Tier 1 IT Outsourcing company - These are the big guys of IT outsourcing in India and responsible for putting India on the map when it comes to IT outsourcing. Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Polaris, Cognizant are a few and notable examples. But, overall, any IT outsourcing company which typically has more than 2500 people on their rolls is classified under this category. These guys have very strong processes, from generating and capturing sales leads to closing of leads, delivery and employee training and performance appraisals. From a client’s perspective, these companies make a very strong fit for somebody who needs process excellence more than the product excellence. Testing and maintenance projects are the best fit here.

Tier 2 IT Outsourcing company - These are typically the companies who have focused on 1-2 verticals and have developed strong expertise in these domains. They thrive mostly on the testing and maintenance projects from companies who find Tier 1 companies too big for their comfort and budget. Obviously, if your contribution to a company’s top-line is very insignificant, there are chances that you will not get the necessary attention that is required. Most of these companies will have some certification, whether it is in the CMM series or ISO series. These will typically be between 350 - 4000 people strong. They will also be interested in taking development work, as long as it is not too small.

Tier 3 IT Outsourcing company: This is where the companies really starts becoming a company. The size typically range from 75 to 500 and they rely on the individual brilliance of a handful of people rather than the processes. The company has figured out that to move to Tier 2, they need to have stronger processes. These companies thrive on the new product development projects and most OPD (outsourced product development) companies define their strategy when they were still in the Tier 3 classification. In the Indian market, there is a lot of technology talent in the companies in this tier - what they lack is the expertise in sales and marketing and bandwidth for project management. Only those companies who are operating in certain niche segments here (instead of doing everything), move from Tier 3 to Tier 2.

Tier 4 outsourcing company: These are either the entry level startups or your mom-and-pop shops. More than a company, this acts more as a partnership firm. Every founding member will be involved in active project delivery and the company has not even gotten a chance to think about the processes. They are struggling to find people, retain people and unless they move fast and reach a critical mass - they will either cease to exist or convert themselves to a mom-and-pop shop. They are good for projects where the client need certain number of people on retainer for some time.

A small graph representing the classification is shown below (you will notice that the membership of these tiered companies is fuzzy instead of being discrete).

Next on, I want to talk about where Tekriti currently is and also a few possible business opportunities in this sector.

Not only is Mr. Bajrang Bishnoi my father-in-law, he was also a noted poet, painter and a very creative person before deciding to spend his life establishing a Handmade paper factory. He has invented a lot of things in handmade paper creation and I got a chance to look at his factory a couple of weeks back - but I think that his other creative skills could have fetched him far more adulance and wealth. After all, not many people get a chance to be profiled in “Reference Asia” amongst “Who’s who of Asia” when he was still in his late 20s. Click on the photo below to see the larger image.

Long live Dad - it’s a privilege knowing you.

So, what really happened? Did I get too busy? Did I get bored of blogging? Did I find some other way to unwind and share my thoughts? The answer is a combination of all this, however the real fact is that too many things happened in my life in these last few months - both professionally and personally. The words may not do justice to all that happened, so I will take the help of pictures in the interest of writing less.

Tekriti has a new website and now we do talk publicly about the different businesses we are in and different things we have been building over the last few years. We also moved into a new office where the entire building is occupied by us - it’s a good feeling to have a personal cabin which is bigger than our entire first office meant for 7 of the initial Tekriti employees.

It’s worth a look if you haven’t visited the site in a while.

The 2nd update is much bigger, actually much much bigger. I GOT MARRIED. Paavani and I, after a courtship of almost 3 years, finally got married on 13th March and had a good vacation after that. I came back to work only late last week and, I guess, still am not very attentive at work. Life is good, so far  

Babit from NEN informed me a couple of weeks back about the re-design of the site that they had launched - which is essentially a very complete online resource for entrepreneurs in India. I have been refraining from writing about it for some time but the more I go through it, the more I think that this is an awesomely well done site and acts as a complete resource for the Indian entrepreneurs - particularly the first timers. Having spent more than a couple of years running Tekriti, I wish that this existed earlier for me to have easy access to certain things that I learnt the hard way.

