If women could use the memory they have…

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Rodinhood

My wife and I are part of the regular party circuit. For those occasions when we head out to gatherings involving friends and family, my wife selects her clothes in a rather unique fashion:

She first asks me to choose an ensemble for her to wear. I am a predictable kind of a guy and quickly pick out something that is functional, dressy and most importantly speedy to put on. My motivation is my favorite saying – ‘time is of the essence’. In a few seconds of announcing my recommendation, it is ceremoniously rejected and dismissed by my wife. The reason (if I can luckily extract one) is always the same: ‘ Everyone we are meeting today saw me wearing these clothes last time and so I can’t repeat them’. She then authoritatively theorizes that the folks we met a few weeks or even months ago will actually remember what my wife (amidst 15-25 women) had worn!!

Really??

If that were the case, then my wife should in turn remember the clothes the other women wore. In that spirit, I ask her about to describe what my aunt or cousin was wearing in that party 2 months ago, but my questioning is cut short by wife slamming the bathroom door on me…

If I were to play CSI, I wonder what is the possibility of a human being (who is not trained to be a detective) to arrive in a dimly lit environment, then immediately meeting lots of folks, getting busy in husband bashing and gossip and even high on white wine to remember weeks later the clothes of other folks in that party setting were. I think ‘impossible’.

Still she may have a point…so if women can, so can Men. I mentally conduct an advanced google keyword search of my memory and try to remember what was the color of the trouser of that idiotic Uncle when we met the last time over dinner in a restaurant…. Hmmm… awwww….it just slips me. Ok – wait a minute, there was this moron who spilled his full whiskey glass on my brand new woolen trouser on my dad’s birthday dinner. Half an hour later and 2 whiskeys down, I had unsuccessfully tried to download a nice bloody Mary into his shirt….but he got the vibe and vanished… So what was the color of his garment? Hey…wasn’t it a white shirt…?? Errr….it could have been black… why can’t I remember the colour of my target i felt so strongly about??

To conclusively accept or reject this Einstein memory theory, I consciously made an effort to memorise what my wife wore on a couple of occasions, and then a few months later quizzed her on what she had worn for that event?

Believe it or not she remembered everything in detail and scared the wits out of me. I repeated this test on my mom who also passed with flying colors.

My perception of human memory has been altered forever.

Can women please channelize this memory power to fulfill 3 wishes I have for them:

1- Mentally absorb every chess move ever played and then beat the pulp out of all the Grand Masters out there and became the Grand Mistresses of Chess!!

2 – Remember every General Knowledge question that exists and monopolize all the Who wants to be a Millionaire Shows.

3 – Imbibe every musical score and nuance of the world’s best musical compositions and please conduct the New York and London Philharmonics…

And if you wear Black and White doing all the above, the world will still clap for you.

I dedicate this to my wife who is always the guinea pig of such posts of mine :-)

If you liked this piece, you may also like my blog ‘Why do Women carry Large Handbags‘

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Dear God, Do you understand your Mobile Bill?

Posted on June 11, 2010 by rodinhood

I swear (on GOD), that I can just about manage to run a Company, keep investors happy, drive cars on both sides of roads and even identify a western classical musical piece, but I just cannot understand my mobile bill.

Consider this simple chart:

In Mumbai (Maharashtra), if you want to get a post-paid connection, these are some of the options: (haven’t considered some of the latest entrants):

Operator

 No of schemes Total Items on the ‘Confusion Menu’
Tata Indicom 11 11
Airtel 19 30
Vodafone 13 43
Reliance 16 59
BSNL 8 67
Idea 9 76
Aircel 8 84
MTNL 15 99
Reliance GSM 11 110
Tata Docomo 6 116

So, lets assume that you go to a gas station driving your car, harried, late for a meeting and ask the pump attendant to ‘fill her up’. ‘Sure!’ he says and  gives 116 options to choose from  (what I call the item on the confusion menu in the table above).  ‘Sir!’ he says, please tell me if you want ‘ super 149 or saver 99 or gold 599 or Lifetime of …… (brand names of the 116 choices)’

Depending on how your day has gone, you will either:

  1. Shut the car, walk out, thank God for the sunshine and hail a cab. Hell to the world… and cars and 116 types of gas choices…
  2. Blow your fuse and create some healthy  blood pressure for yourself… hell, we have to die some day anyway..
  3. Tell him ‘Boss!’ – Fill in whatever you want – I have to quit in 5 minutes’
  4. Be a moron and say “Acha (ok), let me ‘study’ the plans”. So you park your car on the side, take the 116 print outs of the options and then spend 8 hours studying what you need to buy… (Remember you are a moron).

Telecom Companies BET that you are the Choice 3 person ( Charge what you have to but get on with it types) and that’s how they thrive!

Why creating confusion is the best way for profit maximization:

Have you studied your mobile bill carefully? Can you really claim that you know EXACTLY what is being charged for what? The different ‘schemes’ of sms, Internet gprs, talk time, roaming local, roaming international blah blue blee…?

Creating unpronounceable and incomprehensible cost plans make you weak – they make you drop your guard and say the golden words ‘whatever’.

