एक ख्वाहिश अनेक ख्वाहिश

एक नजम जड़ सकू, बस इतनी ख्वाहिश है |

एक नब्ज जुड़ जाएगी, खुद-ब-खुद ख्वाहिशो के ||

दिल के शीशे में कोई, यो ही उतर आती है - Ghazal

दिल के शीशे में कोई, यो ही उतर आती है |

बन के परछाई मेरी, बात लिख के जाती है ||

कोशिशे करता हूँ फिर भी न चला, एक भी अक्षर उसका |

लगता शब्दों को स्वयं आँक, गजले गुनगुनाती है ||

चाहता हूँ की पकड़ पूछ लू, वह धुंध में आने का सबब |

जब थम - कदम बढाता हूँ, वो घूम के नट जाती है ||

मैं इधर चैन को बैचेन रहा, कौन क्या जाना क्या आना है |

देखते - देखते वह छाया, झट से मुकर जाती है ||

The rescuer of Life

They save life for charity; in the last 10 years they have carried out over 300 rescue operation around Lonavala and Khandala valley, saved hundreds of lives, they are God sent for the people who get stuck in Valley, Lake & dam due to an accident or natural disaster. They also rescue reptiles (catch snakes, rescue them and then send them back to deep forest). They do it out of passion and interest, free of cost, a purely for charity. The members of Shivadurga Mitra adventure club are real life heroes. This inside story is D2I’s salute to them, their act of bravery and unique charity of saving life.

Shivadurga Mitra adventure club was founded in the year 1980 by Mr. Sunil Gaikwad; with the vision and aim of promoting trekking, rappelling and other adventure sports for people in Lonavala. From the very beginning the club used to teach adventure sports to the school children at no cost and they are still doing so in schools. In mid 90s, the next generation of the club started participating actively in various other activities. And over the time activity list of Shivadurga club grew from Trekking, repelling, rock climbing, valley crossing etc. to survival camping, archery, shooting to special & customised training programs for corporate and government agencies.

Young and energetic members like Sunil Gaikwad and Ashok mate, completed basic courses from NIM, further added new horizon to this club.

In 2000 out of interest and passion, they started rescuing the accident victims in and around Lonavala- Khandala valley. On an average every year they do around 30-35 rescue operations in dense forest, to deep valley and under water (Dam & Lakes).

The valley in the Lonavala-Khandala is around 3000 feet deep and quite accident prone especially in the rainy season. After an accident if someone gets stuck in the valley then the rescue team either comes from Mumbai or Pune; the major damages occurs prior to their arrival, immediate help is needed in most of the accidents. Sunil, Ashok and few more like minded youngsters decided to start rescuing operation by then. With very little resource and equipment, in the year 2000 they started rescuing the accident victims in and around Lonavala Ghat. They do not charge anything for it, they even bought all the equipments and gears required for such rescue operations themselves. All the earnings of Shivdurga Mitra Adventure Club are being spent for these purposes, they even put their saving. It was shear passion and feeling to help, keeps them going. By 2005 Shivdurga Mitra became a reliable and famous entity. Even the Police started to contact them for rescue operations. They became top choice for cops and life saver for victims. On an average every year they carry out around 30-35 rescue operation.

After 2005, they started to maintain the record of operations and related activity. Now they are a 200 member strong team. The rescue horizon too expands from valley to lakes and dams. From dense forest, to deep valley to under water, they started rescuing everywhere. It was not only geographical horizon of Shivdurga which was expanding, they also started rescuing snakes.

They catch snakes, rescue them from people and later let them free into the deep forest. To promote it, they have started courses on identifying snake, their poisonous characteristic and how to catch them, and how to survive if a poisonous snake bites you, etc.

They also train the cadets of Force One, for repelling, valley crossing and rock climbing. On 26^th November 2009, on the mark on one year of terror attack on Mumbai, the cadets of Force One demonstrated their preparation to fight terror. An important portion of this drill was trained by Shivadurga club.

From members count to rescue operations to activities and their passion to their popularity, everything is growing up. The only thing which is still in bad shape, are their finances. Members are running this noble organisation on their own; its parent club which organises various adventure sports too is less of a business establishment and more of a charitable institution. Their most of programs are to promote the activity and free training for locals and the underprivileged; very few camps and activities earn them the much needed money. Time to time they get support from local business houses, but still they are way behind what they should be in terms of the finances.

Finance has never been their vision, idea and aim, and they continue rescuing people while betting on their own life out of passion and will. They not only conduct adventure games, and rescue work, they are also promoting sports and culture among youth in a big way. Shivadurga Mitra Mandal is in true sense serving the society.

