For a four-letter slang, cool is notoriously hard to get a handle on. There are myriad definitions of the word, but none that captures its meaning in its entirety. But here's the thing: When something's cool, you just know it. Finding cool companies, however, is a slightly more complicated task. For, cool isn't about, say, having a zanily done up office cafeteria, mischievously named conference rooms, or unconventional designations. Cool, when applied to businesses, boils down to two things: What you do, and how you do it. It doesn't matter whether you are big or small, old or new, listed or privately-held, profitable or loss-making. What does is that you must be onto something cool-and, for this listing, be Indian-owned. To compile this year's list of Cool Companies, BT spoke with venture capitalists, analysts, industry experts and seasoned managers. The final compilation is as interesting as it is varied. In the pages that follow, you will find a health-meal firm launched by an IIT-IIM alumnus in response to his own quest for calorie-counted meals; a former MIT fellow and acknowledged innovator passionate about electronics, pushing the boundaries in digital signal processing; a three-month-old start-up coming up with a simple, but innovative solution to make mobile commerce work; and a 74-year-old home-grown fitness brand gearing up to give its global competitor a run for its money.

Needless to say, there were many other nominees that bt considered. But when put through our test for innovativeness and spunk, only 10 held up without any effort. Take a look:

Bringing Web to Life
Interactive marketing on the net gets interesting, thanks to this young firm.

Net's dream merchants: Rao (left; he dropped out of college at 19) and Samaria with their team

WEBCHUTNEY

The internet is the future marketplace and they know it FOUNDED: 1999 REVENUES: Rs 22.5 crore (2005)

Seven years ago, when Sidharth Rao and Sudesh Samaria teamed up to launch Webchutney Studio, they had two computers, a basement office and a rough idea of networking ("we just about connected the two PCs to share files"). Today, the Delhi-based Webchutney employs more than 50 people (most in their early 20s), counts HSBC, Microsoft and ICICI Bank among its customers, and claims to be the only independent "total solutions" web advertising firm, offering everything from interactive marketing to web analytics.

Webchutney has at least two things going for it. As an early bird in the internet space, it has a headstart over competitors, most of whom are divisions within big agencies. Secondly, since internet advertising in India is a relatively small Rs 200 crore-a-year market, the bigger agencies aren't as serious about it. But that's not the reason why clients pick Webchutney. "Webchutney is very innovative in online marketing," says ICICI Bank's Deputy General Manager, Naren Chandra. It is a creative hotshop in its own right. At this year's Abby Awards, for instance, Webchutney bagged both gold and silver for a viral marketing campaign it developed for makemytrip.com. Sure, none of the nine top agencies entered the awards this year, but ask people at the travel portal and they will tell you that the four-part viral campaign (two of them based on the Ramayana) more than deserved the awards. "The campaign was seen by at least 55,000 people," says Sachin Bhatia, Co-founder, makemytrip.com. Such good work has kept Webchutney humming at 200 per cent growth year-on-year. Is that cool or what?

-Aman Malik

The Gold's Gym Wannabe
It is India's only fitness chain, with ambitions of becoming a national player.

Iron man: Talwalkar believes in practising what he preaches; he still pumps iron at 73

TALWALKARS

Cashing in on the fitness craze FOUNDED: 1932 REVENUES: Rs 50 crore

Question: how old do you think is the man in the picture? 50, 55, 60, 65? Even if you picked 65, you are eight years off the mark. For, Madhukar Talwalkar, Chairman of the Mumbai-based Talwalkars Better Value Private Ltd, is just a year younger than the fitness chain his father founded way back in 1932. So, that's the first cool thing about Talwalkars. The other cool thing, and the reason why it figures on this list, is that it is India's only fitness chain, with Rs 50 crore in annual revenues. In other words, it is India's answer to Gold's Gym, the iconic fitness brand in the US, made popular by the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starrer, Pumping Iron. (Incidentally, Gold's Gym has also entered India and has 10 centres in seven cities, including Mumbai and Bangalore.)

