If you are a 1 person company, the best advice and help you will get is from a person running a 10 person company. If you are a 10 person company, your best advice would come from a 50 people company. Go talk to them.

This morning I wake up with yet another ecommerce launch and this is the much hyped entry of Amazon in India. People may like, hate or justify the current model that Junglee (Amazon) has adopted and we can all speculate on what would the future be. But as a consumer, a retailer and a user of these same ecommerce sites since over 10 years, I am saddened to see that Amazon makes a mistake that the Indian ecommerce scene has long forgotten.

The very first mobile listed on Junglee.com, a Samsung Galaxy SII is priced at Rs 28,400 on the homepage. A quote lower than what Pricebaba shows for Mumbai and given that most reputed sites are listing the SII for over Rs 30,000, this is a fantastic offer. But wait, click on the thumbnail, and then click again on the seller information page of the lowest bidder and you shall see this

… and if you clicked Visit Seller Store instead, you will notice this only on the checkout page of a site that is at best, Web 1.0.

Charging shipping extra is fine. Charging extra for credit card transaction is ok. But after several clicks quoting me Rs 1998 as Tax is not. Lucrative advertising with hidden charges is a practice most e-retail players gave up sometime back. Amazon has work in hand to curate the experience I get on Junglee. The ‘we are a platform’ wordings hasn’t worked for eBay as an excuse to compete with the ones who are really delivering a good experience, there is no reason Junglee would be an exception!

Welcome Junglee, You Have Work To Do! 

Disclaimer: Pricebaba is my venture.

For me, there might be plenty of fundamental reasons for not getting involved, but probably my friends on twitter put it right – a name that I haven’t heard about invites me, I am wary by default (honestly I have probably heard the name Theviewspaper once before). But fast forward a few days after the tweet-a-thon is over, I see hate is in the air. The same folks probably who went about trending #ifeelup are offended. The Tweet-a-thon was a 7up promotion.

The best part: the first email inviting to be a participant didn’t mention 7UP, the second one which was unread till date mentioned 7UP. But people actually fell for this? Trended the hashtag and now crying foul? Are the ones who suffered the overdose of 6600 tweets really bothered? For the real consumers, this is probably just another disturbance in their timeline. Markeeters fighting Markeeters!

What does it take for an entrepreneur to succeed? That’s a tough question to answer and there sure isn’t any one factor. But off late I am introduced to the reality distortion field and I believe it is an important bit for any ambitious person (say an entrepreneur or a leader).

Walter Issacson in his Steve Jobs biography talked about the reality distortion field of one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our era and that has left me thinking often about this factor living inside every leader / entrepreneur and perhaps every individual. Walter quotes Andy Hertzfeld from the original Macintosh team (1981):

“The reality distortion field was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand”

Steve Jobs had unrealistic expectations (his reality distortion field making him believe that it can happen) and he failed many a times. But in retrospect his reality distortion field worked. We cannot take away from him the successes he has had. But is that reality distortion field only restricted to Mr Jobs? Over the past few days, two separate incidents have shaped my belief that a reality distortion field works within every ambitious person.

In one email a friend (& co-worker) emails me “your admiration for xyz over-weighs so much that you are blinded…” He points that I am not seeing the reality, while I kept arguing that I am devoted to the end goal we are here to achieve, it is working. Somewhere in between both our versions, the distortion field breathed its last… we found a common ground, of course that took a few months to happen.

My learning’s from this incident is that the distortion field gives a pace to things, acts as a shot in the arm for actions. Many continued to be blinded with me and still continue, but in this case my friend managed to bring me closer to reality and I spent a few hours fixing a people issue at hand that I otherwise wouldn’t have done.

The second incident is again a conversation with a co-worker who argued that I am not allowing him to achieve large goals. My version of course is that I am preventing you from burning larger holes. And to anyone else working with us, it was clear that this co-worker is just a misfiring gun. His reality distortion field made him believe the same about us. We parted ways eventually. The distortion field though I can see in this case, sure gives a lot of confidence, but not always authentic.

Looking back at some homeruns that I have hit and many that people around me have, it is clear that a lot of success and failures are a product of a reality distortion field. You may argue that it isn’t impossible without a reality distortion field, but I would believe that the distortion field makes one achieve things that defies all logic.