How this works:

  • By creating massive confusion on the pricing, telecom companies take your attention to the easiest thing you can understand – your ‘budget’ or monthly commitment to your mobile bill. Let’s say you make up your mind to spend Rs 1000 (US$ 20) per month on your bill.
  • Immediately, you have stopped paying attention to what you will GET by paying this amount – rather you will have already committed on what you will GIVE someone.
  • When sharks-like Telcos get  you in that mindset, they create myriad and bloody awful pricing plans that GIVE you the LEAST and GET them the MOST.
  • Interestingly, they measure their quarterly performance in monthly ARPU ( Average revenue per User) – how much they make you pay per month!
  • As you trudge along, a stray colleague or friend will give you a ‘tip’ on how to get the best ‘scheme’ or mobile plan. You secretly call the operator up, make a few changes and feel satisfied. You just fooled yourself all over again.

The SOLUTION

  • The TRAI (telecom regulator authority of India) has to allow folks to flip operators but not their mobile numbers ASAP. This is called Mobile portability and means that you are no longer forced to stick to one Operator for the rest of your life since he sold you a mobile number! Its like signing up to fill petrol from the same gas station for the entire period you own a car!!
  • Once this happens, a simple MARKET of ‘Mobile Minutes’ and ‘Mobile SMS’ needs to evolve – almost like buying Gold or Silver from Banks or from commodity exchanges. In a country where 400-500 million people consume a daily requirement (talktime and sms) this is hygiene!
  • So, if I want to buy 300 minutes – look up the ‘best rate’ at that time (and so 100+ operators can compete basis what minutes they can offer and at what rate) and you snap it up. Same for SMS. It’s just like saying – I want to buy 100 shares of a company – look up BSE/NSE and buy it there and then. Add to this, consumers should also be able to SELL unused minutes at their price choices – truly making this a highly LIQUID market.

Confusion has always been the creator of ill amassed wealth and profits.  Information is the enemy of confusion and brings order, competition and massive efficiency.

The same applies to the Indian Telecom industry. The players need to quit confusing 500 million consumers and deliver the truthful value to them.

Send me your experiences as a comment and contribute to this piece!

You may also like my blog ‘Alok’s driver plays obscene film songs on his mobile and why Alok pays for it‘

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Why service at India Retail stores is so bad…

Posted on June 9, 2010 by rodinhood

A few weeks back I invested a princely sum of money to buy my Airmax 2010 Nike shoes from the flagship store in San Francisco. Last week, just before traveling again, I washed my shoes and was aghast to see a big hole on the inside lining of my brand new shoes. I photographed it and sent the complaint to the marketing folks at Nike India – got ‘Shunya’ (zero) response. This made me madder. Armed with the receipt and with war in mind, I stormed into the New York store determined to make a fuss and noise. This was the ‘Indian’ consumer psyche kicking in – ready to fight and draw blood to set right what should not have gone wrong!

The ‘returns’ counter had a very pleasant girl who greeted me and asked me my problem. When I snarlingly showed her the hole, she shrugged, said ‘oops’, and asked if I wanted my money back? Her reaction took less than 7 seconds. I melted. Yet the Indian consumer was still kicking. ‘Yeah- gimme my money back’ I grumbled. She did and then pulled out her trump card – she gave me a 20% discount on any purchase bought within the hour in that store. Well, you guessed it – I bought the same pair of shoes (new color), pocketed enough dollars for a great dinner, walked out feeling like a prince and started doing social marketing for Nike!

Can you ever imagine this happening in India?

Why does Retail Service in all the stores we visit in India – be a boutique or a super mall suck so much?

I believe:

  • The staff at the retail counters doesn’t use the goods they sell and have no information about the product.


The folks in Nike USA are athletes. They know everything about running or the sport that interests you. The guys at the Nike store in Mumbai have fat paunches. They wear Nike shoes but I’m sure only as ‘store wear’. The Nike guy in SFO asked me what kind of running stride I had. I had never heard of this before. The guys in Mumbai did not understand the difference between running and jogging.

The brand owners have to make these sales folks use the product and ‘get into’ the brand they sell.


  • The Brand owner hasn’t educated the sales folks about the philosophy of what their service standards globally are.


The Tommy Hilfiger stores in India are pathetic! The store sales folks never smile – they look like they are recovering from an epidemic or something – neither offer fashion advise nor bother checking if your size is available beyond what’s upfront. When I walk into a Tommy store in the USA – the experience is absolutely the opposite. The problem is that I expect the same experience irrespective of which Tommy store I visit!

Big brand owners must learn from the original software exporters of India who sent young engineers abroad on assignments and then ‘contracted’ them legally to work with the firm when they came back.  The big retail brands should send a few key Sales and Service folks to their International flagship stores or even as just consumers walking the high streets of New York or LA. The investment will be well worth it.


  • The orientation should be ‘service’ and not ‘sales’ because sales precede great service automatically sooner or later.


The Apple store in San Francisco gives you free lessons on how to use and juice Twitter or begin blogging. It’s an open classroom – just come, sit, learn and go. Nowhere do you get the feeling that someone is going to sell you something. In India, within a few minutes of walking into any store, someone will ask you what you want. When I answer – ‘nothing’, I get glared at! Why the hell did you ask me in the first place?

