The Story of Chillibreeze:
Content Writing Services from Bangalore & Shillong, India

Chillibreeze was launched in 2004, by Ralph Budelman an entrepreneur from Chicago.

A spin-off from Stylus Systems, a custom software development company, Chillibreeze has the advantage of the offshore outsourcing knowledge of Stylus Systems and 7 years of experience in working with customers worldwide.

If you are curious to find out how we evolved as a company, you are in luck. Ralph, our founder and CEO loves to tell this story.

Chillibreeze is growing organically at a steady pace. So this story (written by Ralph in 2006) might not be our latest one.

Over to Ralph...

Every company has a story. Our story at Chillibreeze is short because we started in June 2004, yet our history is longer because we have evolved from our parent company, Stylus Systems Pvt. Ltd., established in 1999, but more on that later. Let's first explore our core.

Click thru Our Story at a Glance:
How we started — Meet our Core Team — Our Core — Our Location — In the Pipeline and for more of the story read The Secrets to Our Success. A quick look at the Chillibreeze management team in 2007.

The Chillibreeze case study says a lot more about who we are and how we fit into the "Flat world" concept.

Read news stories about Chillibreeze here.

I'm Ralph, Managing Director of Stylus Systems Pvt. Ltd.
I have a passion for exploiting the power of the Internet and starting
value-based businesses. This vision has now become "Chillibreeze"
where we focus on content services and e-Publishing.
(Read more about our social entrepreneurship vision)

Meet Our Core Team:

I, Ralph, started Chillibreeze last year and started Stylus Systems and Outsource2india in about 1999. I enjoy taking credit but if the truth be known Joanna, my wife, did half the work and so did other directors and owners. And when Joanna was not working she was taking care of Bonnie, our daughter, who was born at the exact same time.

I have discovered a little secret. Create a team that is smarter and harder working than you. This formula is really working in Chillibreeze. You can see that I am very proud of the CORE TEAM of ladies that run our content division. Let me introduce them to you...

Joanna — From Louisiana now living in Shillong. They are both small towns with friendly people. Joanna has 3 brothers and a sister and a great Mom and Dad (and husband). Did you know she is an artist? Her daughter has her same spunky personality. Bonnie is 6 and considers herself an Indian, more specifically a South Indian. Joanna is good at lots of things and can't be put in a box. She helped start Stylus Systems in our house in Babusahibpallia the same month that Bonnie was born. She now heads the Chillibreeze Design Division in Shillong.

Dr. Roopa Nishi Viswanathan — A medical doctor with a Masters in Nutrition from UT-Austin. — Writers Network Coordinator and Chief Content Officer — Ralph was getting tons of emails from writers but for some reason connected with Nishi via e-mail and she started writing. She flooded the Chillibreeze website with content and got us on our feet. Today Nishi keeps all of us on our toes! As we say at Chillibreeze "she's our 'real' Boss!" and on her way to making Chillibreeze the premier location for medical writing.

 

Vilasini Kumar — A Master's in Math with experience in the area of community communication — Project Coordinator and a Business Strategy sounding board. We met once then she wrote an article on solar stoves. Then we defied all HR practices by hiring her on intuition. Between her and Nishi, they have jump-started Chillibreeze and are constantly improvising and setting up systems to help us grow. Or is the other way around — Chillibreeze is growing because of Vilasini's professional execution and warm leadership personality. Today, Vilasini is our COO.

Radhika Chitnis – B.A. in English Literature and Post-Graduation in Mass Communications. Presently enrolled in ongoing courses with the University of California, Los Angeles – Extension. Her marriage in 2001, to a Software Engineer, brought her to Los Angeles, California where she presently works virtually as our Lead Sales staff and Project Coordinator. Radhika had been writing for Chillibreeze for 6 months. We all had our eye on her and once our customer work load grew beyond the above team — Radhika became our first choice! She had already proven herself as a professional creative writer. Today we see her skills go beyond writing as she demonstrates fantastic business sense and an excellent ability to capture our customer’s writing requirements!

Nishi, Vilasini and Radhika make up our Core Content Team at Chillibreeze. With support from our highly efficient project management team, they coordinate our "Chillibreeze Hubs" and our network of over 250 tested Chillibreeze associate writers from India and abroad who work with us on customer projects. Chillibreeze boasts of a database of over 1,500 independent writers awaiting the opportunity to be listed as Chillibreeze associate writers.

Chillibreeze and its virtual management style places us on the cutting edge of the future work model. Our management challenges are growing, and through our diverse core leadership team we are rising to higher levels of leveraging global talent and building Chillibreeze into a strong content service company that attracts talented and motivated people.

Keep your eyes on Chillibreeze — and watch us prosper together in a holistic way (character, skills, financial, social).

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Our Core

We focus on content development and publishing services with a passion for "exploiting the power of the Internet and value-based business excellence." This may set us apart from other similar companies. This focus on Internet content is guided by a business strategy.

