About losing weight and the choices we have and make

Wrote this on Diwali, 17th Oct.

Diwali today, should have been a usual morning, except that at 6:30 my mom woke me up to reverse the car for getting it washed. And I thought it would make sense to go running, a choice made initially difficult but finally easier because of the not so recent gain in weight. I stepped out and started walking towards the ground. Saw a few children, the oldest being 10 and the rest of them 6-7 years old, getting ready to play football. Started my jog around the 300-350m perimeter park and after about the first 800 meters a known feeling came back; where the body gets slightly warmed, the breadth a little heavier and body wants to say, let me be, let me rest a bit. A feeling that I have always overcome. Football was just getting started, the goal was international size, field covered almost half the ground. They were 6 in all, three girls, three guys. The older guy and a girl were in one team. I kept running, thinking that around 3kms (10 rounds with the last half a sprint) would be a good first day distance to cover. Still 3-4 rounds to go, slightly tired but given the lower temperature, no sweat. I noticed the older guy was wearing Adidas spikes and relied on outrunning the others (which was quite easy) and shooting hard into the wide goal. One of the two younger chaps was putting up some fight. Everyone else kept hitting the ball with their toes and mistiming; sending it packing off into the wrong direction. Couple of times I passed the ball back. I was into my last round and was looking forward to the sudden feeling of tiredness that would come after the sprint.

It was over. Doing it after a few months had made worsened the tiredness but made it all the more sweet. I still kept walking, bent over a little with my arms swaying in front of my legs, my eyes on the football playing guys. The younger fighter chap was making a sprint kicking the ball along, the older guy picked up speed, came from behind and started pushing. Couple of shoves and the younger chap rolled hard, the older chap seeing this did an automatic fall, wincing his face, catching hold of his leg and simultaneously shrieking ‘your foul’. The younger chap was crying and the rest of the team rushed to him. The older guy was still saying ‘his foul’. I was quite close by, walked a little closer and said ‘chote waale ki koi galti nahin hai, tumne giraya hai, you pushed him from behind and didn’t even touch the ball’. He started to argue, knew too soon it would be futile and stopped. He walked over to the younger chap who was still howling, telling him ke kuch nahin hua, khelte hai.

I started walking back towards my house wondering if I should go back, slightly worried that the younger chap might stop playing aggressively. I wanted to talk to the younger guy and tell him that he was playing well, to keep fighting and not stop, this would keep happening. I wanted to talk to the entire team, tell them to reduce their goal to 1/4th, field size to half, not allow air balls and hit the ball with their side of the foot if they wanted to learn and enjoy more. By doing this I could have helped them improve, motivated the young guy rather than just speaking against what I felt was not right. In the short 100 meters towards my house, I realized I had more choices than the one I took. While writing this last line, I realized that there is another choice that I missed thinking of earlier, one of just walking away after the 3km run, one that I have rarely taken.

Money Management!!

I am in Chandigarh at my parents place having evening tea. Our maid after doing the chore comes and asks for a change of Rs. 500. My mom searches around to give her the same. Though this might seem like a routine 'change' procedure, she has to make sure that before she gets home, she has the change. Because her husband is going to ask her for money to drink and if she does not have change the entire 500 goes. Money management!!

Are students really looking for jobs?

This is what happenend. I am narrating as if I took the interview.

This final year student was scheduled for a telephonic interview . I try his cell number and he does not pick . I try the landline number we have and his father picks up. I mention that this is regarding an interview with his son and we are unable to reach him. The father tells us that he will reach out to his son and we can try again in 5 minutes. Then he mentions that "child is brilliant aur 'aap dekh lena'. He is a very dedicated kid".

I reach out to the student 5 minutes later and we start the call focussing on the skills he has mentioned in his resume ( let us say html, php). So I quiz him around basics of html. He mentions casually that it has been a long time since he did that project. Then suddenly the phone cuts. I try again, he picks up. Second project, same story. The phone cuts. I try again no response. I try again, again no response.

He calls up 45 minutes later and says 'Sorry, I had to go to the washroom.'

What??