All in all - highly recommended for all entrepreneurs in India to bookmark this. They have articles / answers from VCs, have a weekly coverage on various startups and tons of articles / presentations on various things that a first time entrepreneur wants access to.

What I see missing is a link to their RSS feed that I could just subscribe in my blog aggregator that doesn’t force me to go to their website all the time to read the contents.

Book 1 - Give me back my Guitar

The author is Ravindra Potharaju, who is the founder and CEO of Bangalore-based PEM Training Solutions. It’s written in a very simple and sweet language and is a collection of age-old stories in a new light where Ravi has emphasized that managing the personal energy is what defines the quality of life and success associated with it. If you are like me who doesn’t exactly read a book only for its literary values, you will like this book. It makes for a good and light bed-time reading material. The Hindu has a 1-page write up on the same. For more details, go to the book website at http://www.givemebackmyguitar.com/

Book 2 - How Innovators Connect

Rohit Agarwal from TechTribe is one of the 2 authors of this book and is about the entrepreneurial experiences of several innovators in Silicon Valley and India. It attempts to showcase innovation through experiences of more than 40 successful innovators in the 2 geographies. This is a nice book to keep as a reference and not necessarily finish reading in its entirety. If you are in a similar space, it always is useful to learn from the experiences of somebody who has ‘done that, been there’. Go to http://www.howinnovatorsconnect.com/ for more details.

Do let me know if you decide to follow my recommendation and read these.

One question that I almost always get asked is “How can I trust my clients, customers, business partners, lawyers, accountants, employees and who not?”.

That is a very valid question. And this is something everybody faces - and I can relate it with my experiences. But let me turn around the question and ask you - what option do you have other than to trust? When you are small, you neither have the bandwidth or resources to hire ‘experts’ or expensive lawyers for documenting everything. At the same time, for the lack of experience, it’s almost impossible to think about a list of situations that one could run into - and hence it’s rather foolishness to even attempt doing it in its entirety. But here are certain things that one should do:

1. Spend money on the legal contracts: When you are small, it is very common to sign contracts without seeking legal opinions - as it helps save you a lot of money. Don’t do that - absolutely don’t do that. If you are signing a similar 2nd contract, it is still OK to not get it whetted by the lawyers but do engage the lawyers the first time you are creating a particular kind of contract. You wouldn’t realize the importance of it until you become a little bigger and then know the potential downsides of not doing that.
2. Spend time and keep an eye on all the major aspects of business: It’s good to follow the policy of ‘Divide and conquer’ with different heads for different aspects of business. But have regular meetings with the different heads and open all books (including yours) for scrutiny by all major stakeholders from time to time.
3. Create a Shareholders Agreement: This is probably much more crucial than what it seems initially. You could survive even if your biggest customer leaves you stranded / cheats you or your accountant did something to maximize their benefits. What will hurt the most is if you or your business partners lose trust in each other. Remember that we all are humans - there will be times when the misunderstandings will creep in. So, it’s important to create a shareholders’ agreement soon enough which exactly talks about what are the authorities of each person and the team as a whole. A good analogy is that if you keep the money lying on the floor with nobody watching, many people will turn ‘thief’ and steal but very few of them would actually do it if they know that somebody could be watching.
4. Communicate regularly with the stakeholders, customers, team-members and others important for your business: Yeah - follow all processes, have the legal systems in place and sign the right contracts but there is nothing to replace the regular communication with all the parties involved. Most people wont do anything bad with somebody they really treat as their ‘friend’. Communicate with people and be their ‘friend’ and you will mostly be in good shape. 

