Oh man!
Am I the only one who doesn’t have a life? Here I am still in the office and trying to sort resumes and talk to various people on the phone for the role of senior technical project managers and visual designers / thinkers for Tekriti. Some of these resumes are from friends, some from references and some are just picked up from the job portals. But I have failed miserably – many of the people I tried to speak to were either busy with family, didn’t answer the phone or preferred to be called during the business hours. I told myself that I will start calling after 8 PM and before 9.30 PM since that is the time most suitable for many but, may be, I am wrong. Or may be it’s just that the other people give a lot more weight to the life outside work – something I have been unable to do and, surprisingly, don’t seem to mind that. And, luckily, somebody I care a lot about doesn’t mind it too much.
Ashima does a tremendous job in scheduling all the interview calls but we thought that we will do it ourselves for the senior folks – only to end up getting disappointed. I guess it’s better for me to go down and have my dinner and then get back to some project management stuff. All these calls are going to be pushed for tomorrow.
But, yes, if you are or know of somebody who is fit in the role of a Technical Project Manager with a company of the size of Tekriti, please contact me at ashish AT tekritisoftware DOT com.
HI Ashish,
Good Luck with your venture. Just came to know of yours thru PVS of VC Circle.
Having started my venture 5 years back and now running a good team in US and India in the IT space, I think you are on the right track.
Your product for the Apartments, condos and societies does have a lot of commercial relevance for USA as here it nuclear families and even Apartment social netowrks lack good network medium whose void can be filled with your product.
1) Try pitching it to Real estate & Construction companies both big and small entities as they own and operate various such condos/apartments in US.
2) Use a good data mining and web search expert working in Call centre area, in India, for starting your database compiling search for FLORIDA/CA/ARIZONA(Phoenix)/VA/ Washigton areas as your target market. Tehy have hot real estate booms in progress and Real Estate Companies are desperatly trying to differentiate among themselves with unique services for their clients and buyers.
3) Am I right in stating your product is more like a INTRANET FOr ZIPCODE based networks?
4) Being constrained for resources, the best approach would be to put up a Voice enabled Telemarketing guy/gal(or yourself) calling US companies during day time(night for you) in this space and trying to pitch your product to the Main IT guy.
PLEASE READ THIS BOOK…
Selling To VITO (The Very Important Top Officer)
by Anthony Parinello
Even I underestimated its potential, until I realized how helpful it was in teaching how to how not to write your pitch to your potential clients
5) See if any synergy can be worked out with online Realestate portal like ZIP Realty, Inc. etc
6) Also look at REITs and Realestate based VC websites as they have a portfoilio of clients to whom they could pitch this, if they like your product.
7) Last, and most important, Never look at India your market, look at US and the scalability, the time, effort is worth more pitching to companies here as they are more IT savvy and more professional.
The good thing is Realestate in India has also been liberalized and some professional groups like GODREJ Properties, Mahindra Real estate, Raheja, Hiranandani group might be more recepetive to your idea. If the Hiranandinis can work out your product for their Mumbai(Andheri)POWAI venture, they you have hit pay dirt.
Even if you give it free to them stating it is a Beta trial and their feedback would be helpful to you to improvize your product further, you can use their name for bagging more projects from other clients as their name sells and your products needs more such names to hit it off well.
Look at http://www.indiaproperties.com , http://www.99acres.com for getting access to various Real estate construction groups in India in various cities
Good Luck,
Madhu
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Oh man!, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong