Complaints like eve-teasing, domestic violence, clashes in public or any hindrance to a law and order situation can be SMSed to 9500099100. The message will be automatically diverted to the concerned police limits inside the city with the help of a software named SMART SYS. The SMS complaint facility has been developed by D3D Technologies, Chennai, in association with City Police.

A special control room headed by an Inspector of Police and 15 police personnel has been set up in the Commissionerate to attend to SMS complaints. Once an SMS is received, the software installed in the control room automatically segregates the complaints and forwards them to the concerned police departments. “We receive lot of cases on eve-teasing, petty clashes and even domestic violence in the city. We received over 2,500 SMS texts on the very first day the facility was launched,” said an officer attached to the control room.

According to V. Priya of D3D Technologies, the mobile number is a toll-free number linked through a GSM medium. “The software SMART SYS works based on a public-police interface system aimed at assisting the regular beat policing. Even if a text message is inarticulate or incomplete, the software has the capability to pick up key words and segregate it to be forwarded to the concerned officer,” added Priya.

D3D Technologies also introduced a similar SMS complaint facility in Madurai and Virudhunagar districts in March 2008.

City Police Commissioner T. Rajendran said that police have taken immediate action on some specific complaints that were received through SMS and have also informed the complainant on the steps taken.

Peek-a-boo Patterns on Kasturi Rangan Road in Alwarpet, near Chola Sheraton, specialises in customised home furnishings for children, a welcome break from the Disney-dominated readymade ones you see in chain stores.

From furniture for kids’ rooms to their bed linen, upholstery, cushions and comforters, everything’s here. While the store is a year old, Garima Agarwal had started Peek-a-boo Patterns from home more than four years ago.

“It was while doing my son’s room that I realised there was no place one could buy bed linen for kids!” recalls Garima. While Garima was already armed with a Fashion Designing degree from Kolkata, a school friend helped design the logo and Peek-a-boo Patterns was born.

Prior to setting up of the store, Peek-a-boo Patterns participated in numerous exhibitions in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. “When we went back to the same venues a year later, the old customers came back. This proved a major encouragement,” says Garima. “I don’t believe in a fish being a Nemo.”

Peek-a-boo Patterns has recently started doing interiors for children’s room, which means taking care of everything from wallpaper to flooring, lights and furniture. “Furniture should be built to grow, not something you would have to chuck after two years,” she says.

Everything is handmade at Peek-a-boo Patterns’ own workshop, from the appliqué work on cushions and curtains to the embroidery. Even the foam chairs and bean chairs.

The focus is clearly on the children. “I always ask my clients to bring their kids to the shop, so that they can choose for themselves. My main client is the kid. If he wants a red bus with a piggy riding on it, that is what he’ll get,” says Garima. “Everything is customised, so what you see in the store is only a small part of what we do,” she adds, pointing out to some Tinker Bell colour-themed products awaiting delivery.

Outside Chennai, Peek-a-Boo Patterns also retails from Bumblebee and Sandbox in Mumbai and Blissful Beginnings in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Address: 16/47, Kasturi Rangan Road, Alwarpet,Chennai – 600 018

Ph: 044 - 2499 2365 Website: www.peekaboopatterns.com

Email: peekaboopatterns@gmail.com

Store timings: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Monday to Saturday)

Moved by the plight of the children he started by contributing educational material in the form of notebooks and uniforms. This later stirred him to start a social organisation called Help to Live.

His four project-mates, who were equally motivated to take up some social responsibility, joined Priyesh.

The team made weekly visits, distributed stationery, contributed a monthly fee for a child’s education and conducted games. The support continued until their office shifted from the locality and Priyesh got involved with another institution. But their support in terms of money, materials and time continued and further expanded, and Help to Live was formed.

The NGO is today eight years old, a registered body and run by a group of software engineers who take time away from work to give their mite to underprivileged children.

Eight long years

Lending help for around eight years is not easy, especially in a profession where everybody is on the fast lane. That’s where its Yahoo! group came of great support. “Our core team comprises around 10 people and we meet every month, whereas we have around 350 software friends as members, a majority of them active on Yahoo!,” explain Priyesh, an employee of Mphasis. Members channelise money and education material for children’s education.

“In fact, we started our initiative with an exercise of collecting uniforms for a corporation school. It was purely through word-of-mouth that we reached out and in the process many joined us,” says the engineer.

