Forget delivery boys, a leading e-tailer has officially launched a women-only delivery station in Thiruvananthapuram, the first in the country. For over a month now, the ‘biker girls’ have been delivering around 40 packages daily to customers in the Technopark region on an experimental basis.
“We have built a new model, which will help us reach out to customers, at a time when transportation of products has become most challenging and expensive,” said Samuel Thomas, director (transportation), Amazon India. The company will next set up a similar station in Chennai, followed by one in Kochi by next month, he said. The plan is to have dedicated women delivery stations across India, to be completely managed by women service partners.
The station, with Divya Syam of Thiruvananthapuram as service partner, is based in Kulathur near Technopark. “With increasing popularity of e-commerce platforms and with support from our dedicated delivery associates, I am sure we will be able to grow in this male-dominated business,” she said.
The company has around 20 service partners in the state. “The women deliver packages on two-wheelers, covering a radius of 2-3km from the station. There are plans to train them in self-defence besides starting a helpline,” Thomas said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Thiruvananthapuram / TNN / March 03rd, 2016
A native of Kannur happened to be the pilot of the first aircraft that landed on the new runway of the Kannur International Airport coming up here Monday. Commissioned in 1981 as a pilot in the IAF, Air Marshal R. Nambiar, a native of Kadachira near the district headquarters, is now serving in the Air Force Training Command. A qualified test pilot, he has the experience of flying over 30 different types of aircraft, including Mirage.
Addressing the public function, Air Marshal Nambiar said that he was very proud of flying the test flight at the airport here. Members of his family here joined him at the venue of the public function at the airport site here in the morning. — Special Correspondent
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / Mattanur – March 01st, 2016
Each member in this Kudumbasree team has four cows and the unit sells 300 bottles of milk daily — in an autorickshaw.
They were just homemakers and their husbands were small-scale farmers. But now their lives have changed. Each member of the 11-member team of the Thanima Kudumbasree unit at Kulamavu is now making a monthly income of Rs.20,000 by selling milk.
The Ksheera Sagaram Scheme of the Kudumbasree district mission supported by the Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA) gave them an opportunity to buy cows and locally distribute milk on the model of the Nature Fresh project implemented at Edavetti grama panchayat in the district.
Thanima members locally distribute the milk in bottles and the remaining milk is given to the dairy cooperative society at Arakulam.
“Each woman member has four cows and it is possible for the consumers to identify the milk supplied by each member through the number affixed to the bottles,” said Ancy Vinod, a member.
Fresh produce
They carry the milk in an autorickshaw to homes, tea shops, and hotels. “Fresh milk is locally made available in the morning and afternoon,” she said.
The self-help group president Thressiamma said they sell 300 bottles of milk every day at Kulamavu. The aim is to make available quality and fresh milk on the doorsteps, she said adding that they sell milk in 650- millilitre bottles at Rs.31 and 375-millilitre bottles at Rs.17.
They have no plans to increase the price. Instead, they want to make more value-added products available in the market. The team is also planning to buy more cows.
Expert advice
They follow scientific methods in growing the cows and took the advice of experts for building cow sheds.
The members were trained under the experts in the Government Veterinary College, Mannuthy.
The Agriculture Department also takes them for study tours to learn about model dairy farms outside the district.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by Giji K. Raman / Idukki – February 28th, 2016
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will inaugurate Coir Kerala 2016, the sixth edition of the annual trade event on coir and natural fibres, at EMS stadium in Alappuzha on February 1.
The five-day fair will be launched at 5 p.m. on Monday.
Over 150 international buyers from 54 countries in addition to domestic buyers will participate in the event. The foreign participants include those from African and Latin American nations.
The international pavilion will have 125 stalls while the national pavilion will feature 135 stalls. The event’s buyer-seller meet will be inaugurated by Rajya Sabha deputy chairman P.J. Kurian on February 3. Union Minister for MSME Kalraj Mishra will deliver the inaugural address at a national seminar on February 4.
Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala will preside over the valedictory function on February 5.
