Chennai: A frantic drive across the city to buy a honeymoon pack of condoms as a wedding gift for a friend was one of the triggers for 29-year-old Arul Oli to come up with an idea of portal selling personal health product.
“Buying a pack of condoms or any other personal health product is still being viewed with a jaundiced eye,” said the B.E computer science graduate from Chennai. And the response he got from his friends when he told this idea was encouraging enough to log on to the venture along with college mate Vivek Raja.
“It was just then Vivek was back in Chennai after a brief stint in Singapore and we decided to go ahead with the concept in November 2012,” said the CEO of Shycart.com that sells various personal health products including condoms, vaginal gels, lingerie and even pregnancy medical kits.
Soon after his B.E, Arul Oli rejected a campus placement from Dell hoping to do something on his own firm. “Though my dad is a doctor, he has other family business including construction, furniture etc and wanted me to take over. But I did not,” said Oli who kicked off his entrepreneurial stint with an IT consulting firm doing small projects.
Vivek, too by then, was employed with an IT firm in Singapore and both of them were in touch exchanging projects. “So when he returned, we decided to team up and zeroed in on shycart after tossing around a number of ideas,” said the avid trekker.
“We were very clear about being a site for sexual health products and not a cheap porn one selling kinky sex stuff,” said Arul. And this saw them rope in a doctor for consultancy over chats and stack up products such as ovulation kits, pregnancy kits and other related products.
Though initially the firm started only with 100 products from 5-6 dealers, the fervent customer response has seen it touch 1,000 products from 40-50 dealers. However, the two eligible bachelors were overwhelmed when a lady from an interior Kerala village sought their help in procuring ovulation kits.
