Desicritics Author: Intrepid

Narayana Murthy on Entrepreneurship

Intrepid — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:43:06 EDT

I was privileged to attend an interview of N R Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys Technologies. The interview session was part of a "Leaders and Learners" session organized by TIE at Welingkar's Institute in Mumbai. Murthy was interviewed by Anuradha Sengupta of CNBC TV18, and a select panel of entrepreneurs. Then the forum was thrown open to questions asked by the audience. Here were some of the key takeaways from this brilliant and humor-filled session:

Q. What does it take to start your own venture?
NM: You need 4 things before you can think of starting your own venture:
1. Idea. The key idea or concept of the service or product you want to sell in the market
2. Market value of the idea. You must have a basic level of confidence in the fact that the market values your product and is willing to pay for it.
3. Team. You must have a team of complementary skillsets - so identify your own strengths, and find people who have different, but complementary strengths.
4. High aspirations. You must be someone who sets his/her sights high, and is willing to work very hard to achieve those aspirations.

Q. What must a startup do for branding?
NM: Do unusual things. Infosys has always attracted the press and positive publicity by doing unusual things, which interest people.

Q. Who were your idols or people you looked up to?
NM: When we started our business, there were already well-established business leaders who had founded and expanded their companies while sticking to sound ethical principles - JRD Tata, even Mr. Birla, TVS, Mr. Kirloskar. Of course, by that time Bill Gates had also become well-known. Intel was one of the foremost examples of success for most security companies to follow.

Q. What is a non-negotiable component when starting your own business?
NM: A sound value system. You have to lead by example, you must walk the talk, eat your own dogfood. Only when will your team trust you implicitly, and only then will they deliver and help achieve the common goals.

Q. What are the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur?
1. Ability to work with other people and work in a team
2. Passion and will to persevere
3. High degree of optimism
4. High aspirations for oneself and for the company
5. Ability to put long-term interest ahead of short-term benefit

Q. How do you judge the value of your idea?
NM: You should be able to express your idea and its value to the market in a simple sentence. Not a compound sentence, nor a complex sentence.

Q. How do you attract and retain talent?
The leadership must articulate a grand vision - an exciting future. This will create a challenging work culture and attract future leaders to the company. The vision must be a story that is compelling, believable, and intrigues and excites the minds of the team members.

Q. What do you think about work-life balance?
I remember K V Kamath's answer to this question: first let's make a life, then think about work-life balance. I don't understand the concept of a work-life balance.

Q. How do you define success, and at what stage did you consider yourself successful, and why?
NM: I have thought a lot on this subject, and my definition of a successful person is one who when he/she walks into a room, people's eyes light up. If he/she brings a smile to people's faces, then irrespective of whether that person is educated, not educated, self-employed, employed, I would still consider that person to be successful. And going by that definition, I am still not sure whether I would consider myself as being successful.

Interestingly, Murthy's favorite books are Richard Feynmann's Lectures on Physics, and History of Mathematics vols 1,2,3.

Ten Ways To Get Business When Bootstrapping A Startup

Intrepid — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:00:19 EDT

When you're bootstrapping your business, and don't have much in the way of funding, and possibly no sales or marketing staff, here are some ideas on how you could get leads. Caveat: this would work best probably only for consulting companies, but then again, it just might work for anyone. Here goes:

