Government opens startup warehouse in Chennai
In a pioneering move, the Tamil Nadu government has opened a startup warehouse under the aegis of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) in Chennai last week.
The 80,000sq ft facility would help entrepreneurs set up companies with benefits like subsidised power, e-connectivity, labour, crowd funding and marketing link-ups with leading conglomerates.
Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa said: “We are extremely pleased to be partnering with Nasscom to scale up the entrepreneurial growth of the city. Chennai is emerging as an important location for the startup ecosystem and we hope that this initiative will bring a new dynamism to its entrepreneurs.”
Startups are new companies in search of scalable business modules, mostly online. They became popular in India after 2006, due to its large number of smartphone users and software programmers.

Self-styled godman arrested
A 21-year-old self-styled godman was thrashed for threatening a pregnant woman in a village near Goomidipoondi in suburban Chennai.
Police said the man and his friend had visited Rajeshwari while she was alone at home and forced her to have an exorcism. The two men demanded Rs10,000 as fees and threatened to return the next day to collect it.
Angered by this, Rajeshwari’s husband and other villagers caught the men the following day, tied the ‘godman’ to a post and beat him before handing him over to police.
In a separate incident, a pregnant woman was forced to take abortion pills by her husband’s family, after an astrologer told them she would give birth to a girl at Usilampatti village in Madurai district.

Film comedian Kumarimuthu dies aged 77
Veteran film comedian Kumarimuthu died of old age in Chennai on February 28. He was 77.
He acted in nearly 500 films over three decades. With his squint eyes, Kumarimuthu entertained his fans with his facial expression and iconic laugh. He debuted in Tamil film Ival Oru Seethai in 1978 and continued it with memorable films like Idhu Namma Aalu, Sahadevan Mahadevan, Oru Oorla Oru Rajakumari, Marumagan and others. His last film was Villu in 2009.

Car catches fire on bridge
Traffic came to a standstill when a high-end SUV vehicle caught fire due a technical snag on the night of March 3 on the Dr Gurusamy Bridge at Chetpet in Chennai.
Passersby rushed to rescue Ganesh, the owner and sole occupant before alerting police. Fire personnel took nearly 30 minutes to extinguish the blaze.
In a separate incident, four members of a family, including a doctor were killed after their SUV car burst a tyre, jumped a road median and hit a truck at Ambur about 188km from Chennai.
Dr V Kumarasamy was an ex-director of Chennai-based National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis.

Temple for Jayalalithaa
A ‘devoted’ fan has decided to construct a temple for Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa at Iyyepeddu village in Vellore district about 160km from Chennai.
A P Srinivasan, a Chennai-based advocate, said he was building the temple on 1,200sq ft with private funds and donations of Rs5mn.