No Smoking

This piece comes after watching No Smoking and needs some further background on how I came to watch the movie in the first place.

So, I watched Gulaal and was fascinated. And as it happens every time I am fascinated with a movie these day, I came back and started researching on the director. I knew Dev-D was also from the same director, but it did not give me the same kind of high that Gulaal gave. So, the research started after Gulaal. And I landed on PFC (Passion for Cinema) website. The director Anurag Kashyap is an active blogger there and also responds to the comments quite frequently. I was hooked on to the site his blog over the weekend and read through several entries. His writing has a “this is my opinion and if you don’t like it, you have a clear option – don’t read it” attitude and resulting honesty, which I appreciate. So, I read up most of his posts.

It is during this reading and research that I figured that we, average movie goers, would not have noticed it, but apparently in their world, the movie had sparked strong reactions. The critics had given bad to insulting reviews and the director had reacted strongly to them too. From there on, there is huge debate over the movie as well as whether the director should have reacted so. I will leave the latter part out for this post (and probably write another post on this). Instead concentrate on the movie.

Having read through the comments, reviews and bunch of director’s posts, I was curious enough to watch No Smoking. Found the VCD in Sapna Book Store (and not in newly opened Odyssey on 100 feet road, Indiranagar) and watched it as soon as I got back.

With some help from author’s article, Abhaya’s discussions and my understanding – here is my interpretation of the movie and where the story comes from:

• We have a writer-director with two of his movies, made after years of hard work, facing many obstacles in absence of producer backing, not cleared by censors. He is angry and depressed. For him the system is powerful and hell bent upon changing him, if he wants to survive. And why change him? Because he is not what the powerful folks in the system think is ‘right’. So, he must change; else he has no rights to survive. But changing him is not easy. He has his soul – going strong despite his problems. The only way to change him is to rid him of his soul. But he wants revenge on the system. He wants to get back at the system. He still can not destroy the system, but he wants to laugh at them. It is in this context that this particular movie is written.
• Before getting into the actual story of movie, let’s think of a slightly revised story. Suppose that Baba Bangali was not trying to rid K of his smoking habit. Instead he was trying to rid him of his art (yeah – suppose he was an artist). And the rest of the story was same. Does it now become easier to decipher some things in the movie? Here is a powerful system, who for some reason thinks that an artist is not the right kind of person for the society. So, the system will go any extent to ensure that artist no longer remains an artist. But art is his soul. The only way he could stop being an artist is by getting rid of his soul. His soul has to be snatched away from him. And that is what has happened in the movie. The soul is snatched away.
• It actually becomes a rather simple story here. Because the relatively ‘liberal’ world we live in, we’d obviously be sympathetic towards the artist. We, the audience, can not get in the frame of mind of the powerful people of the system, who strongly feel that the artist needs to change, for whatever reason.
• So to engage the audience with the conflict, the director could choose a more gray concept – say homosexuality. If the system is trying to rid somebody of homosexuality, is it fair or not? The debate is on the today’s world. It’d have brought some conflict into the mind of the audience. But even here, the impact is mild. You may not absolutely believe that system is right. Our homosexual character still remains more of a helpless victim, than an arrogant man of choice, who is up against the system.
• Now that is not the motive of the writer. He is projecting himself in the character. He does not want to project a meek, helpless victim of system. He is trying to project an arrogant character – ‘Nobody tells me what to do’. Plus this arrogant characters needs to laugh at the system. And where is the system? Just a few characters in the movie is not enough to laugh at. So, he converts the entire audience into the system who thinks that K should change. How does he achieve that? Not by posing art or homosexuality as the problem. But smoking as the problem. Now, the entire audience is there in the skin of the system against K/writer. K should change. Of course, smoking is bad.
• But K is arrogant and so is writer. Its about the soul. The same soul that we could have easily visualized as something that incorporates K’s artistic tendencies is now shown to be incorporating K’s smoking habit. For the arrogant writer, soul is essentially the person – with his pluses and minus – not something distinct, universal, not something always ‘right’. We find is easy to see that art is in his soul, but find it difficult to comprehend that smoking is in his soul. Because the soul to us is something right and pure – that’s how we popularly use the word. But whose right, what purity? The writer has made the soul individual. You find all this bizarre. Fine. The writer of the story does not care. He has achieved what he wanted to achieve. He has made you the part of the system who wants to change K. You are suddenly guilty of taking away the man’s soul and probably forced to feel bad. And if you are uncomfortable with where you are, he is laughing. He has taken his revenge.

