So I am sick + some learnings and thoughts

So yes I'm down with an upset stomach - so bad in fact that I had to leave my Co-op's Annual General Meeting mid-way (which was a shame as I was one of the two members younger than 70. Luckily Hemisha could stick through the whole thing and have the samosas and juice!!)

Haven't been able to sleep well - woke up at 3:30a.m. and spent a LOT of time trying to look up old friends on facebook and check on updates in my friends' lives. Finally decided that I had seen all the new pages on the internet and had pretty much tracked down all my friends and it was time to do something productive.

Most of you might now that for the past 16 months I've been working on building a new company. Paytronic is an attempt to build a retail network for the acceptance of consumer payments in India. It is our aim that if you are trying to get retail customers to pay you money you will come to us and we will provide you the reach and an elegant way to do so with the least cost. It's been a learning experience (as always) and I wanted to share some of my learnings with the world at large:-

Firstly, I wanted to share things that every start-up should do to save cost:-
1. Move all your email hosting to Google. We run a company with 200 employees and an even larger number of mail boxes on it and it's brilliant. It comes with shared calendars, documents, files etc. and we have never felt the loss of Outlook. Most importantly, it never goes down, it works seamlessly with Blackberry (including the calendar) and you don't require to dedicate resources to administer the whole thing.

2. Never hire through recruiters. We have found that the best way to hire is through referrals and through job portals. Recruiters are just lousy. If your HR person is using a recruiter or wants to use one, it just means they don't want to put in the effort to do the job themselves. Of course the best hires are people who have worked with other team members in the past.

3. Encourage people to start the day early. This is especially important for people like us who are based in Mumbai. Starting the day early means that at least some people will avoid the pain of commuting two hours and coming to the office all fagged out. Trust me this takes a huge toll on their productivity.


Next I wanted to share things that we have learnt through experience:-
1. Ensure that the entire process is under your control. This is very important. There will be temptations to do that deal with a large company who will get their entire sales force to sell your product. It will be lucrative to get integrated with this large pan-indian bank so that your cash management becomes a trivial problem. Trust me, this will not work. The fact that you want to do any deal with an external party means that you feel that the problem is a difficult one for you to tackle. Wisdom has taught us that the only reason the external party agrees to do the deal is they don't realize how difficult the problem is. In the initial days, it's important for every company to have full ownership and a fool-proof plan they can implement to solve the difficult problems they come across.

2. Metrics, Real Time Systems and Automation. When you are running a large company, it's very easy to get bogged down by operational issues. During times like this it is important to drill into every employee - Are you doing the same thing everyday? If so, can it not be done by Software? Are you being continuously asked for reports ? If so, can it not be generated by software? Would you be able to do your job better if you had some data from another department? If so, can the software not get the same for you? It is absolutely critical that every member of the organization's performance, goals and achievements are monitored in real time. There is no better way to improve productivity.

3. Ensure that the company can function from cybercafes and buses. We operate in a country consumed by chaos. In the last month there have been severe rains in Bombay meaning on many days our staff has not been able to commute to the office. There have been riots in Indore, floods in Jharkhand and our Sales manager Om in Jammu has been sitting inside his house (hopefully only till Aug 15th) because of a curfew in Jammu and Kashmir - along with a ban on SMS. We operate a real time business and it's impossible for us to not have productivity from even a single team member for even a day. It has been important for us to give all team members an ability to function from the closest cybercafe or else by sending an SMS from their mobile.

and lastly,

4. Put in effort into building a culture. This is different for every company. I like to feel we have built a culture where we are aggressive as a company, we do what we say we will do and every person is accountable for his commitments. This is an ongoing process and I am thinking hard on how to build some of the softer values into the company such as compassion and respect for dissension etc. Let's see how it goes.

P.S. We've crossed over 10,000 Recharge points across the nation. Congrats to the team!!

Nice Article about Nandan Nilekani

In today's Mint Lounge. Click here to read it.

The quote I liked most -

Asked what he would like on his epitaph, Nilekani simply says: “Here lies someone who didn’t squander his serendipitous opportunities.”

Randy Pausch Loses his battle with Cancer

Randy Paush lost his battle with cancer yesterday morning. Randy is the author of the book "The last lecture" inspired by the actual last lecture he gave at CMU - For those who have not watched it - the video is embedded below.He was a brave man and has inspired me to do go out and do things.

