How do you run 2 companies successfully?

I am working with a social enterprise in the remotest corner of India in Uttarakhand. One needs to travel 7 hours by road to the nearest big market for any industrial help. That's how remote we are.

Inspite of the remoteness of the region, and no formal training how can a man innovate and run various companies at the same time? 

The founder of my company is building a beautiful house of mudblocks, has innovated the technology to generate clean electricity from hazardous pine leaves and supervises a beautiful organic farm in the campus, which caters to more than 50 people in the company.

How does a man, who is not train to do any of these constantly innovate and build tangible profit generating projects from it? From what I have observed - the three things that are key to constantly innovating, and managing multiple things are - Discipline, Logical Thinking, and basic level of Intelligence.

Even though we are not trained to do many things but with logical thinking we can take decisions much faster and reach to a conclusion on our own. In this part of the world, we have no external help available and very few people have even heard of the concepts that we work on. Thus, it is the power of logical thinking, that constantly helps him to guide the team and take the right steps to grow the company.

I also believe that basic level of intelligence is important to be able to innovate constantly and think beyond the regular processes in day-to-day life.

Discipline is another attribute, which I have learnt to respect immensely as I see successful people constantly following it to be able to run multiple ventures and still stay human. One needs to spend time with loved ones, travel and go for a run, to be able to come back and work with new vigour and enthusiasm every day of his/her life. Without discipline and clear demarcation of timelines, it is almost impossible to be able to find enough time for things we want to do in life. We will always live under the notion of being ' super busy' all the time and not enjoy life. After all isnt that the goal of everyone's life - to enjoy life? 

Another article, which seconds some of my thoughts.

What is religion to me

I don't know much about any religion. But I find it hard to believe that a religion is meant to be complicated. Religion is for people to adopt and better their lives, and thus, should be easier to adopt. I apologise in advance if I say something which I shouldn't have, because 'people' consider it a sensitive topic. I am sure YOU and I don't fall in that category of 'people'. 

I was born in a fairly religious family, who would do their prayers on all the religious days and festivals, and had faith that HE is there to support us and make things okay in times of trouble. When I was two years old, my grandmother passed away, and my parents put her in the same pedestal as God, and we would pray to her everytime we offered a prayer to God. As I grew up, visited temples, met priests and saw and heard about their perspectives on religion and their way of following it, I kind of started to distance myself from it. How material offering and superstitious beliefs have been imbibed into religion, is what amazes me as well. 

I think religion and faith in someone superior is important in life and should be something, which helps us to hold on to something in times of pain, helps us to be on the right path when we are lost. But, we, humans have moulded religion according to our perspectives, and that is something which I am not very comfortable with. A small village in the mountains where I live in, people spend years taking care of a goat, spending half a day looking for fodder for the animal in the forest, only to sacrifice it in the name of religion. 

I, in my bad times would like to hold on to my grandmother, because I have seen her, and so have my parents, who tell me that she was a guardian angel for our family. I would like to believe in something I have seen or people I trust have seen from their eyes, rather than someone's perspective on something. Someday, I hope, I will have the energy to find out for myself about religion, and how it can help me become a better human. 

Again, someone might have a problem with my perspective on religion. I would be happy to change my thoughts if you can convince me that I am wrong :)!

This blogpost was inspired by my discussion on this article -

The discussion as well.

Why did I travel to Tanzania to be a part of IDDS !

Because at International Development Design Summit, 

You build things - real things that solve human problems and not just talk about your 'world-changing' ideas and go back home. 

You make solid friends and not just expand your network or add more people on Linkedin

and you have FUN

Like any other good global program, IDDS brings together smart people from across the globe in a developing country and works on designing solutions faced by the local community. The general belief is that everyone is creative at some level or the other and the program helps us to surface our talent and increases our ability to innovate.

In the first 3 days of the program when we were inside the classroom, I dont remember a single day when we did not build anything.

On the first day, we were given a 3 feet long wooden block and a rolling object, and the task was to control the speed of the ball using various tools available. 

On the second day, we were thrown into a market place with some IDDS Money and were supposed to build something tangible and then sell them to the entire IDDS folks. It was one of the most fun things I have done in a long long time. 

On the third day, we visited Twende, Bernard's workshop who does super cool things with bicycles. He taught us how to make a blender using a cycle and water bottle. If you ever happen to be in Tanzania, you have to have to meet Bernard. This guy is a true genius.

