So long, getting back to blogging, and … thank you!
Let me begin with thanking everybody who wrote to me while I was not blogging and encouraged me to come back and blog. This probably has been the biggest break I took from blogging and for the right reasons. I have definitely gotten a lot of work done in the last couple of months, have got time to think about my priorities (other than work), and even took 4 days off to go out of Delhi and travel to Belgaum on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border to meet my sister and brother-in-law.
Now that I am reaching back Delhi tomorrow, I am all geared up again for work, blogging and all the other activities that I indulge in while at Delhi. Funny that even a one day of official leave is so refreshing at times. 
So – before you start reading more posts from me – I just wanted to thank you for writing to me, leaving comments and keeping me in your blog reader list.
Now – just make sure that you start visiting this blog more frequently than you have done over the past few weeks 
What is happening with me? … some random thoughts!
Let me start with wishing everybody a very Happy and Prosperous New Year ahead. I have been very inconsistent with blogging over the last 1 month and I feel bad about that. But the reality is that I have been busy with more than a few things on the professional front (that my company board doesn’t allow me to talk about yet). Once we make sufficient progress and get the product in the ‘talkable’ state, I will write about the entire experience but, for now, I will just write my random thoughts here.
Random Thought 1: Tekriti had further expansion and rented out another office in the same building. There was a week when I didn’t have an official seat in the previous office because the new office was still getting furnished – so I kept moving from one conference room to the other with my laptop. And I used to get happy if somebody was on leave - I had a seat that way. Anyways, the new office has got a lot more corporate look – and I guess I got to change that with putting up posters and other funky things.
Random Thought 2: I am losing interest in blogging. Seriously! I hate to be doing things that I don’t want and I have realized that I am pretty bad at things that I dont like. So, even though I was very busy, I didn’t miss blogging that much - and I did notice a little decline in my blog page views over this period (and that bothered me a bit). I also think that I have received lesser number of emails through my blog in the last 1 month. At the same time, I do think that this is just a passing phase and I will get back to my same old frequency. My blog has been fruitful in more than many ways, but I am reserving those comments for the 2 year anniversary.
Random Thought 3: I need to get more involved in the Delhi’s business circle. One disadvantage of doing a business only with overseas companies is that you don’t develop a lot of business contacts in your country. You do have mentors, appreciators, friends but business-contacts are someone that you don’t have. I believe that I need to be a little more active there. We have started to do some work in the Indian Business space (though pretty selectively) – so I do see that changing a bit over time.
Random Thought 4: I need to get more involved in the Delhi’s social circle. This is actually a continuation of Thought 3, and a more important one. Quite frankly, I think that the nature of my work is making me really boring. And I have started to get scared because of that. There are actually times when I get a little uncomfortable when I am in a place where I need to talk something apart from business, technology. That has never been my style of living and I got to maintain it that way. Oh – and if you are one of the readers who is deep into the Delhi social circle – I will appreciate you contacting me. I promise I will try not to bore you
More later…
Want to get work done? – Take a flight!
Many of us have the complaint of not getting enough work done because of distraction during the normal work hours – through the meetings, small events, coffee breaks or just because of the fact that a colleague has lot of questions. I typically solve these by either working for a couple of hours in the morning from home and/or working late nights, when not many are around.
But it looks that those are all old-fashioned way of doing things. Based on the routine delays of flights to / from the Delhi airport (read here, and here), it looks that taking a flight is the latest cool way to get work done. You still have to reach the airport fairly early because 1) you wouldn’t know about the exact delay until you reach the airport and 2) you also wouldn’t rememeber how many marriages (36,000? 18,000?) are happening in Delhi on that day – potentially increasing your travel time to the airport by 4 times. At least I am careful – after my parents missed their flight last week.
