Cactus Chords

I had no one to help me out with my business plan, financial projections or presentations. I just had my dear little internet.  I tried my best and put together whatever I could. Eventually when it took shape, it was quite impressive with a 15 page business plan, a 26 slide presentation, a 4 sheet financial projection spreadsheet. I opened all three documents in front of me, admired it for a long time. I could not believe I had made all these documents. I knew they were not professional, they were not what a seasoned company would have prepared. They would have a 100 page business plan, 40 sheet financial projection and 70 slide presentation. But mine basically outlined everything that the investor had to know about the project and us.

Started mailing these documents to investors one by one. Contacted nearly 15 of them by email, out of which I realize that 9 of them do not even exist anymore. They have either left the previous company or gone underground. I then decided to contact NEN. They were a huge network of entrepreneurs, investors and mentors. I was very apprehensive. After exchanging a few e-mails, they put me through a member of the IAN.

IAN had asked for more details about the project. My heart skipped a beat. Could this be it? Is something actually happening? I could not eat, sleep or think straight. I used to sleep with my inbox signed in and my laptop right next to my bed. Then one morning, I wake up to see a mail in my inbox.

Note: The names in the mail have been changed.

Hi Neha,

Would like to introduce to you Mithun, the founder of this venture. Mithun, a pleasure to introduce you to Neha from IAN.  She wants to schedule a call with you.  Could you kindly take this ahead?  All the best.

Thanks and regards,
Meera

My heart was in my mouth. A telecon? Why not face to face? I was always confident in face to face meetings and presentations than telecons. In telecons, they judge you by the voice and in face to face it is all about body language. The team resided in Delhi and thus the telecon. Replied to the mail, fixed a time and waited for it. Informed only my close family and a couple of friends who have been a good support. Prayers and wishes were flowing, but I was literally shitting bricks. From prior experience I had learned, until the cash falls into the account, never bank on anything or anyone.

I thought I would sleep early and have an early morning, but little did I know, my body had something else planned. I could not sleep a wink until 7 am and the telecon was for 12 pm. Wonderful.

What is the worst that could happen? The worst could be that I miss the god damn telecon by oversleeping……

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So we get back to our drawing boards to see where we went wrong and what we should have done. It is not that, we had a bad product, it is just that we approached the wrong client, what does that mean? There was only one answer. We had our target market wrong in the first place. The reason why we started this business was not to benefit colleges that had money in surplus, it was for those colleges that did not have money in surplus and wanted to still provide quality education to its students and prospective admissions. So what was it that we had to do? We had to try and sell it to those colleges. Done, but one small problem. No more money to keep going on.

We did not have an experienced coder on board to complete the product that was left incomplete by the developer who left us. He just upped and left one fine day. The whole team was beyond cheesed off with him but we had no other option but to move on. But how? I had just INR 30,000/- left in my account with which I had to manage rent, server charges (which at this point in time was idle), electricity, water, food, fuel, phone, internet which would easily shave off INR 25,000/-

I could not ask friends or family anymore, they had helped me enough and there is a limit to begging as well. When you are trying to set-up a business, you will have to beg, beg more than anyone would, beg to people you never thought you would beg to. Is that compromising with your morale? Oh please, if I hug onto my morale, I will be buried underground along with my dream in this wicked world of business. I had to find a way out somehow. What could we do? We had two options, rather, I had two options. Either beg some more from different people whom I had just met, but were sweet enough to lend me 10,000 here and there OR try and raise funds from Angel investors. The latter seemed to be an option which we hadn’t explored yet and why? I frankly, do not know. Maybe, we had to see all this before we could muster courage to reach out to these angels.

So I got to work, re-doing the complete business plan, financial projections, presentations, every little aspect starting from idea, how, when, why, what, development, initial set-up costs, overheads, investment so far, from where it came, investment required, disbursement of the same, how long till I break even or make profits, revenue sources, competition, current financial situation, current product standing, marketing and sales strategies , strategic partnerships, other revenue sources, team background etc.