Doors2India salute the brave hearts of Maharashtra.

“This blog was originally published in blog.d2i.in as inside story of Shivadurga mitra mandal, Lonavala; republishing here with permission from D2i team”

Pune's journey back to being - City of Bicycles

Everything has its own cost, so did Pune paid, for its growth. From pensioners paradise to paradise lost; from city of bicycle to city of motorcycle, Pune kept changing its identity with industrial & IT development.

Back in the late nineties, a health & environment friendly group of visionary Puneties formed a group “Pune Cycle Prathisthan” to promote cycling and regain its lost identity. Started with 15 - 20 people; this group has now over 3000 members. On 5^th June 2010, Pune’s Pedal Power had organised a cycle ride to celebrate world environment day and over 1200 people turned up for it. It’s a strong evident of growing passion among Puneites for cycling. Especially in the last few months (After opening of Life Cycle, India’s largest cycle mall) cycling has become a movement in Pune.

This inside story is an attempt to salute the passionate cyclists, who are pursuing rides which are in real sense healthy, adventurous as well as environment friendly. Our pre-investigation finds that Mr. Nachiket Joshi (of Life cycle and Zen of cycling, a cyclists group) is one of the main contributors who are helping achieve Pune its lost identity of ‘City of Bicycles’; and for this reason we contacted him for more inside scoop on the same. This inside story is based on the conversation of D2I-Mag team with him.

Young, energetic and dynamic entrepreneur Nachiket is a passionate cyclist. This passion is in his blood, his father Mr. Ulhas joshi (he is founder of Life cycle) is a big time cyclist and has organised & participated in numerous cycling ride in India and abroad and go to Himalaya on cycle ride almost every year. Nachiket’s interest in cycling goes back to his childhood, but like many other youngsters his first love too was motor-bike. In 2007, he was in a group of four riders who went to Goa from Pune on Bike (for biking adventure) and unfortunately they met with an accident. With no major physical damage, it was a close shave for him. His father Ulhas said – “If you really want to enjoy riding adventure, try a ride with us”. Ulhas along with Dr. Dilip Dhawan had formed “Cycle Premi Group” in 2006 which Nachiket join. Started with 2 members, the group has now grown to over 1400 members and is known as Zen of cycling (to know more about it, visit www.zenofcycling.com). In 2010 only over 700 people joined it.

Turning Point

In Early 2008, cycle Premi group had organised a Konkan cycle ride, and around 60 people participated, most of them were first timers and coming from the IT sector. This event got huge mouth to mouth publicity over the mail, social networking sites and blogs. Nachiket realised the power of IT; with this media he can effectively promote the message of cycling and its event to the masses. And from then onwards Zen of cycling is organising frequent cycle rides and with effective promotion of events more and more people are joining.

Frequent rides

Zen of cycle organises cycle ride almost every week. On first Sunday of every month a cycle ride from Deccan gymkhana to city area, aims to convey the message to the PMC that cyclist exist and they need a dedicated road for them. A special ride on third Sunday of every month is normally a long distance (40 – 60 KM) ride around Pune. It also organises many similar rides and practice rides for Himalaya or tough expeditions. Breakfast, support vehicle and thing for all the safety measures are provided by members only. If you have never been to any such ride, then one must attend one, it is highly recommended by Doors2India.

Many Groups one destination

Ride 2026, Pedal Power, NIBM Cycle Group, Zen of cycling, etc; when we asked why so many cycle groups. Nachiket explains (with a gentle smile, which he always posses) actually there is only one group “Pune cycle Prathisthan (PCP)” and all these group are part of it. We can say sub group of main organisation to promote and organise cycling ride in a particular region. Like NIBM cycle group is active in Kondarwa, Hadapsar area, Zen of cycling is active in Peth, Swardate, Kothrud, Katraj area, Ride 2026 in Aundh area and so on. There are many more groups of 4-5 people, who enjoy their cycling in their group but all are under PCP, and actively participated in PCP events. It’s like there may be many religions, with their own set of rules, but all are in union with God. Here too there are many cycling group and all are part of the PCP only.

Life cycle

On 26^th January 2010, Life cycle (India’s largest cycle mall) opened its first mall at Tilak road, Pune. With over 6000 sq. foot of area, it sells imported cycle and cycling gears of all major brands. It has cycles of ranges start from INR 6,500 to 5.5 lakhs. From common man, to politicians to Bollywood stars; cycling lover from all sector are its client. Life cycle does numerous things to promote cycling along with many social activities. Keep following inside story segment of Doors2India, we are very soon going to Publish a dedicated inside story of Life Cycle.

