, to offer shoppers an alternative channel for its products. The ₹800-crore company, whose products are available in 10,000 multi-brand stores across the country, has been selling on Snapdeal, Amazon, Pepperfry, FabMart and FabFurnish, since June 2015. “ has been live for seven years, it was not e-commerce enabled. We wanted to offer customers some excitement in the form of an alternative shopping channel and decided to re-launch it as an e-commerce site where our products will be offered at the same price as the stores. However, we will be introducing bundled discounted offers of mattresses with pillows, or mattress protectors or bedsheets soon,” T Sudhakar Pai, Chairman and Managing Director, told BusinessLine. The company has set up an internal e-commerce team of five headed by Vishal Aneja, which has built the e-commerce platform with an integrated payment gateway in partnership with Axis Bank. The website will offer 23 mattresses in different configurations of size and thickness;
in foam, spring and coir variants, at prices ranging from ₹7,000 to ₹1.5 lakh. Deliveries of regular size mattresses and non-standard size mattresses will range from 7-15 days respectively. Kurlon will introduce its range of pillows, cushions, bolsters, bedsheets and mattress protectors for sale on its website in two weeks, followed by its range of home furniture next month.“We are in the process of transitioning from a pure play mattress maker to a company that provides home comfort solutions, empowering customers to convert their dream houses into dream homes,” said Pai, who expects to close the current fiscal with a 12 per cent growth in revenue at ₹900 crore. Plans are on to ramp up the number of exclusive franchisee stores – Kurlon Express, from 200 to 500 by March 2016. Kurlon has established a presence in 68 cities pan-India, including the top metros, Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns. Asked why the company had delayed its e-commerce foray, Pai said, “I feared the Indian e-commerce market would go the global way.
Globally, online sales of mattresses contributes to just 0.25 per cent of overall sales. Our attempt to sell through other e-commerce sites has brought in business of just ₹1.5 crore. However, we are witnessing steady traction in mattress sales and have observed that customers prefer to shop for pillows, bolsters, cushions etc, online.”The domestic market for mattresses stands at ₹7,000 crore, of which, only a third is organised. Kurlon dominates the organised space and competes with domestic players like Sleepwell, Nilkamal, Duroflex, Centuary and Peps and international brands like King Koil and Casper. more of your delivered to yourThe requested URL /?page_id=1645 was not found on this server.A rare sketch of Goswami Tulsidas made in the 17th century that is among the collection at Akhara Goswami Tulsidas at Tulsi Ghat, Varanasi. On December 22, 2011 when the only original pandulipi (manuscript) of Sri Ramcharitmanas (also referred to as the Ramayana) dated Samvat 1704 (1648 AD) and a few precious articles of its writer, Goswami Tulsidas, were stolen from the Hanuman temple in the Akhara Goswami Tulsidas on Tulsi Ghat, the Mishra family was shocked.
Its then ‘Mahant’ or head priest, a noted environmentalist and professor at IIT-BHU, Veer Bhadra Mishra, had to face charges of theft conspiracy. It led to massive search operations by the Varanasi police, which was ‘informally’ aided by the CBI and the intelligence agencies as it was feared that these rare articles could be smuggled abroad. It took seven months before the police recovered all the articles — the rare pandulipi of Sri Ramcharitmanas, the piece of Goswami Tulsidas’ boat and a few ornaments of the temple — from two people in Varanasi. “But this theft changed everything…The articles that were so far available for public viewing were safely locked only to be taken out once every year to celebrate the Tulsi Jayanti,” says Professor V.N. Mishra, son of Professor Veer Bhadra Mishra, who is now the ‘Mahant’. Perturbed by all kinds of insinuations that his family had to face and the national and international media coverage, the Mishra family decided to make foolproof arrangements for safety and security of all articles related to Goswami Tulsidas in the temple where the great saint lived, even as they faced pressure from top government officials to hand over these items for greater safety.
“My father thought how could he hand over the articles to the government when his family has been the custodian for centuries. So we brought a special fire and bullet resistant safe that weighed three quintals and placed it inside the temple. All the precious articles were then placed safely.” Those seven months till the police recovered the rare manuscript of Sri Ramcharitmanas led to an interesting development. “As the chances of recovering the original manuscript dwindled with each passing day, I decided to collect as many manuscripts of Goswami Tulsidas works as possible, including Sri Ramcharitmanas, from whatever source I could,” says Dr. Vijay Nath Mishra, a leading neurologist and younger son of Professor Veer Bhadra Mishra. “And since then I have collected 173 handwritten manuscripts from all over India. These include the Ramayana and other works of Goswami Tulsidas. I also found Sri Ramcharitmanas in Urdu that was printed in a Lahore press 90 years ago, which contains rare handmade pictures related to the Ramayana.
I even have manuscripts in Farsi and Awadhi,” says Dr. Mishra.Mahindra Centuro : Detailed Review The recently launched Pantero gave us a clear idea that Mahindra is definitely serious about its presence in the Indian motorcycling scene, and the now the all-new Centuro aims to up the game even further So there we are at the Jolly Grant airport at Dehradun. While we definitely loved the place, most of us were still doubtful about the choice of place to test Mahindra’s latest commuter offering. But an hour’s drive from the airport to Narendra Nagar in the tranquil Himalayan foothills through some of the most lovely paved and not to mention twisty roads immediately laid our doubts to rest. In fact once we reached the resort most of us were itching to get on the bikes and challenge those luscious curves. Coming to the bike, the Centuro was already unveiled with the entry-level Pantero earlier this year with only the latter getting launched. While the Pantero was an improved version of the lets just say ‘not very successful’ Stallio, the Centuro aims to be Mahindra’s flagship 110cc commuter offering not only reliable technology but a lot of firsts for its segment.