Sushrut Bidwai | Blog

Early adopters and Indian eco system

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:47:42 -0400

Many times we keep hearing that Indian startup ecosystem is non-existent and there are not many early adopters. Well we cant really change everything immediately, but there are simple things that we can do to solve the problem at smaller scale.

When I was running company from Nasik, I used to get very limited opportunity to meet founders to exchange notes and share experiences. So when ever I traveled to Pune or Mumbai, I would invite few people I know for lunch/breakfast/dinner meetups. Just may be 5-6 people sharing secret sauce. Try out each others products, give feedback and may be help with connections/network and similar things.

This is something I think every founder can do. Now we have a very active and awesome group of 25 odd founders in Mumbai+Pune which meet regularly, share feedback and help in any which way possible. Its almost like an open source ycombinator minus pg.

This works especially for founders who are not very good at networking at larger conferences. By restricting number of people, it creates a more comfortable and cozy environment for real discussions and not just sales/marketing pitches to each other.

Now we have a good group in Mumbai which meets often. I am also doing founders meetup every month in Pune along with breakfast meetups every other week.

So if you are in similar position may be start doing such smaller meetups?

PS - There is also one awesome demo club run by @prateekdayal and @mukund in Bangalore.

Hobbies on resume are important

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:59:00 -0500

I have always used hobbies as one of the ways to find good programmers. Or programmers who can be easily coached. Specially when it comes to hiring fresh-graduates or interns.

Hypothesis

Very few people have given much thought to writing resumes. So mostly they copy paste resumes, specially parts like hobbies. So when you asked about it, you can find out how much thought a person has put in it.

Most people write hobbies as - reading, watching movies, music etc. Most of these are time-passing activities, rather than hobbies. Of course these can be actually hobby of a person, but when you mention them on resume, most of the times you are just either copying it or dont really mean as a hobby.

People who have good knowledge about field of their hobby are often good at learning things and participating in a discussion. They also have ability to reach their own view on subject matter and have skills to defend that view.

Example -

If a candidate says his favorite sport is cricket and his favorite cricketer is Sachin. Then does he have list of top 5 innings Sachin. Can he explain why he thinks those are top 5 innings. Who considers second best? Does he know what an inside-out shot is or what exactly is reverse swing and how it works?

If he has answers to questions above, I will be glad to talk more. If not, I pass.

Theory -

To pursue a hobby, it takes lot of time. You need to learn lot of things. Even if it is things like going through physics of a reverse swing and understanding different material used to make cricket balls and pitch/weather conditions etc. All of that just to enjoy watching cricket a little more.

Also to learn all these things first thing you need to start from is asking questions. To yourself and to people around you. You will in the end have to reach out to people who are experts in the field. From making a visit to local cricket coach to writing an email to Zaheer Khan. To do all that, you will have to start expanding your comfort zone. You will have to develop listening skills.

When you start this pursue, over a period of time you will start forming your opinions. You start getting comfortable to the fact you can form opinions of your own.

And to go through all this to derive no monetary/professional gain, but just to enjoy something you already like in better and more satisfying way.

This is something I value a lot.

Lot of good people I have met are the ones who pursue one or more hobbies, learn all about them over a long, long time.

It shows passion they have for something. And ability to pursue that passion.

And passion can be a transferable quality. If you are passionate about one thing, given right environment you can become passionate about other things like programming for instance.

And more importantly - I like working with people who are passionate. Not necessarily the job at hand. But in general. You get to learn lot about their hobbies, have interesting and stimulating conversations. It is fun.

Conclusion

A simple question like, What is your hobby?, is a good window into a candidate’s personality.

Anecdote

I worked with a really talented person. His hobby was eating. He will be ready to travel 100km just to try out the misal paav some one recommended him. It was fun working with him.

A year on..

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:52:00 -0500

It has been a while since I wrote a post.

I moved to Pune exactly a year ago, from Nasik. A lot has happened in this year. Took up 3 different consulting gigs. Built 4 different products/app of my own. Learnt a language (Python) with few tools around it. Picked up couple of skills. Made few new friends, got rid off few. 3 different long vacations. 30 odd books and couple of new TV shows, Game of Thrones in particular. Lots of movies, A separation, the best one I saw this year.