Since 1992, which was when it first expanded out of Mumbai, Talwalkars has opened 38 gyms across 13 cities, but has plans of operating at least 100 by 2010. In addition to that, the fitness chain has a tie-up with Kishore Biyani's Future Group to operate gyms out of malls. "We might also have a different brand, we are still planning how to exactly go about it," says Talwalkar, who studied to be a textile engineer, but ended up running the family business.

Even with 100 gyms, Talwalkars wouldn't have scratched the surface of the fitness market. In cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, only 5 per cent of the population engages in any sort of fitness activity. Also, unlike malls, gyms need to be located within a radius of two-to-three km. So, there's plenty of room for Talwalkars to grow. "People are slowly realising that to stay healthy and live longer, they need to work out. And that's where we fit in," says Talwalkar. No pun intended.

-Kushan Mitra

Innovators Inc.
At Signion, R&D is all about cutting-edge innovations.

Playing by its own rules: For Signion's Jayasimha, R&D is about spotting niche opportunities

SIGNION SYSTEMS

Driven by passion and a thirst to innovate FOUNDED: 1987 REVENUES: Rs 2 crore (2005)

In an industrial estate dotted with chemical and pharma units, it sticks out for its sheer oddity. But truth be told, the windmill towering over the Hyderabad-based Signion Systems' one-acre campus is more a symbol of the company's innovative spirit than the source of its power supply. Founded in 1987 by Sriram Jayasimha soon after he returned from the US, Signion's core strengths are in digital signal processing, algorithms and software. Over the years, Signion has delivered a wide range of products, or applications as Jayasimha calls them, such as energy meters, satellite modems, and mpeg video codec to customers as varied as Analog Devices, c-dot and Azonix Corporation. In fact, six of Jayasimha's inventions have got us patents.

How does 16-engineer Signion go about identifying its R&D projects? It largely emanates from perceived needs of industry. For example, the company did not have customer orders when it built the energy meters, but had no trouble licensing them to Analog Devices since there was a clear need. "The key differentiator in our case is that the decision-maker and the financier is the same," quips Jayasimha, an electrical engineer from IIT Madras and former fellow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The flipside to Signion's focus on high-end R&D is that its revenues tend to be lumpy. In 2005, it clocked Rs 2 crore-the most it has ever made. But Jayasimha, who's authored more than 35 papers on electronics, isn't worried about the financials. "There is an excitement that comes with encapsulating a technology in a physical device," he says. It may be a romantic notion, but so what?

-E. Kumar Sharma

Cellular Banker
A mobile payment solution that works.

Ringing in an answer: Paymate's Adiseshann wants to become the Visa and MasterCard of the mobile world

PAYMATE

It has brought the bank to your mobile phone FOUNDED: 2006 REVENUES: Not available

It's less than three months old and makes almost no money. So why is Mumbai-based Paymate on this list at all? Simply because it has come up with a mobile payment solution that actually works. "Paymate is a consumer wireless brand," quips Managing Director Ajay Adiseshann, who spun out the company from CoruscantTec, a similar company he and Probir Roy co-founded in 2003, to facilitate investment by Ram Shriram's Sherpalo Ventures and KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), a top Silicon Valley-based tech venture firm.

How does Paymate's mobile commerce solution work? It's fairly uncomplicated. To start with, the mobile phone subscriber needs to register with a bank (currently only Citibank), and then get a personal identification number (pin) provided by EuroNext, a global financial transaction services company. To make a payment for an online purchase (at present this facility is limited to a handful of websites, including Rediff, Naukri and Cleartrip), the user needs to send an SMS to 7333 with the amount and pin. After verification of the pin, the transaction is approved and a confirmation message is sent to the subscriber. And voila, mobile commerce is enabled at the cost of one premium SMS, or Rs 2. "We want to be the Visa and MasterCard of the mobile world," says Adiseshann, adding that the plan is to facilitate mobile payments at physical outlets and also mobile-to-mobile fund transfers. "I first heard of what Ajay and Probir were doing in March, and I decided to check it out. It did not take us too long to decide to put money in them," says Sandeep Murthy, Partner, Sherpalo and India representative of KPCB, both of which have put a total of $5 million (Rs 23.5 crore) in Paymate. Adiseshann, though, is under no illusion. He admits it will take at least three years to get people to transact via their mobile phones. But he's equally clear that it's the future. We agree.