This is an extreme but true example. The student in question is a Tier II - III city student who more than anything else 'should' want a job. The education system should have made him a competent engineer by now or he should be worried to death about having spent 4 years and not being educated. None of this has happened. What has happened is that we have a callous 22 year old living with his parents who have spent a fortune in making him an engineer.

The other side.. .
But this guy I am sure is on Orkut and probably on Facebook too. He can manage 10 chat windows without a problem and be witty and quick in his scraps. His language though is not the usual polished english but difrnt qik smthgs. He has potential.

. ..and what we are doing
Technology I believe will make the difference. We are using technology to tell him about what companies expect and how to go about getting a job. We are telling him about the importance of skills. We are shooting videos making him more confident about his skill sets.

Companies and colleges will also follow suit. Facebook has used technology to gather users across the world. Companies can also do the same with candidates thus effectively cutting costs and increasing student engagement, training him while he is studying. Colleges can use technology to manage students and increase placements.

CoCubes intends to be THE place where companies can reach out to colleges and students to engage/train/hire online, talking in a language which both understand.

How can we save 10 lakh man years of time every year in India. Very simple.

My younger sis is preparing for IDC and she started a discussion with me today morning which led to this.

Education System in India
There are 17000+ colleges in India from which 40 lakh students graduate every year. Though unemployability has been cited as one of the major problems another critical one has gone unnoticed. Everyone graduates at the same time of the year for jobs which are available at different times of the year. This creates a unique challenge for IT companies as they don't have the facilities or the projects to take them onboard at the same time. Hence staggered joining and “sudden unemployability” leads to wastage of thousands of months of manpower.

Solution: This is a problem which could be reduced easily if different universities operated their curriculum so as to allow at least 2 or 3 times within an year when students graduated (a practise prevalent in US)

Saving of time = Area of shaded region = 10 lakh man years and using 70 as the average age of humans = ~14285 human life spans _________________________________________

Assumptions

1. 40 lakh students graduate and everyone gets a job over an year

2. 20 lakh graduate at two points in year and get job within 6 months

Two Principles and a Learning

This is a quick posting. Because I have something to share and because I just havent posted for so long.
Two Principles that I believe are good to follow and would have signficant affect on success or failure of person/organisation

• First things first (prioritize) - assuming that you are smart enough to figure out what to do if we can do it in the right order, it could lead to a dramatic increase in output. Let me take a very simple personal example. Our office starts at 9:15 am. Everybody is supposed to be there. But for me there is this habit of reading newspaper every morning which takes half an hour and given that I have been sleeping late, I kept on getting late by 15 min and used to hate it. Made a simple change. Now I go to office and read the newspaper
• The ones who survive are neither the smartest nor the strongest but the ones most adaptable to change (obviously Charles Darwin). I believe this is true for all success stories

A Corporate Learning: "All processes in an organization will evolve and change". Which leads you to practical things:

• Keep reviewing processes as you grow
• Don’t try to make the most comprehensive process possible for starters. Start with the means (read time) you have to build and manage the process. Just get off the ground

takecarez,

Harpreet

Welcome to India!!

CoCubes team was in Jalandhar recently for a Joint Campus placement drive for Evalueserve. And we happened to visit Amritsar, Wagah Border as well!!

Sunday Morning Lessons

My parents are here to visit. And I have learned a few lessons today morning.

Mom: My house can look cleaner, infact way cleaner with just 2 hours of effort. And this is high output/input ratio. When motivated my maid knows how to work hard.

Dad: Raddi waala (old newspaper collection guy) had come to take newspapers and bad day for him, my dad was here. He totalled all raddi (old newspaper) to be ~15 kgs. My dad came, took one look and said, 'He is off by 100%. This is minimum of 30kgs.' Well, I was sent off on a 'weighing machine scouting tour' which thankfully I managed to find. And you know what, it was 33kgs resulting in doubling revenue from the sale with all bottom line impact (I gave him two bananas to compensate for it). Moreover, he showed us how he actually does it. It is surprisingly simple. Give me a buzz to know.