I have always loved living in a small city. I feel more comfortable and much less intimidated. Big cities are just crowd of people. I feel kind of lost. Of course it is full of interesting people. And got to meet lot of them. But still in the end, you are just part of crowd. Anyways since professionally I do not have choice, have to stick around and perhaps I will get comfortable or at least used to it.

And now - I am doing a new startup. I built 4 different products in last 12 months. From marketing automation to a collaboration app. But I realized I want to do a consumer facing product. I am not very good at that. But that is what I want to do.

Enter - simplycious.com - A product search and discovery tool.

It has only been about 27 days since I started writing code for it. Everyday has been a total fulfillment. I wake up at 5am just because I am restless to implement a feature that has been cooking in my brain for some time. Been long since I have enjoyed building something so much. So what ever happens I know I am not going to regret a single day of it.

Looking forward to 2013 and another year full of possibilities.

PS- FYI it has also been six years since I left a job and started on my startup journeys. No success yet, but will not give up. Ever.

Happy new year everyone!

Letter to Sachin Bansal : CEO/Founder Flipkart.com

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:18:23 -0500

Below is the letter written to Mr Sachin Bansal of Flipkart.com on Jan 12th 2012, around 11 days ago. I have changed names of customer service agents.

Hi Sachin,

Thanks for sharing your email address. This is a long letter, just want to make sure I am communicating everything. Though there is gist at bottom, if you would rather skip.

I bought a laptop and few other things in mid Oct and they were delivered in third week of Oct 2011. After using laptop for few days, I realized that it crashes a lot. I investigated the problem at my end and found that the fan stops working some times and that causes overheating and crash.

I reported this problem and talked to customer support. I was supposed to leave to Bangalore for a business trip of 10 days and hence had asked them to accelerate the process. But only on 23rd Nov, when I was already in Bangalore, I was informed that laptop will be replaced. I was also told that laptop will not be replaced, as per the guarantee, but rather I will get store credit or refund.

I asked the support agent, Mr S that I can only return the defective laptop once I reach back on 2nd Dec. He told me call *him* once I reach. I called flipkart on 2nd Dec and was told S will get back. This same thing continued for next 3-4 days. But neither S, nor any one else from flipkart support got back.

Finally next monday ie 6 or 7th Dec, I was told that reverse pickup will be arranged in next 48 hours. Nothing happened till 13th Dec. Finally I decided to publicly ask for this and then I was told reverse pickup will happen in next couple of days. Again I had to leave on a business trip to Pune, actually for a week, but I cut it short. Not having a laptop was affecting all my business really hard now.

I decided that enough is enough and now I want to be compensated. If flipkart is giving “replacement guarantee”, it has to honor it. And I decided to not co-operate for reverse pickup. The reverse pickup person banged on my door when I wasnt home, for 45-60mins causing serious discomfort to all neighbours and extreme embarrassment to me and rest of my family. We had to answer lot of question, causing further mistrust. Plus our neighours told us that he was using profanities while leaving the building against me.

Even after that, I agreed to the terms offered by flipkart. Terms were, flipkart will ship replacement laptop *immediately*, costing Rs 800 more than my purchase price and I will co-operate in reverse pickup. I had given time for delivery guys to come and pickup the laptop.

Please note that Mr J, customer support staff, told me that replacement will be shipped immediately, that is first thing tomorrow.

Delivery people did not came on given time and hence I called Mr J. He told I have to wait till they come, cancelling in effect all my plans. And if I dont do that replacement will not be shipped. I asked him that replacement was suppose to be shipped immediately, how is that dependent on everything else? He told me no, replacement will be shipped as soon as delviery guys confirmed receipt of defective laptop.

After this I completely lost trust in flipkart. I have purchased more than Rs 150,000 worth of things from flipkart.

After a couple of days, after looking at my tweets, Mr J emailed me that “Flipkart is committed to refund/replace your laptop. And new laptop will be shipped when defective one reached Bangalore warehouse”

Please note that - Mr J first told me, laptop will be shipped next day. They it will be shipped as soon as reverse pickup guys send receipt. Then he said it will be once it reached Bagnalore warehouse.

After that - I finally bought the same laptop, which flipkart told me they cant procure from any sources. I had to not only spend more money but put it on an expensive EMI which will cost me 15K more, as I did not have that kind of cash left.

Then, flipkart told me they have shipped the laptop!! I told them I already bought it. So they went ahead and added some Rs 43,000 store credits to my flipkart account!!

