Challenges of a new venture – Part 1

You, probably, already know that I have started a company of my own doing software development work targeting both the Indian and the overseas market. Many of my friends have asked me to write my experiences on starting a new venture. I thought I will start a series to talk about this. This is the first part of that series.

Challenge # 1: Renting Property and dealing with Property Dealers – I know that you will laugh. It doesn’t really look that these things are even remotely related but these are. I would have thought the same, had I not experienced it myself. Some explanation for that – you must be aware that renting an apartment in a good society in India is not that easy if you are single. It’s quite a pain to convince people that you will not cause inconvenience to your neighbors and others in the society by living the life ‘bachelor way’. Now, add to that the fact that you don’t have a job. Business, in India, irrespective of its nature (unless you are Microsoft or IBM or Reliance or another big name) is considered less prestigious by people belonging to the lower class, lower middle class and even middle class to some extent. Now, the people renting out the properties mostly fall into the middle or the lower middle class and you see how difficult can it be to rent out a property for your residence.

Now, add another dimension to that – Property Dealers. Without the fear of exaggeration, generally speaking, I can say that this is the worst class of people I have dealt with. You can count on one thing that they will almost never speak the truth (they do it a few times and you really need to be smart to figure out when they are doing that). When they say the deal is final – they basically mean – yes there is an apartment which is vacant. So, you get the idea. And almost every landlord has problem if both the conditions are true:

1. You are single
2. You are running your own business

Lessons:

• When you rent out a new office, rent out an apartment with it unless you already have a place to stay in that area. It’s quite a pain to do that later.

Next: Challenge No # 2 (Communication Management) in the next post!