In spite of all this, trust people. As long as you exercise a bit of caution, you will be much better off by trusting people rather than spending your time and energy thinking about what can go wrong and who can do wrong. This is not to say that people will not cheat you - THEY WILL - most of the times unintentionally but sometimes (sad) intentionally. And if it happens, just increase the level of caution that you exercise but dont get too paranoid. Try your best to forgive and forget it and worry about the common long-term goal. But, yes, don’t hesitate in making your concerns very clear to the offending party and / or severing your ties if you absolutely cannot withstand what has happened. No loss will be as big as losing out when you become bigger.

Whatever you do, please remember that you should forgive me for being really irregular with blogging BUT dont forget even if you can’t necessarily find a common goal Instead, keep visiting the blog. I do intend to be regular, though not necessarily frequent.

Following are the brief Job Description of a few positions that we are trying to fill:

1. Product Managers: You will be responsible for the product management of an ambitious Tekriti product that is in the pre-alpha mode. You will be responsible for all aspects of a product development including, but not limited to, brainstorming on the product roadmap with the management team, participating in technical architecture sessions, interacting with the Information Architects and the front-end team for the prototyping as well as creating / tracking the product schedules for the team members. Somebody with a technical background, particularly in .NET architecture, is a big plus.
2. Project Manager / Group Project Manager: You will be responsible for the project management of one or more Tekriti projects being carried out for clients. An ideal person should be a multitasker, process-oriented and a great team builder. You will spend a lot of time on talking to the clients, creating business proposals, creating / tracking schedules, interviewing candidates and generally think about team building. Strong communication skills is highly desired. You should be a good user of technology, and be curious enough to try out various web applications in the web 2.0 space.
3. Interface Designer / Information Architect: Your responsibility will be to coordinate the content, navigation and design for a variety of Internet business solutions. A strong ability to conceptualize and develop all aspects of software interface designs is required, with special emphasis on handling the project single-handedly without much of a supervision. Good communication skills (written and verbal) is important.
4. HR Manager / Training specialist: If you are an exceptional HR manager who is looking for a challenging task of refining the HR processes of a fast growing company with a strong belief in the “people are our greatest assets”, we are very interested in talking to you. You should also be prepared to conduct soft skills training, refine the New Hire Induction programs as well as training need assessment for other trainings and help organize it, potentially with the help of external trainers.
5. .NET Developers - If you are passionate about building world class products (doesn’t everybody say the same!), that has the potential to change the way certain businesses happen and have expertise / experience in .NET / C#, we are very keen on talking to you.
6. PHP Developers - If you live and breath open source and have expertise in applications created usign PHP language, we are continuously on the lookout. At Tekriti, you will find some of the best PHP developers in the region.

You can continue to look at our careers page (to be updated soon) for job-openings, but I will make sure that I am personally involved in most of the hiring for the above positions for the next few weeks. Apart from the fact that we are a group of passionate people working towards a goal, have way too many parties / outings, have high energy with a great work environment - another advantage of joining us / helping out with forwarding the job descriptions is that you will help me find more time to blog

To apply, either send an email to careers@tekritisoftware.com or personally to me at ashish@tekritisoftware.com

Today is 2 year birthday (or should I call it Anniversary) of our company ‘Tekriti‘ as well as my blog ‘LatestInIndia‘.

Warmest wishes to all Teknokrats and thanks to all the well-wishers, friends and family. A ’surprise’ cake cutting ceremony happened in the morning - the big party is due sometime in the next month.

Update: Manish just blogged about the Tekriti T-shirts distributed on the occasion. Here is the design of the t-shirt:

Let me ponder more of my thoughts here. In the last couple of months, I have gone in the introspection mode more than a few times - either because I was doing a lot of things but not able to focus enough on one or because I had to continue learning the art of ‘losing control’ as Tekriti grows or because I was not able to spend enough time on blogging, or may be because I was plain agitated at my incapability to increase the speed at which we were making progress. Don’t get me wrong - we are making enough progress and that will be evident by some announcements we make this year but, knowing where we want to reach eventually, no speed is really great.