The Oberoi and Taj groups in India and my favourite – Jet Airways have done a spectacular job in selling service to the India consumer not the product. Stay put in an Oberoi or Taj lobby for hours and no one will disturb you. Put the key brands sales teams thru a hotel or airline experience and then put them in front of consumers.


  • Don’t focus on looking smart yourself – make the consumer smart instead!


I still remember walking into the Levis counter at Vama (Mumbai) a couple of years back (Vama incidentally wins my prize for the absolutely worst store…in terms of service in the world). The girls at the Levis counter were slim and pretty, chewing gum, strutting around and constantly chatting among themselves without a bother in the world that they had a job to do. I saw a few customers (girls and their moms) standing on the side absolutely intimidated and shadowed by these ‘modern’ girls! I asked one of these wannabe models what was the difference between all those red, blue and black ‘tabs’ of Levis  – she looked snidely at her partner and asked if she knew… in a tone that made me feel like a moron. (hmmm… shouldn’t she have known in the first place)?

The customers in the corner had vanished and so also had vanished valuable sales for Levis.

Tell Sales people to either become models or Sales people and thus choose between one profession. Don’t mix them up.

International brands can open as many stores in India as they want and stuff them up till the walls burst, but it’s the sales folks who will make the cash register ring. Set that right first.

Send me your retail experience in India or anyplace else as a comment and contribute to this piece.

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My driver plays obscene songs as his caller tune and I pay the bill

Posted on June 8, 2010 by rodinhood

My long standing driver – Yadav aka ‘Maharaj’ is a rather decent bloke. He is demure, soft spoken and usually never has an opinion. All he loves to do is drive and polish the car. Yet, when I call him on his mobile phone (provided by me) for logistical coordination and other errands, the caller tune he forces me to hear makes me go insane. He has chosen the choicest of bawdy, vulgar and obscene bollywood songs available as his caller ring back tunes. If Hugh Hefner called Maharaj, he would probably never kiss a Playboy bunny again. Maharaj has taken mobile embarrassment to a nuclear level.

The least gratifying part of this story is that I pay his mobile bills and hence I am actually funding this spectacular entertainment strategy of his.

So what makes me do something so stupid?

Well, I have no option. This is the Indian Mobile Mafia at play that adds all kinds of value added services to their subscribers’ phones without their permission.

Maharaj has been subscribed to a monthly CRBT (caller Ring back tune) service without anyone asking him or me. If you try and call the ‘big’ telecom operator that powers his phone  and request to get that service switched off, the pain and the trauma of being passed around amongst villager sounding operators  and then pleading them to just get that damn service switched off is just too much of a pain. It’s better to hear those amazing songs. And if I ask Maharaj to pay for his own bill, he will just hang up – he only receives my calls!

Allow me to explain the real math behind the biggest organized crime racket in this country:

India has 50 crore mobile users (500 million) and their ARPU (average revenue per user) each month is plummeting. Thanks to all out wars between so many operators, voice as a stand alone business will be a very competitive space to make money.  SMS at one time was a couple of bucks – now it’s been reduced to almost nothing.

So, if you are an operator and have massive investments to recoup, what do you do?

Enter ‘VAS’ – or value added services. Ringtones, Wallpapers, Games, blah blah. Sure they seem exciting, but it’s a relatively small % of people who are really interested. And after the newness wears off, you really don’t care. The bulk of India is oblivious to such services since they only want to speak and make calls.  Also, the remaining subscribers being added are coming from rural areas (all urban areas in India now have almost 100% mobile penetration) and these folks don’t want VAS at all.

So the next best thing is to thrust it on them!

In a mobile bill, very few consumers keep checking every small item and then calling up their operator to cancel, change schemes, etc.  Mr. Maraharj’s orchestra costs me Rs 30 (0.60 cents) a month – and I don’t have the time and effort to bother and get a ear pain calling up his service provider. It’s also amazing how many times his service provider calls him (while he is driving) to plead with him to say yes for song downloads and other useless services. Forget the embarrassing songs; these guys will cost us a car accident!

Multiply Rs 30 (o.60 cents) with 10 crore (100 million) users (20% rotating guinea pigs) and you have 300 crores (60 million US$) a month in a scam that is just too painful for consumers to switch off.

This is not just an India scam. While in China when we were operating Mobile2win (subsequently acquired by Walt Disney), we were always tempted to send mass sms messages to Chinese consumers to lure them into subscribing to Astrology and Love services. If the innocent consumer would message back, they would automatically be subscribed to 6 months of such services with very difficult ‘unwinding’ procedures. I remember a vendor showing us a machine that would be fitted with 24 sims just as a spamming device to lure subscribers.

I understand that TRAI in India (The Telecom Regulator) is really taking the operators to task and getting them to clean up their act.

Till their bullets hit Mr. Maharaj’s operator, I will merrily listen to his songs… and who knows…even hum them when I am drunk?

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Why do women carry such large handbags?

