Ethnic Fashion in India : Discovery of Local Shops

Recently I found this problem of discovery of fashion stores - especially that of boutiques in Bangalore.  It is very difficult to find the right boutiques when you are looking for some ethnic wear dress like Lehenga, Designer Blouse, Designer Sarees, etc.

There is very little information about the local boutiques and which boutiques are good or bad. People as of now discover the boutiques through word of mouth from their friends and relatives. But this is not optimal as the choices they have is limited to the knowledge of the friends and relatives.

Hence, we embarked on a journey to solve this problem and thus TapDiscover was born.

We focussed on Ethnic Wear market as this is a nice niche to focus on and there is a real problem of finding the best boutiques. We are also trying to find a way so that the customers are able to find the latest updates from the shops like new arrivals and offers and review from their fellow shoppers.

If you are in Bangalore do take a look at our blogs. Especially

A complete list of boutiques in Bangalore

10 shops for readymade designer blouses in Bangalore

Do let us know what do you think and drop a comment below.

Development Sector: Can startups be an answer?

Can startups bring about the requisite changes in India's developmental patterns and foster a sustainable growth? This is a question which I have been pondering for long and I think needs a bit of our deliberation. Its evident that there is a disparity in India's growth story. While on one hand there are people, living in cities who are decently well off, enjoying all the necessities of life, there are these other set of people living in rural India and urban slums whose living conditions are miserable to say the least. Even in not so poor blocks and villages there is hardly any organised growth present, and most of the development is just unplanned and uninformed. There is hardly any basic infrastructure present, there are power cuts some 8-10 times a day without any regular timings, roads become alll muddy and unusable even with a light shower of rain, and people throw garbage and outlet their drains anywhere they want to. And this is the plight of a block in Jharkhand(Baliapur), where I live, which is not so worse of in terms of economic earnings of people here. I wonder what is the situation in villages of Orissa and Andhra, where people hardly have any means of earning their livelihood. No wonder they rise in protests as Naxalites and anti-government miscreants.

The way government has tried addressing these issues of lack of development, and general poverty and illiteracy is by launching big ticket schemes, like MGNREGA, Sarv Siksha Abhiyaan, Mid day meals at school, etc which look nice in their manifestoes but are in effect poor returns for the taxpayers money that is spent on it. The question which I want to ask is that can we have a model of growth in which government instead of acting as the actual implementor instead acts as a facilitator for social enterprises to take on the tasks of development and building infrastructures. Can startups in the social and development sector prove to be the machine which we so desperately need to convert taxpayers hard earned money into tangible social outputs? I know of a few startups doing wonderful work in the sector. Nachiket Mor's Sugha Vazhvu Healthcare, Gerard Rego's Vayugrid, Ram NK's RangDe are just a few of them. Can we have a startup ecosystem for such enterprises, on the same model as we have for Internet startups in Silicon Valley? Well, a thought worth pondering over in my opinion.

An Encounter with a Girl

Hmm... OK, before you start getting ideas, here is the disclaimer: This is not about my meeting with some hot-chick female who swooned my heart with her beauty, but about a girl who moved my heart and set me thinking by her sheer nonchalance and attitude. I met this girl on my train journey to my home from Chennai. I generally prefer to travel second class on trains because only here you get to see the real India, and not the "oh-so-know-it-everything" people whom i meet when sometimes i travel in AC.
My journey was going on as a two day journey on a "express" train should go. The train stopped at every station that passed, the atmosphere was all hot and humid. People were bored as the usual exchange of pleasantries were done and nobody wanted to further know what the person sitting in front of him did for living, or what were his views on performance of Indian cricket team, the corruption of politicians, etc.
At this point of time two kids, a boy and a girl, appear in the train compartment. Some energy was infused among the passengers. People rose from their slumber wondering what this kids were up to. The boy with a frail body seemed to be around 12-13 yrs old and was carrying two pieces of asbestos in his hand, making sounds with it to attract the attention of the people around. The girl, roughly around eight to ten years old, was dressed in a dirty frock and was carrying two iron rings with her. With the starting of the boys "music" from the asbestos plates, she started passing her body through the rings in all possible manners. She would pass the ring through her head, pass her hand through it, fold up her legs and again pass it through the ring. She did all this and many other myriad steps while almost running through the compartment. That it was possible for a human body to pass through those small rings,, of the size of basketballs, was just unimaginable for me. But this girl's body slithered through them as if they were meant to perform such acrobatics.
Once she was done through the whole compartment, she came back to the passengers asking for money. But here is what was unique about this girl. She didn't ask for money like a beggar, she wanted it from them as if it was her right. And if someone didn't give her any money, she would look him with such strange questioning eyes, asking, "What's wrong with you? Why are you not giving me money." It didn't seem to her that she is doing anything wrong by asking for money, no shame, no sense of guilt. It was a perfectly fair way of getting means of survival from a society which was unable to provide her one. At an age, when she should be studying in schools and playing with the dolls, this society has forced her to earn money from passengers traveling in the train, so whats there to be shameful about.