Now, that I have written it, I am wondering if my interpretation (or rather its expression here) has not become more incomprehensible than the movie itself.

But if the above makes any sense, I guess as the audience you can only say ‘what the hell’. How can he do that to me? Well – he has done it. That’s why it is an arrogant, self-indulging piece of work, as the director and the critics both agree. Someone may say that this is not fair to the audience, but that’s not reason enough not to create such work.

Finally few disclaimers:

• This is purely mine (and Abhaya’s) interpretation. There is no claim that this is what the movie means
• This interpretation does not mean that the movie says that smoking is good or harmless. This aspect is immaterial in this interpretation actually.
• The thought process outlined here is something that helped me understand it. This most certainly was not director’s/writer’s thought process.
• The movie is also supposed to have borrowed concepts from some movie and/or book, which I haven’t seen/read. So, my interpretation remains solely based on the sources cited earlier.
• I am an average movie-goer, who likes to see good and different cinema, but does not appreciation for all possible kinds of genres, experiments and techniques involved in movie making. So, the interpretation could be limited by that.

The odd moments of Delhi – 6

It shows promise at times and then takes a track which make you go – “Oh! Why this?”

So, here are some selected odd stuff from Delhi-6:

WARNING: May have spoilers

• The born-and-brought-up-in-America grand son is in India with his grand-ma, fights with a policeman, barges into a neighbour’s house when he is trying to fix his daughter marriage to tell him and his guests that the girl does not want to get married, meets the girl at the dusk and gets accused of trying to run away with her and the dadi does not have a word of advice to give. Okay, she has lived with his son’s family in the US for five years and has probably learnt not to interfere in their lives. But for God’s sake. Her grandson knows nothing about the ways in India and can get into trouble. Not a single word of advice anywhere?
• The whole scene concluding “India works” is so, so, so artificial. Would have looked good between people discussing business. Not there. Not to ultimately confess that he is in love!
• The “talking-to-dead-grand-pa” scene was another awkward one…
• Finally I just did not get how the crowd suddenly changed its attitude towards our hero. How did the realization dawn on them that he was not the Kala Bandar, but became so for “their” love!

A disappointment after Rang De Basanti.

Gulaal

I spent almost 20 minutes thinking of an interesting title for this post. But each one seemed like doing injustice to one aspect or the other. So, I went for the plain one – the name of the movie.

Anurag Kashyap rocks. There were some aspects of Dev D that felt odd, out of place, not quite reasoned out like rest of the movie. Like I just did not get the enlightenment of Dev there. How he realizes that he should abandon the path of self-destruction and how he manages to come back and find Chanda living happily ever after… But it was still wonderful for all the other things. For the brashness of its characters, for its take on the old story in current times, for its dialogs, actions and actings!

Then comes Gulaal… As usual, a full review is not my cup of tea. So, here are a few observations <potential of spoilers>

• Its not just the brashness of the characters, but also a brashness in the way story is written and told. It is like “This is how things are. You feel uncomfortable? You find it coarse? You’d rather have it slightly different? So be it. We aren’t going to change things due to that. Take it or leave it.”
• You need some sense of history and appreciation of Hindi poetry to be able to fully enjoy the movie.
• All the time the use of poetry and music gives a street-playish effort. After coming back, I found that the lyricist cum composer indeed has that kind of background.
• “जैसे दूर देश के टावर में घुस जाए रे एरोप्लेन” – It is a wonderfully folklorish expression. In this world of direct information, being able to think of such expression that gives you the information and yet has a feel of it being distant is not easy. I am hooked on to it.
• Acting is brilliant for everyone.
• Too bad it won’t do well You know it while watching and enjoying it.
• This is one of those movies which make bollywood come of age! Not Slumdog Millionaires of the world.
• I am going to watch this movie again, and also the older movies of Anurag Kashyap which I have missed out on.