Posted on June 7, 2010 by rodinhood

I have given up trying to figure out what my wife is upto with her obsession of  massive handbags. Big new ones appear each week at home. In the morning, a new one is selected for the day. Its takes a while for complete ‘content transfer’. In the car, the phone in the handbag rings, and since the bag is almost the size of a cave, it takes forever to find the irritating ringing thingy in the tunnel – by which time the caller gives up and hangs up. Each new store we visit, she first heads to ‘womens bags’

Why are women fascinated by big handbags? And why do they buy new ones ever so often?

  • It’s primitive DNA gene:

I think women were the hoarders or safe keepers in the caves and that’s why clutching bushel like parcels is hard wired in their brains. The bag replicates that experience – it makes them feel that they are in possession of something very material and hence the comfort of the big wobbly cushiony thing near them.

  • It is a baby-cradling fetish:

The bag is a surrogate baby. Cradling and holding it delivers the same effect. Stuffed with things women never use, the weight and proportion is almost that of a baby. It’s a good way to feel.

  • Its that industrious feeling:

In India, women in rural areas carry  large water vessels on their heads. Or on their waist. It makes them industrious. Some toil with sickles in the paddy fields. Are handbags the avant garde tools of industriousness of the modern woman ?

  • It feels like protection

These large handbags are perfect for swinging and protection.  Think of carrying a soft manageable boulder hanging out with you. A swig or two can do the job. It’s a nice feel safe thing.

  • None of the above – women are just richer than men.

The economics of the handbag business are mind boggling. Women buy them like clothes and its just plain simple economics – They have a better cash flow than us men.

I’ve given up reasoning and hope to get some answers.  And watch out – the next handbag is going to become the trolley bag.  I’m gonna get my car an overhead bin!

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Confessions of a Digital Entrepreneur…

Posted on June 5, 2010 by rodinhood

I was born and brought up in a Marwari family where breakfast, lunch and dinner conversations (granny included) were about deals struck and money made. I guess that’s where I inherited my ‘entrepreneurial dna’.

It’s only after working in my father’s socks factory for almost 10 years and then taking the ultimate roller coaster plunge into the world of dot coms and mobile tech that I really learnt some heavy-duty entrepreneur lessons.

Post 4 companies, 7 Venture raises across my various companies and 2 successful exits (mobile2win china was acquired by the Walt Disney Co), let me share some insightful confessions with you:

Solve a BIG problem for a FEW folks or a SMALL problem for LOTS of folks – but nothing ‘in-between’.

In early 2000 in China, we cracked the elusive dual operator ‘sms connectivity’ [To explain - There were only 2 operators in China & both were govt. owned and hated each other.  At that time they would refuse to give a single COMMON sms ‘short-code’ to any private company. So, if China Mobile allotted you 7007 as your short-code, China Unicom would purposely give you 8008. Now, if you needed to communicate that short-code on say, a TV Ad (to get people to respond to you), you would have to mention 2 short-codes, who to send what to etc which was painful]. We cracked a short-code ‘8558’ that worked on both operators by presenting the potential of brand sms promotions and sms revenue to the 2 operators and they agreed! Only Nokia China had succeeded before us. So, when Disney started sniffing at China and figuring out how to buy a simple communication platform, we were the acquisition of choice. To come to the core point – we had solved a small problem but the one that applied to 400 million mobile users (the mobile population of in China)!

Don’t try and grow a Rose Garden in 1 month – it will take years.

Most new age entrepreneurs I meet (and some of the VCs who fund them) believe that growth and market share is a function of stepping on some magic accelerator of hiring people and throwing marketing and business development money around. Forget it. Look at the companies you admire – they grew slowly and steadily. During the phase they went berserk, they went broke. Tell yourself and your VC that creating real value is a 7-10 year grind – if you can live with each other for that long, set sail on that long world trip. You may be god’s gift to mankind, but mankind takes its own sweet time in unwrapping gifts. In 1998 when I started the concept of contesting online, people thought I was mad. Folks at TV companies used to make me sit in the sofa (with the courier folks) for hours and then refuse to meet.  In 2003, we created history with Indian Idol voting and contesting via mobile and landlines.

Hire folks who love what you do – not the bribe you offer them.

When I meet senior candidates for job interviews, I test them by asking if they are willing to take a haircut (small reduction) on their existing salaries – in return for the experience, small equity and a brand new learning I would give them. Their body language and reaction tell me what they came to me for – if it were that 10-30% salary jump they came to me for, I will not be the lucky person to ‘bribe’ them to join. All our key hires and my co-founders live with lower than market salaries for the kick of the job and the equity upside they may earn.

VC money comes when you need it the least and never when you want it the most – so say YES when it appears!

I refused a General Electric term sheet in 2000 for a few points of valuation wrangling. I regret that now coz it set us back in terms of an entry into the USA markets by at least 5 years.  Not to mention wearing the badge of being a GE funded company. As a rule, always stay engaged with VCs – updating them on milestones, new ideas, advice requests etc even if you have nothing to do with them. Just be on their radar at all times.

Don’t fight wars about dilution and valuation – it’s a wealth destroyer!