Over the years the group has adopted two institutions – one corporation school in Mint Street and the other in Tiruvallur district. “We collect around Rs. 50,000 per month as funds from the group, but we still need more helping hands to carry out our projects.”

You can help

With the new academic year having begun, members of Help to Live are on a drive collecting educational material for the corporation children. The drive has already begun in some of the members’ offices, L&T and Mphasis, for example, where mailers are sent asking employees to donate unused/used geometry boxes, water bottles, books and other stationery. But it is still in need of more and wants all you professionals to contribute.

Besides, the group is also looking for volunteers who could lend a helping hand any two weekends.

You could coordinate with Santhosh (9840743066) to hand over your stationery. Visit them at www.helptolive.org or email helptolive@yahoo.com

Meanwhile, on Monday morning two unidentified persons attempted to rob a 40-year-old women passenger at knifepoint on platform no. 1 of Chennai Central station. Police personnel on the premises rushed in to apprehend the duo after the victim raised an alarm.

Upon questioning, the men admitted to the crime and also various other thefts from rail passengers in the state over the last two years. The duo from Ranchi in Jharkhand were identified by police as Rajan alias Rajan Ram Srivastava (47) and Amar alias Amarnath Jaiswal (43), who used to buy AC 2-tier tickets in trains after registering fake names and addresses.

“After boarding the train they would wait for the passengers to fall asleep at night and in the dark open their bags and extract all items of value from them, secure the luggage again to prevent any sign of break-in and decamp with the loot. The victims would not even realise that they had been robbed till they went home or opened their bags,” said S. Manoharan, Superintendent of Police (Railways), Chennai.

The accused were remanded to custody and sent to Puzhal prison. Police is conducting further investigations to ascertain if more people are involved.

But infighting between AIFF officials and their inability to acquire land had already landed the project in doldrums. And now, if officials from Bharti are to be believed, the project has been completely scrapped.

“At this point we are focused on rolling out the Satya Bharti School Program through the Bharti Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Bharti group. Under this programme we are providing free quality education to underprivileged children in rural India,” a statement from the group read.

“Given our deep commitment to the education programme, we have decided to put the football academy project on hold for now.”

The proposed academy, which had also drawn interest from Manchester United on a technical level, had run into rough weather at the very beginning. A tussle between Goan football chiefs and also state ministers made it virtually impossible for the AIFF to take possession of the land. A decision to move the academy, first to Tamil Nadu and then Haryana, also bore no fruit.

While no suitable land was found in Tamil Nadu, the Haryana Football Association headed by the state Chief Minister’s son Deepender Singh Hooda (a Lok Sabha member) also failed to allocate any land, months after they made a proposal to AIFF and Bharti.

“It’s a big setback for us. The academy would have solved a lot of our problems and set an agenda for future growth,” an AIFF official said on condition of anonymity. “But we haven’t given up all hope. Our acting president Praful Patel is set to meet Sunil Mittal, chairman and CEO of Bharti Enterprises, to sort out the issues.”

The federation, still headed by former Union Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, who has been in coma for almost a year now, has also failed to appoint a CEO for its “professional” I-League. “A professional League needs a CEO and we have passed a resolution in this regard but we are yet to finalise a choice. We also discussed it in our last executive committee meeting in early June,” AIFF vice-president Subrata Dutta said. “We will sort it out soon.”

Even the club licensing system, necessary for AFC Champions League participation, has not been followed thoroughly. According to AFC criteria, clubs in India have to be separate legal and commercial entities. But interestingly, I-League side Air India still hasn’t fulfilled the criterion of being an independent commercial entity and is still a government-owned club with AIFF acting president Praful Patel as its head.

With problems on every side, the AIFF is desperately trying to find a silver lining, banking on the senior national team’s success at the 2011 Asia Cup. But with little government grants and practically no corporate support that too looks a distant dream right now.

My father wanted to buy a sandhya vandanam book for one of his friend’s son’s thread ceremony in Mumbai. He couldn’t find one there and this triggered him to start selling traditional books in the city. He immediately took a trip to Madras and bought a few books to sell in the Matunga Railway Station and soon he had a shack in a near by street. This went on for nearly 20 years.”

Battling odds

Ranganathan’s older siblings – Kashi Vishwanathan, T. S. Aiyapan, Ram Narayan, Iyer Srinivas, T.S.V. Hari – felt the need to expand the business when they were in their early 20s. In mid-70s, T.V.S. Giri along with his sons and daughters – Sharada Prakash and Meenakshi Balu – opened a 200 sq ft shop in Mylapore, next to the Kapaleeshwar Temple. They got a small space inside the temple and sold minimal pooja items like camphor, kumkum and vibhuti along with books.