There is no way I can trust an organization like that. I understand this can be one of case, but there is no way you can affect some one like that and still not ready to compensate appropriately.

In a gist -
1. Flipkart guaranteed 30 day replacement, which it did not honor.
2. It never processed for 2 weeks, till I started talking about it publicly.
3. Customer staff kept giving me incorrect information, on purpose
4. All in all it wasted more than 45 days of my computing time.
5. Its delivery guy harassed me, used profanities.

I am an entrepreneur, like you. You can understand how much precious computing time is when you are about to start a new venture. I wasted an entire month. I am completely snowed under now, late with all necessary business stuff. My reputation is down the drains, as I have not been able to keep up with promises. And thats a huge huge opportunity loss. I was supposed to move to Pune from Nasik by 10th Dec, but had to delay solely because of this laptop issue. <was-not-in-orig>I had already signed lease agreement effective from 16th Dec, meaning I lost Rs 4500 directly because of Flipkart. </was-not-in-orig>

Tell me what I should do? Should I just take the refund and go away? Or isnt it my duty as a consumer to make sure businesses are penalized when they do some thing like this and fight for that?

Techsparks in Review

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:15:07 -0400

I attended Techsparks Pune event on Saturday, and here is brief review of the experience.

Keynotes -

Both JustDial and Quickheal are amazing stories. Both journeys are of real startups, which have gone through the extreme amount of pain involved and determination needed to build companies which impact world. Most events I attend, founders who have built companies for couple of years and flipped them with out creating long lasting impact come and speak. This was a refreshing change. Kudos to Shradhha and her team for putting together such fabulous speakers.

I have used both of these products many times and hearing about efforts behind them is truly inspiring.

Panel -

Panel was very well balanced with entrepreneurs, technologists and investors being represented. But quality of questions was not great. I think events like this can find better ways to conduct Q&A. Perhaps let people tweet their questions and moderators will ask best questions from tweets. Or can pass along questions on piece of paper to moderators and then ask best questions. I am sure Yourstory team will figure out a better way to do this.

People -

Even though each event is driven by content and people, but its people you are there to meet. And there were lot of enthusiasts in the attendee. Met some of the best entrepreneurs. Lots of useful connections, discussions and exchange of ideas. Given the quality of people this event pulled, I am sure there next editions in other cities are going to be great success as well.

Heck I might even attend one more event before the grand finale in Bangalore!

So if you are in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad - Do not miss this event.

Bhimsen

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 04:33:00 -0500

When you grow up in India, you hear stories about great musicians, singers of the past. Even legends about them. How their singing can make it rain.

When you hear Pt. Bhimsen Joshi - you become audience to those legends.

One of the most memorable moment of my life was listening to his Abhang - Maze maher pandhari with thousands of Varkaris in Pune.

You see thousands of Varkaris instantly mesmerized, swayed and touched spiritually. Thousands who get that much closer to their god. Thousands who may not have experienced a connection with spiritual power before, experiencing for the first time. And all this throughout the night surrounded by these wonderful Varkaris who so deeply believe in God. And you are filled with this pure positive energy and warmth that even if for a second, you do believe everything will be fine. Rather you just dont think, you just want to remain in that place, some where far closer to yourself than you have ever been before.

Then you realize that with music anything and everything is possible. Pt Bhimsen Joshi was one such legend and he will always be. He gave with his singing a kind of experience that you will remember forever. And his songs will make rain for you, just believe a little.

Life and path and bitterness of the soulless heart

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:42:00 -0500

Don’t blame the lord for troubles of the path.

With no lord, there wont be a path.

Don’t blame the night for darkness.

With no night, there wont be stars.

Don’t blame the rose for thorns.

With no roses, there wont be beauty.

Don’t blame others.

With no others, there wont be you.

—————————————————————————————

On your bitter days, remember the sweeter

And on your sweeter days, remember the bitter.

Blame all you want on others.

It wont change a thing.

Blame yourself for everything

and you will be changed forever.

—————————————————————————————

Its so easy to blame.

To satisfy your ego.

To justify all your wrongs.

To satisfy your greed and lust.

For you know only the bite of your own shoes.

For all you feel is the pain of your own thrones.

Then stop and ask.

Have you ever done wrong?

Have you ever cheated

and lied and stole?

Have you ever done wrong with out meaning to?

And then ask yourself

Did you ever questioned why you got something?

Did you ever deserved any thing?

