Small Ideas Big Changes and a little bit of Just Dial

One of the things that gets us easily excited and blissful here at The Better India is to come across stories of inspiration in mainstream Indian media. Therefore, we were delighted to observe that Hindustan Times has been running a series of stories titled “Small Ideas Big Changes”. The introductory paragraph of this series is:

Mumbai is the city of opportunities. It is as full of possibilities as of traffic. Here, we always think, anything, really, is possible. Small Ideas Big Change presents the stories of 12 daring, dogged and ambitious people who didn’t merely dream but who went ahead and did what they dreamt of. These entrepreneurs, little known when they started, grasped the opportunities that Mumbai presented them with. They altered their own lives with their successful ventures.

On July 16, HT reporter Pratik Ghosh, writes about VSS Mani and his overwhelmingly successful business idea – Just Dial. For the uninitiated few, Just Dial is a telephone search service in India. Users can call a specific number and obtain contact and address details of almost any commercial establishment of their respective cities.

The article talks about the genesis of this idea:

The idea of launching a telephonic service struck Mani in 1988 when he was working in Delhi for a yellow pages company. He was chatting up a client about the prospect of trading information, when it flashed across his mind. His logic was simple: “Unlike in the West, Indians are always banking on friends, relatives and neighbours for information in their everyday life. Why not launch a service to cater to this need?” asked the Jamshedpur-born Tamilian.

With an annual turnover of 85 crore and, check this – a valuation at Rs. 500 crore, Just Dial sure is more than just an idea coming true.

Read the complete article here.