So – if you haven’t already - it’s time now to prepare yourself to spend some time on the airport and get the work done when there isn’t enough (forced) distraction. I did that yesterday when I spent over 6 hours at the Chennai airport waiting for my Indian Airlines flight to Delhi. And since many people were trying to do the same, I had to sit on the floor with my laptop cable plugged to the power-point. It was funny this time – not sure if I will find it funny next time!
By the way – it did appear to me that I was more efficient at the airport than I have been in the office for the last few days
At Barcamp Delhi
Okay – so I did make it to the Barcamp Delhi this time around - just before lunch. I have not been a big fan of ‘un-conferences’ and the only other Barcamp that I have attended was at the Silicon Valley in the US few months back. I was not even present at the last Delhi Barcamp, even though Tekriti was a co-sponsor then – because of time constraint. The Bay-Area one was a big disappointment; Delhi is marginally better – by virtue of being little more organized.
From what I have come to know from people during lunch - Marc‘s presentation has been one of the best so far. Somebody from TCS is speaking currently and the conversation had to move towards the classical debate of “Which is more innovative: Services or Products?”. I will say “amen… Let’s start comparing oranges with apples and decide which is tastier.”
Anyways, I am looking forward to the Daler Mehndi show tonight at Mittal Gardens. I got 4 tickets to the show, courtesy my dad and we are taking Marc there too. Marc was at the cinema day before yesterday watching the bollywood hit Dhoom-2 and he could not sit through the movie. I am definitely hoping the result to be better this time.
Why are entrepreneurs worried about VC involvements?
There has been multiple studies suggesting that more and more businesses are relying on bootstrapping / angel money to start their business and are not too keen on the venture capital, at least in the initial days. A part of this is because of the decreased cost of starting a company and lower development costs because of the open source tools AND the other part is because of the keenness of entrepreneurs to have more control of the company – for as long as possible.
The question to be asked here is: Why are entrepreneurs worried about VC investments, when the VCs truly bring in much more value than just the money?
Guy Kawasaki has a great post on The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) that created quite a buzz in the blogosphere. He writes his thoughts on the right time for a person to become a venture capitalist and points to a test that can help you figure out your VCAT. He stresses on the fact that one should become a venture capitalist after they have had the shiitake kicked out of them.
I agree. It is very hard for an entrepreneur to trust a VC who doesn’t have the necessary background in the activities that the entrepreneur is carrying out and the experience in having run (or be a part of) a startup. Somebody who has never answered the board from a management team’s position almost always never understand how is it to run a company. So, while it is important to have people in your board who are independent Directors and aren’t involved in the day-to-day running of company, it is also important for the management team to be able to respect them. The respect comes automatically when the entrepreneur knows that the board member can (and does) empathize with the issues / challenges faced in a company and yet can give open and critical feedback.
Generally speaking – I am quite neutral about my impressions about Venture Capitalists. In fact, it’s been much more on the positive side than the negative side, based on my interaction. But it’s baffling to know that most companies (funded and not-funded) I have talked to have not-so-good things to say about the VCs. On the other hand – everybody have good things to say about angel investors.
Am I just plain lucky (and I have interacted with VCs who would clearly fail the VCAT)? Or is it that Guy Kawasaki has over-generalized his test? India has its own unique problems. On one hand – we need serial entrepreneurs who have been ‘successful’ in the past and not just the 1st generation entrepreneurs AND on the other hand, we need Venture Capitalists who have been entrepreneurs before.
Unfortunately, I can not think of more than just a few names when it comes to people who have successfully build even a USD 50 million plus business in the last many years. There are people who have successfully exited on a valuation of less than USD 10 million dollar business but I am not sure if I can term them as being ‘really successful’ or not. But this is a never-ending process where more entrepreneurs will exit out of their venture in case of acquisition – what will be interesting is how many of them chooses to start again and how many becomes VCs? Of course – there are other options as well, based upon the interest and the exit valuation.
Low Cost Carriers – Yeh Dil Maange More!
