March 2005 Archives

One of the FM stations was running an sms opinion poll today. I heard the question while driving to work in the morning. They were asking what would people prefer their kids profession to be. The choices were the usual engineering, medical, mba, arts etc.
Now if this 1995 when I was in a position where I had to make a career choice, the poll results would have been an even split between engineering and medicine with mba coming in 3rd and Arts being relegated to the fringes.

So, I was quite surprised to hear the results of this poll on my way back from work. As expected, engineering is profession of choice for 30% of the people. But, the second choice is no longer medicine or even going for an mba. 23% people claimed they found goiing into arts and fashion design more attractive. Medicine is the last choice of students now. While it would be naieve to take this "sms survey" too seriously, I am pretty sure that 10 years back, any possible demographic in India would not have rated arts and design above medicine.

I see this as a positive sign that our society is maturing and breaking out of the shackles of stereotype. More people are opting to do what they really want to do. That can only be a good thing.

Interestingly, the number one choice for profession in US would surely be sports -- a choice which didn't figure at all in our little survey!

I came across this interesting thread on the R2I forums. Apparently, you need $900k to live for the rest of you life "doing nothing" in India. Of course, the bigger question is if you would really like to spend all your life doing nothing, even if you had the money. Only somebody who was working just for the money would want to stop working as soon as they met their financial goals. But then it is said that you can't succeed if you work just for the money. Seems like a catch-22 situation to me. You can't make money if you don't love your work. And if you love your work so much, why would you ever stop?

Wishing everybody a very happy and colorful Holi!

http://www.ourmedia.org This is what we have been working on for the past few months. After several false starts, we finally did a an alpha release few days back. Ourmedia aims to be a global repository of grassroots media. Anybody can upload their videos, audio, images or text on the website. Ourmedia has partenered with Internet Archive to provide unlimited free and forever storage of media published on the website. Though the website accepts all types of contribtuions, it is more focussed on blogs, vlogs, podcasts and other type of emerging mediums of communication. It provides some rudimentary social networking features as well which will be enhanced eventually.

The site received lots of coverage in the blogosphere over the last couple of days. It even got slashdotted! Over 3000 people have already registered on the website. It is exciting to see something that you have been working on actually get used and generate excitement in the community.

Do check out Ourmedia and send feedback my way. Remember it is an Alpha release. There are bugs and we are working to fix those...

Plenty, if you are trying to register a company. Finding a company name is even more difficult then finding a domain name. The department of company affairs wants that
1. The company name be unique
2. Not similar to that of an existing company
3. Be relevant to the nature of your company's work

Other than that, you of course want that a decent domain name also be available.

So that pretty much rules out anything that the collective creativity of me and my buddies have been able to come up :)

Department of Company affairs maintains an online directory of all the companies registered in India here. Check it out and if you can think of something that hasnt been used yet, please leave a comment :)

Yahoo is soon going launch its own social network. My company is majorly working on social networking software and related applications. I am yet to see a real social networking portal relevant solely to an Indian audience. We will be very interested in building one. Ideas are welcome!

Two interesting statistics before I head out for work:

1. India has 8th most number of billionaires in the world - 12 in all.

2. The average Indian billionaire's wealth is equivalent to almost 9 million times the country's per capita GDP. That is an astounding number and highlights the disparity of income in our country.

I am away for one week and the hottest scandal in Bollywood erupts behind my back. Turns out some unknown news channel hungry for attention filmed Shakti Kapoor soliciting sex from some actress. He also went on to drop names of many actresses and producers who have visited the casting couch. (I am not providing links here, its all over the place - just look on rediff.com or timesofindia.com)

I feel sorry for the dude. First, it seems like this lady in question propositioned to him for months. So he was lured into it in the very sense of the word. Then, this guy with a family and kids caved in and walked into the trap. Sure, he made a mistake. But his family didn't deserve this public humiliation. And what did all this prove? The existence of the casting couch? Well, guess what, we all already knew it existed. And it exists only because it is mutually beneficial to the parties involved.

Indian journalism is consistently hitting new lows everyday. It is a shame that a TV channel should stoop to these levels for some cheap publicity. There is enough corruption and crime in our country that needs to be exposed. So can the media please concentrate on the real issues? Shohaib Illaysi was the mastermind behind the casting couch coup. I remember admiring this guy back in the days when he used to produce "India's Most Wanted". Sorry Shohaib, you have fallen from grace..again.

I landed 5 hours back and haven't been able to sleep at all. It is a pity that I am a slob when it comes to collecting airlines miles. I must have raked quite a few over the last week. I flew from SFO to Tokyo where I had barely an hour's stop before hopping onto the flight to Shanghai. Shangahi airport has this strange setup where you need to go through immigration and customs and get out of the airport before you can catch your connecting flight. Anyway, after about 28 hours of travelling I finally made it back to Delhi.

Business wise, this was a fairly successful trip. We signed our first contract. I networked with lot of people and built relationships.

The trip up to Redmond completely messed up my brain. The moment I landed in Seattle, I went into this warp zone where I kept feeling that I had never left the place. When I went to visit my colleagues in building 9 on the Microsoft campus, I kept feeling that I still worked there. So much so, that while walking past the mail room, I autmatically went in and started searching for my mail slot. I guess I had done that routine so many times that my mind got reprogrammed into that old state. That might also explain the free soda I pinched from the kitchen. I am sure Bill doesn't mind :)

(via Rajesh Jain) A nice article on what it takes to create successul startup. Rajesh has a brief excerpt also on his blog. I am posting here just a bookmark for myself...

