March 2007 Archives

I have been suffering from a severe blogger's block for a while now. I just can't get myself to write a decent blog post. I noticed that lot of other people in my blogging circle are going through similar symptoms.

There are a couple of reasons why I have not been blogging much. Firstly, I just have been incredibly busy with work and yet at the same time, I am making a conscious effort to balance my work-life. Since there is only limited time in a day, its not possible to pursue everything. Blogging has unfortunately fallen down in my list of priorities.

Apart from that, I have been a little disillusioned with the style of blogging that used to previously impress me. The most influential and popular bloggers (at least in tech and entrepreneurial circles) are the ones who write a lot about how things should be and how things should be done. Its a lot of preaching and advice which usually is good and well intentioned. Frankly, significant part of my own blogging has been in that category and I know the that whatever modest popularity my blog has enjoyed is because of my posts on R2I and entrepreneurship in India. But of late, I have realized that the most successful entrepreneurs out there getting work done - not blogging. There is a huge crop of bloggers whose only claim to fame is blogging. I don't want to end up in that category. Hence my motto - blog less, slog more!

Finally, my own views on entrepreneurship and running a startup continue to evolve very rapidly. Hence, often my views change from what I had previously blogged. Now that is not a bad thing, but I am getting a little bit wary of putting stuff out there which in hindsight might not be very good advise for somebody who takes it seriously. After all, I have only 2 years of experience doing this and we have a long way to go! However, at the same time, sometimes I feel that it is worthwhile to pen down my thoughts and experiences as they evolve. This is something I am still debating.

I am trying to get back into the blogging groove. Thanks for checking back and thanks for leaving comments even when I have been really bad in replying back!

It gives me great pleasure to showcase the efforts of the Tekriti intern team in the form of LetsCricket.com LetsCricket is perhaps first social networking community targeted towards Cricket fans. Its built on top of the PeopleAggregator platform, which of course Tekriti develops with Broadband Mechanics. I had this project in mind since a very long time and I had registered the domain name more than an year back.

With the interns coming in and the world cup being just a few weeks away, we felt it was right opportunity to build LetsCricket.

LetCricket is targeted towards the typical crazy overzealous cricket fan (like myself). Indians love to talk about cricket (no matter they might have never played ever in their lives). So clearly disusing cricket is a very social activity. On LetsCricket, users can create groups, participate in discussions, vote for their favorite players, maintain cricket blogs and find other people with common interests.

LetsCricket is very much a work in progress. It has been put together in less than 3 weeks by Pankaj and Santosh (with generous help from Gurpreet and rest of the PeepAgg team). We are adding new features in to the site everyday. We decided to make the URL public in the spirit of open development approach. Do give it a look!

This year's budget is going to have a significant impact on the functioning of software service startups in India. The government is introducing a 12% minimum alternate tax (MAT) that needs to be paid by IT companies even if their actual tax liability is nil (as is the case of 100% export oriented units). MAT is adjustable against future tax liabilities so as such it doesn't affect the profit and loss statement of a company. But it does affect cash flow.

What really irks me is that IT bigwigs like Narayana Murthy have been advocating introduction of such taxes since the IT industry has enjoyed tax free status for "too long". Well, truth be told, it is the Infosys' and Wipros of India who have enjoyed this status for a long time. Secondly, since most big IT companies anyway are not 100% export oriented, actual increase in their tax payout is in the tune of only 1-2%. So for all practical purposes, these companies are unaffected.

Now consider a small software startup like ours. Because of the tax exempt status of export oriented work, it makes sense for us to focus our energies on acquiring overseas clients. So being almost 100% export oriented, our tax liability suddenly goes from 0 to 12%. That is a direct hit on our cash flow. What is worse is that our pricing and billing is based on the assumption that the income will be tax free. That means, now to maintain same cash flow, a lot of startups might actually have to hike their billing rates  a little. That makes them less competitive.

It is very disappointing that people like Narayana Murthy are now taking the seemingly high ground and advocating taxes when they have themselves flourished largely because of these very tax sops.