And what did you do to deserve it?

Did you ever questioned

When you were getting?

Now then why you ask, when you stopped getting?

Services Vs Product : Founder's perspective

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:34:43 -0500

To provide context - I was running a services company for 30 months. We worked on various kind of projects. Consumer facing e-commerce app, enterprise apps, financial services products, backend infrastructure of of a gene testing labs, mobile apps. So a wide range of projects. Product startup I am doing now is, Prolinkd, an Internet app for B2B search and sales.

Following are the differences I observed so far.

Lack of business goals understanding -

Even though often I have pushed the companies we worked with to share business goals they are trying to achieve, its not possible to understand everything from where you are. Its mostly refined to a point before being handed down to you to execute. Most of our clients helped in understanding every little thing about business goals, but there is only so much time. Your main objective is reduced to executing technology so that next version can be rolled to market as quickly as possible. So you tend to get into habit, even if unknowingly, to just take up specs and execute on them.

Where as in product startup, every person has to know what business impact will be for things they are working on. At least at very early stage and for very early team members. For example - In services work, when certain decisions were made to change deployment infrastructure, even if I personally understood why the change, I had no further incentive to share this with the team working on it. If they ask you of course share. Now I have to share everything. I was just talking to the guy who is writing up deployment scripts and reiterate multiple times about how critical deployment scripts are. As a product startup we have to iterate quickly. If a customer reports a bug, we will need 10 mins to fix it most times. But if we dont have sound deployment scripts we will have to wait another few hours to apply the patch. And when you can orient some one to think in these hard business terms, they understand things quickly and make sure they take their time but do a great job instead of just good. I sit with our server guy and do the math of calculating cloud costs and better ways to utilize our very little runway.

Make no mistake, even while running a services company I tried to do all these things. But you as a manager have so little information that it becomes difficult to share that half knowledge.

Control

Even though for all projects we worked on, we owned the technology side of it. But still we had very little control on choosing. I debated multiple times with a founder on how mongodb is far better suited for his needs than any RDBMS application. I had to end up letting go of the deal. Most services guys would not do that. You are getting a customer, you bring him in and get things done best to your capabilities in given constraints. I learned that hard way.

In product startup, if we are not happy about slightest of things, we wont release it. No matter what internal deadlines are. We were suppose to launch yesterday, but we delayed by another 2 weeks as I am still not happy with 3 major screens and their UI. We have already done entire UI twice. And will do it for as much time as it takes. When you work for some one else, you are not at liberty to take such decisions. You are given a deadline, you ship. Even if code is not well designed, you make peace with yourself that you will come back and re-factor it. Unfortunately pressures of next release will not allow you to do so most of the times. And since client has never seen the code himself, no matter how much you make him aware of that fact, he will still go ahead with next to-do item.

So essentially you dont have control to take decisions which will make what you are doing from good to great. And since decision makers are not aware of the fact that what they have got is just good, they can not take decisions for you as well.

Highs and lows -

As a services shop our highs were defined by new deals and lows by losing out on promising new customers and letting go of existing. As a product company my personal highs are when we nail down UI for a particularly complex feature. Or when we nailed down our middleware/backend architecture. Customers is of course important aspect. But as a services business I required 5 small sized deals to reach a particular revenue target. To achieve same target (with 3 times more profit), I will need at least 800 paying customers. You can not keep obsessing about losing one or two of them or celebrate every time a new customer upgrades to paid version. 800 parties in an year would be overkill.

But most important part of that comes from philosophical change. To win in services business, you need great sales skills. So all your focus in on that part. So your highs and lows are tied with sales performance. Where as in product space, you can win with having a great product and not screwing up sales. So your highs and lows are bound with product performance and not with sales.

Attitude

No matter how much you try, your thinking of human resources becomes very different in a product company than in a services company. For example - we right now have 3 interns executing a module which makes it easy for product manager and developers to monitor our product. Almost everything can be re-done through this interface, so that we can analyze everything. Each significant event which can not be tracked through mixpanel, is tracked. All back-end actors spit out important logging information and all these are loaded up in the admin module. Anyways enough technical details. Point is - during services work, I generally made interns work on some internal tool or just prototyping some idea. As for me they were non-billable entities. Where as now they are suppose to contribute. If we are investing in their education and training they are suppose to give. And we will be using that admin module everyday. So they got to work on something real which will be used and we got paid back having a working thing we really needed! Now interns, trainees are not just non-billable entities, but contributing members of the team!