This management style or strategy is derived from a combination of two Harvard Business Review articles and one book.

The Quest for Resilience by Gary Hamel and Liisa Välikangas
In a turbulent age, the only dependable advantage is a superior capacity for reinventing your business model before circumstances force you to. Achieving such strategic resilience isn't easy.

What Really Works by Nitin Nohria, William Joyce, and Bruce Roberson Separate the facts from the fads: A groundbreaking, five-year study reveals the must-have management practices that truly produce superior results.

Re imagine by Tom Peters
This inspirational book outlines how the new world of business works, explores radical ways of overcoming outdated, traditional company values, and embraces an aggressive strategy that empowers talent and brand-driven organizations where everyone has a voice.

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How We Started

The first staff of Chillibreeze (2004). Meet Rajathi and Joanna

Ralph Budelman with CEO of Stylus Systems Pvt. Ltd.	Chillibreeze was part of the bigger Stylus Systems team of 60 + staff.

Chillibreeze Management Team 2007

Chillibreeze leadership team attending January 2007 strategic planning meeting.
(L-R: Ralph Budelman, Joanna Budelman, Usha Ganesh, Vilasini Kumar, Shiv Nair, Roopa Nishi Vishwanathan, Suneethi Rao)

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Started in 2004 as a spin-off from Stylus Systems Pvt. Ltd., Chillibreeze today operates our Content Division with a Core Team who coordinate our writing services through our large network of Indian writers. The parent company, Stylus Systems, is well established and has been doing software development in Bangalore, India for global customers since 1999.

We were pioneers in India in exclusively using the Internet to market and sell software development services via the Internet. Our core competence has been using the Internet to effectively communicate with European and North American customers.

Since then we have expanded to offer a full range of services via our web site www.outsource2india.com. Here again, we use the full potential of the Internet not only to market outsourcing services, but fully execute projects, often without ever meeting our customers. Chillibreeze has developed a large portion of the content for the outsource2india.com website.

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Our Future

My role in the team is to provide strategic direction. I help create some structure and decision-making processes. Mostly I work on marketing using our website.

Right now one focus is establishing and grounding our fast-growing Chillibreeze Design Division located in North East India. We hope to expand this into an Architectural CAD and Animation department. We are excited that Chillibreeze can bring jobs to NE India. Take a look at ne-is-now.com. This website communicates the hope that we can be a model of success. We want to pioneer an excellent successful company that will prove that NE can prosper like the rest of India.

The next expansion will be to offer digital content for sale on a new site. Just pay and download articles, e-Books, software, photos, book summaries, tutorials, Power Point presentations, digital art and graphics. Some of this will be available under the Creative Commons licensing plan.

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Our Location

Our Content Division is truly virtual, with an accounts office operating out of Bangalore, India. On the other hand, the Chillibreeze Design Division operates from a traditional office setting located in Shillong, North East India. This area of India has not benefited from the outsourcing boom and needs a pioneering company to break the ice.

Moa Longkumer was the first North Easterner to officially join in November 2004. Moa started in sales: Vector and Imaging, and now, a year later, heads up the 3D graphics and animation team. Today our design team is 20+ strong. Read more about us on www.360flat.com and www.24point0.com.

Besides providing content and design products and services, Chillibreeze hopes to leverage its Internet knowledge and location in India to provide some redeeming social value. Read more about our social entrepreneurship vision.

Read about the social entrepreneurial arm of Chillibreeze.com — sustainability, innovation and communication. 

Projects in the pipeline:

Chillibreeze.org - Chillibreeze wants to leverage its core writing and graphic competencies to solve social problems. This means chillibreeze will tap the skills of the company to solve health, poverty and environmental problems in India by producing content that will
a) educate motivate and inspire global readers
b) encourage Indian writers to write or publish
c) facilitate ebooks and PowerPoint presentations for free download
d) use our knowledge of the Internet to reach globally
e) use our graphics abilities to communicate
f) network people who are looking for jobs or opportunities in this area.

Social Entrepreneurship Vision Statement – Chillibreeze believes, as a business, it can perform a role as a change agent by collaborating with NGO, Non Profit organizations, academic institutions and companies to encourage business as a means of solving basic human problems.

Chillifreeze.com - Launched in 2007, this website is packed with value for the Indian writer. Users at Chillifreeze can take writing courses, get their articles evaluated, attend workshops, interact with their peers both online and offline, get their books published and get all the help they need to enhance their freelance writing careers.

Well, that is it for now. You can see we are one part tech—one part dot com-one part green - some Gary Hamel with a little American and Indian thrown in to spice things up.

We welcome you to use our services but we are also happy if you track with us on any of the above initiatives. If you are an MBA or journalism student in India, UK, Europe or America, or for that matter anywhere in the world, complete our writers form.

Please feel free to contact our core team through this simple form on this site.

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