My dad then proceeded to do a simple analysis on how collecting raddi can be a profitable venture as well by creating micro collection centres through guard of the society plus a macro collection truck each month!!

Last but subtle point: We have a white board at our place (it is a thin sheet which sticks to the wall automatically) where each of our team member writes a message each morning!! I was quickly rubbing off yesterday's with a duster and writing a new one when my dad interrupted. He said 'Son, take a wet cloth and clean it properly'. It hardly took me 30seconds to do but now I am sure I wont have to change the whiteboard each month.

I realised I was running and while I was doing a lot more things, simple rules were being forgotten, making life more complicated than necessary. Technology may have had a big role to play in this complication, but as I read in the newspaper today morning ('A man can fall a lot of times, but he becomes a failure, only when he says someone pushed him'), the onus is on me.

Who the fcuk is going to pay?

Colleges tell us companies wont pay, companies tell us colleges wont pay. Sometimes colleges tell us they wont pay and something companies tell us they wont pay. Who the fuck is going to pay?

My father

p.s.: Defining your customer is one of the biggest challenges of a startup. The above thoughts were in my head till very recently and have currently been sorted out for good. My father can breathe easy.

Old Poetry

A few days away from life
A few days among the lonely mountains
A few days here and there. Nowhere.
A few days of my life.

Written after my wonderful trip to Kalindikhal, 6000m mountain pass, more than an year ago!! Everytime you come back from such a trip you promise that you would go back soon. And for most people that soon is too late. I hope to make a trip to the mountains in the next two months.

Learning No. 13: Drawing the line

This takes on from an earlier post on how time becomes crucial when starting up. You have 24 hours on your hands.

Meeting new people (and marketing there) is probably the most critical part of a startup. Potential customers, investors, advisors, accountant and in general people who can help. One great place for doing so are conferences. The dilemma comes in when the conference ends and you come back home with a stack of cards to follow up with (50 - 100 if you are a networking person). So what do you do then? You see the loads of work that tomorrow shall bring and the backlog that is definitely there because you went to this conference. You met some nice people, some big hot shots, a few customers who were really interested in what you are doing, some media guys who could give you coverage and some people you just want to forget.

The hardest to write mails to are the customers because you shall have to customize your offerings and think clearly about what you write. But even though the lure of the easy mails saying 'It was a pleasure meeting you' beckons, save them for the last (but make sure you do it the second night). Write to potential customers first and then schedule meetings with the few hot shots you met (lunch, coffee, dinner) and the media guys. See who you can find on LinkedIn.

There is loads you could do. Know where to draw a line. Don't go overboard and forget that your baby beckons.

Learning No. 12: Website

In layman’s language, here are a few basic things that I think one should keep in mind while building a website:

• Make a platform which is scalable/sustainable
• Make the platform integrable with third parties. The efforts of mass will always be more than 10 people in your company
• Apply extra effort on interaction design
• Keep the offerings simple and focused on the core values that you provideMake the website available on various devices online, offline, phone etc and for each device provide a different set of chosen features which gel with its use

Learning No. 11 : Building a brand

Suppose your company is going through a tough time. Think of an environment when everything is going great. Think of all the good things happening. Now use that vision to build your brand, to make the changes that will take you from your current place to the strong one. Create a perception of a strong brand and a stronger brand will also come following. E.g.: Infosys in order to revamp its image among employees in 2003-04 recruited foreign interns. This created a belief that people even from abroad wanted to be at Infosys!!

Renting a House

So you are planning to shift to a new place!! Here are some of the tips that you might want to keep in mind while deciding how and which place to choose!!

