Few months ago, I had a client from Israel who made us sweat for over 3 months to develop his project - a video sharing site which utilises the hosting infrastructure of Youtube, ESPN and acts a aggregator of Videos in niches. We couldnt come to terms with the client, the client defualted. My teams effort for 2 months and investment of $4000 gone down the drain.

So, this is an experiment so see if I can recover some bucks ! This will also demonstate the quality of Application we can deliver and given money , we can deliver even youtube .

Olympic2008site is my new experiment. I thought the time is right to collate Olympic Videos.It captures and collates all the action in Beijing 2008, Olympics, Olympic News and yet is not intensive on my resources.  If this thing works , I will replicate this script over 100 times to create more such vertical video aggregation sites for Cricket, F1, etc.

Lets See how it works.

Being a CEO of firm with 15 people under you, working at various levels and functions, its so difficult to control each of them , ensure most of their work is productive, advice them timely, monitor them constantly, pamper them occassionaly, Pep them up on a routine . To run any enterprise, you need very robust PROCESSES. Lets Define my understanding of processes:

Processes:  No Rocket science or anything to do with codes but are pure logical statements, set of rules or an algorithm which can take care of any thing that is routine.

Robust Process : Every rule has an exception, but there are instances where the frequency of exceptions is high but variations among execptions are low. These execptions can thus be again programmed, or be bound under a set of rules. A Robust Processes addresses these execptions and thus appears as extending flexiblity to the executioner.

Suddenly Why am I talking for these processes ?

On Monday, I happened to meet one Traditional Businessman, put to Indian Context , who runs a jute mill another traditional business with a typical 8~10% Y-o-Y growth rate, matured industry, perfect competition. This person is just 35 years old, considers himself to be the most savvy of his fellow businessmen as he uses email to expedite his communications. Yes, He has a blackberry

Apart from the golden Spoon, there is much more a traditional businessman inherits from his predecessors. He Inherits Processes which have been tweaked, tested and adapted over thousands of years and practiced to perfection.

He runs a Jute Mill with over 500 looms, he is an HNI - so obviously he is a busy man. I reached to meet him at 5 pm , as adviced by him over the phone. I sat in his cabin on the other side of the table, on the corner chair  totally unnoticed for over 2 hours. Infact, I was really enjoying sitting there and observing how  this person conducts business. He sits in a small closed chamber in his head office, hardly gets up and moves around, but he still is in total control of his mill, godowns, inventory, sales, and even in tune with Labour Sentiments. How does he manage that ?

I observed that only He in the entire organisation uses a green pen/ or a green ink. He goes through the Day books, the daily bills, everything nearing the end of the end. Morethan, bothering about the numbers, he carefully pauses to notice the body language of the person who is presenting him the numbers. He personally marks small ticks in his green ink beside each and every figure and places a small signature on each pages. This suggests that those numbers have been checked and need not be revised again. The signature ensures that no one can change that page, paper or numbers. He encircles each and every total with his green ink and again puts a signature beside it. On each of the bill which needs to be paid, he repeats the entire process all over again, but as added measure of security , he notes down one random number from the bill onto his personal pocket diary. No one knows what component of the bill he noted down, this again doesnt allow anyone to tamper with the bills. Ocassionally he points out to certain numbers on the bills and presents some comments on it ” Yeh bill abhi clear kyun hua ? pichle hafte ho jana chahiye tha ” and ocassional ” Ye Lyka waalon ka bill hai, inko bolo kuch discount to de ” . This sends a message across he is in total control of the numbers.

My Dad is an entrepreneur , a business man for last 30 years. He didn’t inherit any business from his father. He still suffers from Labout issues, Stealth, Fraudulent bill payments, arbitrague trade by staff for their own interests. in his 30 years, he designed and master many of the processes - how to use ancilliaries to your advantage, how to get the best quality product within minimum time, how to standardise quality, how to standardise measurements, etc. But again, the saying is Rome wasnt built in one day. You can build a house in one day but not a home.  If you have money, man power, what stops you from setting up a highway in 5 days. Because of these processes which cannot be built overnight. Consultants bill @ $200/hr just to create these processes for you. But still These processes cannot be bought. Coming back, it took 30 years for my father to set product and quality control in place but these 30 years were not good enough to master some of those processes which were developed by the Vaisyas - the merchant class since history.