How the hell do I do all this? I did not have the slightest clue. There were a million templates online on how to make a successful business plan, articles on what Angels look out for in a business plan. Some said, Angels realize that you are a start-up and it does not matter if you make mistakes or do not know how to make a business plan or financial projections, they need to see how much you know about your product, the business, the competition, the differentiators and entry barriers, how you will make money and how you plan to grow which I realized is not completely true. All the good Angels are hidden somewhere and you would be just lucky if you find them. Other ones that are there either, ironically, would not be interested in the same domain or say that we will wait for a bit until you prove the potential of the product. Ahem!!! isn’t that why I am approaching them in the same place, so they give some money and help me prove the potential of the product?

But it was a fact and I had to face it, either my product was just shit and would not work whatsoever or i was just not lucky enough. I tried to force myself to believe in the former, but I just could not. I had nearly all my time and money invested in this to think it was useless. Could be a great mistake or a brave move. We would have to wait and see. So I sat down to think what would happen, in case I did not get any investors. Scenarios kept zooming through my head, people making fun of me behind my back, start looking for a job, get into the rat race, running away to someplace far and live my life.

One thing you never run out of is emotional support, everyone you know will say, “go on man”, “you can do it”, “you are smart”, “it will work out” , but financially, not all. Of course, why would they. Even they have their expenses and why would they bank on a once failed entrepreneur?  I myself wouldn’t. Entrepreneurs become really selfish and self centred when it comes to building their businesses. They wonder why people can’t see the obvious potential of the product. But that is where the difference lies and the reason why you are a budding entrepreneur and they are seasoned businessmen. They have seen the in and out of business and can weigh a proposal by just brushing through it.

All said and done, I had to forage for myself. But this emotional support itself can replace financial support for a while because it is all about not giving up. I nearly thought of shutting shop as everyone around me connected to my life directly was getting weary. My family slowly started dropping hints, how long do you want to try? do you still think this will work? My younger brother was bombarding me with mails everyday asking me to do my MBA abroad. But for that too, you need close to 20 lakhs. We couldn’t afford anywhere close to that now.

My father was the only blind support I had who kept telling me, go ahead, if you think this will work then try, do not give up. After every rejection, he used to say, what’s the use if things came easy? You need a success story and not an easy story.

Keeping all this in mind, I decided to approach angel investors, Venture Capitalists (VCs) were out as we were too early to be funded by VCs. Made a list, researched and mailed them. This was it for me, make or break.

Either get funded and do well and get out of the hardship that I have been trough the past 3 years non stop or make a drastic decision to shut shop and get a job and earn some steady money. The mere thought of it sent chills down my spine. But I had no other choice but to do my part, believe in my product blindly and give it my best shot.

image reference: http://filingbankruptcyinsouthcarolina.com/images/bankruptcy.gif, http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad218/GangFights/Walking_Away_From_Everything_by_vam.jpg, http://www.symposiumz.net/wp-content/uploads/marketing.jpg, http://www.offprint.co.uk/Images/revenueRising.jpg, http://mamco.in/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Team20puzzle.28162911_std.jpg, http://www.thevarguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/channel-profits.jpg

Bharti Airtel has warned us that 3G mobile services will not be friendly to the end-user pockets, especially for subscribers in metros, as service providers shelled out a pretty handsome amount for the spectrum.

The amount for spectrum that has been charged for the metros Delhi and Mumbai is close to Rs 3,500 crore each. Rs 700-900 per month is the cost an end-user will have to bear if the operator has to just break-even after the input and licensing costs, mentioned Sunil Mittal, Chairman and MD of Bharti Airtel. I do not even want to think how much it would cost post the margin for the operators.

Bharti Airtel won 13 circles, including Delhi and Mumbai, paying Rs 12,295.46 crore, the highest among service providers.