Because of certain circumstances I am going to end up having a couple of free days while I am here in the bay area. I would really like to use this oppurtunity to network with people around here. If you are willing and interested to talk to me (about R2I, business or just anything in general), then please do contact me at gauravbhatnagar at msn dot com. Maybe we can have an "indian bloggers in bay area" dinner or something.

Craig Barrett is happy for Intel but worried for his grand children. The Intel CEO, like many others of his league, sees an Asian domination in technology imminent.
"China and India, says Barrett, are expanding their university-level math, science and engineering programs at a pace comparable to US after World War II. Asian colleges now produce six times the number of engineering degrees produced in the US. "

hmm... all i can say is that we need quality along with quantity before we can see real innovation and impact from Indian technology companies.

(posted from Narita airport)
I am sitting at the Delhi airport waiting for boarding to begin. Its going to be a long and tiring flight but fortunately I have hardly slept in the past few days so falling asleep shouldn't be a problem :)

I switched on my laptop and just for kicks tried searching for wifi networks. To my surprise, I found three networks! My delight was shortlived when I realized the login was required to access each of the three networks and there was no way to buy credit online :(

When travelling alone, long flights give one an oppurtunity to introspect. You are trapped in your seat with no phones, nointernet and no familiar faces around you. So either you sleep, or you think. The last couple of months have been the busiest I ever had. I have been so tied down with work that I haven't had any time to pause and look at the bigger picture. Today, when I marked my occupation as "business" on the immigration card, reality finally stuck me. Things have changed a lot in the past few months. Three months back, I was an employee in a 60,000 people company in America. One month back I was working for a 300 people company in Noida. And today I am working for my own 2 people company in Gurgaon (we will double in size in about a fortnight :) It is amazing how so many things can change in so little time. And yet there is continuity in it all in the form of people who love and care for you and people you care for. That makes these changes feel less like a disruption and more like a logical next step.

Next post from Tokyo where I have a 9 hour stopover.

Steve Fossett completed the first solo airplane flight around the world without refueling yesterday after shrugging off an apparently dangerous fuel shortage and pressing onward across the Pacific Ocean and into aviation history. (more here)

Mr. Fossett spent 67 hours in air. Makes me feel much better about my upcoming flight to SFO. Its only 24 hours long :)

Yesterday Reliance disabled outgoing calls on my WLL phone because i had run up a bill of 5000 bucks. Now today, hotmail disabled my outgoing email. Why? I don't know. I spent the whole of today morning sending out important emails to our clients. And many hours later, I realized nobody is getting my email.

I was pissed off enough to switch to using gmail exclusively. But, in what could only be a CIA conspiracy to make me totally unproductive, gmail refused to send email as well. Google thinks adding a "Oops..." to an error message makes it funny when in fact it makes it just more annoying.

Well, eventually gmail did comply and now I can send mail via gmail. Hotmail has still blocked my outgoing email. No idea why.

What a waste of time.

Sachin is asking students to concentrate on their board exams and not get distracted by the India-Pak cricket series. That is easier said than done. I feel sorry for these kids. I went through this during the 1996 world cup which happened right in the middle of final exams. I can still remember watching the India-Pak quarter final when I had my Math exam the very next day. When Prasad had clean bowled Aamir Sohail after being hit for a six, the whole neighborhood had erupted and there were work fire works all around. Who can really study in such an environment? :) Fortunately I was in XIth and didn't have to worry about board exams.

My beloved Delhi has finally been awarded a one-day game - and that too an India-Pak game. I am super excited to go and watch the match next month. Anybody know how to get tickets or passes? I will be eternally grateful to anybody who can get me good seats for this match! :)

Since my post yesterday about hiring, I have been receiving lots of resumes. That's great! Thanks everybody! Please continue to send these referrals my way. That is the best way to find good people.
In particular, we are looking for B.Techs who are, or are willing to work in Gurgaon area. Thanks again! :)

The budget came out yesterday and it has been hailed as a "dream budget". My knowledge of finance being very limited, I can merely go by what the media tells me. But I do see that I will have to pay lower income tax and that is always a good thing. However, it seems that certain reiumbursible expenses have been made taxable. So as a company, that might have some impact on us.

Times of India had a hollywood style budget special edition today. I applaud their attempt at being creative but sometimes they take it too far and end up looking like a school newspaper. Anyway, that is besides the point of this post. ToI asked many of our film stars what they thought about the budget. I liked Priyanka Chopra's response best. She started with "Not much will change for people like us." Why, you ask? Ms. Chopra explains - "It's a pro-poor and a pro-middle class budget". Ahh, I see. So surely, these trivial money matters should not bother Priyanka, who is clearly not poor and not middle class. But they do. She continues, "I am unhappy that petrol prices have gone up. It it's pinching me, imagine how much the common person will be affected". How sweet. She thinks about us common folks too. Imagine if its pinching the most uncommon Priyanka Chopra, how much it must be pinching poor me?

Reminds me of Lina Lamont from Singing in the Rain screeching "People! I ain't people!" :-)