Subscribe and post to mailing lists: In our line of work, there are a number of mailing lists. Some of these have subscriptions of over 1 million members (Bugtraq). When people send in queries, and if you have sensible answers to give, it helps to put your name out there. If I read someone's reply to a query, which I find useful, I will often check up on that person's website, and see if there is any business potential. Similarly, if you post answers and put your contact information in your signature, it helps to put your name out there.
Write articles: Often, when we don't have business in a particular segment of our work, say SAP Security, we'll go ahead and write up on it. If an online or offline journal publishes the article, that's great. If not, we put it up on our website, and sooner or later the search engines will pick it up and send inquiries your way.
Speak at conferences - big or small: Within your area of business, there would be a number of professional societies. These would normally meet weekly or monthly, and quite often they invite guest speakers. If you take membership of these societies and take an active role, you're very likely to get noticed. They are also often short of good speakers, so if you can play it to your strength then you would again be able to put your name out there.
Write a blog (not an anonymous one!): If you post good stuff on your blog, especially directly related to your area of expertise, business is quite likely to come your way. Of course, anonymously blogging like here doesn't help much in the way of getting business, but then again that was not really my objective :)
Call up the bigger fish: In any line of work, there are bound to be the big guys who would be more than willing to send business your way, especially if you specialize in a niche area. For us, initially our area of expertise was (and hopefully still is) penetration testing. The big consulting firms were more interested in large audit projects, and were more than willing to offload the smaller ones to us.
Call up existing clients: Asking for referrals is one of the best ways to get business. In fact, why just clients. You could call up everyone you know - vendors, suppliers, friends, ex-employers, etc. It doesn't hurt, and most of our large deals have landed up in the most unexpected fashion.
Get your website listed: Build a cool-looking website and get it listed in a number of online directories which may be specific to business in your area. Both Yahoo! and Google have directories and you could try and get it listed there. There are also online Yellow Pages-style sites and you could try getting listed there
Drop flyers in your office complex: This might be a slightly desperate measure, but what the heck. Get one-page flyers printed and post them around your office complex or in buildings next to the one you work in.
Put up hoardings if possible: Where we work, the law of the land allows us to put up a hoarding outside our office. And thankfully for us our location is right on one of the busiest roads in town. So everyday thousands of people see the hoarding. Not that we've gotten a lot of direct business from it, but every now and then we meet someone who's seen it and it helps create recall value.
Do work gratis: This is probably the last resort, but if a large client is willing to give you a letter of appreciation or recommendation for some free work, then you might as well do it. When starting out, we did a few free assignments, but this must be avoided to the extent possible.

Interview: Shibani Jain, CEO, Craftsbridge India

Intrepid — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:29:10 EST

Shibani Jain is the CEO of Craftsbridge India Pvt. Ltd. A first generation woman entrepreneur, she has stuck through a lot of ups and downs to build a very unique and inspiring business - bringing India's traditional crafts and arts to a wider market, using the Internet and direct marketing as tools to ensure the craftsmen get their right recognition and dues. I interviewed her online a few weeks ago, and gained some significant insights into a woman's entrepreneurial journey.

1. Could you brief us about your company's main offerings?

Shibani: We offer designer and special skill products which map current corporate requirements. We work with special skill groups across the country and our sales help these small rural urban groups to generate income.

We offer corporate promotional and motivational products like desktop products and office accessories.

We arrived at this focus after a lot of trial and error. We tried many other things at first - home textiles which we were exporting; retail sales for domestic markets (garment apparels, etc). We even had our own stitching unit. But then, we realized it's not possible to do so much; especially since they were all virtually different businesses - with separate infrastructure requirements, different markets and different production bases. We decided to cut down and we focused on the business where we had the strongest market traction.

2. Since your website is one of the primary marketing channels, what strategies would you advise to promote one's website and make it more productive in terms of customers and revenues?

Shibani: Our website is only 7% of our total business today. I would advise the following for similar ventures:

Unique offerings
Decent strategic tie-ups/partner sites to ensure you get the eyeballs
Constant renewal of offerings and content

The web site is more a promotional tool for us, today than bringing in real business. But we find it useful to refer our customers to our site.

3. What prompted you to begin your current venture? What thought process led to this idea, and what initial challenges did you have to face?

Shibani: I was a web and multimedia designer and always interested in handicrafts. We thought that we could make a difference to this business (even if it was done in a small way to start with) with our ability to understand current market norms, design and bring in professional inputs.