May the good entertainers flourish in bollywood.

मन

मन क्यों ना तू खुश होता रे?

जब थीं दिल में उमंगें जागी,
जब सपने नए मिले थे सारे,
कितनी मन्नतें तब माँगी,
कितने देखे टूटते तारे।

अब जब झोली में हैं आए,
क्यों है तू यों थका-थका रे।
रस्ते का क्यों दर्द सताए,
सामने मंज़िल बाँह पसारे।

मन क्यों ना तू खुश होता रे?

–

खुशी न जाने क्यों नहीं आती!

मंज़िल क्यों वैसी नहीं लगती,
जैसी थी सपनों में भाती,
जो भी पीछे छोड़ आया हूँ,
अलग ये उससे नहीं ज़रा सी।

प्रश्न है खुद से जिसको ढूँढ़ा
क्या वो कोई मरीचिका थी?
और उसे सब कुछ दे डाला
बची है बस ये राख चिता की।

खुशी न जाने क्यों नहीं आती!

Why do I have to feel apologetic that I did not like Slumdog Millionaire :)

It is becoming funny. The moment you say something against “Slumdog Millionaire”, you are being an elite, hypocrite, who does not want to look at the darker side (read slums, poverty) of a city like Mumbai and country like India.

No – for God’s sake! I have absolutely nothing against someone showing poverty in a movie. I am not offended by it. I know it is a reality and let them show all they want.

I don’t like it because it simply was not a good movie. The entertainment aspect was a dud. The “real India” aspect unimpressive.

Let me elaborate.

The entertainment aspect of the movie was based on a very interesting concept. One person with an extremely humble background comes to a game show and knows all the answers. How? There is a story connected to each of them. I am not looking for whether the premise is realistic. I have some expectations from it because it is interesting and intriguing. A good story can come out it. But…

• This “slumdog” knows that the picture on the the dollar bill is that of Benjamin Franklin. How? From another blind “slumdog” who is a beggar and has lived even less privileged life than himself. It did not answer the “How” for first “slumdog”. Instead it created a “How” for the second one. Pray, what is the answer to the second “How”. Nowhere to be located in the movie. A mind expecting something interesting becomes frustrated instead of becoming entertained or satisfied.
• Why on earth did our hero need to jump into a pit of shit to know that Amitabh Bachchan was the lead actor in Zanzeer! For God’s sake. Was it a subtle depiction of unhygienic conditions on slums? No, it was a gross depiction of something which I will call “sensationalization of unhygienic conditions and sensibilities of slum dwellers”. Really, there was no need to have a story behind knowing that Amitabh Bachchan was the lead actor in Zanzeer. After all as our “slumdog” himself says – He is the most famous man in India. And unhygienic conditions were depicted very well without this scene.
• Why would the host of a show take it so personally that a person from a humble background is winning the money. If anything, he should be happy. If the “slumdog” wins all the money, it will be great for the TRP of the show and the host should love it. It is not his money anyway. Let the producers and sponsors worry. Mind you, the host was not just being suspicious (which would have been a genuine concern since if later it was revealed that the guy cheated, it’d be bad for the show). He seemed to be taking it as a personal offense that this guy is winning the money. Funny. And no host whose mind is in the right place would so overtly insult the participant on the show. Whatever might be his personal feelings, if he is worth hosting the show and has any professionalism to speak of, he would be cordial and respectful to the participants while the show is being recorded. We have seen enough of these shows, haven’t we? I am not surprised that Amitabh Bachchan felt bad about this movie – his character has been so absurdly villainized. Of course he never spoke of this aspect
• Half the characters speak English with Indian accent, one fourth with American accent and all these American English speakers speak Hindi in their childhood. Now, what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to make a movie where everything, including language, is authentic. Then let’s keep it Bombay Hindi/Hinglish all through and give subtitles in English. Are we trying to keep the language as English, so that the intended American audience gets something; but we also want to give an Indian flavour to it? Then let’s have everyone speak English with Indian accent (and still give subtitles). Or are we trying to abstract out the language, since we are making it for American audience anyway. Then let’s leave the language out of the way and have everyone speak American English. What on earth is that mixture doing there? That mixture of language (American English, Indian English, Sophisticated Hinglish and Hindi) looks relevant in the new economy corporate circles, not in the situation the movie is trying to depict.