The company could not achieve the objective of a pan-India 3G foot print as the prices rose beyond a reasonable level due to various factors like the auction format, a severe shortage of spectrum and also ensuing policy uncertainty, it had said.

And what’s next 4G?

As you move on with your entrepreneurial life, you find yourself facing a plethora of situations. One day you will be basking in the glory of success and the next day you find yourself almost drowning. Post you getting familiar with this constant turmoil, you realize a lot of things, some that were right in front of you and you missed and some that were hidden someplace else and you deciphered them.

One of the lessons I learned with my current venture was when I was faced with a question by one of the angel investors. After a couple of telecons and a few mails we had a face to face meeting. He asked me, “Mithun, from what I have seen and heard, your product has potential which is why we are having this conversation today. But let me ask you one question, does your product solve your  problem or does it solve the customer’s problem?”

I had done my market research and had an answer to this question which luckily he bought. That is when I realized how imperative this question was to a start-up before it went all out for its venture. And for a fact, I hadn’t thought of this. I was just lucky that it worked out and people started using it. But what if I was wrong and people hadn’t used my product? Then this question would have been that one question I could call as the crux of my business case analysis prior to development.

8 out of 10 start-ups come up with a product because it was a solution to the problem they were facing and wanted a solution to it and that is why most of them do not work because they can not find a group of people (prospective customers) who share the same problem. They lack the community that would use their product in other words, their target market.

Every product that is made has a market, there is nothing like a useless product. The key is to find the people who can use the product, once you have that figured out, the next step is to make them use it. Whether it is for free or not. Revenue models will fall in place once you have a modest user-base. Why go far, look at Twitter or Facebook or You Tube. These were products that had a mass appeal whereas another product might just have a state appeal or further restricted to a city or merely a small community. That is enough, trust me.

You do not always have to be the next Google or You Tube or Facebook or Twitter or My Space.

A few things you must check out on the to-do list before getting your product up are;

- Develop a product that has at least one differentiating aspect/feature compared to your competitor

- Do not hesitate because there are other players in the market. It is all about the target market

- Ensure that you have a community around you just before you commence building your product or as you finish

Once you have the product developed;

- Give it to them for free (pilot phase). Let them play around with it. If it does not work out there, it won’t anywhere, stop running behind it

- If it works with them, find a way you can make them pay for it. Even if it is a small amount, generating revenue is always good

- Consult industry experts, friends, mentors on how you can better the product and what would actually make the users pay for it

- Focus on quality, deliverance and most importantly look and feel because 80% of the users of any product are laymen and purely judge a site by its look and feel. If you have a differentiating aspect, you might still lose a credible number of users if your site is not presentable.

All my views pertain to low cost products that do not require heavy investment and resources. A simple yet effective solution to a problem.

Cheers

image reference: http://images.clipartof.com/small/15663-Nerdy-Man-Standing-In-Front-Of-Mathetmatical-Equations-On-A-Chalkboard-Clipart-Illustration.jpg, http://www.princetonol.com/groups/blawenburgband/bb%20group%20sm.JPG

Now, of course, this is not something that I compiled myself. It is something that has been on the internet for ages. But shamefully, I hadn’t come across it do far for many a reasons, topping the list is, ignorance.

But to save my shame, I luckily knew 60% of the information mentioned here. But the rest of them anyday is knowledge and I, for a fact, felt immensely proud to be an Indian.

If this helps you in the same way then go ahead, spend 2 minutes and read this completely. For the ones who know everything mentioned here, keep it up

Facts about India

Q. Who is the GM of Hewlett Packard (hp)?
A. Rajiv Gupta

Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the today’s computers run on it)?
A. Vinod Dahm

Q. Who is the 4′th richest man of the world?
A. According to the latest report on Forbes Magazine, it is Mukesh Ambani

Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world’s No.1 web based email program)?
A. Sabeer Bhatia

Q. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT & T-Bell Labs is the creator of program languages such as C, C++, Unix to name a few)?
A. Arun Netravalli