So many entrepreneurs I meet ask about how much they should dilute and if they will lose control of their company. I always remember Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways in these cases – he owns more that 100 airplanes but doesn’t fly any! The VCs is investing in YOU – not in some hijack plan to oust you and run your business. New age businesses are about people and their intellect combining with venture capital to create massive wealth. Those VCs want to slog you to make the 100x return for them – not do it themselves!

The world is your market – not the market you began in.

Our big success stories have come when we created business models that reached just about break even in India but really exploded outside of the country. As an entrepreneur – be ready to be in a market that needs you – not in a market that you may need.

Being a founder doesn’t always mean being a CEO or COO.

As start-ups, the founder/s take complete charge of the business and fire it up with the one priceless fuel called passion. However, as the business matures and processes and best practices are required, you must be able to give way to let the ‘been there, done that’ folks come in and take over. As the founder, take pride in the creation not the operations. My biggest achievement so far have been getting folks more capable than myself into my companies and giving them ownership roles to execute!

Earn like an American – Spend like a Marwari.

Get tuned to charging customers handsome fees for what you give them. Think American. Charge confidently and early on so that your business becomes something that the market gets used to paying for. At the same time, spend like a Marwari – tight and conservative. And if your VC asks you to go on a spending spree – ask them to give me a call.

Sell when the going is good – not when the time is right.

There is a big distinction in the point above. Lots of folks wait for the ‘right time’. That’s a big mirage. As an entrepreneur, you will know when the curve of value creation is flattening – hey it may not be a curve at all (which means it’s a dud) . So SELL and give the baton to the next runner to take over and run the next lap of your business. In 2006 we made a conscious decision to exit the VAS space in India and got 3x on our return (not the 10x we wanted) – that business would sell at 0.03x if we wanted to exit it now.

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So you think you can ‘Start-Up’? Take my FURNACE test first…

Posted on June 2, 2010 by rodinhood

Almost every other day I get an odd mail from someone in a B-School or working in a corporate job wanting to ‘start-up’.  I am polite to all of them saying ‘think again’ but I am now inspired to write the ‘FURNACE’ test. Take this if you are in a start-up state of mind.

F = Format

Are you a ‘format’ type of guy or gal? Someone who lives by dos and don’ts and ‘this rule’ and ‘that theory’? If yes, just abandon even the dream of starting-up. It will be a nightmare. You need to be re-formatable- like a hard disk. In my dad’s socks factory, I took on an export order that could be profitable only if I bought ‘unfinished’ yarn and then did something at my end to make the sock look wearable. My factory floor manager of 30 years freaked out. He whispered to my dad that we were doomed. The yarn I had bought was twisting and turning because it was unfinished. I knit 30 pairs of socks with that yarn and did everything conceivable to make the twisting stop, until I hit bull’s eye – washing the socks! (Much later I found out that the last processing of that yarn was washing and they charged 20% premium for it).

Be ready to make a ppt in the cab – or speak extempore. Don’t live in a format.

U = Ultrarian.

Forget being a contrarian – how ‘ultrarian’ are you? Are you ‘ultra’ everything? Passionate, never saying it’s over, working on Sunday like it was a Monday, being able to cry with tears when you miss a deal? Putting work before family?

Start-up entrepreneurs are Ultrarians. They take their passion to the limit and sometimes that hurts.

My second daughter was born on a Sunday, and I told my wife as I drove her to the hospital that this kid was a ‘practical’ one. She didn’t care to hear what I said. On the Tuesday my wife was to come home, I wasn’t around. I was signing my first term sheet of my life and Neeraj Bhargava (E-Ventures) and I were putting our pens to paper at the Oberoi Lobby. My wife never forgave me for this. And let me confess that I am guilty of my action.

R = Ravenous.

Start Up entrepreneurs are not hungry – they are ravenous and starving. They are GREEDY – and I use this word in Capitals because most of us are taught not to be greedy. I contest that. The biggest wins in the world come from entrepreneurs who are starving – Steve Job’s hunger is to create art forms in hardware and the Google founders to make everything so easily discoverable.

I remember making a fervent non-stop marketing pitch at the L’Oreal office in India a few years ago. The marketing head – Ashwin Rajagopal (a close friend) at the end of my long non-stop pitching asked – ‘Alok – oh my god – why will you do all this for us’? I looked at him and said ‘to become rich’!!  There was the deadly silence in the room – they did not come across hungry, ravenous and starving entrepreneurs often.

N – Naïve.

Being uniformed can be the best blessing as a start-up entrepreneur. In IIMs and MBA colleges I usually get asked by the students out there will become great entrepreneurs and my honest answer is ‘NO’ (thank god I haven’t been hit by an egg or a tomato yet).

I think the world has changed so rapidly now, that textbook case studies are not relevant. Companies peak out in 5-10 years & that’s just about the time they would become a formal case study. Also, is this is relevant for a start-up?  Typically you are trying to do something that has never been done before – so who could have written about it?

