For companies who want to be innovative in every aspect of its business, sometimes things may start with the name itself, as is the case with consulting firm Cooolio. Founded by Gappan Annamalai, founder of Stratburg, Cooolio provides services like product research, simpler development services as well as complete product development on mainstream media to represent it on smartphones and the internet. They have also diversified into offering services such as web development, custom ERP implementations and ad operations. Gappan wants to make Cooolio synonymous with “home of innovation”, the extra ‘o’ in the name is an emphasis on the extra cool quotient of the company. Cooolio’s main focus is gaming, eCommerce, travel, entertainment and sport and has plans to cater to the global audience; alongwith a strong focus on Asia.
Gappan Annamalai
Gappan is convinced of the opportunity in Asia, because of the burgeoning Internet and smartphone users. 45% of the 975 million Internet users are from Asia Pacific and 55% of the 2.8 billion mobile subscribers are from Asia, cites Gappan. Started in April 2010, Cooolio is a branch of Bangalore-based Stratburg in Hong Kong. Gappan speaks about the Hong Kong connection, “Hong Kong is a major Asian hub for online startup businesses and Asia is currently the heart beat of the world with two of the world’s largest mobile markets — China and India.” The ease of doing business, favourable government policies and the various tools and facilities that aid new businesses foster, are his reasons for choosing Hong Kong.
Some of Cooolio’s key management staff is also based in Hong Kong and have a strong network in the region. Cooolio recently registered two subsidiaries in Hong Kong – Champion Wave Ltd. and Big Mark Enterprise Ltd. However Gappan continues to have his base in Bangalore for the availability of quality talent and the low cost of operation. All the key functions for the startup like development, programming, analytics, research and accounting will be handled out of Bangalore.
Gappan, a graduate of Ohio University and has worked with GE, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Ford and AOL in the past. The young team at Cooolio also comprises of many ex-AOLers, whom Gappan has managed to convince to cross over. A bootstrapped venture, Cooolio is looking for the right investors. They will be focusing mostly on Asia Pacific and the Middle East in the early stages and will later take their offering into more mature markets in the West. Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, India, Japan and China will be their key markets in next 3 years, says Gappan.
