Change...

I have often heard that change is good... and when I look back, everything which seemed wrong at its onset has actually turned out to be good. Isn't it strange then... that we are perturbed by the slightest thought of change. The last few years of my life has been quite a challenge with changes happening at the most unexpected moments and with things/people/situations which I almost considered to be permanent! Yes it was stupid of me but I guess it is in the human nature... even the newton's first law of motion states the same... ( A body at rest tends to be at rest.... :P )

From the past few days changes have again started to happen at hz. As expected, the changes are painful and I would have preferred to maintain status quo but... Nevertheless there is no fun in not being subjected to change, after all it is the stationary water that acquires moss and disease causing germs and not the flowing water. Only time will tell whether these changes will turn out to be good... till then I would say "Aall iz well"

Unethical online marketing

Recently there has been a spurt in unethical marketing activities by companies, most notably by justdial and khojguru. I have received emails describing the features of these products from friends who claim they never sent it!

A lot of my friends and colleagues have been receiving non stop, spam emails from companies like snapdeal. As a user I am surely frustrated by this strategy of such companies and the more emails I get the more disenchanted I become towards them. It is very unlikely that I or any of my friends would ever use services like khojguru or snapdeal. While I do agree that email is one of the most cost effective and potent means of reaching out to ones user and informing them about new product features. Over using this medium is surely detrimental as it decreases trust and creates a negative vibe towards the brand.

It is surprising that companies of the size of justdial are following such means to gather eyeballs. It wouldn't be difficult for such companies to invest in an intelligent way of sending email communication. Instead of spamming a single user with mailers of same type repeatedly within a very small duration of time, it would make sense to send different mailers during a longer duration of time. If a user does not respond after sending a mail communication twice or thrice, it would be safe to conclude that he does not belong to the target audience. It would create tremendous ill will if the user continues to get a mail if he is not interested in the product. I hope folks at such companies sit up and think.

Why order food online

While I can advocate a number of reasons why I order my food online ( a little bias ... perhaps due to my association with hungryzone), I strongly believe that online ordering of food is surely going to be the preferred way.
To illustrate the factor of convenience here is a small anecdote, I was recently on a visit to city I have never been before and was staying at an hotel which prided in serving food cooked in coconut oil. I logged on to hungryzone's pizza corner page and placed an online order. The food was delivered on time and with the certainty of not being cooked in coconut oil! Features like this are helpful not only when one moves to a new city but also when you shift from one location to the other in the same city. Have a look, I am sure you would agree....

Reboot....

Its been more than a year since I wrote anything here. When I look back, the year gone by has been undoubtedly the most challenging times of my life and I now stand stronger and wiser than ever before.

This year promises to be another thriller :) the path ahead for hungryzone is not only exciting but also extremely difficult. The learning from the past three years will be put to test, in other words it surely is going to be the test of our endurance and business acumen.

With this small note I am trying to reboot this blog...

my childhood...

I remember having a really tough time understanding maths when I was young, it was very shameful when my teacher would ridicule me in front of the entire class for not being able to add two numbers correctly. There were other students who had similar trouble like me, but in my case the pangs were multiplied because my father is a mathematics teacher. My elder brother was a brilliant student and as happens in most Indian families, comparison with my brother was inevitable and peer pressure was huge. I remember I had secured 36 rank in the first standard, alas there were only 36 students in the class. In the next grade I stood 35th but then there were only 35 students left in the class cause one student had quit the school (Those were the times when both my brother and I would come first in our classes, the only difference being he would be first from front and I first from behind). After more than twenty years now, I still have the report cards which are a testimony to my individual brilliance :).

The following years were very interesting as I alternated with rise and fall in my rank in the class. My parents were terribly confused and so was I... I always did the same thing but ended up with vastly different results. It was not that I was wonderful at sports either, I was almost pathetic in any form of sports. I usually came last in 100 mtrs or 200 mtrs dash and could never complete any distance greater than 200 mtrs anyway. I used to love long jump as it required the least effort among all other sports and some how I would just cross the qualifying mark, however I never won any prize for any sport in my entire student life. One thing I was really good at was watching cricket, hockey, football etc and I was an expert in encouraging and cheering a team but I was never a participating member of any team. I was extremely introvert and would usually spend time alone making toys (like cars out of cardboard boxes), sketching cartoons and painting (usually scenery of a mountain range and a river, with huts and trees). While things did improve with age and I have changed quite a lot from what I was years ago, I still am very introvert and prefer being alone. My friends and family fret about my unwillingness to go to parties and malls etc but that's the way I am. I do hope to improve on this front though, in the same way as I managed to improve my mathematics skills (I won the Best in Mathematics shield of my Batch in Standard 12 :) ).

