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."

Have you started up before?

 
Me: I want to build a platform where entrepreneurs can directly connect with domain experts and find possible solutions to their pressing problems

Seasoned entrepreneur: But tell me something, have you started up before?

Me: No

Seasoned Entrepreneur: [smirks] You don't even know the problems that startups face, and you plan to solve them? Interesting!

We moved to Chennai a week back and this was the first feedback we received. It was a social event we were attending and met people from different walks of life and heard their take on what we are building.
An important takeaway was that it is very important to talk to as many people as we can, but that doesn't mean we need to convince every 'successful' entrepreneur. It is pivotal to understand the emotions behind each dialogue with others because they help you dig deeper and find out possible answers to 'Why did this person say this…'

Surely, we are naïve to a certain extent and not aware of many problems that startups face in their journey. But in the past eight months, we have faced our share of hurdles and interestingly we have realized that some of these problems are quite common amongst startups, but specific to each business model. We have had access to some of the best domain specialists for our problems in Pracly and if they are willing to exchange their wisdom and experience with other fellow entrepreneurs, I think we can help a few people startup - better, faster. We might not find chefs to prepare all the cuisines from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, initially, but we are okay with serving the best sambar and then spreading out.