Satisfaction

For almost 3 years I lost my sleep obsessing over new deal we are looking to win. Or new people we need to hire to service the demand. Or waiting for confirmation on release status. Those were good reasons to lose sleep over.

Now I am founder and product manager. So I lose sleep when I am just not able to understand and depict how to implement certain features. There is one screen I still have not done any work on and we may just drop it from first set of features, as it anyways does not belong to MVP. I lose sleep when a prospective customers gives me feedback about product, which really makes me think. These are great reasons to lose sleep over.

Courage

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 03:59:00 -0400

There are many forms of courage. One of the forms is to smile despite knowing that there is nothing you can do to prevent what is going to happen to you or some one you love so much.

Almost every day you will have to go to bed crying and yet you have to wake up like nothing has happened and everything will be alright. You have to put up a show just to be happy and try to enjoy those last few days/weeks/months what ever left you with out thinking of the end.

It is very difficult. It takes tremendous amount of courage to get through such situation. You tied and pushed in a corner and punched and you can not scream but have to smile through each punch. And yet you want this to go on forever. No, you need this to go on forever. Because every new second you get feels like a blessing.

I sincerely wish that no one ever need to display this form of courage.

Money

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 05:52:00 -0400

Making money is easy. (1)

I learned this after running a business for 3 years. Not a highly successful business. Not a million-dollar business (, yet). But just by taking that risk.

Initially - perhaps like any one else (or may be not) entire focus was on from where next months expenses are coming. From where I am going to make money. Of many more such dirt cheap living situation before I can crash on a bed in a nice comfy apartment. How much more time before I will finally stop having nightmares about not able to make salaries or having to live on the street.

After 3 years I realized making money is absolutely easy. If I can even think about running a business, I sure can make money when ever I want.

Once you take biggest risk in life and are still on and about, then everything else starts looking pretty easy. Not easy - but not something you will be intimidated by. Not something which will give you nightmares at least.

And after I realized that money is the easier part, I decided to take that final step. Not thinking actively about making money at all.

Life seems full of much more opportunities than before.

(1) - Not crores of rupees but enough to spend for a comfortable life-style with may be very few corners cut.

Neglect

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 02:26:00 -0400

The worst thing a person can do other person is neglect.

You can be angry with some one and express it. You can hate some one and express it. You can be disgusted with some one and yet express it.

But if you neglect some one, then the wounds run much deeper than any thing else. I am not sure why. (1)

You can shout at some one, say sorry and move on. You can even hit some one say sorry and move on (I dont recommend this though). But you cant just neglect some one, for a long time, and then still hope to build a relationship with them in future.

Neglect is basically questioning some one’s mere existence and its impossible not to feel extremely insulted and depressed because of it.

Be careful with this powerful weapon, you might burn down bridges which you dont want to.

(1) - Very quick research shows me that know one has ever attempted to study neuro-behavioral pattern when exposed to neglect, or tried but I am not able to google the findings. And since neglect is not really expression of any emotion, it is perhaps difficult for brain to process it and hence it leaves a deeper mark on emotional processing of the individual. Animals are also observed to react to it. My personal, thoroughly un-scientific observation is - couples which often quarrel end up having better relationship than couples who use neglect to express then anger/frustration/disagreement (silent treatment etc).

Privileges

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:01:00 -0400

What we are is defined by how we use privileges given to us.

Whether in personal life or in professional. We are entrusted with privileges thinking that we will make good use of them and will not abuse them.

Entire social hierarchies and control mechanism have come into being because people started building tendencies to abuse such privileges.

Stop and think before you are doing so. Because you may soon find that these privileges are taken back from you. And not just you but even your peers.

You are not just affecting your own life but life of people touched by your existence.

Journey

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:30:00 -0400

Destinations are quiet places where we want to reach in the end.

Journey is what makes reaching there fun and enjoyable.

Journeys are where we make friendships and forge relationships.

Destination is just a carrot to keep us going, journey is what we really want.

Problem is we often realize that only when we reach the destination.

Perhaps we can start thinking less about destination and more about journey.

Good

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:48:00 -0400

Most times we have best things heart and yet we are often perceived to be bad.

As human race has evolved our minds are closing us into more and more paranoid thoughts. Because of this our mind has actually closed for things which are generally good.