Q. Who is the new MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000, responsible to iron out all initial problems?
A. Sanjay Tejwrika

Q. Who are the Chief Executives of CitiBank, Mckensey & Stanchart?
A. Vikram Pandit, Rajat Gupta, and Rana Talwar.

- We Indians are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America , even faring better than the whites and the natives.
There are 3.22 millions of Indians in USA (1.5% of population). YET,
38% of doctors in USA are Indians.
12% scientists in USA are Indians.
36% of NASA scientists are Indians.
34% of Microsoft employees are Indians.
28% of IBM employees are Indians.
17% of INTEL scientists are Indians.
13% of XEROX employees are! Indians.

Some of the following facts may be known to you. These facts were recently published in a German magazine, which deals with WORLD HISTORY FACTS ABOUT INDIA .

1. India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.

2. India invented the Number system. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.

3. The world’s first University was established in Takshila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects.. The University of Nalanda built in the 4 th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

4. According to the Forbes magazine, Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software.

5. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.

6. Although western media portray modern images of India as poverty striken and underdeveloped through political corruption, India was once the richest empire on earth.

7. The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh 5000 years ago. The very word ‘Navigation’ is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH.

8. The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is now known as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars have (1999) officially published that Budhayan’s works dates to the 6 th Century which is long before the European mathematicians.

9. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India . Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11 th Century; the largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Indians used numbers as big as 10 53.

10. According to the Gemmological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds to the world.

11. USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion amongst academics that the pioneer of wireless communication was Professor Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.

12. The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.

13. Chess was invented in India .

14. Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted surgeries like cesareans, cataract, fractures and urinary stones. Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient India .

15. When many cultures in the world were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley ( Indus Valley Civilisation).

16. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.

Quotes about India .
We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
-Albert Einstein-

India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition.
-Mark Twain-

If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India .
-French scholar Romain Rolland-

India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.
-Hu Shih-
(former Chinese ambassador to USA )

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG, THE LIST COULD BE ENDLESS.
BUT, if we don’t see even a glimpse of that great India in the India that we see today, it clearly means that we are not working up to our potential; and that if we do, we could once again be an ever shining and inspiring country setting a bright path for rest of the world to follow.
I hope you enjoyed it and work towards the welfare of INDIA .

Say proudly, I AM AN INDIAN.

image reference: http://navvis.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/indian_flag11.jpg

Dell streak will hit the markets in Europe tomorrow. The unlocked piece of the 5 in 1 tablet cum phone will be priced at $500. This tablet is Android based and has been well awaited to hit the market. Dell being one of my personal favorites will sure make a mark with this piece. Though $500 sounds a little too much for an Android based tablet, the rave it has created will have quite a large number of customers flocking to the Dell stores.

But what is more surprising is that in the UK, the Streak is being given out free coupled with a 2 year mobile-data contract or data-voice contract with O2. Here are some of the hardware specs of the Dell Streak

- A sharp 5-inch capacitive multi-touch WVGA (800×480) display for a great full-screen experience watching video or browsing the web

- Fast 1GHz Snapdragon ARM-based mobile processor from Qualcomm

- 5 MP autofocus camera with dual LED flash that offers easy point & shoot capability and quick uploads to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and more
- VGA front-facing camera enables video chat functionality down the road
- A user-removable (and replaceable) battery
- A 3.5mm headphone jack means many of you can use the Dell Streak as the music source (and more) in your car
- Integrated 3G + Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + Bluetooth 2.1 (think headsets, external keyboards, stereo headsets, etc.)
- UMTS / GPRS / EDGE class 12 GSM radio with link speeds of HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / HSUPA
- A user-accessible Micro SD slot expandable up to 32GB. That means you can store lots of movies, music, photos or other kinds of files.

