New Delhi Times

Come Monday morning and Tekriti would have moved out of Palm Court and Sun Tower for good. We came to Palm Court in October 2005 when we were barely 15 strong. Back in mid-2005, when we had started hunting for new office space, we were targeting a space of around 2000 sqft. In fact we had zeroed in on a 2200 sqft office in building nearby but thankfully the deal did not go through over a pretty minor issue. The next weekend, a property dealer showed us 602A Palm Court. The office at 3510 sqft was almost double in size and budget. We were told that we could take half of that office. The building also housed two call centers at that time. Hence, the courtyard was full of young kids and it almost felt like a college campus. That appealed to us and we decided to move in. I don't exactly remember how we ended up taking the entire space because 3500 sqft seemed like "way too much space" back then. The office owner had been pretty suspicious as to why we needed this much space when we were only 10-12 of us.

 The office was furnished in the most unconventional way. Right from the color of the fabric used, to color of walls, to the texture of wood used in the cubicles, there was nothing "office-like" about it and we loved it for that.

With a seating capacity of 36, the office used to feel really empty when we first moved in. Almost a third of the cubicles were vacant. Central air conditioning was a new luxury for us and with so few people around, the office would become terribly cold even during peak summers. Few of the girls carried shawls and jackets to office every day!

Late nights in Palm Court were always felt like more fun than work. Because of the call centers, the building was buzzing with people even at 2 AM in the night. There were a few all night "dhabas" within the building courtyard. Having a hot Maggi or chai in winters over there was almost a daily ritual for most of us.

The Tekriti Cultural Team was born at this new office. All the extra space we had was a great excuse to party without reason. We had many samosa parties, quizzes, skits, Diwali, Holi, Xmas parties at that office. One of my favorites was when I donned the red Santa outfit (back then I definitely looked like a Santa on a diet!).

I guess it took us just about an year to fill up the 6th floor office. We then got another office on the ground floor and then another office in the nearby Sun Tower. In the last three years, we have been through six different small and big offices. Amongst all of these, after the first one at Galleria, 602A Palm Court holds a special place for me, and I am sure, for many of the Teknokrats.

Posted by Gaurav at 02:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Its been a very long time since I last wrote a blog post. Unlike other addictions, blogging seems to have few withdrawal symptoms. That would be why I just haven't gotten myself to update the blog in a long time! However, there are many updates to share and hence this post!

Travel Boutique Online nominated amongst NASSCOM TOP 100 IT Innovators

 Travel Boutique Online (TBO) is our travel industry focused B2B platform. In our first year of operation, we have seen tremendous growth in this business and to top it, we were nominated amongst the top 100 IT innovators for 2007 by NASSCOM. This was a great accomplishment for our technology team. As a business, we have largely flown under the radar in a space (online travel) which sees lot of news and activity. We have also followed a radically different business model by going B2B in a space that is so far dominated by B2C players. TBO deserves a post (actually several posts) to itself. But getting the NASSCOM nomination was definitely a high point for us.

Three years of Tekriti

Tekriti completed three years of existence on 7th Feb 2008. It has been a terrific ride so far and time has flown by fast! We are now nearing the 100 employee mark, have added new clients, delivered several dozen projects and very importantly, brought domestic mix in our client list. Our commitment to product/platform based model has borne fruit and our video publishing product TekMedia has found good adoption in the last few months. There is a lot more to share which I will leave for future posts. However, we do have a new logo (as seen here) and a brand new company website. Do take a look and send back feedback my way.

New office move!

We are moving to a new office! For almost an year now, we have been operating out of three different offices. Obviously this makes things difficult. It increases costs and reduces communication. So now we are moving to nearby Udyog Vihar. We will have a whole building to ourselves. With 15000 sqft of space, a nice cafeteria and a recreational lounge, I can't wait to move in!

I am hoping to get back to blogging. I started getting back in the mould by micro-blogging on twitter but New Delhi Times is the real thing!

Posted by Gaurav at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Cricket, they say, is a game of glorious uncertainties. Unfortunately, when it comes to Indian cricket, life is predictably certain. It was less than 3 weeks ago when India had won the T20 world cup. The excitement, ecstasy and media hype was predictable. The showering of awards and cash on the players by state governments was also predicable. Comparison of Dhoni's mane to that of a lion's was also something not unexpected. Comparison of Yuvraj's sixes to the rising stock market was somewhat amusing but not inconceivable. And then Australia came to spoil the party.