We were also excited by the concept of "customized crafts". Being handmade product, it is relatively easier to customize a product with a special message or specification or color, even in small quantities. We thought of how a "grain of rice" can be packaged nicely with a hand written message and magnifying glass and sent off anywhere in the world.

And we were excited about the fact that we could be the one middle point between the end buyer and the end producer. It was exciting to visualize a situation where we could be the bridge between the rural/grass roots producer who has no market access and the end buyer who has no idea about the craft producer and their stories. It was interesting from a social and creative perspective.

We felt this was possible with a dot com model - with producers on one end and buyers on the other. In fact, we were incubated as a dot com. We made it through incubation funding, but were late in the dot com boom. The bust ensured that no one even heard us out as a dot come investment. The choice before us was either to shut down or change the model. We changed the model and started selling directly to corporate buyers.

4. When the chips are down, how do you deal with those kinds of situations?

Shibani: We have had many times when the chips were down. And we persevered. I did not give up. We evolved and sharpened our model in terms of cutting costs, reducing overheads, sharpening our focus, building systems and processes. We had to go through really tough transitions, like when I closed down the home textiles exports business - it was a harrowing time. We had to let go of trained staff, say no to customers who had started initiatives with us and manage all excess raw material fabric stock which was left over. At this time we simply stuck to our guns, gave ourselves a time line and swallowed our losses on this.

Another transition happened when my partner who headed the corporate business suddenly decided to quit after five years of managing this business. We then had to transition and learn many things afresh. The knowledge of the business went with him. We had a huge struggle just to re-educate ourselves about our customer requirements, vendor capabilities and issues and so many other things. But this transition actually resulted in us moving from a one man show into a 'team' approach. We built a team and dependence on one person is much reduced today. We also focused on more documentation, systems and processes at this stage.

5. What plans do you have for the future for your company?

Shibani: We have many dreams - of them one is that of having our brand recognized in the form of retail stores of our own. The other picture is to take our gifts offerings to foreign shores.

6. If you had to do it all over again, what would you differently?

Shibani: We had very high costs when we started up - manpower, office, etc. I would now start like a garage operation if I had to restart. I would also focus, focus and focus from day one.

7. What drives you to work everyday?

Shibani: The thought that there is so much more to do, that we have only scratched the surface. The fact that I have something new to learn every day some new idea to pursue.

8. What three things would you advise aspiring women entrepreneurs?

Shibani:

Be courageous. Do not worry about the fact that you are a woman and chances are that others will not worry about it either. Very often the problem is not external if it's not internal.

Find and use external support. Today women entrepreneurs have a lot of external support- special funds, working capital loans, network groups- find them & use them well. Am not exactly aware of which ones, but banks like SIDBI, women's cooperative banks are women friendly. To be honest I have not had to find one myself- but they are there- on the net/banking community/funding groups.

Manage your guilt well. If you also have a family to look after. Guilt is not good for you/your family/your business. You might as well realize that this is what you love to do and your family might as well realize this too! Honesty is the best policy here in more ways than one!

9. What books or events have inspired you the most?
Shibani:So many books! From Ayn Rand (We the living, The Fountainhead) at 16, to Herman Miller (Siddhart) at 20 to Celestine Prophecy (colin wilson?) to Conversations with God recently.

I was also influenced by books like All Paths Lead To Gold and Winning by Jack Welch.

On events - I did a course in Vipassana meditation in the mountains of Igatpuri- this is a 10 day silent course- and it changed my life. It taught me to view life in perspective- and the fact that mind control is the most important control to have. The mind must not dictate you, you must control your mind.

Also every time I see street children in India, I feel compelled to do something. Anything to alleviate the suffering that so much of mankind seems to have. I feel outraged that so little is done and about the unfairness of it all.