On the software side, here’s what you can expect:

- A customized multi-touch version of the Google Android operating system that features Dell user interface enhancements

- Access to over 38,000 apps (and growing) via the Android Marketplace
- Microsoft Exchange connectivity and integration through TouchDown
- Google Voice support
- Integrated Google Maps with voice-activated search, turn-by-turn navigation, street and satellite views
- Quick access to activity streams via integrated social network app widgets like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

You can read more here

Bubble Motion, the Sequoia-Capital funded, voice blogging site has launched Bubbly in early February. Imagine Twitter with no text and just voice. Ok, now this isn’t something people didn’t think about and eventually one company has come out with it. And they have come out with it pretty well. Kudos. But how well will this fair with the users?

Around 80 celebrities are already using the service and more are joining each week. They have also roped in content owners like BBC, Bloomberg, UTV, and Balaji Telefilms, among others.

Besides India, the company is in the process of launching the service in 6-7 other major countries throughout Asia and expects a similar success.

Say you register with them and you start following celebrities for a subscription charge per month. They start posting voice messages and you will receive an alert. It is free to send messages, but the user will be charged to listen to messages. Would you call that number and actually listen to every little thing that person says? Yes, there will be an initial craze because you will be able to hear your favorite celebrity’s voice, but then will you listen to it even 1 year down the line or even 6 months? What if you call the number and waste money and listen to a message that might be a reply to someone else’s question. I would not. I would get tired of voice messages and revert to Twitter, where it is free, much easier to follow and actually view the tweets than have to call a number to listen to a post of every person.

But a twist to this is Bubbly is planning to introduce video blogs  and text alerts as well where users can post video blogs. This can be an interesting feature whereby celebrities post their home made videos. Since the userbase to Twitter is huge, Bubbly also stands to gain from this. They can ride on Twitter’s success story and eventually become the mobile Twitter for users.

But it is crazy the way things become a craze overnight. Whether Bubbly becomes a craze or not is something we have to wait and see.

They have a pretty good revenue model though. They get a pie of every call that any user makes from the mobile operator, which from a company point of view is a sensible move than what Twitter did. But Bubbly has learned from Twitter’s monetizing delays.

CEO of Bubble Motion, Tom Clayton said, “As listeners get exposed to a wider variety of content, there will be many creative ways people will use voice-blogs to build community – from politicians reaching voters, school leaders communicating with parents, employers messaging their employees, sports enthusiasts sharing their analysis with other fans, comedians telling jokes, investors sharing hot tips – the range will surprise us all. This is the sort of service that once people get a hold of, anything can happen.”

All the best to the Bubble Motion team. It is indeed a smart product for mobile users.

image reference: http://media.photobucket.com/image/mobile%20calls%20frustrated/ohkulala/1%20hit%20wonders/frustrated1.jpg, http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2010/03/11/BubbleMotion_Logo_RGB_Medium.jpeg, http://rlv.zcache.com/overnight_success_tshirt-p235032639472238010tmn7_210.jpg

Start-ups are cropping up in every nook and cranny of the nation. The last 5 years has seen an exponential growth in the way people have started looking at their lives. They are letting go of their cushy software jobs and embracing the tough life of entrepreneurship. I recently had the opportunity of visiting a few entrepreneur meets and conferences where I was surprised to see the number of youngsters who had well paying jobs and have let gone of it to start something on their own. I do not mean to come across as an aged entrepreneur, am miles from it, but in my case, I never worked in a professional organization and can’t even imagine myself in one. But these guys have been there and they let go of it. More than the business they were starting I was more interested in how they mustered the courage to leave their jobs.

One such person I met was working in a well known software company for  2 years and was being paid close to INR 45,000/- after which he realized that the money was nothing when he was asked to work 7 days a week. Reach office at 7 am and be back by 11 pm. On weekends, he was asked to work from home and not go to office as if that was exactly what he needed. He was telling me, everyone thinks getting a job in these companies is a prestigious thing. It was, it used to be. But now, there are so many such companies and competition has hit sky limits and the employees suffer. The problem with such huge companies are that they forget the fact that employees are humans and not work machines. When he hit his top, he moved out without even thinking and he says, ”The feeling is heaven like. I had forgotten how it was to sit at home on a weekend. I had forgotten the taste of beer with friends. I had forgotten what having fun was. Now I indeed feel alive” He is now being jobless for 4 months and working on his idea. Wish him all the best. Even if this does not work out, he will be happy doing it. That’s the beauty of entrepreneurship.