Most of us dont like to pause and think about things which may seem bad but might actually be in our best interest. Might have been done in very casual sense with out meaning anything.

Because of this we have to focus more and more on being perceived good rather than on just being good. And being perceived good is far easier to fake and hence people can deceive you. Which will force more paranoid thoughts and more cheating.

World will be much better if all had a moment to think.

Eg - In India we have two major political parties - congress and BJP. congress is the one which has very successful faked in being perceived good where as BJP unfortunately a really good party has always been bad at that. Hopefully situation will change sooner than later.

Tangent - If you have seen a movie click by Adam Sandler then I have always related automation of mundane tasks to automation of emotion processing. We need to stop doing that.

Jealousy

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:16:00 -0400

Is your life based upon how others see you? How much bragging rights you have in group of people? Are you always tormented by inferiority complex about little things? Then you can never succeed in life.

Problem with jealousy is - it will always force you to be with people who are inferior to you. Who are perhaps not as gifted as you are or not as ambitious as you are.

Have you ever thought of planning your life in a way where you will have those bragging rights 10 years down the line in your peer group rather than in your friend circle?

Your mentor generally awakens you to see beyond immediate success and failure. That is the most important job of a mentor. Mentor will train you to detach from immediate short term satisfaction to long term persistent euphoria.

Do you have such mentor? No. You should start searching for one.

Example from Mahabharat - Karna’s continuous jealousy towards Arjun was his down fall. Because of the jealousy and because of his longing for short term satisfaction he decided to challenge him for a dual during the graduation day contest and one thing lead to another and he found himself in eternal debt of the wrong man.

Do not let this happen to you!

Decision making hierarchy

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 05:29:37 -0400

Few times I have observed that people tend to barge into decision making process where there are not supposed to. One of such important domain in technology budget.

Agreed that startups will have tight budgets and have to optimize the budget. But that does not mean Mr CEO that you should decide who will call shots related to it. Just give your budget to CTO/VP Engineering and let him make calls. That is HIS job not yours.

There are numerous other reasons why such decision making powers should be given and later respected. One of the more important reason is that - Only a tech person will understand the continuous importance of having good programmers/developers in the team.

When a non-tech person starts making decisions which are related to technology like hiring of programmer, partnership with outsourcing vendor, then such decisions are more likely to go wrong. This person may not have understanding on cost of losing out relationship with a good programmer, development partner. As it is not his direct responsibility to deliver next release.

So all such decisions, communication should be always and always handled by a person who’s direct responsibilities and ability to deliver can be compromised.

Sure you are CEO of the company but that does not mean you are in charge or even capable of doing everything your company requires. So focus on things you are truly good at and let others take decisions and manage relationships in there focus areas.

Combating Heat

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:10:30 -0400

Global warming or not, the city of Nasik which was till early 90’s (even late 90’s) was cool even in summers is experiencing very warm summers since last 2 years. Already in April we saw temperatures as high as 41C and May is still to come. Due to this weather we faced few issues which directly affected work.

1. Network equipment gets so hot that we experienced continuous packet drops and network drops.

2. Overall productivity of people.

I posted a query of Pune OpenCoffee club as to cheap solutions that can be applied. Here is a list of things people suggested. But before that a bit more information about our office.

Office is located on top floor. Its like a big hall with only one room separate for conference. There is very un-even distribution of people and machines in office with most of the folks sitting near east side of the office with west side kept empty for lunch and cricket. Due to my personal bad decision even inverters are near the crowded section of the office and hence this particular section was un-bearable to work in during peak heat hours few days ago.

Suggestions -

1. Flood roof with water.

Too much wastage of water and impractical.

2. Cover roof with grass, carpet or similar material.

Roof is a shared property and hence carpet etc could be stolen. There is a hospital in the same building and hence lot of people use roof.

3. Coat the roof with a special chemical like Dr. Fixit Heatshield or Surya Cool Cement

We received quote of around 55-60,000 Rs for doing these things. Since our’s is a rented place, we thought investing so much amount of money on something which we may not use for long is not a good idea. And hence parked this suggestion till we found some cheaper way.

4. False ceiling - Again cost + investment from long term was not favorable. Also would have taken much longer time and work would have affected while construction goes on.

5. Install more exhaust fans - We installed one and will be installing another one this weekend. Effect is pretty good.

6. We have north-east windows un-curtained. So suggestion was to put up vetiver curtains on these and water them. We are doing this. Cost of doing this was approximately Rs 2700. Result is very nice. Not only the place is cooler, it smells really good.

