Image via Kudos to Ohile, our Featured Story, for starting a family-oriented venture. We interview the founders here:

Name of Entrepreneur / Venture and Company Motto
Ohile: The Complete Family Portal

Brief Profile of Entrepreneur
"Shalini V Nair - MD, an alumnus of Executive General Management from IIM-Bangalore has over 9 years of experience in carrying out different roles & responsibilities in the IT industry. She is in charge of planning the vision and direction of the company as well as its management. She guides the company towards the vision of becoming the “Family Portal - a one-stop solution to all family needs” with her strong sense of responsibility, keeping the team motivated and giving their best outputs.

Ramakrishnan Nair brings with him vital experience of being part of an MNC and interacting with clients across the world, providing software solutions. He is in charge of devising strategies and setting guidelines for the smooth functioning of the project. He graduated from the College of Engineering, Trivandrum with a B.Tech degree

Arun has more than 5 years of experience in designing embedded systems in Telecom and Data Acquisition. He is in charge of spotting emerging technologies which can take the company ahead. He graduated in B.E (Electronics & Communication) from Cochin University in 2004.

Manu Raj has six years of experience in Designing/Developing products in embedded environment. Currently looks after Business development. He has strong strategic management perspective in defining organization direction. By constantly challenging the way things are done combined with the organizational refocusing programs has been the key factors in obtaining the results. He graduated in B.E (Electronics & Communication). He is a certificate Holder in Global IT management from U21 global.

Something Different about each of us:

Shalini V Nair: Revived Prajna Foundation, an NGO based in Delhi working with the Youth & Children of Sudhar Camp, a major slum in Kalkaji, New Delhi.

Ramakrishnan Nair: As a loyal follower of Ramakrishna mission, he has been an active part of their social activities and coordinator of ‘Bhaktha sammelanam’, yearly get together of devotees.

Arun S S: Besides a technocrat, he is a scholar in history. In a foregathering of people with similar taste, he has been the lead speaker and authoritative last word on matters of contention.

Manu Raj L S: Played a major role in formation of a company in US, in health care domain called icuro, inc (www.icuro.com). He also played a major role in setting up operations of Yazata Consulting (www. yazataconsulting.com) in Thiruvananthapuram. He leveraged both his technical and start up experience to guide them.

Friends since school days, growing up in the town of Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala, we diverged while at college and during professional life and missed lot of ‘family functions’. During every get-together we had, we discussed this ‘disconnect’ and yearned for a solution to recapture the warmth. Our quest resulted in the prototype of www.ohile.com."

What's new, interesting, or different about what your company does?*
"Our unique idea spectrum of a media to emote, share and cherish transcending modes of access does not exist in market right now and has the potential to rewrite the market trend. Redefining ways of connecting people is our USP. A private and secured way of sharing and managing your family space!

• Ohile extends the ‘emotional connect’ of family to the virtual space. We provide features facilitating users to connect, share and experience family moments transcending digital divide.
• We believe every individual needs to connect with his family, uninterruptedly. This connection is manifested primarily through his lineage; family tree thus becomes the core of our portal.
Users need a private space or ‘family space’ - which is unaddressed in the internet/mobile space presently, which forms the cornerstone of our USP!
The mix of features being unique, www.ohile.com is in a different plane in itself.
We face competition from fragmented players in the market. All players have divergent approaches and don’t follow our entirety.
"

Given 20-20 hindsight, what would you do differently?
Passion, Persistance and intuitive understanding of the target market and their needs. Market Study & Research.

What is your most memorable fund-raising experience?
Self funded till now, the experience of selling our idea to friends who never pull a punch can be exciting and harrowing as none other. "Flagship product: www.ohile.com

What do you do or make?
Vesta, Roman Goddess of the home and hearth brings warmth to households, both as a temperature and as an emotion. Ohile is built to be the Vesta of the virtual world, epitomizing family life and its continuum ‘online’.
Our idea is to present a quilted embroidery of all family related services / utilities under Ohile aegis. There is more to a family than shared ancestry.
Our focus is more on the family as a totality; it's needs and preferences- Holistic approach to map your family timeline.

Enterprise Solutions: We are in the process of customizing the Ohile.com framework for mapping corporate structure and knowledge sharing projects.

Mobile Solutions:

Several of our Applications are already released into the Nokia OVI Store with few more at QA and in Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Android Marketplaces.
Applications fall under Productivity tools, Utility applications, Religious content apps and News & Info.

