The Story Of Chumbak

-Pratiti Nath

We all like to travel and collect souvenirs and mementos from places we have visited. Now, think of a foreign traveler, travelling to India and looking for objects to remember the place. Well, here the market is flooded with conventional showpieces and mementos of monuments like Taj Mahal, Howrah bridge, India gate or Qutub Minar. At best clothing like saris and pashmina shawls.

A couple from Bangalore got bored of all this. Vivek Prabhakar and Subhra Chadda thought of channelizing their frustration to come up with a business enterprise. Thus, in 2010, started the journey of Chumbak, the popular lifestyle brand. The name by itself attracts like a magnet, and indeed true to its property. As illustrated by the co-founder Vivek Prabhakar, the name means “kissing stones”. As they wanted to monopolize the Indian refrigerator magnets market. Their tagline “home is where the love is” delivers the ultimate attraction punch for a lifestyle 

The Journey so far

Chumbak with just 45lakhs arranged by the couple by selling their house. It started as a 30 member souvenir store and ended up being a 150 member lifestyle store. The duo coupled their knowledge with pragmatism. It started as an online store that continued to flood the e-commerce market. 2012 brought the opportunity of seed funding via Matrix partners. Then , in 2013 they opened their first flagship store in Bangalore. 

Visiting their store or browsing through their products will make you gasp in disbelief. It has a quirky, colourful and vibrant range products. They have a magnificent range which spoils you for choice. It has  a wide range of lifestyle products – from key chains to mementos to dresses to footwear to apparel to jewelries to bags, wallets, watches, phones- all under one roof. 38 categories with more than 500 products. Thus, here is a brand which perfectly understands your needs. Price, design, style, range, colours EVERYTHING!!!

Like all start-ups they wanted to be different but in a different way. The company philosophy is to do it in a fun and lively way. This is visible in their public interaction and eccentric vibrant range of products. They team up the curiosity of a child, the innovation of youth and the experience of a knowledgeable person. 

Another potent problem for a start-up is real estate. Subhra and Vivek were pragmatic in this matter. They started with small kiosk of 150-200 square feet and then made it to 2500 sq ft. They have 20 such kiosks with more than 60 outlets in 5 major Indian cities. Of them Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore gathers the maximum revenue (60%). 15% of sales are made through online. They are first of its kind store. They are quick to adapt with changing market dynamics and fashion trends. This lead to an unprecedented growth rate of 300%  in 5years. 

Future Venture

In the coming years they are targeting a 400 crore annual revenue. It is vying to spread its wings all over India. Their future target is to open more such kiosks in other cities. Chumbak planning to boost is online sales percentage to meet the target. 

Overall, with their unique set of ideas and executions they are a force to reckon with it. A viable start-up story for every entrepreneur dreaming to make it big.

Why Teleportation is Awesome!

-Ankita Roy

Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information(e.g the exact state of an atom or photon)can be transmitted(exactly, in principle) from one location to another, with the help of classical communication and previously shared quantum entanglement between the sending and receiving location.

All those who didn’t understand a word of what has been written above, put your hands up!! Above stated was a paragraph copied and pasted straight out of Wikipedia. To explain what has been written above, lets put it this way...remember how we all watched star trek and gazed in amazement as captain kirk and his crew constantly used their transporter to move between the enterprise and another world, an asteroid, another spacecraft and into an exact place in any of these locations. Or remember harry potter?! The floo powder, port-keys and apparition. This, my friends is what teleportation really means. 

It is the art, or ability (or anything you would like to call it, as it doesn’t exist in reality yet)to disappear at one place and instantly reappear at another place, a place of your own choice.

Why teleportation would be awesome is not difficult to imagine.

1.People would be able to transport themselves in no time to a different place at any place in any time. Distance, would in fact become a theoretical thing. We would need no visas and passports to travel from one country to another, free as a bird.

2. Cars, trains and airplanes would not be needed anymore, doing mother nature the favor that has been long due to her. Lesser pollution will solve a lot of environmental as well as health problems.

                         

3. If the ability to teleport were given to me with absolutely no holds barred on its potential ,I would definitely teleport myself to the future and first and foremost, wait-for-it, watch the entire series of "game of thrones" and find out how it ends because being made to wait for months for a new season of this particular series is definitely the most torturous act of all, worse than the beheading.    

4. Having satisfied myself of the future I would teleport myself back to the past, to old England, to the era of gallant young men and chivalry, to those wide frilled skirts and bonnets, to the age where Mr. Darcy thrived(aahhh….drool!).i don’t think I could ever teleport myself back from that age so that’s a dangerous gamble to play.(if it only wasn’t for the dynamic  Mr. Darcy).

5.As for the present ,I would definitely want to teleport myself to the secret mysterious lair wherein our college exam papers are evaluated. I wish to drench the burning thirst of a burning question in the minds of majority of the students in India-“that person and I have written the exact same answer, then why did he get more marks than me?”. What force of nature is it that prompts such injustice? Teleportation could definitely help provide an answer to all those students in agony who can do nothing except go “why you do like this?!” *weeping internally* 

6. So having made it clear that giving me the power of teleportation would do no good to the world lets come back with what its other general awesomeness could be. For starters, it could save you a lot of money. You could just teleport yourself to the concert of your choice without having to pay for it. Free events=saving money+having fun!!Cant dispute mathematics now, can we?

                                                                                                            

7. Teleportation is more discreet than other powers like flight. Less people find out, you don’t get mobbed by people asking for favors and you are less likely to be captured. And even if you are, well you can always be…*poof*..gone

                              

10. Also, crime would fall with the ability to teleport being placed in responsible hands and the world would become a safer place to live in. Needless to mention the positive impact on the environment.

Teleportation if it ever comes into existence would be a boon for mankind, at least for a while before we somehow manage to turn it into a lethal weapon.

  

                                          

If Dogs had Twitter Accounts

-Ankita Roy

Happiness my friends is a warm puppy. Dogs are undoubtedly man’s best friends. They are the only creatures on earth who can love you more than they love themselves. No matter what you do, you can not dissuade them from leaping in joy when he sees you .A dog is a little heartbeat at your feet. All this and more. Dogs these days are smart too! They have taken this tech-savvy generation tail-on. With Meredithswift(Taylor Swifts dog),cookie(bethannie frankels dog) and many more celebrity canines joining the twitterati, we thought of a world wherein all the dogs had twitter accounts. After all….never underestimate the power of the common dog.

Just look at that puppy dog face!