He came to know of my venture, my idea, my background that I am an MBA from an IIM with an engineering degree too. After lot of carefull thinking, he said ” Youngsters like you lack patience ” . You want to try to many things too early.  He symbolised patience. I can recall him explaining the map of his plant to his  employee for 20 years who has seen the plant in and out - still not getting the picture right. He explained to him over 4 times, then finally the employee went out and got a map from a file and then he explained him again over the map. Not once he riased his voice, or his eyebrow, neither his voice has any dejection or irritation.

He says ” In this kind of industry , if you go too fast you will surely falter ” . He suffers from a problem : there are 2 class of labours - One which is paid Rs. 250 a day and One which is paid Rs. 150 a day. If The higher wage labour ( H )  is absent, the Lower Wage Labour ( E ) will strike a deal with H . He will put attendance for H, and mark an Absent for L . L gets paid Rs. 250, of which he pays Rs. 75 to H without doing any work and himself takes home Rs. 175 which is higher than his daily wage.

He said if you put swipe cards attendance mechanism in place , there is always a risk One person swiping cards for 6 others. So, you have to man the Swiping Card place. Moreover, in a mill, 5000 employees report to work at a shift. Even with 20 Swiping machines, there will be que and the labour will protest to come 15 minutes early just to mark their In time. Thumb Impression based machines were tried on Pilot they failed as they are too slow. Thus the entry time of 5000 labours was running into an hour. Moreover, such a sudden change always run the risk of being taken adversly by the labors.

He being an HNI, I was obviously pitching him to fund my venture ( small seed money ). I was explaining to him fundae of Valuations, Equity , Debentures etc. At the age of 31, this guy has actuired an Electric Transmission Company, which was sick, turned it around in 6 years and was now negotiating with PE to buy stake in the firm. Remember he said - He was most savvy among the compareable lot.

I really have started to admire these businessmen for their processes which we call as acumen as well as their person or human skills. Only thing which have restricted them over the ages to scale much beyond has been the vision,  the need / zeal to scale up  and education .

Now, in this context I remember one very wise saying by Ajit Balakrishnan , as the core problem of Indian Approach to Business and Scaling. He says, Indians are really good in scaling in numbers and replication of processes but fail miserably in adapting automation. This means, if I am running a Call centre of 50 people and I do well , suddenly over few years you will find me having  5 setups of 100 people each . I have scaled from 50 people to 500 people and thus increased the number of customers serviced. This is where out nack is, human resource being available at arms lenght we scale by adding numbers. We dont think much about strethening processes even more, automating more routine work, finding consistancy among requests and making those 50 people service a load of 500 people. This is scaling by automation. This has been the precise debate of Independence Era where British nationals used to take raw material back to Engla

nd and bring finished product back to India and still sell cheap. Because they scaled by automation, India was scaling by adding more Jute mills.

MARKETING is either a knack, skill or is about money. During my MBA days, i never used to pay much attention to marketing and now I am trying my level best to figure out the secret of low cost marketing.

I would like to seek pointers for marketing my portal kitnebaje.com given

My Resources :

One SEO person who exchanges links with other websites

One Content Writer who generates content and try to place articles in blogs, and directories

A wafer thin budget of around Rs. 50,000/-

A email database of 6 lakhs email ids

A Prepaid SMS account with 40,000 SMS’s up my kitty

There are some obvious things which i am doing with these resources, but i would like people to chip in with their ideas, concepts, pointers, experiences etc.

Any innovative idea on Viral marketing would be great - trying to crack an innovative first of its kind viral markteting

After Time Vision Infotech and Kitnebaje.com, this another brand I was tried to create. This is not a path breaking concept or anything to boast innovation, neither is it a startup worth tagging as a startup by an IIM Calcutta graduate.

Infocademia is a pure training centre - PHP,MySQL web technologies training centre. This is an attempt to generate some running cash for Kitnebaje.com plus some family of ideas which we are keen to develop.