After the introductory session, all of us were divided into 8 teams and taken to our respective communities to work on our projects. My team is working on introducing innovation in the local school curriculum and eventually using the practices to solve problems of the local Masai community.

You also make awesome friends during the program. I remember how on the first day the organizers harped on the fact that we will be teary eyed when parting with our IDDS buddies, and I was like what the hell. Who does that? But only in the first week I made some really solid buddies and the thought of leaving this life and set of friends definitely did not make me very happy.

The best thing about IDDS is you are having fun almost all the time, even during the sessions. A lot of it is due to the similar level of intellect, humor and creativity that is shared amongst both organizers and the participants. 

Are you a social enterprise? What is your biggest struggle?

                                           

One of the biggest challenges that a social enterprise like us face is convincing people, for whom we are working, that we are trying to help them. Ironical, isn't it?  

It is indigestible for the people in rural mountains that two people (founders of Avani) could just leave the comfort of a big city life and settle in the mountains and innovate solutions to make rural life more enjoyable for everyone around. Sure, the founders had personal interest in living in the mountains, but that does not make the cause for which they are working any less noble? 

While most of the people in the social space have been supporting our work for the past 17 years, its been a difficult ride trying to convince the local people to be a part of Avani and earn a better living. But the hard work has not gone waste and we have been able to mobilize the local community and have a positive impact in the lives of people in almost 100 villages.

Now, the current challenge that Avani Bio Energy is facing is to convince the local people to collect the littered pine needles. These pine needles cause widespread fire during dry summer months and destroy the only source of existence for the village people - the ecosystem services provided by the forests. Moreover, employment is an issue in this area and women spend hours climbing and cutting trees for fuel wood. Avani proposed employment to these people by collecting pine needles and remunerating them both in cash and cooking charcoal. Initially, the proposition seemed very exciting to everyone in the village, but suddenly a rumor spread across the area that Avani is making a lot of money by selling electricity to the power utility and paying local people only peanuts for their effort. All of this happened right at the beginning of the three month collection season and this put us in a very very difficult situation. We set up the entire business to benefit the local community, who doubted our intentions. We had no option but to call for labourers from outside to collect the pine needles. These labourers are doing a fantastic job and making good money out of it.

Seeing people from outside earning money by collecting pine needles from their areas has pinched the local people. They have realized that it was not a bad proposition offered to them initially and some of them came up to us today, saying " Why did you not ask us before to collect pine needles." Battle won! At times the best way to convince someone is by showing them how it is done rather than talking about it. Its been a constant element of our struggle and we have definitely emerged victorious here as in the second month we have almost 32 people collecting pine needles.

Another line of thought says that with so much struggle for existence and 'smarter' people trying to reap benefit at their cost, its often difficult for people in rural India to trust new genuine ones.

I have a dream as well

So we went to a village today, which had just 20 families with students from Yale - Sam, Nick and Helen. They wanted to understand the impact of pine needle collection on the live of villagers. We, at Avani have developed the technology to generate clean electricity from flammable pine leaves and employ local people to collect these pine leaves.

Pine Needle collection has been slow for us as most of the men in the villages are busy in agricultural activities, have migrated to bigger cities or are not sober enough to work. Women, who are literally slogging the entire day are the ones participating in the collection process and earning decent money to provide a better future to their kids. 

We visited the entire village and asked the local people to gather near the temple, which is normally the landmark for each village. Not very surprisingly, we had only women and kids attending the meeting. They also got some curd and sugar for us, which was very kind of them, considering the fact that they were sharing the good part of their meal with us. The meeting started and Piyush, team member at Avani, acting as a translator between Helen and the villagers. Helen and Piyush were brilliant at breaking the ice and got a wonderful conversation going, where both parties asked questions about each other's lives. Amongst, all the villagers was a young girl Rekha, who seemed a little subdued and wouldnt talk much. Helen after introducing herself, asked Rekha for her age and one of the older women from behind says around 20, not even letting Rekha speak for herself. It seemed like Rekha wanted to say something, but probably did not have the freedom to even tell her age to outsiders. 

