Born in Chennai, MV Praveen completed his B.A., English Literature from Pachiayappa’s College (Chennai) and subsequently did his MBA - Marketing at Loyola. Praveen started his career in 1991 with Manali Petrochemicals Limited, a Chennai-based company. Later he worked with Eureka Forbes, Ceasefire and Bajaj Electricals before floating his own venture, MORF, in February 1998.

MORF - In a nutshell

MORF, founded as a proprietorship entity with an investment of Rs.10,000/-, commenced operations as a trading concern selling point-of-entry water treatment plants in Chennai.

In 2003, MORF was incorporated as an unlisted public limited company and Praveen brought in industry professionals as equity shareholders. Thereafter, MORF started selling water purifiers and water treatment plants under its own brand. In 2004, MORF diversified into centralized projects and started executing large water and sewage treatment plants. Organizational processes were soon put in place and operations were expanded across South India.

Between 2009 and 2013, MORF won several industry awards such as UNESCO-Water Digest Award, Aqua Excellence Award and Pentair Water Award in addition to positive credit ratings from CRISIL.

In February 2012, Praveen successfully spearheaded negotiations with Electrolux Home Products Inc, a Swedish MNC and signed a licensing deal with them for manufacturing and marketing water purifiers under the Kelvinator brand in India and Sri Lanka. In July 2012, an agreement was signed with a Beijing-based Company for importing water purifiers under the Kelvinator brand.

In January 2013, Capvent - a Swiss-based PE Fund invested 2 million USD in MORF. In June 2013, MORF also signed an exclusive product supply agreement with Halosource, a US-based technology organization. Objective was to transform MORF into a pure-play water and waste water treatment company with a pan India footprint. In FY 2012-13, MORF clocked a turnover of Rs.10 crore.

In October 2013, Praveen decided to exit MORF and sold his shares to Capvent. After a brief hiatus, he founded KORGEN.

KORGEN - A Brief

Incorporated in Feburary 2014, KORGEN was conceived and built as an integrated solutions provider in environmental engineering. Apart from selling standard, off-the-shelf, award-winning products and equipment from the best global and national brands, KORGEN also designs, supplies and executes customized and technologically advanced projects of varying sizes to meet the specific requirements of our customers..

However, sensing a niche opportunity in the online space, Praveen set up CloudSurge Online Services and started building Demoport, a first-of-its-kind Hyperlocal Online Plus Marketplace for a wide range of home and office products.

Beta version of Demoport was launched in June 2015. Praveen and his team will, essentially, leverage their decades of direct selling experience to deliver a personalized and reassuring online shopping experience to discerning customers across India.