Hello, agony uncle!

Three school friends from S.B.O.A., Anna Nagar, who have experienced similar anxieties in their teenage days, are out with an online platform, www.teenfrage.com, offering help and remedy.

Teenfrage is the start-up led by Edwin Solomon (senior associate, Cognizant Technology Solutions), Vishnu Charan (an entrepreneur who runs a school in Chennai) and Shankar J. (MS graduate).

At first sight you might dismiss them as too young ‘Agony Uncles’ for an age group which needs a more professional approach to confide in their problems, but the trio claim they have experienced every phase of a teenager, and have more reasons to tap students with their online network.

Online comfort zone

“A majority of schools in Chennai do not have counsellors, while 24-hour helpline numbers are least approachable,” says Vishnu, who holds a Management degree from Symbiosis Institute of Management, Pune. “We may not be professional counsellors but then we don’t hesitate to seek help from experts if the queries are out of our purview.”

It’s more than a year since the website was launched, though they have not marketed it aggressively, and now they have more reasons to get active. Teenfrage (’frage’ is a German word meaning ‘talking’) is one among the 72 start-ups short-listed for the ‘Tata-NEN Hottest Start-ups of the Year’ award.

“The biggest achievement of ours in the last one year is that we are getting more questions, more hits and more referrals,” says Edwin, who sowed the seeds for the start-up before roping in his friends. Today its biggest competitors are columns in magazines and online portals, but they position their website as a one-stop-solution for teenagers.

Marketing lessons

An initial investment of Rs. 1 lakh was pooled in from their personal savings to start the venture. The three recall those initial days when they had to promote the site among youngsters, when they stood outside schools distributing pamphlets to students.

If that was their early lesson in marketing, then designing the website was equally difficult. “We got the website designed by a young team of designers and we spent nights making sure each and every section/tab appealed to our target group,” says Edwin.

Teenfrage is in the process of forming a company. Meanwhile, they are also planning to launch it in a commercial way soon, online advertisements being the main source of revenue. “We hope to make profits in a year’s time and also get VC funding to scale this model further,” says Vishnu.

(If you are an entrepreneur with a successful business model or know one, write to us at firstinnings@goergo.in).      Photo: R. Ravindran