After sometime, she actually mustered up the courage to talk to these students through Piyush and the first question she asked was why did Helen not have red hair. Lol! That got everyone laugh so hard as she thought that every foreigner had red hair. Gradually, she opened up and then one of the Yale students asked her about her dreams. Whether it was fancy cars, big houses or something on those lines? I , in my head, thought whether people from as remote as where she came from, with no access to water or road, can even dream of such things? And amongst all this Rekha replies - I want to be a Police Officer so that I can protect my village from all the wrong doings that is happening around her. Piyush asked - What sort of crimes? and she replies " Dont you watch TV's to ask me such a question (lol)?" But she adds, "I know I can never be one, because my family cannot afford to send me to college." 

Her father is seriously ill, and either she or her brother has to give up studies to support the family. She knows it will be her and is glad to make this sacrifice. A girl who has not received or seen anything in life has such noble thoughts, a sense of humor and is very much grounded in her expectations. I wonder what does it take to bring up such awesome kids and what can we do to probably convert their dreams into some kind of reality? She will be visiting our campus to see if see can be a part of Avani and live a better life. In the end Helen says - " I hope your dream comes true, and she says" I know it wont"

Pondicherry!!

I still remember sitting outside a liquor shop in Bombay and waiting for it to open. Yes, the agenda for the day was to get drunk. With never enough money to drink the entire day in a pub, starting with a liquor shop was the only option we had. Also, Bombay is not very pocket friendly anyway. 

So, I had bought a newspaper while traveling to Bombay from Pune and both of us happened to notice an article in the newspaper, while waiting outside the shop, about magnificent houses and holiday homes. Both of us fancied the structures and picked up cities where we wanted to live. Blame it on the time we had and the shop owner who probably had one too many the previous night. 

Yesterday, while I moved in to my fifth city since then, found that piece of paper and interestingly I had chosen Pondicherry. While all these years, I used to think that I have changed quite a bit and not the same person I used to be ( I think most of us think that way, dont we?).  But the fact that I still want to settle down in the same city makes me wonder - probably not much has changed. Though, looking at the rate at which I am changing lives and cities, I doubt if I would ever be able to save enough money to buy a house or have the stability in life to settle down in one place. But if I ever do, it has to be Pondicherry. I was there last month and I absolutely love the place.  

Unemployment 2.0 and the Chennai Startup Community!

                                                   

I was a Strategy Consultant at Accenture, Delhi. In February 2013, I called up my mother and told her that I wanted to quit my job. Her response was, "okay". I told her that I had no idea what I was going to do after that. She said that we would figure it out. To be honest, I was a little surprised by her confidence in me; but I think you need that kind of support from your family right from day one. I quit my job and came home in March, spent a couple of months preparing for and writing my CFA exam, and hoping that I will find an answer soon. For someone who spent 10 years away from home, for his education and work, staying at home doing nothing substantial was not such a happy time. I would spend the entire day at home sitting infront of the computer, trying to figure out 'things' and encountering (it was not easy) my parents in the evening who would hope that I would have something figured out – First mistake. You do not figure things out overnight. It is a long process and requires taking baby steps in the right direction. 

I had set up a brick and mortar business in the past and thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure of creating something, but was not comfortable with the orthodox way how Marwari businesses operate. So I knew I wanted to build again, but did not know, what or how. I decided to go and rent an office, and reached out to some friends – First right step. Getting out of the house for work every morning gave me a reason to look forward to something and having friends over in the office ensured there were people to brainstorm with.

I had no technology experience and spent days reading to get myself up to date and also checking out the profiles of people I wanted to talk to for advice. But I did not approach anyone as I thought they were not approachable – Second mistake. Don't get ideas into your head based on random assumptions.

Calcutta is a dead metro in the Indian startup scene and clearly, we were not doing much except we had narrowed down on an idea and had sort of a team ready. We attended one of the Idea to prototype events in Pune, In50hours, and found another team member, a 17 year old full stack developer, who had come all the way from Ahmedabad to participate in the event. We built our prototype, got a positive response and a new member – Second Right Step. Look further if you don’t have the resources around you.

Now we were back to where we started from - Calcutta, but this time with some learnings.

1. We realized we needed help (mentoring)

2.  We required an environment bustling with startups. It helps to constantly get feedback, assistance and being around with people who are in the same boat.

Post our interactions with Vijay Anand at In50hrs, we applied for his pre-accelerator program at The Startup Centre. We got through and moved to Chennai – Third right step. Realizing the weaknesses and acting upon it.