In the first quarter of 2005, after I had just returned from the US to India for good, I was making my first air trip out of Delhi and was flying Jet Airways when I met a friend of mine who had chosen to be an entrepreneur immediately after the engineering school. He was flying Air Deccan and made a statement that “Now that you will be an entrepreneur, Low Cost Carriers are going to be your friend.” I had smiled at his statement and continue to do so as I realize the experience behind what he said then. In the past 20 odd months, LCC airlines have indeed been a good company for me. Almost 75% of my domestic trips (personal and business) have been on the so called No-frills airlines – primarily on Air Deccan and Spicejet.
Without doubt, LCC Airlines have been a tremendous boon to the Indian Aviation industry. Not only these have made the air travel a lot more affordable but have also provided much better air-connection between various cities. Just a week back, I took Indigo Airlines – yet another low cost airline. Following were the good things about the same:
- The return ticket to Chennai was 2/3rd the cost of any other full-fare airlines, and I bought the ticket 3 days in advance.
- The planes were pretty new – which is very different from how it is with Air Deccan. Spicejet also has pretty good planes.
- The flights were all on time – contrary to how other full-fare carriers (Sahara / Jet) operate.
- The air-hostesses were, I must say, pretty cute (Kingfisher will probably be the only competition – with the balance tilting heavily in the favor of Kingfisher). I heard that the group behind Indigo Airlines also has a modeling school. I haven’t verified that but if that is true, I will only say that they have taken good care of supply-demand equation.
However, there are still certain things left to be desired in these low cost airlines. And that is the availability of decent food item that can be bought. Indigo had nothing other than cookies and cold-drinks to sell – that’s pretty lame in my opinion. Why can’t they sell some more packaged, non-perishable snacks along with tea / coffee – I am willing to pay and so were others in the flight who demanded the same.
What’s up airlines guys – am I missing something? I love you guys but yeh dil maange more. It can’t be because of the human resources - the flight did have a decent number of air hostesses for the service.
Spreading the word on the activities of ‘Manjunath Shanmugam Trust’
A year back – Manjunath Shanmugam, an IIM Lucknow graduate and a Indian Oil employee, was murdered by a dealer of an Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) for not accepting bribes and turning a blind eye to the adulteration of fuel being carried out by the dealer. The entire nation was shaken because of that and I specially feel strongly about the entire incident because
1) My brother-in-law is also an officer in the same company and it was discussed a lot more in my family.
2) I am specially touchy about any murder as a result of the societal corruption / terrorism – for the fact that it has directly affected me in the recent past.
But this post is not about my feelings about the incident but I wanted to spread the word on the activities taken by the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust. I got a note from H.Jaishankar today informing me about a couple of nation-wide initiatives in Manjunath’s memory to bring better transparency and improve governance in the Indian corporate and public life.
Copied below are the details. Please spread the word and participate, if you can.
On November 19, 2006 Manjunath’s first death anniversary the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust has undertaken following initiatives.
1) Launch of a national helpline that will help people across the country in using the Right To Information Act. (9250-400-100)
2) Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award.
The objective of Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award is to honour and encourage person/s or institutions who are working to uphold the values of truth and honesty in the Indian public life. We are looking at deserving candidates who have reported and actively rectified/have worked to rectify corrupt practices in government, public or corporate life.
The nominees will be evaluated on the basis of
1. Gravity of the situation and its impact
2. Corrective action undertaken , not merely reporting the situation
3. Extent of difficulty faced by nominee in correcting the situation
The valid entries will be assessed by a panel of distinguished jurors, drawn from the corporate sector as well as public life.
Nominations will be accepted from 19th November, with details and form available on the MST’s website www.manjunathshanmugamtrust.org. The award carries a citation and a cash prize of Rs. One Lakh.
You can help us by nominating a deserving person. If you wish to nominate someone, please download the nomination form and send it to us at the address mentioned. You can also spread the word around through your emails/blogs.
We wish to make this annual award a success, and encourage more people/institutions to work to improve Indian public life.
