Year of experience: President and CEO of multiple companies 40+years Business experience

Ralph Budelman is a visionary who came to India with a purpose to start a business and release the potential of the people of India. He started Stylus Systems Pvt. Ltd., a small software business, in Bangalore in 1999. Outsource2India was birthed out of this software business. His adopted the bootstrapping model which meant starting small and growing one customer at a time. No large investments up front but growing through internally generated funds.

A few years later he started a small venture called Chillibreeze. This was the first virtual content service provider in India. What started with a few people in 2004 grew to be one of the largest networks of content writers in India at that time.

In 2004 Ralph and his family visited Shillong to seek out possibilities to set up a different type of business as he saw that there was talent and potential in the youth of Meghalaya, but they had few opportunities.

Soon, technology began to take the world by storm and in 2005 the family moved from Bangalore to Shillong to pioneer a graphic design venture, while at the same time, running the virtual content writing services. Both services delivered digital content to companies across the world.

In the year 2006, Chillibreeze was officially registered as a private ltd. company in Shillong and started operations from the STPI facility. Ralph’s vision to release the potential of people was largely realized when he handed over the responsibilities of running Chillibreeze to the local youth of Meghalaya.

The rising of the local leadership freed up Ralph’s time and allowed him to explore other untapped potentials of the region. He then set up Zizira, an ecommerce platform, in 2015 to promote the local, naturally grown produce and help farmers in Meghalaya by opening markets for them.

Ralphsees a dichotomy - while there is immense potential in the people of Northeast India as a whole, there are very few private companies being set up in this region, which means few job opportunities. He is hoping to see this change. Meanwhile, he has been training his staff to set golden standards in their work culture. He sets high expectations and guides the employees to constantly learn and develop themselves. He does this by providing opportunities, encouraging employees to take on responsibilities, reading books that impact the business world, believing in the dignity of hard work driven by virtuous values.

He also believes in raising entrepreneurs. With the help of Chillibreeze, he launched The Chicken Wagon, a local food truck, in 2018 in Shillong - it’s the first such in Shillong.In 2019, he sold it to one of the Chillibreeze employees, giving him the opportunity to run his own business.

In 2019, a team of people from Chillibreeze and Zizira began taking trips to remote locations of Meghalaya to discover more entrepreneurial opportunities. That’s how Ralph's newest venture was launched. Muezart is a globalecommerce platform promoting Eri silk of Meghalaya, thus helping the local people who are into sericulture. The platform sells Eri silk cocoon fiber, handspun yarn,and artisan textiles made by local Meghalaya weavers.

Ralph is constantly looking at what next for the betterment of all these ventures, the people who work for them and the local farmers.