I feel sad when I see beautiful, skilled products, sold in a shabby way, at shabby prices and in a shabby manner. I feel bad that the artist who created such a beautiful product is not getting his/her due- neither price nor recognition. I just feel that it's all a criminal waste.

10. What advice would you have for aspiring entrepreneurs in general, and women entrepreneurs specifically?

Shibani:

Out of 10 start up businesses only 3/4 survive. The trick is to persevere and to believe in your picture.

Being at the right time and at the right place is important when you start- a good idea is not enough- a hard look at viability is a must.

Being an entrepreneur is very tough- it's even tougher if you are trying to do something different/not done before/charting a different path. I would advise all young people trying to start a business to go in with their eyes open, but also with dreams in their mind.

For women I would say- your job is even tougher- like it or not, the family looks at you to keep the home fires running-but the flip side is that you may not have to be the bread earner! Enjoy this freedom and do something that you truly want to do. This is not to say that your success is not important- it is just as important, but you may have the option to choose!

For women I would also say, that consider the logistics of your life as a serious matter - like how far is your office from home? How much support do you have (family and otherwise), good help at home!!! These are small, practical and according to me imperative tips for the women entrepreneur. I could never have run Craftsbridge, if these logistics were not in my favor.

KK: Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into answering this long list of questions! Would it be OK, if readers of this blog wanted to get in touch with you?

Shibani: Sure, they can email me at shibani@craftsbridge.net

Muttawas - The Real Moral Police

Intrepid — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 14:58:05 EST

For those of us who live in democratic countries, we tend to take a lot of things for granted. We raise a lot of hue and cry over moralistic issues and argue vehemently about the state's right to impose a moral standard on the populace. Be that as it may, it is a whole new experience to spend time in a country where a moral police does actually exist.

Saudi Arabia for instance, has the Muttawas - a much-feared and equally despised moral police. Officially called the Department for Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, their objective is to ensure that the Islamic moral code is strictly followed in the country. Their jurisdiction applies not only to the public behavior of the country's residents but also in their private lives. Almost every week there is the case where the moral police or the courts forcibly divorce couples who may have gotten married against the rules of Islam. This happens quite often when the brothers or the father of the bride object to the wedding, but the couple goes ahead and gets married in any case. Islam requires the father to grant approval for the wedding. Failing this, if a case gets lodged in the courts, the judge might simply go ahead and order a divorce. This is even more terrible when the couple have kids.

The rich and the mighty of course lead a whole different life, but the overbearing presence of the moral police has an effect on every little aspect of the common person's life in this country.

Right from the fact that a woman must not be seen immorally dressed in public (which often means being completely covered) to the requirement that every Muslim be at prayer during the prayer time. The law requires that if a Muslim is indeed seen in public during this time, he will be taken to a mosque to be taught why he should be praying. The transgression is noted on their passport or residence permit, and three transgressions result in immediate deportation.

I was once accompanying a friend on his grocery shopping. As boring as it was, I picked three ripe tomatoes to juggle with. When a local comes up to me and with mock seriousness says, "If a Muttawa saw you doing that, it is quite likely you will get in trouble". I put down the tomatoes, and said, yes you're probably right. He then went on to joke, "It is quite likely that they will immediately also issue a fatwa against juggling foodstuff. You'd be lucky if they don't actually declare a jihad for doing that!" He was of course joking, but the point is that the restrictions can get pretty pervasive.

Again, the levels of enforcement differ from one place to another. Riyadh is probably the most restrictive, whereas places like Jeddah are more open. And probably the smaller towns are even more open, at least in terms of the moral policing. The overarching feeling of living under such circumstances is that life is actually passing you by. Especially given that the majority of this country's population is below 30, I guess one begins to feel one is stuck in a time warp.

How Naïve Is Our President?

Intrepid — Thu, 9 Nov 2006 02:28:04 EST

India may be the largest democracy in the world, but Indians in general have come to expect very little in the way of good governance from the governments that we elect. However, the biggest disappointment in today's political scene is not Manmohan Singh for being a lameduck prime minister or Chaggan Bhujbal and George Fernandes for blatantly stealing or even Narendra Modi for his pogrom in Gujarat.