But I don't think she thinks about all this. She doesn't know what the society was supposed to provide her, what should have been her legitimate right just by virtue of being born as a human. This is the life she was taught to live. Show her performance to the passengers in train and get money from them. That is how you survive. So, whenever a person refuses to pay up, it looks unnatural to her. As if the person in front isn't fulfilling his part of the deal.

Those questioning eyes.... those eyes which don't beg but demand, will we ever be able to answer them? Will we ever be able to look back straight at them and say, "Look girl, you don't need to do this anymore. Go back home. There will be some food for you to eat. Then you can go to school and learn stuff and play with your friends."

Isn't that what each and every child in India deserves?

Life at the base of pyramid

Interesting read.
How social enterpreneurs can bring light to unlit houses.

Inclusive development and Technology

Though the title may read like some sort of continuation of PMs independence day speech, the fact that this topic has garnered so much attention from the PM itself speaks of its importance. Many people who live in posh metropolitans like Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, etc sometimes fail to understand why PM is giving so much importance to such issues like providing clean water to everyone, or making every girl in villages go to school while there are other burning issues like the increasing traffic, delay in metro rail project in their city, etc which were more worthy of his attention. I agree that they are not mistaken in demanding for solutions of these problems which they face in day to day life, but they should also try to see things from the point of view of the PM of the country where 70% of the population still lives in villages. These peole lack many such basic requirements of life which people in urban areas take as granted.

Having spent almost 18 years of my life in villages and rural areas, i can see why the PM and the policy makers of the country give so much importance to inclusive development. In my village itself, which is one of the economically better villages in the area (thanks to the coal industry in the area), people still don’t get clean water to drink. If you get up early in the morning, and go on a walk on the country side, you could see people defecating near the village pond sitting in a line. Though the school provides free education, people don’t send their girls to study. Instead young girls are made to work as domestic helps in houses so that some extra bucks could be added to the family income.

And don’t try to generalise by saying that the people in rural areas are like that because they are idiots. You would be surprised to know that they are as brand concious as any modern consumer is, and they would kill for modern technology. One of the things on the basis of which i can say this is just seeing the range of cell phones these people carry. Its not that they carry the cellphones, just to talk. They are well aware of the bluetooth file transferring, multimedia players and the resolution of pictures taken by the cameras embedded in the phone. They dig technology totally.

The problem is that this happens only for a few families which has managed to come up economically, by some chance event. This is not the general story of the village. Most people still continue to live their old ways of life, with no support from the government or any local help groups.

There is a big opportunity unexplored, waiting in the heart of India. If we can make technologies which are able to help these people or provide them assistance in using technology to improve their lives, it would create a society in which all sections are able to share the benefits of their technological progress. It would be a growth which is inclusive and i see technology playing a big role in enabling this in the days to come.

So why not developers instead of making the next cool app for the yet to be launched Palm-Pre, try developing a software which can be used for educating villagers in a way which they can understand. Why not build a faecal disposal system, which is affordable enough that people in rural areas can bring it in use, instead of designing the “stop-using-your-hands” toilets. Of course, one reason is the general belief that rural people can’t pay. That’s why corporations don’t envision any such projects.

But there are people who have been able to carve successful ventures out of their basic idea of supporting rural people.


1. Saloni Malhotra – She has been featured in the September issue of Outlook business for her firm Desicrew in which she employs people in the villages of Tamilnadu to provide BPO solutions. This doesn’t only empower the rural youth, but makes them more connected to the world outside.

2. Vijay Mahajan – He has been featured in the book “Stay Hungry Stay Foolish” by IIMA alumnus Rashmi Bansal for his for-profit organization Basix. He has shown how it is possible to empower rural people at the same time while posting profits for his publicly traded company.
These are just a few examples to show how things can be done.

The need is to replicate such efforts. Only when there are hundreds and thousands of such concerted efforts, would we be finally able to have a society in which all the sections are going hand in hand.