Technorati Tags: manjunath, corruption, indian oil
I spent some time thinking about the movies-on-demand & DVD rental industry in the last few days and the opportunities / challenges / market size for the same. There has been a lot of buzz recently in the DVD rental industry because of emergence of more than a few companies serving the said market. I had profiled CineSprite, an online DVD rental company, a while back and the comments had interesting information on the other players; this post will try to look at the opportunities in this industry on a whole and these companies in particular.
Traditionally the needs for on-demand movies have been fulfilled by the local DVD rental shops and they have been very generous with the rental rates, courtesy piracy – the first and the biggest challenge for any authentic entertainment business in this industry. These are small-time, unorganized businessmen – and being able to afford large inventory is a perennial problem for them. Companies like Cinesprite, SeventyMM, Madhouse, Catchflix promised to solve that problem by building organized, well-run companies specializing in DVD rentals with an eye on the national market. IPTV and movies-on-demand served over internet by companies like Rajshri offers yet another lucrative option to the consumers. In order to better understand the opportunities - I posed the following questions to Cinesprite (Amit), Catchflix (Vinay) and Madhouse (Nandini).
Q: Who are your biggest competitors – other DVD rental companies / local DVD rental shops, etc? And what are your thoughts on why you are best suited to address the market?
Cinesprite: We are here to serve the needs of a different set of people, the upwardly mobile corporate executives and their family. These are the same set of people who earlier used to rent movies from a local store but are not able to do so now because of their busy schedules. We are trying to close the gap that this set of customers feel (at a conscious or a sub-conscious level they feel this way) – the key ones being unavailability of time to visit local stores to rent or return movies thus paying late return charges, they are more individualistic and want variety in their choice or rentals. Thus we don’t see ourselves in competition to local stores as both are serving different needs.
As far as other online rental companies are concerned, the market is large enough to have any direct market share competition.
Catchflix: Currently, it is a fragmented market to competitors are a mix of high-end movie rental stores, small neighborhood, pirated DVD sellers, and online rental service providers like Seventymm. Here is why we are best suited:
Transactional Pricing: Unlike subscription-based DVD rental models, Catchflix offers a transaction-based rental service (Rs. 99 for 1 DVD, Rs. 149 for 2 DVDs, Rs. 189 for 3 DVDs). Members can keep the DVDs for three days, with free delivery and pickup. There is no monthly commitment.
Next Day Delivery: We promise next day delivery and we also give members the option to choose the delivery date. In the case of other services, members create a queue of movies and just wait for them not knowing when they will get what.
No Membership Fee or Deposits: Catchflix does not charge any membership fee or security deposit which sets it apart from the other service providers. Our members are mostly urban professionals who are responsible folks. Hefty security deposit is a way of making everyone pay for carelessness of a few and puts off movie aficionados.
Website and Service Quality: Our members also find our website very rich and user-friendly and our service very prompt.
Madhouse: Let me answer the latter first, Our USP: Madhouse provides the convenience of multi-touch point interaction to its customers. Madhouse is not an ‘online only’ rental site. Madhouse’s rental service is available for members / customers via web, phone, SMS and physical touch points.
Madhouse offers Monthly Subscription Plans and Individual Movie Packs (pay as you go) providing a wider choice for customers.
Madhouse does not charge a one time registration fee and has affordable pricing for its plans and packs, with nominal refundable security deposits.
The movie rental space is getting all the prime attention, currently. On one side are the organized players, of whom most or all of them are online rental stores, on the other are the local video libraries, who are either illegal entities or have limited inventory. Both of them poise challenges, but it is too soon to say who the biggest competitor is.
Other questions answered by the companies in the PDF file here.