When I began pitching contests2win, the ad gurus in agencies I met, said, ‘bad idea’ – you don’t know marketing or positioning or Maslow’s hierarchy. You are not an MBA and have not worked in a marketing function before. I nodded and never met them again. Instead I went and met 4509 brand owners in the next 10 years (Just counted the count of visiting cards I have) and convinced them that consumers (LIKE ME) – wanted to win free stuff by playing a contest, and a brand could benefit in that interactive process.  They all agreed and we created an industry that never existed before. I was naïve and I won.

A = All hands on Deck

Will you sweep you company’s floor? Will you be the receptionist? Can you hand out your start up’s fliers in a mall?

Start-up entrepreneurs usually do everything – simply because there aren’t others to do stuff for you! Also, this gives you a bottom up perspective of each and every process of your operation. You have to be all hands on deck.

During contests2win first few months, I could not afford an office boy. So, at the end of the day I used to drive and drop of the prize consignments to the local courier office. One day, the clerk said ‘Sir I have to ask you a question that’s been bothering me – You drive in an Opel car to come here and yet drop packages yourself’? I chuckled and said to myself – the car is a family gift to me and I have gifted myself a start-up!!

C = Captain

Are you a leader? I’m not asking a question that appears on the covers of those books you see in Airport bookshops. A captain is not only the guy who dies when the ship sinks. He also assembles teams, motivates armies and gets drunk with his men.

This is important. Can you fire someone without remorse? Can you shout and scream? If you can’t, that’s fine – get a co-founder who can and become ‘co-captain’. One of you will have to be the toughest SOB that ever existed.

One of my favorite Captain tricks is to arrive in packed conference rooms, sit right at the back and then ask the first question of the floor. It takes guts. Why? It gets my company noticed since I announce my Company and myself before asking the question. If I am not on the panel, I still leverage the panel. I play Captain even if it’s not my ship.

E – Excited and Excitable

Even today, a 2000 US$ game license or media buy gets me excited like a kid getting a chocolate bar. I walk around, get a coffee or just start making conversation with colleagues. I get the same high that I used to get 10 years back.

You have to be excited about your business and company and also be excitable so that your teams visibly know what makes you happy and strive to deliver to see you jump up and down!!

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The buffet is dead – long live A la Carte

Posted on May 21, 2010 by rodinhood

Once in a while I still succumb to the buffet – typically when I am too tired to review menus or when I am with a bunch of folks. The decision immediately stinks after the soup and starter (the oldest trick in the restaurant book – feed patrons soup (water) and tit bits and kill their appetite for the main course). By the time I reach the stale and uninspiring spread, I know I got suckered.

The buffet may still pass in restaurants, but A la Carte is winning the world:

Music:

Long ago, I used to buy LPs (long plating records) just because I liked one song of a music group. The rest of the album was mediocre. Unless you were an expert to place the ‘needle’ exactly where the song was engraved, you had to endure the LP for just one song. The cassette was the same thing, though it became a bit better when you could FF and flip sides and play. Generations of musicians earned ill deserved millions and the Walkman was king. The buffet was delivering.

The CD ‘a la carted’ music. Songs got separated. They went up on Napster. They got mp3d. They became free. And everybody in the music buffet business died.

Apple’s i-tunes is the new à la carte of music. Buy what you like, pay per song and create as many playlists as you like. You are the album maker – not the one song trick musician.

Games:

A console game (like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto) costs 20+ million dollars to make, takes 3-5 years to create and costs you 50+ US$ to buy in a great looking package. A study found out that only 2% gamers play any console game end to end. The rest of them drop out somewhere in the middle – it’s only logical – For example, do you have years of spare time to learn how to fly a virtual Boeing 747 in Microsoft’s ‘Flight Simulator’? I bought the game CD years back and spent 7 hours in learning just how to take off. My 747 crashed in 10-12 seconds after that simply because I didn’t know what to do after taking off. The soup and salad had killed my appetite.

Then appeared Mafia Wars and Farmville. No special machines to play these games. Sneak a kill while in the office. Play with friends! Nibble and snack on a game – while you work. No paying any package fees. Sure, if you want to really become special in the game, buy a few coins and get the best looking farm on Farmville. Your friends will be impressed. ‘Eat what you want, when you want’.

Television

I used to sit on Sunday evenings in front of Doordarshan waiting for the Sunday movie. Endured that horrible pre loader screech with black and white (later in colour) vertical lines dominating the screen. There was only stale buffet to eat. Even today if you have the courage to watch a 9 pm movie on Star Movies or HBO, watch what happens to the length of ads mid movie onwards. You will typically spend 3 hours watching a Hollywood Movie (buffet) whose standard playing length (à la carte) is 1.5 hours.

Now, I have Tata Sky+. I skip record everything, skip all the ads and watch a movie in bits and pieces over 5 days or more while replaying some of my favorite scenes over and over. I open my cookie jar and eat when I want. I don’t mind paying for the Tata Sky+ box and subscription fees (per channel) that I like, coz hey – a single cookie tastes better than 12 eaten together.

I could go on but would rather inspire you to look around and tell me which real world business buffet models got destroyed and will get destroyed by A la Carte.