7. Put some matkas painted white on the roof. This will help in reflecting the sun rays and will reduce heating up of the roof. We bought 20 matkas, cut them in half. Painted them in white and put them around 3-4 feets from each other on the terrace. It does not cover entire area but covers the crowded and most affected portion. Reduced temperatures significantly.

8. Install ACs - Right now we do not have any ACs in the office. Reason is - cost + energy bills + inverter cost to keep them running during power outages (5 hours per day now with 2.5 hours slots). This was and is our last option. When we grow out of this office, we can take ACs with us, so investment is justified. But right now looking at the overall effect of measures we took, I dont think there is immediate need of ACs. Though we will always have the option open.

Hope this helps.

My problem with Apple

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:16:02 -0400

Many people have written lot of things about Apple and Steve Jobs and there policies. Adobe Vs Apple. HTC Vs Apple and Apple app store policies have got worst press in history of technology products. But with 50 billion dollars in bank, they are of course not interested in listening. Here is my take on this problem.

Generally - when I buy a product I own that product. I can do any thing with that product. If I buy Nike shoes I can wear them on denims, shorts or with no cloths on. Nike can not bullshit me about what attire I should be wearing with those shoes. Similarly when I buy a PC, Netbook or Phone I should have complete ownership of that device. But Apple is exactly not allowing me to do that.

I am 28 and a programmer/hacker so I understand technology and would like to play around with my phone. Even if I can not recompile kernel of my Windows or Symbian machine like I can do with my Linux or Android machine, still I can do pretty much everything. I can install any app I want. I can install any softwares, third-party tools. I can run programs in any other language. I can watch porn if I want!

Apple and its terms and conditions now specify that we can not cross compile from LangX to C and run it on iEgo devices. Err.. why not Mr Steve Jobs? Whats exactly wrong with that? You are selling a phone and a phone experience or are you selling Objective C to developers? Why do you want to lock in people to a technology which you think is good? Next what - no SMS lingo when texting? All texts need to pass through spell-check before then can be sent out? Or no use of x-rated words in texts?

I can not install any app I want, I have to always install apps from app store. This is the most idiotic thing ever! Plus apple will take down any apps when ever they feel like.

The biggest problem is - Apple thinks users and developers of iEgo devices are witless dumbs and cant decide whats good for them on their own and need to police them always.

I personally never bought an iEgo device myself will never do so.

Ecommerce and Filpkart

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:46 -0500

Till about 10 days ago total amount I had spent over ecommerce website in India was = Rs 1,200

In last 10 days it is = Rs 10,000 .

Change - Flipkart dot com.

Before I started using it, for getting books I had to go to Pune as lot of books are not available in Nasik. Now I receive them in about 3-4 days after ordering.

Things to learn -

1. Very simple user interface.

2. Excellent stock.

3. Great consumer experience.

4. Once you have created account you can order books using credit card in around 2 mins max.

If you are an entrepreneur venturing into this space, you have loads to learn from flipkart.com.

Disclosure - I am not at all related to flipkart.com, havent met any of their team members ever and have not received any special gifts for give this shout out. This post comes straight from the fact that I just ordered entire LOTR collection in 2 mins while waiting for a conference call.

Woman who almost became THE one

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:16:00 -0500

I used to write a blog about people who have became special for me. People who are part of me and will always remain to be so. On this day of World Women’s Day, this post is dedicated to the one girl who really made me happy, while it lasted. You know I am talking about you.

Dear Princess,

A strange mistake is often termed as destiny. In our case it was almost destiny. You shared her name and that lead to so many things. That one mistake is probably the only mistake in my life which I will perhaps make infinite number of times given a chance. Unfortunately life is not simple and I wont get that chance now, ever.

Chatting with you almost 24 by 7, on chat, on email on phone. Waking up at 7am in the morning, after having just said good night at 6am never felt so good and perhaps will never feel so good again. Songs that we sang for each other and the dreams that we created for each other will always be cherished and that I know.

Where ever you are now, stay the way you are. You are too good to be true and perhaps that is the reason, we are not together. I never believed it is for real. Retrospecting, I should have believed it. I should have submitted to it. But alas, when its not meant to be its not meant to be.

My princess, rani, babes and darling - I will always love you.