However, the family did face their own hard ships in nurturing the business. “My brothers used to cycle to Parrys Corner, Thiruvanmiyur, T. Nagar from Mylapore to buy goods from the wholesale market. The rest of the stuff was sent to Mumbai. And in Mumbai, my sisters used to take books in baskets to sell in stores,” recalls Ranganathan.

Branching out

By late 80s, they got popular. Ranganathan says, “We opened our first showroom in Mumbai in 1990 and another bigger shop in Mylapore in 1991. We began selling all pooja items, veshtis for Shabarimala pilgrims and eventually devotional cassette songs.”

Since then there was no looking back and they opened up branches in Mumbai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Madurai and Mylapore, Adyar, and Nanganallurin in Chennai.

The devotional song cassette business triggered one of the brothers Aiyapan to begin Music Company – Gitaa Cassettes in early 1980s. By chance they started a radio station – SS International in early 1991 and it ran until 1999.

Ranganathan says, “Our songs were recorded in a studio where the recordings of then FM station used to take place. We approached them and they allowed us to run it in Chennai. We named our radio station as SS International. Apart from devotional music we played movie songs and also aired dramas. I was also a radio jockey.”

The Gitaa Cassette Company also picked up simultaneously. “Till now we have together released over 300 cassettes and CDs of various artistes from Madurai Mani Iyer to M.D. Ramanathan to S.P. Balasubrahmanyam to Nithyasree to P. Susheela.”

Two years back they also came up with an Add Kisok Music download where the songs are arranged in ragas and vocalist in an electronic database. Giri Trading was registered in 1993 and from its inception they have clients from all over the world.

Currently the company, handled by the second generation, is guided by Chairman T.S. Raghavan, COO E. Bala and CEO V. Subramanian. Ranganathan sums up, “We plan to go into private equity and we are seriously thinking of starting another branch overseas.”

Which sectors to invest in

The government is talking big about infrastructural growth, but for me infrastructure is a big no. The sector holds no value. Real estate also holds no good. Some technology stocks, multinational pharma sectors and credit ratings are worth giving a shot.

Short-term or long-term stocks

A value investor will never go for short-term stocks.

Advice to first-time investors

a) You must not make profit in your first investment. Be ready for a loss and thank God if you made some loss. It is only then that you will be cautious while investing.

b) Don’t enter the market with the aim of making money. Let it be a process of making money.

c) Investing in stocks means buying part of a business. Therefore, the longer the period, the greater the gain. Be patient.

d) Investment opportunities do not come everyday, so keep you eyes wide open. Do not blindly listen to what everybody has to say. Make your own wise decisions while investing in the market.

When one should invest

Once you start earning and have a disciplined life, be prepared to put your money in the market.

Why one should read your book

If you are interested in the stock market and wish to understand the follies an investor makes, my book is a must-read. It advices on how to spot investment opportunities and pitfalls in commodity stocks, growth stocks, PSUs, IPOs, sectors and index stocks. It is aimed at stockbrokers, bankers, students of finance, finance professionals and anyone dealing with money.

Value Investing and Behavioural Finance is published by Tata McGraw Hill.

Eight teams participated in the tournament organised by the Ultimate Frisbee Club over the weekend, specifically to introduce newcomers to the action-packed sport that combines fitness and fun. All the teams had been practising for a month now. The winners of the tournament ‘Blitz-1’ team from KRMMC won a closely fought finals against the ‘Whizbees’ team from Valmiki Nagar.

Elated Janani said, “We enjoyed all our matches. All of us practised as a team only for the last three weeks. The passion for the game made us win the tournament. We are looking forward to play the next national tournament.”

Although Blitz-1 were the winners in the finals, the nail biting and longest match of the tournament was the semi finals between Whizbees and ‘Stall 7’ that well lasted for 45 minutes. Each time Whizbees took a point, the Stall-7 (freshers) caught up with them with their excellent dives and catches.

Gopi, captain of the Whizbees, said: “We have been playing this sport to build and maintain our fitness and the tournament was very thrilling. The club has done an excellent work in organising such a kind of tournament where we could learn a new sport.”

All the teams - Blitz-1, Blitz-2, Noobies, Whizbees, Bharani, Ram, Chapati tum jao and Stall 7(freshers) were given certificates.