Infocademia, based in Calcutta again, targets freshers as well as Engineering students in their final years to come and get hands on experience in web technologies. We get them industry ready and also offer placements to students who are eligbile ( have completed their graduation ) through our network companies.

This is an attempt to leverage the current infrastructure, expertise and background. We are developing Kitnebaje.com in PHP/ MySQL. Mornings our office is empty leaving 15 computers available each day and weekends full. This helps us reduce the course fee for the students and pass on the benefits to them. We also enable them to work directly on client projects, develop products based on some of our or their ideas which they would like to implement. We also benefit from getting small pieces of code developed, plus the first right to employ the star performer in the batch. So our recruitment cost is zero.

How does this sound?

If you have been looking at kitnebaje or been aware of its concept as a portal, the target users are kinda obvious, intutive as well as seem to be everywhere.

But how do i Exactly definite it.

Indian computer literate population , 15 years age and above , living in Tier I cities and above.

is this a good enough definition ?

Do i miss out on any aspect ?

Where do i incorporate the fact that 15 ~ 24 yrs old have very less probability of owning credit cards so may contribute to traffic and buzz but not revenue?

Can any one support me with any facts on Debit Card as well as bank account penetration in this user segment?

Now, I have decided to use this blog for some contructive use. Since all of my friends including you are working in companies which have established themselves in their markets, are now stable and have their own processes in place, who be a better lot of pose my problems too.

So hence forth i will be posting my business problems, my dilemmas as well Ideas to this open forum for best of the ‘consulting ‘ advice as well as brain storming.

Problem Backdrop :

From initial 2 employees in june, We have migrated to now 15 employees big with average experience of 3 years in the industry. Most of my employees are from technical backgrounds and have been in the web development industry for a considerable time. Compared to them, My experience in this industry is practically nil.

Now we are planning to move to a new office - nothing great but a rented but bigger office. I want to signify this move to big office as a progressive move. We are growing bigger and better. I also want to implement certain processes such as a well defined HR policy like total number of leaves, casual , sick leaves etc. as well as policies to ensure data security.

Getting Closer to the problem :

Currently we were a small team, so essentially every one has access to our web servers, the code libraries, etc. Since internet in India is unpredictable, My employees are used to taking the codes in pen drives home and upload data from their machines on to the web server because US client delivery pressure.

Till now this things were fine as we were getting small projects from individuals in US. But now, we have started on with few medium size projects which kick off with a Non- Disclosure Agreement ( NDA) as well as Contract of Copywrite of all the codes written as the Intellectual Property of the Client. Now, Since my employees have their codes and they copy it and take it home. It is in some sense infringement of the contract. But, till they dont sell it its ok.

Now, I want to incorporate a policy where i want to ensure that Our as well as Client’s Intellectual property stays safe. how do i ensure security from external as well as internal staff?

As an organisation, we want to stay young, open as well as entertainment oriented. We openly support streaming Youtube songs, humour videos during lunch time etc.

So we dont want to cut down internet access.

We are skeptical of Employee moral once we block personal email access sites like gmail.com, hotmail.com. Should a young company like us do that?

Should we disable the USB ports so that they cannot copy Files in the storage device ?

One thing is for sure, we are now authorising only one person with the access for the webserver. So upload , download from that server can be restricted as well as made accountable for.

But what other steps should be taken to ensure Zero Liability for any contract infringement by our employee or X- employee.

Please Help me out with this. Because time and again i will keep writing you my queries.

The three hour long movie which makes you ride on all kinds of emotions with a heavily loaded ending compelling to have your eyes go moist, Taare Zamin Per has been speculated by many as Amir Khan’s another shot at the Oscar Nominations – why I mentioned Oscar “ nominations” and not the Oscar is a different debate all together.

I am confused about whom am I writing this post for – ones who have seen the movie or are yet to see the movie. Let me try to deal with both. So ones who have already scene the movie can skip to the next paragraph.