Angel investment is growing in India, but at snails pace. On the other hand VC’s from Silicon Valley are quite active in the Indian market. What start-ups need are Angel Investors before they can knock on doors of VCs. Why is that? Here are a few points that explain why;

- VCs are a consortium of investors that invest anywhere between a million dollars to 100 million dollars or even more depending on the strength and sector of the business, whereas Angels could be one single investor or a few investors who invest anywhere between $50,000 to close to a million dollars again depending on the strength and sector of the business.

- Angels are more of a learning curve for start-ups and VCs are the latter part of running the business. Expansion to be more precise. VCs may also come in if you have the next big thing. And according to all entrepreneurs, their product is the next big thing

- With VCs you have to have a fool proof business plan and without that it is as good as going in to get shot down whereas with Angels, they know you are a start-up and they understand you might have absolutely no clue on how to run the business. I know so many companies that have gotten funding without a business plan whatsoever. They are ready to help you through this so you can stand on your feet. This doesn’t mean you take Angels lightly. They understand and will help you only if they believe in you and your business. But it would be easier to bag an Angel than a VC when you have just started out.

- To raise VC money, you need to perfect a few factors like preparing the right pitch, know your business inside out, know your competitors, have s strong and professional business plan, marketing & sales strategies in place, future revenues, client retention methods and many more. Basically, you need to know your business and where it stands and its growth potential inside out. This is not easy when you have just started out. That is where Angels come in. They are aptly named Angels because they indeed come down on start-ups like angels when you just need a few lakh rupees or a few thousand dollars to kick start your business.

To get a better understanding, Angels are like your nursery and elementary teachers that take your hand, walk you through each and every chapter, individually, giving you special attention before you move onto the higher classes where you have to prove yourself and either stand out or end up being one  of the back-benchers. Angels instill the core lessons that you need to learn before you knock on VCs doors otherwise, if you directly pitch to  a VC, they will shoot you down before you can utter the first word because they are investing huge amounts of money in your business and most importantly, YOU.

Start-ups in India, need more Angels than VCs and at present, they are scarce. But there are a few active Angels that want to help start-ups. I would encourage anyone and everyone to contact these Angels if you have an idea. and want to see it grow into a successful business. In case you need any help with the initial steps, do contact me. I would be more than glad to point you in the direction I know best.

Here are a list of Angel investors in India with their contact details. Hope this post has helped anyone looking for information on Angel Investors in India and how they work.

List of Angel Investors in India (click to download PDF document)

image reference: http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/4564131/2/istockphoto_4564131-angel-with-money.jpg, http://narracom.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/knocking-on-door_000005666099small.jpg,

Pardon my silence on this subject. I was a bit too busy with work off late and a few hiccups that are never ending.

Alright, so we were waiting for the result of the meeting with one of the top most group of institutes in the nation. The meeting though went well, we were faced with a lot of queries that were unexpected and frankly speaking utterly useless. Some of the queries like

Q: Why would we want to share even some of our study material with any other student in any other college?
A: What could we possible say to this? We told them we give you the option of choosing to share or not which led to the next question.

Q: Then why do you have a feature like this in the first place?
A: Duuuuuuh…for the ones who want to share something!!!

Q: What is the difference between your portal and a portal that we get developed from another company with the same features?
A: The fact that, you hadn’t thought of any of this till now, until we walked through the door and now since you have the money to invest in building a whole new thing just like ours but for yourselves alone.