The biggest disappointment is our dear president Abdul J Kalam. Before becoming the president of the country he presided over the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organization), which oversaw the nuclear blasts in Pokhran, and other sterling defence achievements. The least one expected from one of the supposedly smartest people to inherit the post of President was that he would make a stand somewhere, put a foot down at some stage, and at least try to make a difference. But I guess it was too much to expect from a thoroughly rotten political system.

First he failed spectacularly in the democratic debacle in Bihar. Then the Afzal clemency plea. Also no move or statement on the quota fracas. I would be hard-pressed to name one achievement of his tenure as President, even if the position of the President in the Indian democratic system has limited power.

Now he comes up with the most inane statement I have ever heard in a long time. Sample this:

Companies and organizations should create a separate fund to make high bandwidth and last mile access and facilities available to rural areas. The companies can contribute part of their profit to this fund based on their quarterly performance, he said adding, the fund could be operated by a separate board of management, independent of the contributors.

Umm...hello, we do pay for all that - it's called income tax. And service tax, and sales tax, and VAT. And what "separate board of management"? That's the government and the super-bloated bureaucracy, dude. If they did their job, the tax that we pay would actually get used for the betterment of the country, not to fill up the pockets of the political crap that you preside over. And if that isn't enough, the telecom companies already contribute crores to the Universal Service Obligation Fund.

Sheesh! How na�ve can you get?

The Merits of the Death Penalty: Too Many Questions Abound

Intrepid — Thu, 9 Nov 2006 00:16:50 EST

The recent conviction of Afzal over the Delhi Parliament bombings raised a very important question across the nation - should Afzal be hanged or not? The debate over the issue focused on issues such as the aftermath of hanging Afzal (riots in Kashmir or retaliatory attacks all over the country), or that life imprisonment might not be a sufficient deterrent for future terrorists, or that keeping him in jail might allow terrorists to take hostages and negotiate with the Indian government to free him (just as with Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was freed when terrorists hijacked an Indian Airlines plane, and went on to kill Daniel Pearl). The tragedy of the polemic around the entire situation is that it never really got to the real point of it all - is the death penalty an acceptable form of meting out justice or should it be abolished? That's the real question here. Issues of political exigencies, religious constraints, and failures of the Indian state in guaranteeing its citizens security may be important but are secondary.

Two more death penalties came to light after the Afzal case. The death penalty awarded to Santosh Singh for raping and murdering a law student who rejected his advances. And the death penalty handed out to Saddam Hussein for numerous killings and tortures. Neither case raised the kind of furore that Afzal's case did. I didn't see a single activist speaking out against the Santosh Singh verdict. Are we to assume that the protesters feel that Santosh Singh and Saddam Hussein are more deserving of the death penalty than Afzal? What if Saddam Hussein had done in India what he did in Iraq? Would we still agitate and protest for giving him a life sentence over a hanging? What if Santosh Singh had only raped the victim, not murdered her (since the current Penal code carries a death penalty for rape as well)? What about the Nazi war criminals? Should we have condemned their death sentences even?

Is it then the degree of the crime that decides whether a death penalty should be awarded? If so, who decides which degree qualifies for death, and which for a mere life sentence. Let us get a bit more deeper into the validity of awarding a death sentence itself. It is accepted that when the State hangs a condemned man to death, you and I, as constituents of that State also have our hands on the hangman's pulley. So when Afzal hangs, you and I will be as much party to his death as the Court and police is. Do you and I accept this mandate to kill someone for the wrong he has done to us? If yes, under what circumstances do I accept that I would kill a man for having wronged me? And if no, then why not?