Here are 2 predictions I have:

Insurance:

Insurance (Ulip, Retirement schemes and all that jazz) is the stalest buffet in town and it’s making people sick. The insurance companies rob you of your premiums promising you something silly called ‘insurance cum investment’. When was the last time you called Baskin Robbins and asked them to send you pizza, cheese sticks and yeah, some desert? Please, go to LIC only for insurance (term products) and HDFC Mutual funds for investments.

SEBI will smash the fake promise of investments that insurance companies make and ‘un-bundle’ these offerings. Lots of insurance companies will then shape up or ship out.

Telecom:

Remember the black dabba landline phone that used to adorn your living room? The bills that sometimes terrified us and the sleazy and slimy ‘line man’ who used to screw up your wires when he wanted some extra pocket-money? There was one restaurant in town (MTNL) and they only served a diseased buffet.

Then came the mobile. Today, 90% of Mobile is now ‘pre-paid’ and that’s the way the world is going. Pay per minute. Pay for how much you talk and re-charge when you are just about over. Eat à la carte.

Today, I still pay a ridiculous amount each month for my MTNL land line thanks to the broadband connection they have a monopoly on (in south Mumbai) which is a ‘fixed + variable’ buffet deal. I hate it. The service sucks and they overcharge.

But this buffet is almost over. Broadband is going exactly the way mobile did. Either via wi-max or some other technology that will allow me to consume Broadband when and how I want (the USB GPSR sticks by Tata and Reliance have begun the revolution). MTNL and BSNL will Rest in Peace very soon – They would be one of those restaurants that forgot to print a menu that read ‘A la Carte’.

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Do you visit your eye doctor when you want to lose weight?

Posted on April 16, 2010 by rodinhood

When was the last time you went to your eye doctor to lose some weight?

Well, you probably didn’t. And even if you did, your eye doctor probably looked at you quizzically, shrugged her shoulders and asked you to go to a gym instead.

If this seems so obvious, I am puzzled as to why smart, educated and super-achiever folks can’t figure out the difference between ‘insurance’ and ‘investment’.

Insurance, in my limited opinion is the action to protect one’s assets – be it property, health, or life.

So, if I have bought a new car and have put a substantial amount of my hard-earned money into it, I will make sure that it’s safe and secure and doesn’t get stolen. But cars do get robbed and hence there is something out there called Insurance – to protect my investment. So someone in the big bad world is ready to take a risk of my car getting stolen and compensates me by buying a new car for me, in return for a very small sum of money (premium) that I pay every year.

How do they benefit? Well, they collect these small sums from lots of folks and have a simple calculation that everyone’s cars won’t be stolen together – so the money that they collect from lots of premiums is ‘more’ than the cost of replacing a few car/s. In doing this business, the Insurance Company lands up making a profit (in most cases, unless all the folks they insured lived in Bihar). (Bihar is a state in India in which politicians and local goons rob cars as a matter of fact).

This business applies to Life Insurance, Health Insurance, Art Insurance, etc.

Did you know that if you reserve an expensive boat cruise by paying upfront ‘non-refundable’ money, there is an insurance protection that can help you recover that money in the case if you change your mind and not go on that cruise! So the insurance folks by offering this policy have figured out that lots more folks finally go on that vacation than those who back out! Similar Insurance folks have understood that Beckham’s knees won’t break or George Clooney will not lose his voice and hence ‘insure’ these stars by guaranteeing large sums of moneys if these bad things were to ever happen to them.

‘Investments’ in my mind is the surplus money that you save and put aside from your hard-earned monthly earnings so that you can a) protect your money and  b) earn decent returns on it depending on your risk appetite. So, if you are a monk, you go in for bank deposits and savings accounts and if are a cowboy like me, you play the stock market.

Pray tell me, how and where is the scope for insurance and investment to be the SAME thing? In the past 15 years of meeting insurance folks, I have asked them this question and have never received a convincing reply!

Some points:

  • Insurance premiums DON’T have to come back to you as ‘bonuses’ etc!

Think of them as the fare to take a taxi ride! A few years ago I bought a ‘term’ life insurance. The logic was simple – if I were to suddenly decide to take a rocket and meet God, my family whom I would have left behind, would have been paid a good sum of money. If I decided to stay and not to ride that rocket (and I didn’t), I would continue to pay the insurance company a premium that they would never be returned to me!

  • Don’t buy insurance to save TAX!

Now, that’s one of the most confusing and bewildering reasons I have come across, when it comes to buying Insurance. A large bulk of Indian Insurance policies are sold in the Jan-March quarter thanks to the zillion of agents out there who suddenly descend on hapless folks and get them to sign up insurance deals to save taxes…

Think of it like this – imagine you have been shipwrecked on an island and have a 100 bananas (earnings) with you – the island money (tax man) will take away 30 (tax rate) and let you survive on the remaining 70. It’s logical to live and let live. Most folks however, want to bury the 100 bananas, wait for the monkey to disappear (suffer the the 3 -7 year lock in) and then dig the bananas back from the ground, to eat them all by themselves!

Sorry! It doesn’t work that way! The present day benefits (think Net Present Value) of the bananas are not the same after 3-7 years ( factor in poor returns on the locked money and the corrosion of value thanks to inflation)!
This para is inserted post original posting thanks to Reem who bought the topic of taxes to my attention – see his comment at the end.