Introspection is beautiful - it forces you to think about ‘Why’ and not just the ‘Hows’. So - I did ask myself again - why? Why am I doing this? Is it for one of the things: Name / Fame / Reputation / Money - what? Of course, I am not a saint to not think about these ‘earthly’ things - so it is not just because I want to benefit the mankind (it’s another discussion how Tekriti will even visibly help the mankind!) or whatever!!

Quite honestly - I don’t know the answer. I don’t know what keeps me in the office till quite late or forces me to continuously aspire to give my best or want to see not only myself but everybody at Tekriti successful. I don’t know why, for the first time in life, I am happy to see my name second to something - Tekriti. I really don’t know what gives me kick but what I know is money isn’t that. Money is important, lucrative and nice but just doesn’t have that power. Money just doesn’t give the kick!

Reminds me of something that somebody very wise told me once - I dont want money because I need it; I want to make money because I want to be considered ’successful’.

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

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…

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

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.

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.

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:

1. 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.
2. The planes were pretty new - which is very different from how it is with Air Deccan. Spicejet also has pretty good planes.
3. The flights were all on time - contrary to how other full-fare carriers (Sahara / Jet) operate.
4. 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.

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.

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

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)

1. 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
2. Madhouse Signup to avail a 10% discount on the first month rental or the first movie pack.
   Promo Code: latestinindia
3. 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.

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:

1. Yeah, you are right, let’s scrap the idea and focus on something else.
2. 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.
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?

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.

Lately I spent a bit of time looking at the indian job portals and the trend continues there. Naukri and MonsterIndia continue to lead the race and the argument on who is bigger doesn’t cease to stop. My personal experience says that there is little to choose between them and we have an account with both these providers (that I am dying to get rid of as soon as other providers match up in the resume count). Both Naukri and Monster work decently well for people at entry and junior level but the job consultants still work better for senior level people. There are other job portals like JobsAhead (acquired by Monster), TimesJobs, CareerIndia, ClickJobs, etc which are also trying to have a piece of pie (which is substantially big). ClickJobs impresses the most because of its user-interface, some premium services and customer-focus.

Job board is another way the companies in the US have targeted the market, specifically for a niche segment. 37Signals and GigaOm have that offering in the US and the similar stuff has been provided in India by JobMilan (I am sure there are others also but I am just not aware).

Yet another site that I want to mention here is CampusChai which is operating in the same space but claims to be focusing more on the college campus placements than the general job search.

First impression: I was pretty excited after reading the byline but the first page disappointed a bit. The employer registration didn’t work for a long time - the AJAX call was made displaying the status but the page did nothing more for the first couple of minutes. The site, in general, has a clean interface which is very encouraging and shows signs that the stress will be laid on the usability and not the plethora of features (hats off, if you can keep it that way).

When I signed-in to the site as an employer, this is the screen I saw:

The site has a pretty good use of AJAX which makes it highly interactive and responsive. I liked the usability aspects of the site which tells me that the implementation team has done a pretty good job. What I didn’t like is the fact that even though they want to specialize in providing tools for managing campus placements easier (that also is a tough job because of the education needed for the college placement officers - who, in my opinion, will not be too easy to convince), they started with being yet another job portal. Of course, the number of resumes is also very limited currently which doesn’t make it really valuable currently. And the dynamic display of jobs in the front page can be done away with - it’s distracting to say the least (changing the job on page-refresh is ok, abusing AJAX is not).  It’s early days but I see some good signs there - like they have a blog at http://campuschai.wordpress.com. My recommendation: Come on guys, you need to live up to the reputation of ‘Campus Recruitment done better‘, as claimed in your byline. Leave the act of following to the big guys - you can’t beat them with the unchanged rules. Change the rules - that is your best bet to win it!

Oh, and as is the trend these days, they also have a promotion which gives you a PS2 if you are the one who finish the contest with the maximum number of points. I am a loyal customer of Microsoft and don’t want PS2 - do I have a choice?