Akshata takes care of the designing and execution part, I handle the sales, marketing and operations bit.

What prompted you to start De Space? What does the name mean?

Akshata:When we completed our home interiors and people praised the designs, we realised it has a potential. On doing some further research, we understood the market is highly unorganised with local contractors ruling it, and consumers who are unaware of the details, often end up spending money on what they were not even aware of.

We talked to a lot of homeowners, and figured out that they faced issues such as non-transparency, delays, unskilled labor and had wanted to hire someone who would give them a turnkey solution without them being involved in the operational aspects. This showed a clear gap in the market in terms of professionalism and we decided to do our bit in filling up this gap.

Dev: De Space is a French word, which means ‘of space’ or ‘about space’. After all, our business is all about space.

Can you walk me through your solution/product?

Akshata: De Space offers turnkey interior designing solution to resident owners. There is a lot of focus on space planning, something that is a challenge for majority of home owners. We treat every home as unique, and don’t offer standard designs at all.

The designs are prepared after a thorough understanding of the space available, as well as understanding client’s requirements at length. Apart from this, we have invested a lot in building a strong team at the backend, comprising of skilled labours, contractors, carpenters, supervisors, that has helped us in delivering quality service to our clients.

What were the key challenges when you entered the market. Is there a trust deficit in the industry?

Dev: We entered the market with an assumption that high-quality interiors is a gap in the market. We focused a lot on customised designing, catering to the requirements of individual clients.

While this definitely was a gap, we soon realised and learnt that it is extremely difficult to get skilled labor in this industry. There were orders taken, but never fulfilled as per commitments. So we spent a lot of time in getting the right resources, getting people on-board who could relate to our vision of ensuring client satisfaction. While it took some time to get these resources, today we have a team that works towards our vision, giving a lot of strength to the organisation.

In an industry that suffers from trust-deficit, we strive to have customers that trust us, for our designs, for our execution. We spend a lot of time with our prospective clients before they sign-up with us, and as a result, we are lucky to have customers, who understand our approach and trust us, that helps us in delivering quality results.

Can you explain the pricing model? Do you follow a freemium model?

Dev: We work on design only and turnkey modes. Design only costs are calculated as per the number of man-hours that we need to dedicate for designing the interiors. The turnkey mode covers the labor, material and designing of the project and is charged accordingly (with margins taken care of). We had taken a cautious decision of not getting into a Freemium model from the very beginning, and it has helped us to stay profitable since our first project.

We understand that you are currently operating only in Bangalore. Do you have plans to enter other cities in India? What are your immediate future plans?

Akshata: We would like to be known as an initiative that focuses heavily on client satisfaction, space planning and high quality execution. This has been our vision since day zero and all our expansion plans revolve around these three parameters.

We currently cater to the Bangalore market, but are working on plans to enter other cities shortly.

Dev: We are working on a plan to expand to a few more cities. To achieve the same, our first objective is to hire competent resources in these cities to ensure that we are prepared to offer high quality solutions from day one. We will launch our services outside Bangalore only when we are confident that we have the right team to represent in a particular city.

There are quite a few interior designing companies in Bangalore alone, both in the online and online spaces. How tough is the competition?

Dev: The market is extremely competitive with a lot of players, small and big. But the ecosystem is big enough to accommodate all. Since our core focus is working on customised interior solutions, we perceive only those providers who offer such solutions as our competitors. We don’t compete with providers who give standard factory-made products as a part of their interior solutions.

What is your message for budding entrepreneurs in the country?

Dev: While hard-work and consumer satisfaction are a given when you are about to start a venture, it’s equally important to deep dive and understand the market thoroughly. We have noticed a lot of people start their ventures with a gut feeling that their concept will work well, while the market ends up behaving completely different.

It’s very important to stay in touch with your customers, understand what they feel, as it gives you the right inputs on where you can improve. This will help you take logical decisions as an entrepreneur, and will also help to ensure you’re in the game for long-run.

The post In spotlight: De Space Interiors co-founder-couple Dev Vig and Akshata Menon Vig appeared first on Startagist.

In India, where more than 70 per cent of people of 1.34 billion live in remote villages, electricity is a luxury for many. While successive federal and central governments earmark millions of dollars for electrification of villages every year, electrification still remains in paper. Some politicians collude with bureaucrats to siphon off funds meant for electrical infrastructure, by exploiting the illiteracy and ignorance of people.

As a result, many remote villages in the country still remain in the dark. The residents in the hinterland India are still not sure as to when they will see their homes lit up. They are too illiterate to understand that the system they live in is so rot that they may not probably see electricity in this life-time.

Shockingly, this callousness happens at a time when the world has already moved from fossil energy to renewable/green energy.

An Indian scientist has come up with a solution to this perennial problem. He is getting accolades for this invention — solar tree — which he believes will give wings to the dream of millions of villagers who have been deprived of electricity for long.

“More than 70-80 per cent of Indians live in villages, most of which still don’t have access to electricity,” Sibnath Maity, Chief Scientist at the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI), said. “It is not feasible for the government to do the electrification in villages as it is cost millions of dollars.”

Solar energy is the need of the hour, but people are reluctant to set up solar panels as it is expensive and requires vast expanse of lands. “Solar tree is going turn their fortunes around,” he said.