My favorite quote from the last lecture
"It's not about how to achieve your dreams; it's about how to lead your life. if you lead your life the right way, the dreams will come to you."

-Snipped from his wikipedia bio -

Randolph Frederick Pausch^[1] (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a best-selling author who achieved worldwide fame for his "The Last Lecture" speech on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon.

-- The full wikipedia article here

Update - Paytronic goes live!!

Hi everyone, for those who don't know, about a year ago I started work on a new project - Paytronic Network - Me and my team are trying to build India's leading branded digital network for the distribution of prepaid cards. We started the company in February 2007 and went live in April 2008 in Mumbai. We've now started rolling out "Recharge Points" across the country and today crossed the 3500 point mark nationally. What's encouraging is we're now getting 200-300 applications a DAY from retailers to become recharge points. I'm really encouraged and we're gonna do everything possible to ensure that our merchants are very happy dealing with us. If you want to visit us on the web - www.paytronicindia.com. It's been amazing with the teams at Paytronic and Myzus (of course technology is handled by Myzus) working together to ensure everything comes together smoothly. - cheers,

Went Rappelling yesterday

yesterday was a fun day. Myself and Hemisha went Rappelling at Kondona Caves - close to Karjat. It was a tiring 2 hour hike (I know.. I am not in shape!!) and then was the best part - learning how to rappel and going down a 150 foot drop to the Kondona Caves. I enjoyed it thoroughly and maybe will do some more of this if time permits in the future.

Chilled out Sunday!!

Had a chilled out Sunday yesterday. It was Hemisha's birthday and so we woke up late, enjoyed a lazy lunch at the Pan Asian and then came home and crashed while watching the Seven Samurais - Woke up watched the finals of the IPLT20 and then did some reading, a late night sandwich and then woke up today all ready to face the new week. Life's been a blur lately with lots of travel and deal making as I'm getting close to launching the company that I've been working on for the past year and so this was a much needed break.

Amazing

I just saw this article today. I'm amazed. It talks about how they have photographed uncontacted tribes. I'm unclear about why an NGO called Survival International is fighting to keep them uncontacted though - I'm thinking would I have preferred it if the more advanced cavemen discovered my ancestor cavemen in the forest and left them there or would I have wanted the more advanced cavemen to have made contact with my ancestors and told them about fire, the wheel etc. and taken them along to find the best place in the forest to settle down and build a colony? Interesting thoughts these are on a Saturday afternoon.

Interesting Sunday

Me and Hemisha had an interesting Sunday. Started the day by tracking the elections in Karnataka (my home state) and then lunch followed by a late afternoon brainless movie - Be Kind Rewind - Do watch it if you want to see the English equivalent of a Govinda movie and my guarantee- you will use the word Sweded many times in the following week. Something interesting - we watched it at the new Oberoi Mall and seated with us during the movie was Kumaramangalam Birla and family - He's the 7th richest Indian. I was very impressed by how down-to-earth he and his family was. They stood in line with us at the box office, spent about an hour walking around the mall killing time before the movie and I guess had a good time through it. It's nice to see a billionaire from one of India's wealthiest families making efforts to ensure he and his family live a normal down to earth life. On another note, I'm definitely getting a feeling now that the change that started in India about 2 years ago is now becoming visible. You have the first of the world class malls, residential complexes etc. getting ready and it's exciting to see the country modernize itself. But thats the topic of another post!!!

Good Will Hunting - my fav. quote

Saw Good Will Hunting tonight - really enjoyed it. I thought I'd share a quote from the movie that really struck me. It struck me for it's simplicity and also for the contradiction that in spite of it being obvious when put so directly, we end up naively believing that we can read about things and substitute that for real life experience. This dialog really struck a chord with me. I've snipped it from IMDB.com

Sean is Robin Williams - a so-called failed shrink and Will is Matt Damon - a disturbed genius with a troubled past who was sent to Sean for counseling.

Sean: So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right?
[Will nods]
Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

Finally -- google docs goes offline

I have posted earlier about how revolutionary Google Gears would be and how this will be key in google's quest to push microsoft over the edge. Google has finally launched google docs offline. This takes them now into direct competition with Microsoft. Now whats the next big thing ? Gmail offline if you ask me.

cheers,