Cycling movement after life cycle

Life cycle sells around 150 cycles a month which in turn is actually addition of 150 more cycling enthusiasts. He promotes the upcoming events among them, and most of them turn up for the ride; after all cycling is probably only ride which is healthy, adventurous and environmental friendly too. Since Life Cycle’s inception, it has become the main catalyst for increase in the cycling activity in and around Pune. With frequent events, region wise small group, availability of world class cycle & required gears/equipment, along with workshops and free consultation; the whole cycling movement in Pune is break free now. And once again Pune may soon be known as City of Bicycles.

“This blog was originally published in blog.d2i.in as inside story of Zen of Cycling; republishing here with permission from D2i team”

Ice Cream made of spices !!!

Who doesn’t like to add a bit of spice to one’s life ? The spice loving Indians & videshis are going to love the unqiue concept of spicing up their ice creams too !!

An unconventional & unconvincing idea, calculated risk and wonderful execution are the ingredients that make `Spice Cream’ a reality ! Did any of us think that the famed Indian spices could be blended with ice creams and relished by people ?

Indian food has been traditionally known to have the heady flavor of spices, then why should ice creams be left out ? says co-founder and man behind this idea, Siddharth Shirole.

Our D2I Team tasted these innovative ice creams and were found to be yearning for more !

What an idea, Guruji !

It was in Oct’09, when Siddartha with his family were in Indore to meet their spiritual Guruji. Guruji threw an idea in the form of a question – did anyone of you ever try blending Indian spices with ice cream ? Gentle laugh, was the first reaction by everyone ! For some, it was like a joke, while for others it was a thought-provoking point. But for Siddartha, this was the inception of a concept which was soon going to create its own identity.

The Evolution !

After the Indore trip, the idea given by his Guruji was churning in Siddartha’s mind & heart. He shared this idea and discussed the feasibility with almost all ice cream vendors known to him, but the Idea enthralled none. The initial disappointment did not stop him from exploring further and one fine day he convinced his maternal aunt to experiment. She made normal homemade ice cream with Milkmaid and added cloves to it ! It tasted good & different and thus the first ever `spice cream’ was born !!

This encouraged Siddartha and convinced him to conduct multiple trials to evolve new spice flavors. With a vision to realize its potential, now Siddartha started hunting for a place to put the concept into action. He zeroed on the Sabree restaurant (which is one of most popular Maharashtrian restaurants in Pune & owned by Siddartha’s family) and soon enough, he started to experiment on spice creams along with the Master Chef there.

The next 2 months (Nov-Dec 2009) were spent in serving various spice creams to Sabree customers on complimentary basis and taking their feedback. The idea was to analyse each feedback carefully, work on the suggestions & complaints and serve the improved spice creams again. This went on for the next two months and helped to evolve many flavors.

The Launch

Fully convinced with this idea, Siddhartha’s friend Jay Joshi joined this venture and whole process accelerated further. Finally in January 2010, they set up their manufacturing plant at Gokhle Nagar, Pune. And now the spice cream was all set for the commercial sales from the Sabree and Sharvaree restaurants !

For next 2¹/₂ months, they continued taking feedback and using it to modify the flavors. They added spices with fruits, spices with traditional ice cream flavors and gradually they had 20 flavors well accepted by customers from all age groups.

This gave them the confidence to go main stream and launch the brand. On 16^th March’10, the Zayka Spice Cream opened its first outlet at __________ on F.C. Road and followed this with the second outlet at __________, Kothrud on 16^th May’10.

Truely Indian

The theme of both the outlets is distinctly Indian - the interiors, Lantern shaped lights & hut shaped cash counter, traditional wooden serving bowls & spoon, which all help blend the spice creams with the traditional Indian aura.

The Spice Merchants

The biggest challenge for the Zayka Spice Creams now is to make the idea acceptable & palatable to a larger population of Pune. The Puneites who have tasted these spice creams have found the concept interesting. The very fact that the Pune citizens are quite urbane across the age groups, is what keeps the motivated. They are convinced that the mouth-to-mouth publicity will also help them.

Apart from these 2 outlets, the spice cream is now served at 4 different restaurants in Pune, including Nawab and Daalchini.

Siddhartha says ”the best part is that the spice creams are not just liked by Indians but the foreigners too are relishing the taste and that’s why the demand from Koregoan park area remains the highest”.

Taste Control

Apart from the spice cream catering that has picked up, spice cream is now aiming to set 4 more outlets by the summer of 2011. In Pune, all spice creams are produced at their Ghokhle Nagar plant, but to ensure the flavor & taste remain the same at all outlets outside Pune also, they have completely standardized the manufacturing process and even applied for the intellectual property rights too. The next step is to set up a franchisee outlet in New Delhi.