The realistic poverty aspect is unimpressive. “So, you don’t like the fact that it shows poors in an attitude of ‘I am poor, but I am happy’. Right?” The fans would immediately ask. Wrong. All I am saying is that the depiction was mediocre. All the claims of Indian Film making can take a leaf out of it is non-sense. Don’t know what I am talking about? See a bunch of wonderful Bollywood movies in last decade or so, if you want to see the underworld nexus. And you don’t need to go that far for “I am poor, but I am happy” either. Just take out some time to watch “Traffic Signal” by Madhur Bhandarkar. Or are we talking about the situation of girls in prostitution and dance bars. Check out “Chameli” and “Chandni Bar”.

In short, let’s stop getting overwhelmed just because an American British (pardon my not checking the nationality of the director) of the stature of Danny Boyle cared to make a movie on India. It is a great movie for Americans (and others with fancy notions about India). Fine. Let it be. We don’t need to fall head over heals on that. “Pardes” (remember Mahima Chaudhary? She is hosting a show “Salaam-e-Ishq” on Star one these days by the way.) was a great film for India. But it wasn’t a great film to depict American society to Indians. Americans won’t fall for that movie, right? We have seen much better ones on India in India and will continue to see them in future. It is not a Indian Film. It is an American Film and great for them. Let the buck stop there. With due respect to all the awards, both Gulzar and Rahman have done much better work in past. And let’s hope they continue to do so in future.

इति-श्री।

Watch Luck by Chance

Farhan Akhtar rocks again! As the worldly wise charmer… Reviews are all over the places of course. I have three things to say (has spoilers).

• Technically, at times it feels like a bunch of snapshot, documentary like – instead of a well flowing story. But all these snapshots are entertaining. And essential. Although sometimes you wonder if this particular piece of information could have been woven more tightly in the story instead of being presented as what looks like patch. Like abusive childhood experience of Neena Walia (Dimple Kapadia) or the story of Sona (Konkana Sen Sarma) before she comes to Mumbai. The scenes that delve into those look like the ones that are almost put up as an afterthought. But they were essential to the experience of the story and hence I am glad, they came out. Would not do much nitpicking on this part though. After all, what do I know about film-making. At the end of the day I enjoyed it
• One of the last scenes, where Vikram (Farhan) tries to come back to Sona (Konkana), is I think a brilliant one. For two reasons.
• • First is how a scene that looks like a typical “all will end well” scene takes a ‘U’ turn. Vikram is sincerely telling Sona, how she has been the only constant support for him through his days of struggling and how even in his life as a superstar, she can be an anchor for him etc. and how he committed a mistake by ignoring and misunderstanding her. A typical “subah ka bhoola” coming back in the evening. There is all the sincerity in what Vikram is saying. You, as audience, is convinced of a happy ending. But Sona has an observation. An observation on how everything he said had only to do with him, his well being. There was nothing about her, her life, her aspirations, an anchor and support for her. How she expects him to go away as soon as the next excitement in his life comes. And hence, no all is well ending.
  • Second is a statement she makes. “पर इसमें तुम्हारी कोई गलती नहीं है। कुछ लोग होते ही ऐसे हैं।” It can be seen as a sarcastic statement. But there is something realistic and subtle about it too. He is not willfully bad. When one set of things happen to him, it somehow goes into the back of his mind that there are other things to take care of. Its not that he did not want to be with Sona any longer. But her thought conveniently sat at the back of his mind when he overstepped his boundaries while playing the charmer! And probably there is a bit of that Vikram in all of us. In different forms. There are things we don’t do very consciously thinking about the harm it is doing to others. There are such things, which even when we become aware of, we can not get rid of from within us. And probably by the basic nature all of us are selfish. So, simply casting off Vikram’s character as a selfish one will be an over-simplification. There are subtleties of human nature involved, which may be difficult to understand in the first place. But even when understood, there may not be an obvious way to deal with them. Probably I don’t make much sense here. Skip to te next poin then
• Watch the movie, if you haven’t