I will not go into the comparison as to which is better since I don’t have a strong opinion but, I am sure, a lot of readers would. From the response of the companies above, it does look that they strongly believe in the fact that the market is big enough and it’s the right approach to serve the market. Given the fact that these companies are targeting high-income society who already have access to high speed internet connection, I feel that their biggest competitor would be IPTV and movies-on-demand programs launched by companies like Rajshri (they plan to have the premiere of Vivah, their latest movie, on http://www.rajshri.com) and not local DVD rental shops. Ajay has come up with an excellent post on Indian Netflixes – will they work? He is very apprehensive about this industry and ends his post with “Enuff said to scare away the any entreprenuer even remotely willing to think about DVD rental as a viable business plan. I wish I am wrong, and this can really become a good business and many of these guys have good exits.“.
My take on the entire thing and the Indian opportunity is the following:
- I see the DVD rental business, in its current model, as being able to attract attention for at least next 3-4 years (provided the investors are willing to keep pumping money), after which the speed / availability of the broadband connection will become a big barrier for these businesses.
- The low-income society aren’t that fashionable in requesting “I want to see the episode 15 of Friends from Season 2″. Their choice is limited to watching the more recent movies and the cheap pirated DVDs from the local DVD shop will work for them (unless we can control piracy – I, honestly, am not so hopeful).
- It will, eventually, be the game of content – when it comes to targeting the high-income society. Getting high-quality content will be much more affordable and easy-to-deliver in the digital format in the long run – which proves advantageous to IPTVs and on-demand movie portals.
- I see all these companies changing / tweaking their business model in the next few years. One model could be to start auctioning the DVDs once it becomes a little old and the normal requirement becomes substantially lower than peak requirement. There could be many more such models, that I am sure these guys can come up with.
- A positive thing is that it will still be 3-4 years before the Indian Netflixes start facing that problem and if one plays the game well, they should have gotten a critical mass of paying customers. Even if I have 100,000 regular paying Indian customers (is that a very bad guess?), I can do many more interesting things with it.
Again, I just wanted to reiterate my belief that a business model that became successful in the US will mostly not become successful in India, as is - with the exact same business model. Tweaking it just a little can yield amazing results.
Promotions: (All 3 companies have given their promo-code, feel free to choose your favorite one)
- Cinesprite gave me a promotion code that gives 15% discount to the first 50 rental subscriptions signed up through this blog. This offer is valid for signups till Nov 25th, 2006 – so feel free to avail it.
Promo Code: LATESTININDIA - Madhouse Signup to avail a 10% discount on the first month rental or the first movie pack.
Promo Code: latestinindia - Catchflix Signup to get Rs. 50 off on your first movie rental. That means just Rs. 49 for a DVD for 3 days with free delivery and pickup.
Promo Code: latestinindia.
Filtering criticism at the critique level or content level?
“I think this is extremely difficult to be done. It’s a very hard problem and it’s better to spend your energy into other things.“
How many times have you heard people saying this? And what is your reaction to the same?
Your reaction to the above statement tells a lot about you AND the person who made the statement. The 3 possible reactions are:
- Yeah, you are right, let’s scrap the idea and focus on something else.
- Just because somebody else hasn’t done it doesn’t mean that I will not do this. Let me show you that this can be done.
- Ok – you have a point. But are you sure that nothing has been done there? Have you done proper research on that or just expecting me to research a little more? Even if nothing has been done – does that really make it unsolvable?
I regularly come across all 3 kinds of reactions – whether it’s in the interviews, general discussions with the team at Tekriti, discussions with partners or discussions with others outside work. And at the same time, I also get to hear the “It’s a hard problem; let’s not do this” statement at least a few times a month. My ego always makes me lean towards “Heh… I will show you that it can be done” approach (We all hate to say this but don’t we feel most satisfied in doing something that people don’t give us a chance for?). But the entrepreneur in me mellows it down and react in a 3rd way (as stated above) – which, in most cases, is the most practical.
What is annoying is that there are a set of people who make a habit out of asking the “It’s a hard problem; let’s not do this” question. And when you ask them the reason for the same – they will either have no answer or will relate to a scenario where it is not applicable at all or the more intelligent ones will point to a study that was published 5 years back.