Let us state and examine the arguments against the death penalty. One of the main arguments is that it is barbaric. This is evidently true. First, we have consistently chosen more 'humane' ways to get the job done. From being burnt at the stake, to public lynchings, to death by stoning, to hanging by the rope, we have now 'graduated' to the electric chair, and the poison injection. But if we feel it is indeed right to kill another, then why this move to find more painless ways to do the job? The second argument is more personal. I have watched a video of a man in Saudi Arabia being killed by having his head hacked off by a sword. His crime was that he had killed his father. The first word that comes to my mind was 'barbaric'. What if the man was mentally unstable, or if his father had committed an even more heinous crime, like say killing the man's wife? But what is barbarism? An atavistic return to our old savage ways of life. And why do we not want to accept a return to such ways? Because we have progressed and become more cultured? You will notice that it was the more 'cultured' European nations that were the first to protest against the death penalty, when the Iraqi court condemned Saddam.

So what does 'cultured' mean? That the death penalty is not allowed at all? Or allowed only under the gravest of crimes? So am I allowed to kill you because you murdered one guy, or is that too harsh? What if you killed a hundred? Can I hang you now?

The second argument is more simple to accept and prove. Our justice system is flawed - nay, it is rotten to the core. Our investigations are pointless, and one is never 100% sure if a condemned man is indeed guilty of his crime or not. Or if a man let off by the system had a dozen murders on his hand. When murderers rule our states, it can hardly be assured that our investigations and evidence gathering is foolproof. For argument's sake, what happens if Afzal is indeed found not to be the man guilty of bombing Parliament? What if we find out today that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed not the killer of JFK? Oops, we already hung the chap. Sorry, about that, but let's move on with our lives, shall we?

The third and perhaps strongest argument is forgiveness. As a society, we forgive everyday, and we must. We get pissed, but we forgive. I forgive scam artist Ajay Jadeja for having earned millions throwing away catches and matches so that he may now give his expert comments on fixed matches. I forgive the Chaggan Bhujbals and the George Fernandes and the thousands of others for sucking the country. I forgive the three guys on the Bandra local who didn't allow me to be the fourth guy on the seat, against the accepted code of the Mumbai local trains. I forgive them, because that is the only way I can continue to live my life and actually get something done. If we all accept an eye for an eye, and a life for a life, with no chance for remorse or repentance, it would probably be the end of the world as we know it. And at times it seems that that's exactly what we're hurtling towards.

Common Errors in Technical Writing

Intrepid — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:50:22 EDT

Today I attended a session of the Mumbai chapter of the Society for Technical Communication . The first session was by Gurudutt Kamath, who is probably the most well-known figure in the tech writing community in India. My interest in attending the session arose cause someone I know was also speaking there, and also because a lot of the work that we do involves a significant amount of technical writing. So while, we may not be professional technical writers, consulting does require us to have excellent written communication skills.

Guru (as he is popularly known) was speaking on common errors in technical writing. I think many of these errors occur in daily business communication as well. He made it a pretty interactive session, so the other tech writers also piped in with the errors they have seen occur most often. Here's the list we came up with:

Not identifying the purpose of the document. Each document should have a set of objectives and a context in which it is being developed. Is it a user manual, or a marketing collateral, or something else. This leads us to:
Not identifying the right target audience. If you don't know whom you're writing for, you're quite likely to miss the mark in terms of getting your point across. You could come across writing increasingly dumbed-down documents, or your writing could be so filled with jargon that it would be impossible for the average reader to understand. Having identified the target audience, you need to be sure that the next error is taken care of:
Not getting the right sample audience to review your document. The right reviewers can make a huge difference in the final quality of your writing. I have often had non-technical editors review some pretty technical articles, and miss out on stuff that a more technical reviewer would easily have helped improve upon. Some of the better journals have a peer review system, so you ensure that a wider sample audience reviews your writing. A lot of the times, we end up submitting stuff without review - which is almost sacrilege!
Inconsistency. Whether it's your formatting styles or your use of numbering systems, or your choice of words (British English or American English or apna Indian English), you have to be consistent. This also applies to:
Not selecting the right examples. Guru gave the example of an article, which was about choosing relevant examples, and was woven around Amercian baseball. Now the author might have written the original article for an American audience, but by the time it got syndicated, it was published in other regions, where most of the baseball metaphors fell completely flat.
Common grammar and spelling mistakes. "It's" vs. "Its". Not pressing the F7 key. Enough said!
Wrong references. In larger documents, references to sections or figures within the document can go wrong when the document changes. For a book, that I was recently co-authoring, I had to keep changing the references to snapshots and figures as I kept inserting more, requiring me to renumber the earlier ones, as well as change references to them. Apparently, the right way to do it is to add a reference field, and point it to the location within the Word document, so that when the referenced section changes, the reference changes with it.
Cookie cutter nightmares. Ok, so we've all done this. Opened up a previous proposal or report, and simply pressed File Save As, and the old client name pops up in the most embarrassing places. We once failed to get a customer reference, because during the closing meeting they brought up the point that they had been put off because an old client name had cropped up in one of the documents we had submitted in the project. Based on the inputs from the other participants in the session, this happens to the best of them.
Use of cliched graphics. Using the MS supplied clip art in Powerpoint presentations, not getting the graphics done professionally, and using irrelevant graphics. Of course, Powerpoint gaffes are a whole thesis subject by themselves.
Punctuations errors. I am most guilty of these, especially with mis-placed commas. Just don't seem to get them in the right places! Other errors include inconsistent quotation marks, misplaces colons and semi-colons, the use of ;&amp instead of 'and', etc.

Guru recommended "The Elements of Style" as a good first book to get your technical writing in good shape. Others also recommended the "Microsoft Manual of Style" and the "Chicago Manual of Style". Guru also has a whole series of articles on common errors on this website.

Changing Chartered Accountants

Intrepid — Fri, 6 Oct 2006 11:46:03 EDT

I keep harping to everyone about getting a good CA when you start your business. Looks like I should have been taking my own advice.

When we started out, the first CA we got was someone who came in through family contacts. He had been doing the income tax returns for some family members, and we thought it's a good idea to give my company work to him as well. When we were running a small operation, and ledger entries were a dozen a month, it was all good. But as we started to grow, this person proved unequal to the task. Minor hassles such as taking all our files and papers over to his office suddenly became major hurdles in getting the work done. What used to be one box file, was now a dozen and then some.

We started to look around for another CA, and just when we found one, we were told that we needed a no-objection certificate from the first guy in order to start dealing with the new one! Sheesh! Now this was a really delicate matter. Not only was the first chap doing my accounts, but he was also doing those of many more family members now. This meant he was privy to a lot of accounting information.

Anyways, the break came recently and in a very unexpected manner. We moved a couple of family accounts away from him, since he lives at one end of town, and we at the other. That was an excellent reason to tell him that the entire process of dealing with someone who rarely visits us at home or office was proving to be too cumbersome. The next day he called us to say that he was upset at this decision, and had therefore decided not to do the rest of our accounts either. Of course, this decision comes at a very precise moment - 31st October is the last date to file our company income tax returns.

Thankfully, we have a good accountant working for us. Recently when doing the returns for my father, his insight into some of the laws related to stock investments resulted in a significant tax savings. This was something the CA should have been doing! Again the fees of a CA or the salary to an accountant is usually well worth it in terms of the savings they bring in and the accounting discipline that helps keep a better handle on one's cash flow.

The same situation occurred with the Company Secretary. After promising to bring our documents up to date (we had been very lax on this front), and even taking half his fees in advance, he never showed up again. This is the same guy who had done our initial registration. Finally, we got a new CS to work for us, and filed in all our returns with the Registrar of Companies, and ended up paying a lot of back arrears and penalties as well. Yikes!