Minister for Revenue and Coir Adoor Prakash said here on Sunday that the government had decided to accelerate coir husk procurement. Production of husk rose from 25,000 tonnes to 60,000 tonnes.
The government is targeting 75,000 tonnes by the end of the current fiscal year.
The Union government has provided Rs.2 crore to the Coir Kerala 2016 corpus.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / February 01st, 2016
If high-adrenaline action is the surest sign of transmitting a message, Deepak Ravindran is sending out one loud and clear. His Bengaluru-based startup Lookup, which has Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Infosys’s Kris Gopalakrishnan as investors, is in the final stages of closing its latest round of funding. And the CEO and founder of the hyperlocal messaging app, that allows businesses to connect with local consumers, reveals the announcement can be expected within a week.
Inspiration for Lookup struck Ravindran while visiting his hometown of Kasargod, Kerala. “I saw my mom chatting with her grocer over WhatsApp and placing her order. That was an eye opener about the way people use chat,” Ravindran says, in a telephonic interview from Bengaluru.
With WhatsApp, he noticed one needs to save the number for ease of communication. Once that is done, you can see each other’s frequently changed display pictures, which may create privacy issues. He addressed those with Lookup, ensuring consumers do not have to worry about chatting with storekeepers they’ve never met before.
The messaging industry has been this 30-year-old serial entrepreneur’s core strength, with this being his third venture in the space. Keeping an eye on the shifting tech landscape, he has morphed the form to suit changing needs. His 2007-launch student startup Innoz for example, was an SMS-based search engine. “It was a time when mobile phones were becoming popular. But internet was still not so common. We saw the potential for an offline search engine,” says Ravindran.
But by 2014, with data lording over voice, Ravindran realised the rules had changed again. To meet the challenge, he decided to merge the two big trends of messaging (chats) and apps. Lookup was born out of this union.
Meet Lookup’s Deepak Ravindran, a CEOentrepreneur who chose funding over finishing college and got his competition (no less than Twitter co-founder Biz Stone) to invest in his venture.
Fashioned after Steve Jobs
Ravindran’s story at 18 wasn’t typical of the average Indian science student. He took his medical and engineering entrance exams, securing ranks in both. He liked computer science, so he picked engineering.
He had discovered the internet just a few years before at 15. Logging on via a dial-up connection, he was fascinated by the worldwide web. He says, “I started looking for inspiring stories and read about Steve Jobs and a few others. I read how he started a company at a very young age and that idea stuck.”
By the time he entered Lal Bahadur Shastri Col lege of Engineering in Kasargod in 2005, Ravindran had decided that he would use it as a fertile ground to found his own company. He did so in 2007, with three classmates. When his startup was picked by IIM-A’s iAccelerator program that promised funding of Rs 3-5 lakh, things came to a head. The founders had to shift base to Ahmedabad, which meant a choice between college and the accelerator.
The quartet made their choice. They dropped out of college. “Dropping out is a fad now. But it was extremely risky back then. The only reason we did it was because we were getting funded for the first time,” says Ravindran, disclosing that they did worry about getting good placements if things didn’t work out.
For a month, the families of Ravindran and his friends believed they had quit college to pursue an MBA at IIM. “It sounded all fancy,” he said. It eventually worked out, as from dropouts, they went to being the largest recruiter at their erstwhile engineering college, taking on over 100 students within a couple of years — first at Innoz and later at Lookup.
From competitors to partners
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was Ravindran’s competition at one point. After Innoz plateaued in 2013 and the team failed to sell it off, Ravindran decided to move to US for an MIT incubator program. He founded a Q&A platform Quest, that competed with Quora and Stone’s Jelly.
Stone was interested in acquiring Quest for a possible expansion into the Asian market. But Ravindran managed to raise just $50,000 over a year, falling way short of the $500,000 target. That’s when he decided to wind Quest down and return to India
Incidentally, Stone’s Jelly failed too. In an interview with Mashable, he even admitted that today, a small group of dedicated users is the only thing keeping the app alive. But a previous failure didn’t hamper Ravindran’s prospects according to Stone, who came on board Lookup after a San Francisco meeting in April.