Taare Zamin Per is a movie about a little kid suffering from Dyslexia who cannot make sense for many characters and hence fails to read and write. This brings with it hosts of difficulties like failing in exams, constantly being nagged, cursed and counted-out by teachers, parents. However, this child has amazing observation power, loves to play with colours and enjoys playing with fishes, dogs - a perfect nature boy. Looking at possibilities of being thrown out of school, his parents send Ishant, the boy to a hostel. He takes it as he has punished and sent off to some jail . He is unable to cope with the strict displine, a very cruel mindset and sheer lack of care, and emotion. He sinks into thoughlessness where he stops paintaining, talking to peers and other activities till a his art teacher Amir Khan saves him - the Amitabh Bhachan in Black way.

Ok, now once the story is done with let me come to my point. Something about the movie disappointed me. Yes disappointed me. The tone till now will have been full of praises and so would be once I am done with my grudge.

There was certain expectation mismatch between what theme the promos promised and what the movie dealt with. I was expecting this movie to cater to a much larger population who don’t enjoy studying but have capabilities unlimited – where as post interval the movie took a bend and started talking of Dyslexia and very niche segment of children who are capable of studying, who are “willing “to study but are unable to because of a very fundamental disability to recognize alphabets and relate it to their corresponding meanings. The movie started talking of some apparently disabled people who have the capabilities to live life with the tag of being ‘normal’. Like every normal human also suffer from certain disabilities, they are also suffer for certain disabilities – only problem is that those disabilities are either not common or not easily comprehendible by other fellow “normal” humans. I must admit it’s a brilliant movie, brilliant script and very good cause to address and pointed out to the society that how these people are forced towards being abnormal as “normal” people don’t have time and space to actually lending them the little helping hand.

But as I said the story actually differed from my expectation in terms of people who are “willing “ to study and are not because of certain small problems and how people curse them, count them down, break their confidence to ever stand up against those oppositions.

I would dare to say a line which many may not agree “Education destroys Creativity “. The more learned you are the less creative you are. This is a thing which once my school time friend told me. I can quote an example: Once for XLRI MBA entrance exam XAT had this essay writing part where the topic was “your vision of 2010 – most revolutionary change or innovation “something like this. I was an engineering student who had done my mechanical engineering and school time friend was a commerce graduate - who was not so techno savvy. I wrote about evolution of alternate fuel, falling reliance on fossil fuel, greener fuel in terms of hydrogen burning in oxygen to form bi-product steam as the “pollution” etc. My friend started talking of inter-planet teleportation where man won’t need any rockets or vehicles to move places, a very sci-fi imaginative, most likely to tagged un-realistic by we “scientific studs”. People who are knowledgeable are quick to classify their imagination into practical, feasible, impractical or infeasible. This forces them to restrict their thinking within their “knowledge” domain. Very filmy dialogue – Only those can achieve who dare to dream. So, what turns out be way out of the box success already occurred to many educated people but was outright neglected as not making much sense.

So had the movie talked about brilliant painter, a kid with a very powerful imagination, perception of colors not so inclined to study but spends time to observe things and how he made it big in life that way without opting the regular education – MBA way ,it would have been also a great thing.

I know a brilliant web designer - an absolute genius in creating web designs. But the problem is web designers don’t become project managers, for every 4 coders in a company there is only one designer. Facing this reality, the designer learned to code and started shifting towards coding. This in-effect destroyed a designer.

Education also does something very similar. When I was a kid, I used to memorize things to pass GK exam – Voice of India – Lata Mangeskar, Nightingale of India, Sitar Maestro, Sehnai Maestro – Bismillah Khan, etc. Now we are stepping into an age where there is not many to step on to the mantle. I think this because of strong social pressure to study.

One more thing i think makes sense is that somewhere this movie raised false hope for parents of children not able to compete with “normal” students. I am not saying that they can’t turn themselves around, atleast hope would make them keep up the will to live but false hope in terms of finding that Magic Man. Amir Khan in TZP , Amitabh Bachchan in Black, all point to a magician but none of the movie production group went ahead to answer where to find these men for the needy.

I have friends who are investment bankers ( I like to boast of it since i missed the train - why ? is another issue) . Investment Bankers are supposed to be well rewarded rather well compensated in monetary terms for their lack of time and leisure. All in all they are supposed to be rich guys. Still I know many, all are shocked and found turning their pockets inside out when they get their Credit Card Bills.