But why am I writing all this? Oh well… I don’t know. Beyond the fact that I am being a bit sarcastic (sorry!), I am also just reminding myself that “Filtering the good feedback and criticism from the irrelevant ones is very important. The filtering is not always done at the content (feedback) level but at the critique level too.”
Someone told me once that there are 3 types of critiques:
- Your well-wishers, whose criticism carries a lot of weight. They really want you to be successful and will question you for the sake of reality-check. Listen to them. They will, most often, go above and beyond even if they don’t have a business to do so. Their feedback will almost always be priceless.
- Criticism is a fashion / necessity / hobby for them. Ignore them. There are chances that they might make a good point – but “kissing 100 frogs before the prince appears” might not always be worth it.
- Who are more neutral and want to make good points but their reputation is more important to them than whether it benefits you or not. Listen to them, but cross-question to know where exactly are they coming from. You need to be more thoughtful on what to accept and what not to.
Ah.. well! Agree? Trivial?
We are building an atom bomb; you WILL know it when it is ready
In more than a few discussions over the last couple of months, people at Tekriti have shown their desire towards brand-building and be better known. Everybody wants their friends, relatives to know about the company, without explaining. The fact that the person sitting next to us in a train knows about our company is also an ego-booster. Basically, what everybody hates is being in a scenario described below:
Stranger: “Where do you work?”
We: “Tekriti”
Stranger: “amm…what’s that?”
Fair enough! I also hate it when I have to repeat the name, even though the frequency has decreased drastically over the last 20 odd months. What do we do? And how do we do it? Before coming with solutions, let’s consider the following facts:
- A company like Infosys or Microsoft or Google also took many years before they became brand. So, it’s expected that you need to be patient. However, it’s still not a rule.
- Becoming a brand (‘being known’ explains it better here) is a very generic term. There is a lot of difference in who knows you - your prospective clients, prospective partners, top executives, fresh graduates or taxi-drivers. Though it’s always a good feeling to be known by all, everything comes at a cost (money / time) and proper prioritization needs to happen knowing that you have limited resources.
- The time taken before you are known to general people also depends on the business you are in. A consumer-centric business is bound to be known sooner than a business-centric business – that is no measure of how successful the company is.
- Joining a brand and boasting of that is a short-term satisfaction; creating one and living that is a life-long satisfaction.
- Rushing to become a brand is really like creating a hype. Hype is good and necessary, at times, but the message is lost (besides backfiring) if one isn’t ready to live up to that hype. Patience is the answer, my friend.
Having said that, can a startup really make some conscious efforts towards brand-building without going over the top? So, even though, giving advertisement in a newspaper is easy and not that expensive either – it is not the answer. In fact, I will start by saying that I don’t have an answer but, in the true entrepreneurial spirit, will write in some of my personal thoughts as well as thoughts of fellow TeknoKrats – leaving the rest to suggestions from various others.
- Sponsor Technical Festivals at various engineering colleges
- Blogging about the stuff that we do; including the project delivery methodology
- Marketing the consumer projects / products that we are doing – so that it has users in India too and not just the western countries
- Participate in increasing awareness in the society and, generally, be active in social causes.
- Advertisements – direct and indirect. Being more active in open-source educational projects is a good indirect method.
- Build great products
‘Build great products’ is the approach that I like the most. I will end it by saying that -”The fact that one might not know about us is because we are creating an atom-bomb sitting in an underground cave and don’t want to disclose it yet. The voice will be heard wide and loud when it blasts – so let’s all be a little more patient.“.
Of course, the above statement is not supposed to be taken literally. Besides the fact that we have a decent office, as against to an underground cave, we will also make some mistakes and learn other things than just creating that atom-bomb.
P.S: CBI / FBI / Interpol, please note that the atom-bomb is just a symbolic way to represent the products we are building (which happens to be software); please don’t ban my blog.