But what is so special about this solar tree? “You don’t need to fret about space constraints. Our solar panels ‘grow’ on trees. It will not takes more than four square feet of land space to set this up. It can produce about 3 KW of power, which is more than enough to power five households in the vicinity.

This solar tree, which resembles a tree with branches at different tiers, could be squeezed into rooftops and highways, he explained.

Sibnath started working on this project ways back in 2006. His invention remained unnoticed for more than eight years. It eventually saw the light of the day when the central government noticed it. ” I eventually got the recognition when Union Minister Dr. Harshvardhan inaugurated one of my solar trees built in Delhi a few months ago,” he said.

Also Read: This 23-year-old advises India’s premier investigation agencies on cyber security. And he is a school dropout

For people in the remote villages in Bihar, Bengal, Rajasthan, the solar tree is a godsend. They can now heave a sigh of relief that they don’t need to walk kilometres to nearby villages to recharge their mobile phones or other electronic devices.

The solar tree is currently priced at INR 5 lakh, which is definitely beyond the reach of a  ordinary man who struggles to meet both the ends. If the government subsidises the project, he may be able to sell it at affordable prices.

“The cost depends on the requirement. If you need just a 3KW solar tree, it costs INR 3 lakh (US$ 4,500). Some state governments provide up to 30 per cent subsidy for alternative energy setups, while some others 80 per cent. On the top of it, central government also provides some grants. So it is not going to burn a big hole in people’s pocket,” he explains.

A few months ago, he got a request from a farmer in Berhampur in Odisha to set up a solar tree, capable of producing 5KW of power for him to run a motor pump in his farm. Sibnath hopes to see more such requests come in.

As of today, Maity has erected six solar trees in different villages in India.

The solar tree is creating waves not just in India, but in other parts of Asia too. He received queries from places like Lakshadeep and Andaman Nicobar (two Indian archipelagos), where land availability is a huge issue.

“Unlike other solar panels, we promise 100 per cent efficiency. Plus, it does not need regular maintenance and has a long life. We want to see the entire India illuminated in the near future,” concluded Maity, who had previously designed a portable solar pump and a three-wheeler solar vehicle.

Also Read,

Manohar Parrikar says innovation fund to encourage defence startups

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When Shan Kadavil met SeaToHome founder Mathew Joseph sometime last year, the online fresh fish retailer was on the deathbed. Shan, former India head of Zynga and a regular customer of SeaToHome, was determined to save the e-commerce business, when he came to know Mathew, a veteran fish exporter in Kerala, was planning to wind up the online platform that he painstakingly launched in 2012.

“It was really heartbreaking when I heard SeaToHome, the only fresh fish e-taler in India, was shutting down. This when I decided to help the company using my experience and expertise in consumer internet space. I contacted Mathew and asked if he is interested in working together to turn round the company. He readily agreed,” Shan narrates the story to Startagist.

Shan, a serial entrepreneur with immense experience in building startups, had a clear vision in his mind when he took the helm of the company. He realised that if he could make use of the business acumen of Mathew, he could easily rescue the company from further erosion.

“I’ve built many businesses, including consumer Internet companies, in the past, which helped me to understand the intricacies of e-commerce. I was incubating a couple of companies when SeaToHome was enrolled as an incubatee. We decided to put more time and double down our efforts on SeaToHome,” Shan explains.

The duo worked together for a few months, and rebranded SeaToHome as FreshTomHome to include other non-veg products such as poultry, duck, chicken etc. SeaToHome was floundering at just 4,000 customers then. After a few months of a hard-work, the business picked up pace and Shan and Mathew successfully scaled it to 85,000 customers across Cochin, Bangalore and Delhi.

“We also moved the headquarters from Cochin to Bangalore, which is now our key market in terms of the number of repeat customers. We also set up our own logistics and supply chain arms. Without burning much dollars on marketing, we kind of became a household name in the city. We have now bigger plans to expand to eight cities soon and ultimately to 20 cities,” Shan adds.

Why FreshToHome?

Recently, a few startups cropped up in the fresh meat and fish space such as Zappfresh and Licious. However, none of these new-age businesses could not match the prowess of  FreshToHome. “This is because we have far ahead of them in terms of everything. We have several USPs. One, we have our own processing unit in Bangalore. Two, we deliver fish to our customers within just 24 hours of being caught from the sea. Three, we have stringent quality check process in place that we make sure that fish products are totally chemical-free and meats are halal-certified. Four, we have our own supply chain,” says Shan.

Plus, FreshToHome is backed by some of the well-known names in the startup industry across the world. These angels put together multimillion dollars into the company a few moths ago. The names include Facebook’s early investor Mark Pincus, David Krane of Google Ventures, Google India chief Rajan Anandan, Pete Briger of Fortress Investment Group, former SoftBank executive Pavan Ongole, and Mashreq Bank’s Abdul Azeez Al-Ghurair.

FreshToHome is operating an industry estimated to be US$49 billion, which is slightly bigger than the size of the Hollywood industry (US$49 billion). “This is just for the fish industry. If we add meats and poultry products, the size will be much higher. This is why we are confident of becoming the largest fresh fish and meat e-commerce company in India,” Shan concludes

The post How FreshToHome scaled from just 4K customers to 85K in 15 months appeared first on Startagist.