Communication Chaos: How to Create Some Order

Intrepid — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:07:06 EDT

This article by Wired News laments the sorry state of affairs with regards to our ability to communicate. While cellphones and emails have increased the amount of communication we do on average, it has greatly killed the art of communication. A survey quoted in the article, conducted by Yahoo! and OMD shows that the average family is doing 43 hours of multi-tasking work in one day!

Look all around at the emails and SMS's we receive and the horrible spelling and grammar of it all. We had this one person working for us who used to chat on IM with team members in the same room to get his point across! I hate it when someone who could have picked up the phone and spoken to me about an issue would rather send me an email or worse still chat with me on IM. Chatting has to be the #1 communication killer, especially when other options are easily available.

While email would ensure putting things on the record, I'd personally prefer the following order of communication:

Meeting in person. Especially in business, a face to face meeting can have far greater positive outcomes than simply email or phone communication. It is quite likely that a client or partner may be more convinced about doing business with you if you go visit them than if they have only spoken with you or emailed you.
Phone call. It is extremely tedious at times to give an explanation of an issue over email. And how often do we feel tempted to resort to emoticons to convey the emotion behind our message, even in formal emails. Because very often the text of the email simply fails to communicate the tone of the message. Just pick up the phone and talk! There's nothing like the sound of a human voice at the other end of the line to change the way the other person perceives you.
Emails. Compared with the blasphemy of doing business or personal communications over SMS's with their 160 character limits, I'd prefer email any day. Also, when doing business internationally, emails are one of the best means of communication, unless you use Jajah.
Chatting. It's cheap, but it's horrible in terms of actually getting one's point across. While I might be mid-way through answering the first question, the other party is already onto their next point. Grammar and spelling are usually the first casualties.

Sidenote: The one mode of communication that simply defies logic is the scrapping that happens on social networking sites such as Orkut. Intimate, personal conversations all out in the open, and a nightmarish clumsy way simply to keep track of conversation threads. Maybe I am a bit old-fashioned, but send me an email instead of a scrap.

Book Review: Bootstrapper's Bible - Seth Godin

Intrepid — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:02:23 EDT

In one word - brilliant!

If you're starting off a business from scratch, or struggling through the pains of keeping your overheads low and competing with the big guys, then the Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin is for you. It's available free for download here.

Some gems from the book:

A brilliant idea will kill you. Go for an idea that is likely to make you money, not necessarily something that you personally think is great. He gives the example of the Inc. 500, which is a list of the fastest growing small companies, and almost all of them are bootstrapped, and many of them are in boring, mundane lines of business (the #1 company makes toothbrushes).
Don't get too caught up in trying to become a Bill Gates or a Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. What may have worked for them is often an exception to the rule. While their business models get all the hype, very few people can actually replicate them.
Focus on sales and advertising. Often entrepreneurs - including yours truly - focus on the services and the products, and shy away from marketing. Personally, I have always felt I am really bad at marketing (so my next big challenge is already staring me in the face), and so haven't focused on meeting customers and pitching to them. But the importance of this is simply too great and very often overlooked by bootstrappers.
Get a mentor. And some pretty cool ways of going about getting mentors and dealing with them so the relationship doesn't go bust.
Ideas for calculating your cash flow. Based on what you've been spending and earning in the past 9 months. And the best point about getting credit from suppliers instead of trying to get money from banks or loans from family/friends. Very neat!
Just start! Don't plan so much that that's all you end up doing. Go out there. Get in front of customers. Talk to partners and vendors and peers. Get your idea into execution, even if you're holding onto your current job. Whatever you do, don't just sit around waiting for the right time, the right idea and the right execution plan. As Goethe apparently said, "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

The only downside would be that he doesn't directly stress the importance of practical things like search engine optimization or partnering with the right companies to get outsourced business that I have written about. (You can read about them on my blog.) But at a strategy and thought-process level this book hits the mark.