Undoubtedly, things are looking up for Ravindran at Lookup.
source: http://www.economictimes.indiatimes.com / The Economic Times / ET Home> Magazines> Panache / by Masoom Gupte, ET Bureau / September 03rd, 2015
A corporate group opened its account in an election in India for the first time when its political avatar, tackily named Twenty20, breezed into power in Kizhakkambalam gram panchayat in Kerala, winning 17 of the 19 seats. Congress and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) won the other two seats while the Left drew a blank.
Twenty20 became widely popular in Kizhakkambalam, a village situated 22km from Ernakulam, after Kitex Group, a textile major with a turnover of about Rs 1,000 crore invested around Rs 28 crore in two years to usher in unprecedented development in the panchayat and emerge as a credible alternative to the entrenched political parties in the area.
LDF workers celebrate their party’s win in the Kerala Panchayat elections in Kannur on Saturday. (PTI Photo)
“The Left and UDF have been ruling the gram panchayat till now. However, they have done nothing for us. Today, Kitex Group gives us groceries at half the price. They constructed 458 houses and over 600 toilets for the poor, repaired public roads, conducted medical check-ups and sponsored surgeries. Under the leadership of Sabu M Jacob (chief coordinator of Twenty20, and managing director of Kitex), we selected our candidates, and carried out a phased campaign. The results speak for themselves,” said Biju Athanipparambil, an autorickshaw driver and Twenty20 executive member.
Twenty20 candidates contested against LDF, UDF, BJP, SDPI and independent candidates. According to figures released by the district administration, an unprecedented 90.5% of 24,300-odd voters turned up at the booths to cast their votes last Thursday. In the 2010 elections, the turnout was 84%.
Twenty20’s political opponents are not too convinced about the organisation’s professed aims, saying it is a cover for Kitex’s hidden business agenda. They also allege that Sabu Jacob is known for his autocratic ways and that Kitex Group has done precious little to stop pollution caused by its factories.
“Allegations against Twenty20 and Kitex Group are baseless. I am not an autocrat and this is not a facade. We have already decided to form a political party – Twenty20 Party – and have already approached the Election Commission for registration. We are here because people are fed up with political parties’ poll promises,” Sabu told TOI.
Sabu added that Twenty20 plans to carry out Rs 300 crore worth projects in the panchayat in the coming five years. They plan to rope in other companies for corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities apart from depending on the panchayat’s plan fund.
By noon on Saturday, Twenty20’s victory turned into a mega celebration in Kizhakkambalam village as women, children, businessmen, daily wage workers and a couple of doctors took out a procession accompanied by a noisy band. When an executive member of Twenty20 was asked who would become the panchayat president, he replied: “Sabu sir will decide.” Almost immediately, he revised it: “We will decide collectively.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kochi / by Shyam P V, TNN / November 08th, 2015
Joe Ikareth and his daughter with clothes designed by him.
It was a heart-breaking moment for Joe Ikareth when his daughter Tilotama was born 10 years ago. Nerves that send signals from the spine to the shoulder, arms and hands were cut off, leaving her with limited mobility in her arms and a partially-paralysed right arm.
As Tilotama grew up, she proved to be an inspiration for her fashion designer father. Ikareth began to make clothes that she could wear easily. “I would design a dress with a larger arm area, and instead of a zip, I would use Velcro or a magnet,” says the 41-year-old.
Today, he is focused on making clothes for the physically challenged. He uses natural fabrics, like the Kerala handloom. “I plan to use material that will not get stained by liquid and will not need ironing,” he says.
Ikareth hopes to make the clothes economically viable for customers, but most of the 70 million physically challenged people in India are not well off. Hence, he will be tying up with NGOs and social service groups so that they can subsidise the garments. Clothes in the ‘Joe Ikareth’ label range from `2,750 to `9,500.