Links: www.ohile.com

Mobile Apps at OVI Store: http://store.ovi.com/publisher/Ohile+Tech/

Explain how the company will make money?
" "The revenue model consists of three aspects:

1. Information on ‘retail offers’
2. Transaction model targeting ‘kirana shops’
3. Custom merchandise aligned with www.ohile.com portal

We already have a stream of Mobile Apps in the app stores and mobile enterprise solutions as a revenue stream. Additionally, The framework is replicated across organizational requirements which is a revenue stream for the company. "


Why is the addressable market you are targetting interesting?
"The target market: We have two markets identified
1. The regular internet users who are a part of the global nomadic culture - who miss the warmth of the hearth and cherished family bonding, on the move. They need the family ambience with them wherever they happen to be. Geography and demographics are purely subjective in this market.

2. The larger and ever growing mobile users - where the other networking sites provide plugins to their sites, we propose a seamless mobile experience to mesmerise this potential audience."

Why should we choose your company?
Family, the most important entity, is often forgotten in the pursuit of catering to individuals in the internet space. Family ambience needs to be extended to the web, mobile and the entire spectrum of digital media. We understand this pain point from the market study that we had undertaken at the launch of our pilot project. We are dedicated to bridge this gap and extend the family experience wherever you are.

Image via CrunchBase

Name of Entrepreneur / Venture and Company Motto    

Consultingforce.com - empowering consultants to acheve breakthrough results with their clients   

Brief Profile of Entrepreneur     
Its 2013...….. 8,000 business consultants will have completed 80,000 business transformations, affecting €400billion in revenue, positively impacting 4 million employees, generating over €1.2billion in fees – all because they decided that €50 a month to use consultingforce.com was a good investment – and what’s more we will have the critical markers of success to those businesses and consultants spawning a revolution in business effectiveness.    "The principles are consultants, bankers, educators and IT gurus - when you put this combination into a room, with a sprinkling of passion, you get something truly amazing - and that is what consultingforce.com is - something that will enable consultants transform businesses, the way salesforce.com transformed the sales professional.

We will achieve this vision by;
Building a scalable, open source and secure multi-tenanted SaaS Platform whereby consultants for €50 per month can:
•    Manage all client interactions in a secure workspace accessible online and offline
•    Have access to v2020 processes or use their own processes to ensure consistent delivery of consulting engagements, using templates for meetings, reports and proposals with accompanying workflow.
•    Track their client’s progress using Key Performance Indicators, in addition to existing financial ratios, to track their performance against their own targets and against benchmarks aggregated anonymously from their peers.
•    Optimise their time, by managing their time, resources, billing, marketing and sales activities with one integrated system

What's new, interesting, or different about what your company does?*     
We have the team, we have the processes and we have something else, a little bit of magic that may appeal to you......

..... let me also tell you that not only will consultants, business and their employees benefit – people who are not so lucky as to be in jobs will also benefit, because we will dedicate 1% of our profits, people and resources to help those not so well off by applying these same principles to charities and philanthropies to make them more effective as well.

…. So do you want to hear more, do you want to share this wonderful journey, to be part of something that can usher in the next great transformation in positive business…. And remember, 2013 is just a milestone, it’s a milestone that proves what’s possible., and from that point on we will grow, we will affect more businesses as the tsunami of business transformation grips the planet, with something real and tangible.

…. Now I’m not saying it’s easy, no, it will take hard work, we will have to take our concept and breathe life into it, we will need to take what we have on paper, what we have as a result of the 100 customers we have already transformed and build a prototype, a prototype that will show our existing consultant associates what’s truly possible, that will show a North American Bank who has 500 external consultants, that we can help them with their 5,000 consulting engagements every year…

… we will show you the plan and then you can decide who to introduce us to, who give us the €200k we need to build the prototype and prove our concept over the next 4 months before we look for the remaining €1m to build consultingforce.com and make you 10 fold gains in 2013 as we share this journey together.

Given 20-20 hindsight, what would you do differently?   

"    "Our original company is called V20:20 Consulting and we focused too much on the consulting side, working with banks as referral partners, which took away from our main vision, our vision which will net Angels and VCs a 10 fold return on their money.

Now we are focused, we don't have the last 9 months back, but we have our passion redoubled, and we will succeed.....

....my questions is this - do you want to part of this success or will you be like the guy who turned down, eBay, JK Rowling or Virgin Atlantic?



What is your most memorable fund-raising experience?
"    "Walking into a meeting with a senior banker, who said ""just because they had got things wrong with the economic bubble that exploded in everyone's face, didn't mean they had to change they way they did business, after all banks will be around forever and you won't be!""

I'm looking forward to driving past that guy in my new car in 2013, when we have been proved right, when people with vision join us, when people with passion get what we are saying, when the world business leaders stop and listen to people on the ground, who feel the pulse of this planet everyday - yes, then my friend we will see a revolution, a shifting in thinking, a way where business care about their customers and profit results, as opposed to focusing on profit and forgetting about customers."