If your Valentine is a Web Application Developer :)

चाहे कुछ भी हो जाए
मेरी जान मत घबराना।
एक-एक कर सारे
<div>s ठिकाने लगाना।

Inline CSS भर जाएँगे
File हो जाएगी ugly,
सब समझने से लगेगी
Assembly language भली।

पर हिम्मत हारे बिना
Refactoring में लग जाना।

चाहे कुछ भी हो जाए
मेरी जान मत घबराना।

जब भी तुम करोगे
कोई feature आख़िर fix.
IE7 मान भी जाए
रोएगा देखना IE6.

उसके सब work-arounds
Googling कर कर के लाना।

चाहे कुछ भी हो जाए
मेरी जान मत घबराना।

कभी-कभी हो जाएगा
MySQL gone away.
कभी शायद php का
Timeout तुम पे हँसे।

Server को गालियाँ दे देना
पर upgrade ज़रूर करवाना।

चाहे कुछ भी हो जाए
मेरी जान मत घबराना।

Mail going to spam on yahoo accounts? Yahoo does listen – contact them.

I have heard others facing this problem; so thought I would share my experience here.

Our mail is hosted with Google Apps for your Domain, while our hosting is with godaddy and is on a shared ip. Mails from Pothi.com to yahoo ids were almost invariably being delivered to spam folder. And it was a while before we realized this. In all likelihood we lost some business. Even after realizing the problem, sometimes we just did not pay attention to the fact that a query had come from yahoo id and the mail never got delivered. When we did notice the yahoo id, the only solution at disposal was awkward. We’d respond to them from pothi.com id and then forward the mail to our personal id and resend from there. I ended up transferring some of the business discussions to personal id, which was not a great thing.

We had no clue what to do, but on the suggestion of an ex-yahoo friend, decided to shoot a mail to the customer support. From there on the experience was good.

I could not find a place to report this specific problem. So, I shot a mail to their customer support from their help page which is meant to resolve problems with your yahoo account, not other things. But the beginning of the good experience was that the mail did get forwarded to the right team. I received “Automated Confirmation” a couple of times; so I guess it got forwarded more than once before reaching in the right hands. But that does not bother me, since they promptly replied back. They asked a bunch of questions about servers being used for mails, hosting server IP addresses, volumes and policies about newsletters being sent out etc. It was a long questionnaire; so it took me a few days before I actually sat down to respond to it. I finally responded today afternoon and just now received a confirmation that because we have a shared IP they can not fully exempt the IP, but have made suitable changes in the database. I hope it means that our domain is white listed. Abhaya just sent a mail to his own yahoo id. Earlier these mails always ended up in spam, not this time.

So, I definitely give a thumbs up to Yahoo Support for this. And in case you are facing a similar problem, contacting them is worth it. The right place to go to is http://postmaster.yahoo.com . If you click on one of the questions there, the page has a “Contact Support” link too.

The misplaced founder and the rightly placed Red Hat

This post on proto.in was written for pluggd.in. A thank you for the free pass

–

There is no universal rule for success. In entrepreneurship or elsewhere. It is good to take inspiration, it is good to try and learn from others, but each success story is unique. If it were possible to imitate your way into success, especially in an activity full of uncertainty like entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship would not have remained so uncertain after all! Further all this inspiration, all this learning, taken outside of the context could simply be disastrous.

“The mis-understood co-founder” was a conversation track at the fifth edition of Proto.in, which meant well. The idea had come from the experience of how and when people go around looking for co-founders, which includes

• Writing mails to people like Ashish and Vijay and others in the ecosystem asking them to find a co-founder!
• Trying to find a co-founder after a lot of ideation and probably even implementation has already happened.
• Trying to find a co-founder amongst the people they have never ever known in past

In such scenarios, there are some questions that genuinely come up

• Does it make sense to try to search for a co-founder like an employee?
• Can you expect to get along with a co-founder in ups and downs if you have not nurtured the start-up from the very initial stages together?
• Would you not be better off looking at hiring good employees, rather trying to find a co-founder? Since in these cases when you say you are looking for a co-founder, you are essentially saying that you want somebody smart, with complementary skills who would work for you for nuts or nothing! That probably does not work.