The Spice Dream

Spice cream hopes to establish a pan India presence and Siddhartha strongly believes that spice cream can create ice cream revolution in Europe and USA. You got it there ! His dream is to launch the spice creams in the European and American markets.

Give it a try, buddy !

The yummy Spice Creams are priced at just ` 35 a scoop. Needless to say, D2I strongly recommends everyone to try the spice creams, with the “honey-clove-daalchini” flavor being the D2I pick !

“This blog was originally published in blog.d2i.in under inside story of Jayka Spice Cream; republishing here with permission from D2i team”

why D2i (Doors2India)

Why d2i ?

“You love to do the things, which add purpose to your passion”

Why d2i? This was definitely not the first question when we planned to create d2i. It got its purpose with time.

Initially it was fuelled by our passion in the fields of EAT, DO (hobby ideas) & VISIT. d2i just provided purpose to our passion, and that’s why we love it !

And as the significance in the name “Doors to India” suggests, we wanted our users to enter and explore the many facets of India in terms of EAT, DO (hobby ideas) & VISIT.

There are many web portals, which offer information on eateries; in fact whenever I try to search or Google for eateries in Pune or Delhi, the search results upto the 3^rd page end up displaying results and reference to another portal.

It implies that there were at least 30 portals offering infotainment services and the results definitely surprised me. But there were two things which surprised (read disappointed) me even more; first, the fact that almost all of them had more or less same & very limited info; and second, all or most of them had info either of only eateries or of everything in the world, from real estate to insurance product. It’s like over 30 portals which are mere classified or yellow pages but claiming themselves to be infotainment.

You could blame it on our (my fellow founders/thinkers & I) disappointment with ‘this too little info in too diversified a sector’, that compelled us to visualise a true infotainment portal. We didn’t want to try to be

next Google local or plain Just Dial of the world.

So that’s how the concept of a dedicated portal limiting to EAT, DO and VISIT segment in a city was born, with a vision to offer detailed information of the `places to EAT’, `things to DO’ and `places to VISIT’ in a city, without the malaise of the info being stale &/or unverified, as was our experience with the existing portals.

We conceptualised a portal which could provide verified & interesting info on all sorts of ethical entertainment in a city. And Yes, the data was to be supported with images and more importantly, reviewed by experts ! This, along with interesting facts in form of articles & inside stories; events and offering of the places or venue, was to add value to the users.

When this idea germinated way back in 2008, we started to build a structure, classifying the category for EAT, DO & VISIT and portal’s offering, etc. The biggest challenge was, of course, Data collection.

Our experience was that most data/info on the net was either limited or stale and also skipped most small but interesting joints. So we evolved a multi-pronged strategy for data assimilation – from trawling through the net as well as out-sourcing the data collection to a competitive agency, to ground surveys & visiting the venues, and ultimately managing the whole activity by our own.

It surely took a few hit and trials before we gradually developed a process of fast & efficient collection & verification of data.

Going by the spirit of high speed parallel computing, we simultaneously burnt a lot of midnight oil (more likely to be many precious units of electricity !) to work on the design of our infotainment portal and it was only after 7^th version that we actually got convinced to start coding.

There were multiple rounds of discussion, debate and also pressure from other stake holders of d2i, but end product didn’t satisfy us and thus, we put off the launch.

In fact, we developed the whole portal and scrapped it totally not once, but three times and finally it was 10^th internal version which was launched released on 1^st April ’10 ! Now, who would select such a date for the launch ?! Passion driven Entrepreneurs are fools, so we choose 1^st April or `Fools Day’ to launch `Doors to India’ the portal with Pune.

And being proud & patriotic Indians, we added Delhi/NCR to an improved version of d2i on 15^th August’10, India’s Independence Day.

Our next target is to add the happening cities of Mumbai, Goa, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, & Bangalore by March’11.

But once again we are not jumping the gun and not rushing to create quantity. Our prime focus is to achieve a high level of satisfaction in d2i and its content. We need to first to establish d2i as a truely infotainment portal, which was what we had set out to create !

The feedback that we are getting from our users, not just those who are clicking & exploring d2i but also from those who have actually visited the joints & places listed in our pages, is what keeps us motivated !!

We see no point in getting into a race to max the number of cities on our portal. We are sure that with time, our passion -coupled with the unique Indian spirit of our users in exploring new ideas , will help to answer why d2i ?

“This blog was originally published in blog.d2i.in in mid 2010; republishing here with permission from D2i team”