Q: What about copyrighted content? What if one person takes one line of matter from a copyrighted document and adds it in his document and uploads it?
A: We just smiled at him. I did not want to waste my breath on answering such arbid and baseless questions. Pull out a line from a document and use it in his document? Jesus Christ. Unless it is a quote, there is nothing we can do about it. But I had to say something. I replied, “with all due respect sir, if we find a solution to that, we will be the first ones in the world and that is kind of impossible to track down one line from a document that has 50 pages.” To which his reply was, “Then please go ahead and find a solution to that.” This is when I realized that, he was toying around with us.

Q: You said this initiative is to make content available to those less fortunate students in other areas, what about rural areas that do not have internet?

A: Now, is this guy for real? Just because there is no internet in rural areas did not stop any other company from inventing products, does he mean we should only launch this when there is internet in every nook and corner in India or does it mean that he is not satisfied with our vision? This time, I looked him dead in the eye, shook my head, smiled. I wanted to say, “Thank you for your time sir, I wish I had had this meeting with you a few months earlier, it would have saved me a lot of time and effort.” Instead, I just said, “Thank you for your time sir” and walked out.

There were a already 2 institutes of Symbiosis using our portal on a trial basis and the students were registering, but when it came to the whole bunch, then problems started. He made it clear to us that, what we had has never been done before and also can be a success, but he wanted the one thing we did not have, TRACK RECORD. He asked us, “Say, I purchase your product and use it and it crashes, then the 19 institutes will call me an idiot for purchasing it. What can you do about that? Do you have any colleges who are using it on a daily basis?” The answer to this was obvious,we did not have anyone using it on a daily basis as it had been less than 2 months since we launched it. So, we gave him an option to use the portal for a period of 3 months on a trial basis and to see whether it works, to which his reply was, “But what if it crashes then?”

At this point in time, he was playing with a paper cutter and flicking it on his chin as he spoke. I felt like getting up and jabbing that paper cutter up his hairy nostril. I contained myself and replied, “Isn’t that the whole idea behind the trial period? If it doesn’t work, you are free to trash it and not purchase it SIR.” He looked at us for a while and said ok fine. I will have to discuss this with the rest of the colleges and we can not take a decision until July as we are really tied up till then.

After that meeting, I did not know if I was to be happy or dejected. Somehow, I was content, not because we did not get the deal then, but because we got to meet the head of the decision making board who was a jerk of the nth order. And this was not just my opinion, even the guys who worked under him who pushed our proposal ahead said he was.

They told us not to worry and they would try again. But we did not push it. We thanked them and walked out. So all the months of waiting and nail biting came to a grinding halt. But looking on the bright side, we had, from stupid questions, some features that we could integrate to our portal. But this was pretty much out. Aayush was the most dejected and was cursing everything that he could think of, even the dogs on the road. But we just couldn’t give up. There would be so many who put you down. I had set out to do this and I would till it fizzed out completely and I had nowhere to go. Otherwise what is the use of all that I worked for all these months?

So Pune trip kinda froze there. Had to concentrate on smaller institutes. This made us realize that our target market had now shifted from tier 1 institutes to tier 2 and tier 3 institutes because that is where this would be useful. There, they did not have funds to maintain a platform like this on their own, or have a technical team. So we started working on that. We had lots more to learn and had the eagerness and energy to learn.

Now, when I sit and write this blog, trying to track back the smallest details of what happened and how far we have come in such a short time, I feel proud of everything we have achieved. None of this would have been possible without the help of the team.

So we had a team meeting to see what was the next step…. and the advice one of our team mates gave just turned the whole thing around. That is why I am so glad that I don’t feel like am surrounded by idiots, but instead I feel like the idiot because of all the brilliant minds around me……

image reference: http://zipline.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/stupid1.jpg, http://smspitara.com/upload_image/questions1.jpg, http://www.filetransit.com/images/screen/38018248b89fc8538c792db719ea689d_3D_Matrix_Screensaver__the_Endless_Corridors.jpg,