-Kushan Mitra

Blue Pencil and More
A design and editing shop that believes in content transformation.

Casting the media net: EON PreMedia's Sahib is cashing in on the outsourcing boom

EON PREMEDIA

Taking the cost out of global publishing FOUNDED: 2003 REVENUES: Rs 7crore (March 2007 estimate)

In the $400-million (Rs 1,880-crore) Indian market for outsourced content design and editing, Eon PreMedia is a minnow, but an ambitious minnow. Set up in 2003 by former Himalayan Water CEO, Suveen Sahib, with a seed capital of $250,000 (Rs 1.18 crore then) and a staff of five, Eon already boasts customers such as the Pearson Group, Naylor and Publicis. Its current revenues are relatively small (it will touch $1.5 million, or Rs 7 crore by March 2007), but it has plans of touching $50 million (Rs 235 crore) by 2010. By then the overall market should have expanded to $1 billion (Rs 4,700 crore). "The company aims to evolve into a content transformation specialist with ability to bring down production costs for customers by 30-40 per cent, while structuring and delivering content seamlessly across print, web and cellular interfaces," says Sahib.

The company, which claims to be the only end-to-end production house in the country, has a production facility in NOIDA and marketing offices in the US and London. Although Sahib, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, comes from an FMCG industry (prior to Himalayan, he was with Danone Waters, South Asia), he has put together a top-notch team from the IT/BPO industry. For instance, Karan Puri, Director, was the Head (Global Delivery) at igate before joining Eon, and Rita Kaul, Vice President (Operations), was the workflow and quality manager at another major production house, Techbooks, in the US. Although Sahib wouldn't tell, the buzz is Eon is planning to tie up with a global advertising conglomerate for greater access to the European and us publishing markets. It is also in talks to acquire a high-end media services company in the US. If Sahib's plans pan out, he may have big venture investors making a beeline to his NOIDA office.

-Pallavi Srivastava

Virtual Tutor
When American kids have a math problem, they call up India.

Long distance education: Ganesh (standing) and tutors like Venkatesan have made learning a virtual experience

TUTORVISTA

It spotted an opportunity in America's poor grades FOUNDED: July 2005 REVENUES: Not available

At around 5 o'clock every evening, Lalitha Venkatesan, a 60-something grandmother in Bangalore with 25 years of teaching experience, takes a break from her daily chores to begin her tuitions. However, unlike those of other tutors, her pupils are nowhere to be seen. Instead, Venkatesan logs on to the internet and gets set to take a virtual class in mathematics or English for her American students thousands of miles away. Welcome to the future of tutoring in the US. And creating this future is K. Ganesh, CEO of TutorVista. "American children require extra tutoring, but since it costs $40-60 (Rs 1,880-2,820) an hour, many of them are unable to get it," says Ganesh, a serial entrepreneur who sold his BPO company CustomerAsset to ICICI OneSource in May 2002 for $19.3 million (Rs 94.57 crore then).

TutorVista's business model is simple. It offers its clients (ranging from school kids to middle-aged executives) a one-time $100 (Rs 4,700) subscription package for unlimited tutorials. And its 'faculty', like Venkatesan, is scattered around the country, from Visakhapatnam to Varanasi, and each works from his or her home or a cyber café, accessing a secure online e-learning module to teach the students. (A couple of tutors are even located overseas.) That means, except its 25-person software centre, TutorVista, which raised $2 million (Rs 9.4 crore) from Sequoia Capital India earlier this year, has no overheads. In the months to come, Ganesh wants to both expand his geographical reach to the Far East and offer more subjects such as Mandarin and Spanish. "We believe that TutorVista will usher in the next b2c (business-to-consumer) wave in this industry," says Ganesh. At this point, it seems hard to disagree with him.

-Rahul Sachitanand