Just like a twenty20 game, our delirious celebrations were fervent but short lived. The Aussies landed in India even before the Indian team had managed to take off the garlands off their necks. The rest, as they say, is, history. And boy, does history repeat itself! So after having lost the series pretty comprehensively, we still have one more match to go. Once more, like so many times before, India will be playing for pride in this last match. Ironical it is to play for pride immediately after having lost all of it!

Posted by Gaurav at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Today morning traffic was blocked off on many major roads in Delhi resulting chaos and many people not being able to reach their work place. A few people in our office also called in to say that they are stuck in traffic jam and wont be able to get to work. I didn't know the reason for these road blocks but I assumed it must be something really important to cause such a huge loss of productivity to so many people.

Well, it turns out I was wrong. VHP (the radical Hindu organization) had organized a chakka-jaam (road blockade) across the country today to protest against the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project which will dredge a channel in a narrow strip of sea between India and Sri Lanka, reducing distances and cutting costs for freight traffic. Now you may ask why would VHP have a problem with something like that? Were they worried about environmental effects on the marine life? Nope. VHP claims that this project will destroy a bridge between India and Sri Lanka which was built by Lord Ram. Firstly, there is no concrete evidence to validate this fact. Scientists claim that is actually a natural structure that developed from sedimentation. Secondly, even if it was indeed built by Lord Ram, who gave VHP the right to protest by disrupting traffic and causing problems to millions of people across the country? Protesting thousands of miles away in Delhi makes no sense. Maybe they were too lazy to go all the way down south to actually protest onsite?

It is surprising and both funny and sad that even today it is possible to get away with this kind of anti-social behavior. I am sure Lord Ram will not not have approved of it!

Posted by Gaurav at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

The Indian IT industry is one spoilt industry. An experienced and successful entrepreneur once commented to me that for an industry to grow at a healthy pace, an unemployment rate of higher than 7-8% is needed. I think it makes a lot of sense. In the IT industry today, with manpower being scarce, the focus is merely on retention, hiring policies and compensation. While that does not mean that the industry is not growing at a scorching pace, it does mean that as a group, we are focused on the wrong issues.

Being a service focused industry, the dependence on manpower is inevitable. As such, I think it is a good thing because it generates employment, improves lifestyle and overall helps in GDP growth. But I absolutely despise the fact that the biggest "challenge" that the industry faces is a employee retention. So much time, effort, energy and money is spent on just one aspect of business that we are losing focus of the bigger picture. This trend is especially harmful for the fresh and young graduates who have just joined the industry or have been here for only a few years. Constantly pampered and hailed as the country's saviors, these young IT professionals live with a false sense of security. They start at salaries at which people in other industries retire, switch jobs every few months and in general lead the good life.

While this appears to be a win-win situation for both the workforce and the organization, it unfortunately prepares neither for the long haul. With organizations constantly focused on retaining and hiring employees "at all costs", our price competitiveness in the services industry is bound to suffer. Average salary hikes in the IT industry are in the range of 12-15%. If profit margins have been traditionally pegged at around 30% and billing rates are only going down, its easy to see how this current model is unsustainable in the long run. The answer of course is to move up the value chain, provide higher quality services and innovate. But with most organizations spending all their energy in maintaining headcount, where is the time to strategize and move up the value chain?

The IT workforce is actually getting an even worse deal. Switching jobs usually means a 20%+ rise in salary. Hence, on an average, an IT worker spends less than 2 years at one organization. Consequently, we have a large pool of inexperienced yet expensive workforce. This in turn ill equips IT organizations in India to move up the value chain since the workforce isn't stable and doesn't have enough expertise to add more value in a cost effective way.

The situation doesn't appear grim today because the world economy has been largely on an upswing for the past few years. So there has been enough business for IT companies to grow and thrive in spite of mounting costs and increasing difficulties in retaining employees. The media also paints a rosy picture and loves to glorify the Indian IT story. However, the big question is how well prepared are we for a downturn in economy? Are Indian IT companies prepared to handle an economic slowdown? More importantly, is our IT workforce equipped to face tough times? Are our young Turks taking their profession seriously enough? Are they spending more time on honing their skills and learning the ropes or are they only fretting over pay packages and job interviews? Do they have the maturity to prepare for future market correction?

Only time will tell but till then sorry, we don't have time to innovate!

Posted by Gaurav at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Michael Vick reminds us how easy it is to lose it all!