Everyone knows what he is earning, stock markets, mutual funds, fixed deposit are re-earning on it but they are modest not to count on the re-earnings. But people forget that EMIs actually reduce their salaries. If one earns Rs. 35,000 in hand a month and buys a Santro with an EMI for Rs. 8000/- , the fools paradise lures him to belive that next month he will pocket Rs. 35,000. Actually his salary has been reduced to Rs. 27,000/- .

Next Best eating up happens with rent. Its also a huge chunck eating up into the pockets of ‘well paid’ people too.

Why i am counting out this silly items ? Actually i want to get to the figure of DISPOSABLE INCOME. Many have a perception of disposable incomes, which is largely ruled by the ball park figure of the Cash - in - hand. If i receive Rs. 35,000/- in hand and with a strong urge to grow, Rs. 12,000/- gone in IPO. So is my disposable income still Rs. 35k or 23k?

Thats the reason why people who are earning big are opting for damn expensive credit card financing, late payments etc which is a vicious cycle. These extra burgens further reduce your ‘disposable ‘income’ which you fund by your newly received GOLD CARD or PLATINUM Card, which again increases your leverage.

I think its a growing need of the generation to help them out with something like an instant balance sheet of individuals where people can actually know what exact their source of earning is , which sink is eating what pie and what will be left for the dessert.

Comments please… will address the issue @ kitnebaje.com

This the most wierd multiplication methos i have ever seen. But Seeing this video, i remember my school days where my Physics teacher used to tell us - ” Mathematics is nothing but advanced ways of counting ” So people who are averse to actually remember tables, weak in quick referencing digits ( like you look at 225 and know it 15×15 ) this method is quite easy to actually help them multiply by counting.

I am just wondering whats the actual algo behind calculating the multiples. Can anyone crack it for me ? Seems like i am getting dull !

 I take pride in saying that most of the people around me rather say all are most intelligent people blessed with best of education and in terms of potential - every one packs a nuclear bomb in his belly. But the common trend among most is - they all are contributing to current Indian GDP. Most of them are creating “present day ” services which is no doubt adding to our GDP. But is doing this enough? What should serve our country best?

We are not here to put a “+” to the resources but a “x” sign. We should not create “present services ” but create Future service creators.  If i build a road , I just dont increase my countries GDP by the cost of building that road, but it multiplies ‘n’ number of times as the moment a road is built , there will be vendors along it, there will be contruction, there will be traffic n vehicles, there will be electricity consumption , there will be taxes so many things to think of.

 I sail in a boat where i am not praticing what i am preaching. If i am hardcore statistical stud, borrowing project from abroad and solving a financial miracle for him, what i am doing is just adding my salary to my countries growth with some addon like salary of support staff, air conditioner, computer vendor etc. not in entireity but fraction of it. This is not our country needs . Then what should be our aim?

There was a time where all the japanese in america struggled under a single aim to get hold of american technological blue prints and get it replicated in Japan. Every single IIM grad is bind by atleast one aim i.e to get his company go and recurit from IIM Campus. So We should struggle to do get our companies have operations in India, not just outsource in India. Imagine if you are the guy who brought Boeing to India to make aircraft - if you can do that you can change the landscape of India manufacturing practises. If you are one who is bring Canadian robotic arms to be manufactured in India you can imagine what huge change it can bring to our future capabilities.

 I am working in the services industry itself. I can see people trying to create services by creating their own layers between the distribution channel ( thats precisely what i am doing ) and think that they have done a lot by becoming entrepreneurs. Its my own woe. A person can buy tickets by going to the multiplex, what we will be doing to bring the ticket to him. But does it actually serve the country in the long run?

These replication of existing service can only bring about efficiencies ( like it will only reduce the travelling of a person if he doesnt get the ticket for a house full show once he reaches home - but who the hell goes back home? They will eat out - I just killed business for that eatry )

Innovating, Manufacturing and constructing is the only way you can contribute to the future GDP. You are not here to create, you should rather strieve to gather enablers so that other countrymen can create.

Again, Lots to scribble but lost my thought mid way… Bricks Batters and comments please !!