So, just when one had geared up to have a meaningful discussion around these questions many of the aspiring and existing entrepreneurs face, we had a pronouncement from the speaker. You do not need a co-founder or even better you SHOULD NOT have a co-founder. A learning from his life! And how exactly? So, I try to put together bits and pieces of what came out form the talk and answers to the questions:

• He had a company (with a co-founder) which was earning enough money to support him through the four years when his successful-without-co-founder company was not making any money.
• He then decided to go to the US for a prestigious MBA, and got lucky with hiring for this successful-without-co-founder company.
• Over next two years, when the only founder was not around, the company grew (100% YOY?), paid for itself and is successful today.

Wonderful! And the learning is “You should not have a co-founder” stripped out of all the context like

• The founder’s life did not depend on the success of the company.
• It succeeded without even the founder – why should one learn anything about co-founder from that? (In fact it succeeded after the only founder had left it in the hands of employees! Makes me think of Indian Railways turn around more than anything else.)
• It is a website around user generated content – not necessarily representative of numerous other kinds of start-up you have.

In nut-shell, the track did not address any of the genuine questions one would have around finding a co-founder. Even worse, whatever point it went on to make, was not made. Interspersed with bashing all “web 2.0 companies” in past 8 years, and challenging those who had co-founders to come back to him after four years etc. it, in fact, left a bad taste in my mouth. Somebody had twittered that it was not clear what the speaker was trying to say. I would have liked to say only as much too, but I had promised Ashish a blog post unfortunately.

But that does not mean that all the hope was lost from Proto itself

Fast forward to next day’s Keynote by Bob Young and his story of Red Hat. It was an interesting take on how he himself went about learning and unlearning the rules of the game and finally came up with a successful company around something nobody in the industry thought could make money! The Free Software. And the best part was that he was not fanatic about it. He was very balanced and clear about where it works and where it does not. He is not the kind of person I saw in the newsgroups of IIT Kanpur shouting from the rooftop that all the desktops should have Linux too. He hadn’t built Red Hat for desktop and was very clear as to why Linux may not be the best thing for home PCs in the hands of non-techies. He also ended his keynote by clearly stating and free software and open source cannot take good care of all the situations. Any advantage that comes from being able to play with the source code comes only to those who can actually play with the source code. So, there is no point selling open source to dentists looking for an dentist office automation software.

One big learning for me from the talk was something simple. Be clear of the context and value proposition. Sell to those for whom you have a value proposition, rather trying to force fit your solution for every situation.

Amen!

My talks during Megabucks (IITK)

I was at IIT Kanpur for three days over the weekend, ironically to speak during Megabucks. [Those who know my love-hate relationship with Megabucks would be able to see the irony ]

So, Megabucks (and recently launched e-cell) organizers figured that they should get some recent alumni who have done their start-ups. Then another student related to Placement Office, who has been scouting for people from recent years in various domains to conduct workshops for students, stumbled upon my name for entrepreneurship. He thought Megabucks was the right time to get some one for entrepreneurship. So, he got in touch with Megabucks folks and I ended up in the campus once again.

There were two talks I gave there. First one was in the inauguration. Second was a part of the panel discussion.

Here is the summary of the two talks:

——————-

On Inauguration

Topic: Entrepreneurship

Theme I: Entrepreneurship is not Management

When I first heard that there was an entrepreneurship cell (e-cell) being launched at IITK, the first question that came to my mind was “Why an e-cell, when Business Club is already there”. And that’s when I looked at the typical activities Business Club has gravitated towards over time. Since, I myself was a part of business club during my days at campus, I know that we also tried to conduct similar activities: understanding stock markets, trading games, marketing and strategy exercises, case studies, print and TV ads etc. These activities are very much a part of the world of business, but they are very managerial, MBAish activities. No offenses meant by calling them managerial. I am only differentiating between managerial and entrepreneurial activities. As an entrepreneur, it is highly likely that you won’t have money to create tv and print ads, won’t have enough data and time to create huge, detailed marketing plans and stock markets might as well be something alien to you (unless you start-up’s main business has something to do with them!). So, business club has been taking up a lot of these managerial activities. Therefore, there is a space for e-cell to take up purely entrepreneurial activities.