Finding and letting agents know what you want

• Go to 99acres and magicbricks and search for houses online. Call these agents
• Typically agents divide their areas of operation. And they have a very closed group. So just let a couple of them know in an area and everyone else shall get informed
• If your budget is X then quote 0.75 * X to the dealer. He will invariably take it higher
• Be clear on what you want in the house (Furnished/unfurnished, power backup/inverter etc) and convey this to the dealer

Choosing a house

• Once an agent calls you to tell that he has found a house, ask him if he has seen it himself
• If no then tell him to do so once and ensure that he has the keys to the house before spending your time in visiting the place. Ask him if the landlord is willing to give the house to bachelors
• Take a girl along to look at the house. They can spot the small missing things easily. For e.g. missing curtain rods, hangars in the bathroom etc
• If possible take a house where someone has lived before. This ensures that all things are in working order

Finalizing a house (so you like a house and have bid for it)

• Talk to the previous tenants about the house. Also go and talk to the neighbors once. They are the most reliable source of information
• Make your demands clear in front on the landlord and don’t move in unless they have been met. Don’t get swayed by the lines ke 'ho jayega'
  

Finally, to make things easier, take useful phone numbers from previous tenants/neighbors. Also keep the watchman happy, he is your link to the plumber, electrician, your couriers and everything!!

Happy hunting!!

First Salary

Things have come a complete circle. Two years and 3 months after I received my first salary, CoCubes paid out salary to our first employee, Rakesh. Way to go.. .

Learning No. 10

Evaluate your idea on this framework. I believe it is better than the popular MBA ones. This at an overall level answers the question: what is the pain you are solving and is the pain big enough to push users to use what you are offering?

• How did they do it earlier?
• How will they do it now?
• How much would they have to change?
• How much would it cost?

Learning No. 9

This one is a ‘big learning’. Why? Because this is a compilation of learning’s, those which have already cost me a lot of time and energy. I hope I can learn, improve and implement these aspects as I go forward.

An identification of a leader is to get the best out of people. And I recently failed here. I think the problem lies in not analyzing why you need people, which translates into not making people aware of their roles before joining and finally into no clear responsibilities for them. And this leads to not getting the best out of them. So, assign clear responsibilities and decision powers.

Secondly, be sure that the work you are assigning to people under you is relevant and that will ensure that their efforts do not go waste. Wasted efforts breed negativity in a team and show lack of value for someone else time.

Finally, here is something that I already knew and still faltered on. Trust people, but also spare the time to follow up that trust.

Learning No. 8

There are so many things that build up your life like browsing through websites, playing, meeting friends, clicking photographs, opening a bank account and others such small things.

So you have a job!!
When you are employed with someone, you do all of these on your employers time. Even if you spend a day browsing or playing, you are being paid for it at the end of the month.

What happens when you are working for yourself?
Half of the useless things go out of the window and you optimize on the rest. Now this may mean not going to a concert, playing less and working more. Yes, you gain the independence you always craved for, but it comes with a responsibility, towards your idea, towards people who trust you and towards your bank account.

Learning No. 7

This is a simple learning. I am writing it as a reminder to how you will face additional difficulties when implementing your vision. The last two months that I have been on the road, so many things that we did not think of have cropped up.

The good news is that many things that you thought would be difficult are actually much simpler.

For e.g.: we thought that shooting videos would be tough in colleges and students would not be much enthusiastic. What we found was that they were over eager to shoot the videos. At the same time, what we did not think of was that girls and their parents would have a problem with an online video profile. So, we have ended up with most guys shooting it, and also adding an additional option of hiding video for girls.

Learning No. 6

Okay, so you have 24 hours on your hands. And you can choose how to spend it, either to build your business or check out how the competition is doing. Checking out competition is good but this often leads to a lot of time being spent on game theory and can be disconcerting for what you were trying to build.


Keep some time aside each week for checking out others. If you come across a link during the week, archive it for that session. In that session try to look at what other people are doing and any learning that you can incorporate from them. And the rest of the time focus on your business.

Mind you, it will need discipline.

Learning No. 5

Your meeting went good. You had a nice conversation, you got great feedback and you can think of a couple of ways in which you can go forward in the future. Well, looks like you had a productive morning.

Wait.

Did you get any money? Did he buy what you went there to sell? No.

So you had a nice time and have hopes of getting money in the future. This is business development alright, but if you are in a startup, you need clients now. So don’t be lead into complacency by having a good meeting. Get the cash.

Remember that, water like feedback is abundantly available and very valuable but does not bring much money when sold.