Fortunately, we ended up finding one of the best mentors ever - Vijay Anand. I had talked to some of the teams before and after coming to TSC and one common statement was - "Vijay will go out of his way to help you" and our experience so far has only bolstered that belief. Both personally and professionally we have grown to build a better company- Pracly. Another thing, which has been the highlight of our 5 month journey in Chennai is the startup community here, which is immensely helpful, humble and driven. Five months at The Startup Centre means one would have had a chance to meet all kinds of entrepreneurs and all of them have been really supportive and unlike my initial belief, definitely approachable. I have certainly not experienced being part of such a tight knit community of diverse and talented people, who are struggling to make the world a better place. And this struggle has only made them better humans, and eventually better entrepreneurs. Inspite of being outsiders, we have received more than we could have asked for from the people of this community. Thank you.

An added perspective of an experienced entrepreneur always helps

We are a startup based out of Chennai and provide expert advice to entrepreneurs by connecting them with domain experts. We curate the experts and the problem statement as well that reaches the experts. 

As we proceed in our mission to assist startups, I saw on Facebook that +Amit Misra, from Dazeinfo, had generously agreed to lend his time and knowledge to budding entrepreneurs. I leveraged the opportunity to get in touch with him and find out whether he would have the bandwidth to help startups through our platform. Quite willingly, we got on a call next morning and spent half an hour discussing about how we can improve our services instead of the main agenda - that was to have him onboard as an advisor. He has solid experience in Digital Content and Marketing and helped us realize how to use the existing platforms and tools to reach out to target users. He likes to stick to the basics and threw interesting perspectives about how small tweaks to the existing content can help a startup grow organically. I think, the added perspective that an experienced entrepreneur brings to your product, can make a huge difference. I have started up new and can take few years to develop that perspective, but I could gain that extra dimension of thought from my conversation with Amit. 

Amit agreed to be an expert on Pracly and as the conversation ended, I realized an important problem, which successful entrepreneurs and experts face. Many of them are willing to share their wisdom with growing entrepreneurs, but there is so much noise in between that its difficult to understand whether someone will actually derive any value from their time. Many individuals struggle to comprehend their problem statement or want to just chit chat with these people to get some motivation. But that is not something for which, we can ask a really busy entrepreneur to take out time. I think its important to curate the problems that reach the experts, because they have limited time and people who could really use their help should be pushed up the funnel. That is where we hope to add value.

What could be a good thing to do when you dont know what to do

'I dont really like what I am doing, but I also dont know what I want to do' is basically the problem plaguing people, I think. Someone said that you could possibly count the number of people on your finger tips, who are doing what they want to do.

In our quest to find out what we 'really' want to do, we often end up doing nothing in our current professional role. This not only makes us lazy, inefficient but also depressed at the end of each day. I spent the entire day doing nothing, except figuring things out - definitely not a very happy feeling. In my first job at Bajaj Auto, my boss was too busy to give me much work and inspite of constant nagging, he just wouldnt bother. This free time distracted my attention to other things and gradually I stopped pestering him. In the end, when I could not take it anymore, I just put in my papers. Though I told the GM, that I wish my boss would have taken some effort to give me more work than he did. I am sure he also couldnt care less about how the fresh graduates were trained as long as the KPI's were met. That was two years wasted right out of college. Not much work done, no real skills picked up except some knowledge about manufacturing. The constant search, though, helped me realize that I was okay with taking up challenges and big risks, instead of settling down for a secured life. These traits, I realized fall under the profession called Entrepreneurship. I took the plunge after a small sabbatical in the mountains, and set up a manufacturing unit with my family. Even though my experience helped me somewhat, but would have made a world of difference had I done some serious work at Bajaj Auto.

Its important to figure out where our true calling lies and said the big man as well

“If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”

But not at the cost of being unproductive in our current 9-5 job. When we take up a job or a responsibility, its important to persevere and make good use of it. We not only end up gaining important skills from the hands on work, but who knows it might be an important piece of the puzzle we want to solve in the future.

In hindsight, all this made sense to me when I has talking to +Aurovrata Venet  ,  He said  "Ritesh, during my previous job I knew it is not what I want to do eventually in life, but I took up every challenge that came my way. The learning, skills and networking helped me to do what I am doing today, better."