Theme II: Learning about Entrepreneurship is not just the case studies of successful companies

This is something I have discussed even earlier in this blog. Success, if and when it comes, is great. Nothing like it. But the toughest and most crucial phase for an entrepreneur are those days of starting up and then building up, the days of uncertainty. If one has to learn about Entrepreneurship, it is very important to have a glimpse into those days of an entrepreneur who is not yet on the top of the world. How do you survive there? And even enjoy it? Because if you don’t enjoy it, you will not be able to survive. That’s why I liked the idea of having recent entrepreneurs come there. While it is important to get inspired by listening to the success stories of people who had humble beginnings, when you are aspiring to be an entrepreneur, it is useful to have a glimpse of the gory details of the difficulties and challenges of starting up.

Theme III: Entrepreneurship in India

Again something I might have discussed in the blog earlier. Entrepreneurship in India does not start with Narayanmurthys of the world (again – no offense meant. Have all the respect due to this gentleman. Point here is different). I picked up some generic, and some specific examples IITK students would identify with

• Person who manages to procure and sell a Dove shop in a remote village or an essential piece of medicine
• Shopkeepers in the ShopC (ShopC = Shopping Center at IITK)
• Person who gets your passport applications done (IITK specific – there is one guy who takes care of all the formalities up to submitting the form in Lucknow for a small fee)
• Your travel agent
• Tutors who taught you during school days

They are all Entrepreneurs. They are not a post 1991 phenomenon. True, there was license Raj and hence we didn’t have more Tatas, Birlas, Bajajs and Dhirubhais. But we still had one of the largest number of retail outlets. Thanks to the entrepreneurs all around us. Your milk reached you daily on time, so did your newspaper. These small, private enterprises also employed (and continue to employ) a large number of people. These guys undertook activities that created value for their customers and in the process created livelihood, if not wealth, for themselves and all others employed by them.

Moral of the story is that Entrepreneurship is more prevalent in India that we normally think. To appreciate this, we need to understand that Entrepreneurship is not just about tech start-ups funded by the VCs. If I have to give this statement a nationalistic hue, I can say that we did not import entrepreneurship from silicon valley

This traditional Entrepreneurship in India was driven by two things:

• By necessity: People from states like Bihar and U. P. would appreciate this. You did business when you did not land up in a government job. By necessity.
• By tradition: As opposed to the kind of people mentioned above, there were Sindhis, Marwaris, Gujaratis, who did not do jobs! They did business. It was the tradition, in their blood so to say. They started or joined their family businesses. Grew it by adding more businesses, which could be totally unrelated to their existing businesses. Thus they went through the experience of being an entrepreneur again and again.

That said, it isn’t that last 2-3 decades have not contributed significantly new things to the world of entrepreneurship.

The first thing that is new, at least as such a well known phenomenon, is Entrepreneurship for Passion. You are a well placed engineer, manager, consultant etc. On your way to higher positions in the corporate ladder. Everyone in your family is well educated and in respectable jobs. You yourself have been a brilliant student. You satisfy every criteria of respectability in your society. And yet one day, you decide to chuck it all. Become a Sadhu, start an NGO or become an entrepreneur. This is Entrepreneurship for passion.

I am sure that detailed research papers could be written on how this kind of entrepreneurship developed, but I think one important thing that has made this concept widespread is the prosperity of a certain class in India. This is the class that benefited from the opening up of the economy and realized for the first time that they do not need to feel financially insecure for all their lives. That they can afford to take some risks to follow their hearts. They managed to break away from the traditional mentality of “Stay safe, hold on to what you have, don’t change too many things, live a peaceful life”. And with time the ecosystem built up. A certain prestige and good will developed around this kind of entrepreneurship. Institutional funding came in. That is called VC money. So, overall an environment developed which praised, supported and encouraged this Entrepreneurship for passion like never before. This is a good thing for us. I, you, e-cell, business club, Megabucks, all the people attending the festival have grown up in this environment of good will and fascination around entrepreneurship. So, let’s celebrate that.