His differently-abled fashion line Move Ability Clothing is also gaining popularity in Europe. He was a finalist at the Danish Business Cup 2015, and in the top 25 at the NORDEN-Nordic Innovation Living Challenge at Copenhagen with his Danish partner Jeanette Kaeseler Mortensen. “Joe has exquisite technical skill and a strong creative competence,” says Mortensen.
Lakshmi Menon, a trustee of Kochi-based NGO Good Karma Foundation, calls Ikareth’s clothes “beautiful and elegant”. Mumbai-based marketing consultant Suranjana Ghosh Aikara, an above-knee amputee, says “clothes designed by him are functional and fashionable”. Her favourite is a pair of linen trousers. “It looks like a skirt, has a flexible waistband and is easy to wear,” she says. “Usually, there is wear and tear on clothes when you use a prosthetic leg. Jeans tear after wearing them about 15 times, but Joe has made two layers in the trousers, so it lasts longer.”
The designer wants “to help increase self-esteem and confidence of differently-abled people and change the way people perceive them,” he says. He is also designing uniforms for employees of hotels, hospitals and companies. For staffers of a new hospital in Kochi, Ikareth designed uniforms for nurses in colours that would be soothing for patients. “If you apply design and movement to a uniform, it becomes very interesting,” he says.
Ikareth graduated from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, in 1996. Thereafter, he worked with designer Suneet Varma for three years. “In the initial years, it used to revolve around the wedding season, with its kurtas, pyjamas and formal clothes,” he says. “Now it has become a huge business. A designer needs several assistants to make his creations and to meet deadlines.”
In 1999, Ikareth returned to his hometown Kottayam. He began getting orders right after he created his website joeikareth.com. The Cobblestone Gallery in Sussex, England, asked him to design clothes for plus-size people. Mohiniyattom danseuse Brigitte Chataignier of France, who has a dance studio in Shoranur in Kerala, asked him to make clothes for her troupe.
Ikareth has also worked with Kalaripayattu and Kathakali artistes. “I make dresses which are a balance between the traditional and modern,” he says.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Magazine / by Shevlin Sebastian / October 31st, 2015
Paddy farmers harvesting the traditional rice variety cultivated in the brackish water fields at Vellikkeel Chera in Kannur on Sunday.
Traditional paddy farmers who have revived the paddy-cum-shrimp cultivation in the tidal marshes near Anthur here, by cultivating a rare salinity-resistant rice seed, are planning to market the organically grown rice.
Ketharam, a self-help group of paddy farmers of Vellikkeel Chera in the Anthur municipality, has been cultivating the Kuttoosan variety of rice that was once popular in the kaipad fields (traditional brackish water paddy fields). The variant had almost become extinct after a large extent of tidal marshes was left fallow for years. It is for the fourth successive year that the group is harvesting produce on its 16-acre field, which includes the land owned by each member and cultivable land on lease.
“We have been harvesting 1,500 kg rice per acre after the revival of the kaipad cultivation under the rice-cum-shrimp scheme of under the Agency for Aquaculture Development, Kerala (ADAK),” said M. Sureshan, secretary of the group.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by Mohamed Nazeer / Kannur – October 26th, 2015
By bringing together movers and shakers from different segments of the business world on a single networking platform, the Kitchen has become a go-to destination for entrepreneurs and businesses alike
It started out with a group of fifty-odd people meeting up at the rooftop recreational area of the Centre A business centre six months ago, with the aim of creating a platform for entrepreneurs, designers, businesses and people with an idea to get together and network.
Despite having plenty of start-ups and a lot of indigenous development, all the participants of the event agreed that Kochi did not have a space for all these people and businesses to come together and network. This gap is what entrepreneur Andrine Mendez sought to bridge when he gathered these people, a mix of different ingredients with flavours of their own, put them all in one place and called the gathering, Kitchen.
“The prevailing trend is that the business events space lacks a middle ground. The big companies meet up at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) meet and the startups have their startup weekends. But participating only in events geared towards one segment limits opportunity; so we came up with the formula of having 20 per cent big businesses, 40 per cent professionals, ten per cent from the investor community and the remaining 30 per cent consists of entrepreneurs, established and aspiring,” says Andrine, outlining the blueprint that the platform is based on.