Posted by Gaurav at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It always surprises me how much fuss is made about these agreements that India signs with US and other countries. The recent nuclear deal is a good example. One thing that we got to remember is that a deal or agreement between two nations is only a piece of paper and that's it.

If US was to break the agreement, you can't really put their president in jail for that. Likewise, if India was to tomorrow violate some clause of the nuclear deal, what is going to happen? Say, we conducted nuclear tests. Would the deal be off? Would US stop supplying the know how to us? Perhaps but maybe not. That would depend on the position, power and weight that India holds at that point of time. If we are a strong nation with a strong economy which has impact on the US interests, or if the world political situation requires US to align interests with us (maybe to counter China or contain Pakistan), US will be happy to overlook some "minor" infringements of the deal. Another way to look at it is that if we weren't important to US interests in the future, they will anyway try and force us to curb nuclear tests AND stop us from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel (which the current agreement allows) AND impose a sanction or two for good measure. India never signed the NPT and on top of that publicly conducted nuclear tests few years back. But we came out alright at the end of it.

So maybe we should just stop crying ourselves hoarse on how we have sold off the national interests to US (unless you are a politician in which case you should, by all means, gain maximum mileage out of this juicy opportunity to oppose the government policy). World politics is like a capitalistic economy. Market forces and not signed agreements decide the future course of nations. So let me finish off by quoting a famous sher

Khud hi ko kar buland itna ki har taqdeer se pehle

Khuda bande se khud poche bata teri raza kya he

Posted by Gaurav at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I kid you not, this is the exact text from the declaration you have to sign on the marriage registration form:

"Neither of us is an idiot or a lunatic at the time of Marriage"

Of course some might argue that this is an oxymoron since why would you marry if you are of sane mind (Palak's joke - not mine!)

Posted by Gaurav at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was my birthday today. So I thought I will take this opportunity to start writing again. I have been offline for almost 3 months now. But I have a pretty valid excuse. I was busy getting married!

Palak and I tied the knot on July 11th. The run up to the wedding involved juggling work with wedding preparations, shopping, and having fun. As is the norm with Indian weddings, we had loads of festivities before and after the wedding. The details of the wedding are worthy of several blog posts!

The past year was definitely not just another year! I will back online and blogging from now on. So please tune back in to New Delhi Times!

Posted by Gaurav at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Reading this article made me wonder why we spend so much time glorifying "product companies". It is a peculiar phenomenon of the tech industry in India to consider services company as completely devoid of innovation and thriving solely on labor arbitrage. I was myself guilty of similar thinking for a long time. However, after over 2 years of doing services and product development side by side, I have realized both have their own unique challenges and it is not at all fair to put services companies on a lower pedestal than product companies.

Firstly, there aren't really any true product companies. No company can simply build and sell products without providing services around them. Microsoft -  the epitome of software product development - has a very large fraction of its work force providing support and associated services around its products. Apple, IBM, Sun - you name it - all develop products and provide services around them. If anything - many of these companies (notably IBM) have realized that services is a much more profitable business to be in. IBM Global Services is probably world's largest software services company.

Secondly, unlike common perception, services companies constantly innovate to remain competitive. The innovation may be in the form of better processes, better hiring strategies, or in developing complex technical solutions for their clients. It is true that many large software services companies do routine incremental maintenance work for systems that were architected elsewhere. However, that is true for large product companies as well which need to invest majority of their resources in maintaining and updating previous versions of their products. If anything, a services company has better chances of doing interesting work in varied technologies as against a product company which is likely to be tied to a single platform and a single product. For a services company, every client and every project is an opportunity to pick up a new technology. The portfolio and technical breadth of services companies is undeniably greater than those of product companies.

Finally, doing software services is a great first step towards building software products. The greatest advantage of providing software services for us has been that we have learnt to listen very carefully to what our customers are saying. On the shoulders of its clients, a services company gets an opportunity to look closely at varied business models, ship varied products and learn from mistakes and successes of others. All this is great experience that readies an organization to venture in to product development when the time comes.

Let us give credit where it is due. The Indian IT industry is what it is because the few big IT services companies which mastered their art. To compare with Silicon Valley is not only incorrect, it is also irrelevant. To deride services companies as doing low end labor intensive work is being ignorant. To assume that product development can't happen here because we are not innovative is naive. If we were not innovative and smart, the IT services success story wouldn't have happened as well. Lets get over the fixation with product development. It is happening and will happen more when the need arises. Meanwhile, lets raise a toast to all those services companies which have put India on the world map!

Posted by Gaurav at 01:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)