But with the prestige and goodwill comes a danger. I call it Entrepreneurship for Fashion. Like a well paying job, family wealth and other things that add to the social stature, there is a possibility that being an entrepreneur becomes such a socially prestigious thing that people jump into it without figuring out whether they really want to do it. It has not become very prevalent yet, but you can already see this happening, when somewhere we start comparing entrepreneurship with a ‘regular, old, boring’ job and depict entrepreneurship as something superior. This is dangerous. Let’s get this straight. There is nothing superior about ‘entrepreneurship’. Its all about figuring out what you want to do. If you would rather be an artist, be so. If you are happy in a job and would use the money you earn to pursue your passions and hobby, so be it. Don’t do anything just because it is a fashionable thing to do (including entrepreneurship). This can become a topic in itself. So, let me leave it for now.

Theme IV: Recession and Entrepreneurship for students and fresh graduates

So, enough of history and philosophy of Entrepreneurship. With recession and bad placement scene, the most important thing for most students right now is what to do and whether entrepreneurship is an option. Let’s leave behind the Entrepreneurship for passion for a while (that can be pursued anytime, recession or no recession) and get back to the Entrepreneurship for necessity. And there is nothing wrong in that. With a better market, you might just have taken up a job, gotten decent salary and used your weekends to pursue your hobbies and passions. Perfectly good way to balance life. And if you don’t see that happening, you can’t just sit back and mourn the lack of jobs. Even if you would not have considered Entrepreneurship then, consider it now.

The question would of course be, how?

Typically you would think of entrepreneurship in terms of starting a company, with all its overheads. Registration of company, registration under any applicable tax authorities, getting a registered office, putting in the minimum required capital of 1 lac for a private limited company etc. etc. This is the way to go if you have a solid business plan in mind, are in to the idea for long term and have some initial money to invest. Depending on the business plan, even looking for institutional funding, for example through Venture Capitalists may be necessary.

But there is another way as well. Closer to what our traditional entrepreneurs did. Not about the business plan or huge money or lot of investment. Do you personally have a skill that has some value in the market. Probably its not making papads for most of you. But are you a great coder? Do you have an uncanny ability to do design? Do you write very well? And a bunch of other such skills. Then you can be a freelancer. Its not easy money. It has all the elements of entrepreneurship. You have to fight it out, get clients, probably team up with someone to complement your skills. But you can avoid the overheads of setting up a full fledged company. And there are places online to get started. So, consider this option. This is something you can start even as a student. So that by the time you are out there, you have already made your way into it. So, do consider this option in the current job market scenario.

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In the Panel Discussion

Topic: From Confusion to Decision

The idea here was a little different. My purpose here was to address one of the most common complaint people have with their life at that stage. That of ‘confusion’. “I am so confused between x, y, z (all totally different) that I do not know what to do.” So, I did not take them through my entrepreneurial journey, but through my journey to entrepreneurship from the days of being confused as a student. That’s where the topic came from.

I talked a bit about my own career choices and confusion at various stages starting from first year at IITK and drew simple conclusions about things. Many may not agree with the actual conclusions (like bunking classes is cool, but attending classes is clever), but the idea was more to make them feel comfortable with confusion and ‘inspire’ (can’t think of a milder word) them to continue trying to find their calling instead of feeling bogged down by the confusion.

I spoke about how I wanted to be an IAS officer in my first year, a scientist in my second and an MBA by the third. And of course, after doing an MBA, the conclusion was that MBA wasn’t about leadership, vision blah, blah. But rather about a job placement! And that’s it. How an internship with an FMCG company killed the budding marketing person inside me too How not getting into McKinsey had frustrated (probably depressed) me to no end, but how I know today that it was the best thing to happen to my career. How I got into Product Management without properly knowing what it means. How the days in Google were so much better without managers. And how I finally figured that in the worse case I would land up in xxxxx (an approximate competitor to Google, but Abhaya doesn’t believe it would exist when the time for me to land up there would come! ). And hence, how I ended up doing Pothi.com and how irrespective of the future success or failure I am happy doing it.