This cross-segment nature of the event, where one is likely to find well-connected corporates as well as the upstart CEOs looking to build the next big thing, is what brings Jofin Joseph, one of the co-founders of Vibe, an app that collects publicly available information about people and businesses in one single profile, to the Kitchen. “I’ve been attending the Kitchen since its third edition, and its appeal is that you get to meet people from across the spectrum. For people like us, who have just started finding our feet, it is an opportunity to meet the established names and learn from them, broaden our horizons.
“But at the same time, we meet people younger than us as well, who we can help on some level too. This is beneficial for the new entrepreneurs, because every startup has to go through a learning phase, and events like this help accelerate that learning phase,” says Jofin.
Having recently completed its sixth edition, the Kitchen, which is usually held on the second week of every month, has seen its share of big names, such as Ernst & Young, Asset Homes, Muthoot Group and V-Guard.
The event is usually divided into casual networking sessions, a panel discussion, individual addresses, and even a time for entrepreneurs to make a pitch to investors. Among the speakers who attended have been names associated with a diverse spread of fields, ranging from finance, IT, app development and even virtual reality.
Brijeesh Mohamed, one of the partners of Waffle Street, believes that Kochi needs such gatherings to amp up the scale on which businesses and investors think. “All business starts from a contact. It is about reaching a point where you meet and interact with the right people,” says Brijeesh, who is among the newer entrants into the fold of the Kitchen. “In larger cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, such meet-ups happen every other week, and the scale of doing business is on a whole other level. The unfortunate problem we face here in Kerala is a lack of opportunity. If businesses here had the same opportunities that the ones in the other cities do, things would be different,” he adds.
Jofin explains that while youngsters can use the exposure to more experienced people provided by the event to their advantage, it is also an opportunity for established names to reflect on their own paths and give back to the community, a point that Andrine agrees with.
“This is as much an opportunity for big businesses to meet future market disruptors as it is a learning opportunity for the new start-up. One of the most welcome surprises for me in the past six months that we have hosted the event is how many women have participated, given the trend where such meet-ups tend to be male-dominated,” says Andrine.
With a tasty recipe established, Andrine reveals that the Kitchen has also been helping emerging businesses with skill sets they may lack, such as design, branding, marketing and sales. It will soon have Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode editions as well.
For more information, visit http://www.atkitchen.org/ or www.facebook.com/makesomethingnew.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Sooraj Rammohan / Kochi – October 15th, 2015
Two technologies developed by Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), Thrissur, have been transferred to industries for commercial production.
Debashis Dutta, Group Co-ordinator, Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India, handed over the technologies to give a facelift to the ‘Make in India’ programme of the government.
Sreekar Reddy, CEO, Speedlam Electomaterials, Hyderabad, and Manohar Nambiar, MD, Deem Sensing Technologies, signed the Technology Transfer agreement with C-MET.
The products developed by the C-MET are Flexible Microwave Substrates and NTC Fast Response Thermal Sensors.
Flexible microwave substrates are extensively used in a variety of high-end microwave circuit applications such as high power solid state amplifiers, patch antennas, missile guidance and mobile base stations. World over only a handful of industries are manufacturing these technologically and commercially important class of products, according to C-MET sources.
More than 70 per cent of the cost of any microwave device accounts for the base microwave circuit board and the availability of such circuit boards in the country are going to make a phenomenal change in the overall performance of the microwave industries, they added.
C-MET has developed a patented SMECH process methodology for the commercial manufacture of these circuit materials.
NTC chip thermistors are extensively used for accurate temperature measurement and control in automobiles, medical field and electronic appliances. C-MET has developed different NTC compositions, chip thermistors and chip in glass thermal sensors suitable for various temperature ranges of sensing applications. C-MET has developed extremely small sensors of sizes 0.3mmx0.3mmx0.3mm.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by Staff Reporter / Thrissur – October 13th, 2015