  • Understand the concept of ‘IRR’ thoroughly

it’s the calculation of MONEY OUT and MONEY IN over periods of time and what you did finally EARN in the end. This is the way car EMIs are calculated – do your own calculation for the moneys you are paying out annually (premiums) and what you will get back when all your hair turns white. In almost all cases, you will be shocked at the pathetic return. (Just google IRR and Insurance)

  • Be demanding on both fronts.

The problem with these ‘insurance cum investment’ policies is that you DON’T KNOW what to demand from whom. It’s like going to a friend’s house who serves you bread and butter to fill your tummy up. You can’t DEMAND that your friend serve you a 3-course meal coz you went to the WRONG PERSON for the WRONG PURPOSE. So, go to a restaurant for a great meal and torch their pants if they fail – and go out for a drive with your friend and demand that she sings a song to you on the way coz in both cases the demand you make is reasonable!

The era that we live in has a specialist and a service for every wish you may have. So, don’t ask the plumber to repair your Wifi Modem – the Linksys guys are meant for that.

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So, you think you know when to clap?

Posted on April 10, 2010 by rodinhood

One of the most fascinating and often argued mannerisms is about clapping between ‘movements’ in a western classical concert. I have observed this ‘never spoken of but assumed protocol’ with great interest over many years in concert halls all over the world. I think it’s a classic case of human emotion conflicting with ancient and archaic rules.

To me, its Amazon vs. Barnes and Nobles (the book shop guys had scoffed at e-tailers) or ‘THE’ Almighty Britannia Encyclopedia vs. Wikipedia (Is the Britannica business still alive today?). You can probably think up many more examples.

Back to clapping:

For those new to this business, take Beethoven’s 5th symphony. Its divided into 4 parts (movements):

First movement: Allegro con brio
Second movement: Andante con moto
Third movement: Scherzo. Allegro
Fourth movement: Allegro

It most cases (and I say most because you will read an amazing revelation at the conclusion), the conductor performing this symphony will pause between the movements for a few seconds and then start with the next.

Why the pause?

Many reasons:

  • Each movement is a story in itself – an emotion, an expression and moods swings of low to high to low to exuberance – you need a few seconds to literally breathe between these mammoth musical chapters.
  • The conductor builds anticipation for the next movement to come
  • Older folks in the audience use that quick stop to cough, some to unwrap the noisy sweet wrapper and folks like me to whisper to my partner ‘wow or not so wow’
  • Musicians of the orchestra use that gap to turn the score sheet page, or to wipe their brow, rest their cello against their thigh or just smile at their partner.

The tragedy appears in these few seconds :-(

The ‘uninitiated’ concert goers are so overwhelmed by the conductors performance (even when he has done a bad job) that they burst out in claps just as the movement ends.

And that’s when the white hair folk freak out! It’s now a RULE that ‘thou shall not clap between movements’. The silence is used to reflect on the music that was just played and also wait with bated breath for the next movement. Thus, when the clapping starts, the elderly get into their act – they look and stare at these naïve first timers with so much contempt that the poor fellows forget to clap for the rest of the concert. In Mumbai so often there is this ‘shoo shoo’ hush that follows the claps trying to subdue the claps from continuing. The general atmosphere of concert halls has become so uptight, its like we all ‘freeze’ the minute the music starts. Statistically speaking, in 7 out of  every 10 concerts I have attended, someone claps in-between movements.

I ask – SO WHAT?

There is a very interesting school of thought that these self-imposed ‘rules’ are not what Beethoven and Mozart intended ever…. It’s a well-known fact that composers in that era were confronted by all kinds of motley crowds who thronged concert halls and clapped, jeered and did all kinds of stuff while concerts were going on.  This is why the ‘overture’ was invented – to buy time in the beginning of an operatic concert to have the crowds settle down (and also give them a sniff of the musical theme music)

If you look at the average age group of concert goers (in India at least), it’s over 70 years old. I rarely see young teenagers in concert halls ( see lots of them in jazz bars and fusion music concerts). Smaller girls and boys do make their appearances because I guess their parents have coerced them to attend the same. The business of classical music is crashing into oblivion. These strict and monastic rules will just make these young folks never enter a concert hall in their lives.

Lets just live and let live. Let the music be sacrosanct. Don’t get all caught up in the small bells and whistles that are not related to the music. If old classical music has to survive and exist, it must remember the fate of the Britannica Encyclopedias and Barnes and Nobles and accept ‘re-invention’ and not say ‘NO’.

Let me end by narrating the most enterprising approach I have seen to this problem:

In many past concerts in Mumbai including last night’s London Symphony Orchestra, the absolutely brilliant Kristjan Jarvi conducted Bernstein and Stravinsky compositions with NO breaks in between movements!! So, he actually had rehearsed with the Orchestra to simply move into movements without a single pause! I had forgotten this approach and it just struck me as a such a simple and non-controversial solution – just don’t ‘stop’ for the clapping to ‘start’!

(I would like to dedicate this blog entry to my wife Chhavi who noticed this new approach to the clapping menace and inspired me to write this piece)

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