Alien in my own country...

Why is everyone against people from Bihar and UP. India is a free and united country, why is then there so much public drama over jobs being taken away by outsiders. We show our displeasure when Americans fret about outsourcing jobs to India but are ready to fight our own country men who come in search of a decent living to prosperous cities. It is really sad to know that people within their own country are being treated like aliens. First it was in Assam where poor North Indian workers were ruthlessly thrashed and some even killed, then the chief minister of Goa says he does not want a train from Bihar as he did not want Beggars in his state. It was then followed by the chief minister of Delhi and now the biggest political drama which is happening in Maharastra, especially Mumbai. People are being beaten up, even killed and crores worth of property damaged. Probably the politicians have found a way to engage the youth, having failed miserably in their promise of providing employment.

I sometime wonder whether it is practical to ask all "outsiders" to learn the local language? The migrants from other states are anyways a tortured lot, everyone starting from government officials, traffic police, auto drivers and vegetable sellers fool and fleece them merrily. Every state where some people are crying hoarse over the issue of Biharis invading their cities know for a fact that most migrants end up doing menial jobs which does not threaten the local population in any way. The poor laborers and workers are the one who bear the brunt of such public display of anger. When I think of reasons for such behavior, I get no plausible answer apart from the one of strengthening vote banks. Having branded BJP as a non secular front, the so called secular parties have found a new method of creating a divide among societies. I sincerely hope the Indian public understand the real motif of these politicians and treat them no better than they deserve.

Having said that I really dread for the day when similar events will start enfolding in Bangalore, for I am an outsider who does not know the local language.

Visit to IIM K

IIM K recently organized a "startup fair" and we were one of the few startups invited. This is definitely a great initiative, the idea is to give students a chance to work with a high energy startup.

We reached Kozhikode at 6 in the morning and decided to walk around the lovely campus. The entire campus is situated on twin hills and the view is just breathtaking. This is probably the only campus among all the IIMs and IITs which looks more like a resort than an educational institute.
At around 10:30am we were ready with our stall and spent most of our time chatting with students and faculty members. It was great to meet and connect with some really enthusiastic people. The highlight of the visit however turned out to be a very unexpected meeting with Prof Sunil Handa. To tell the truth I had no clue who he was until our buddy at IIM K gave us his brief intro. He is a champion of entrepreneurship and advocates one and all to leave up the cushy jobs and to walk on the path of entrepreneurship. He asked us some pretty tough questions and was rather very blunt at our responses ( in other words, according to him we had done all wrong by starting up hungryzone, raising funds for hungryzone was another gruesome error and he was literally shocked to hear that we had 12 members in the hungryzone family). He said, this idea cannot be made into a business of 500 crores, well its true, even I know that hungrzone cannot become a 500 crore business in its current form, but with all due respect Sir, you can only see 1/10th of an ice berg from above, similarly the core of our business is still invisible/ unexplored/ unimplemented. Stay put and we will surely change the way India eats!!

While success is important, in entrepreneurship the experience is more important. People usually learn the most when they fail. I do not intend to strike gold with my first venture (well if I do strike gold, I won’t mind at all) and I am not afraid of failing. Failure would definitely be painful but the learnings I am getting everyday is priceless and cannot be matched or taught even by the IIMs.

Coming back to the chance encounter with Prof Sunil Handa, it wasn’t really an eye opener, as we are already doing what he urges others to do but it indeed was an honor to meet a seasoned entrepreneur and champion advocate of entrepreneurship. I do hope that more and more people follow his advice and become employers instead of employees. The rest of the day was spent meeting few old buddies from my IIT days and some enthusiastic candidates. I am already looking forward to such festivals in other top B Schools.