The world is an expert in telling us, it cannot happen, you are wrong, give up. But what keeps an entrepreneur running is his / her own reality distortion field, which not only gets the best out of them, but helps them get over the logical side of brain that stops them from making a big bet. As a third person, I would respect the reality distortion field of an individual, unless of course the thin line between THAT field and BS is not crossed. Some noise is good, but no signal to back it up can be catastrophic.

I am not even a longtime Apple user, I bought my Mac last year and never used an iPod other than the clip shaped shuffle in recent times. Unlike many, my connection to Jobs wasn’t because of the products he sold. During the end of my retail days, I made lots of cash on iPhones and iPods as they picked pace in India. I made a iPhone site (just as a hobby) for a friend and that became serious and somehow made money as well, but my attachment to SJ isn’t for the money I made trading products or news about his inventions.

The one time when Jobs made a real impact to me (and he still continues to) was when I first came across his Stanford commencement speech. It shook me, it touched that 15 yr old kid hungry for business on the streets of Crawford market. It gave me the courage to do so much more, break out of the shell and see the world. I have a long long way to go, but the journey is so much more powerful. Every time I listen to his words, it comes out even stronger. Be it not being burdened by others thinking or doing what you love to do. In a short speech he left behind a world of wisdom.

The day news of SJ’s death broke, like millions of others I played that video for myself one more time. And his words hit me harder than ever. It is so difficult and yet so easy to follow your heart. I wouldn’t express myself on twitter or fb as I would do in person, why? Because then I would be a soft target for a long time when it would come to my profession as an editor. Heck, I don’t care anymore … I won’t be  killing my own voice.

Something occurred to me today and yet it was nothing new. Rumors suggest that SJ was working for Apple right until his death. That may not be entirely true, but as a matter of fact we know that he resigned from Apple only 6 weeks before his demise. During his Stanford speech Jobs spoke about loving your work, to keep looking for it and measuring life like it was your last day. That’s good to hear during a graduation speech, but you know now that that man meant it. He did it. He demonstrated it to us.

We so happily talk about loving our work. Even show it off. But how deep is that? Asking myself a simple question ‘if these are the final few days of my life what would I be doing?’ is enough to give clarity in any situation. Would I be writing? Retailing? Hosting a Startup Weekend / Saturday? Conspiring the next BCM with Sengupta? Or spending time with long lost friends and family. The answer is for me, but as a CEO, co-founder, employee, freelancer… Whoever you are. Would you be working until the day of your death to make something happen? Do you love the work you are doing?

Also read: Had completely forgotten that I had penned similar thoughts back in 2008. This one might be a relevant read as well “Do What You Love“

A few weeks back, on a fine Sunday afternoon I was seen tweeting about help required around Goregaon / Malad (Mumbai) to take a fraudulent Auto-rickshaw driver to a nearby Police Station. I had promised to share more details on my blog and here we go!

Yesterday Mumbai saw a flash strike by auto rickshaw drivers which apparently wasn’t called by their union. Newspapers are reporting hundreds of rigged auto meters lying at workshops as auto-walas panic to get them ‘un-tampered’ given the recent RTO drive against them. As my friend Sandeep RTs above … Only in India you can dare to go on a strike, justifying an act of cheating.

What happened that Sunday was a simple story. I took an auto from Andheri highway to Goregaon Oberoi Mall. The auto driver wasn’t in uniform and while that was least of my concern, as we reached the destination (Oberoi Mall, Goregaon) I realised he was trying to overcharge me. The meter reading was 4.80 and the auto-driver asked me for Rs 64.

I happened to knew the formula for calculating the auto-fare after the recent change in tariffs (Thanks M4Mum/Raxit). So when the auto rickshaw driver asked mr for Rs 64, I got a little suspicious and casually hit the calculator on my mobile. For the ones who want to note, the formula is x13 -2 (multiply the meter reading by 13 and subract 2 from the total.)

The calculation in my case came to 60.4 and not 64. A small difference. I confronted the auto wala and he showed me a fare card. It was certainly a fake one, for fares above Rs 80 his tariff card showed amounts higher by Rs 10 or more. I told him that he is cheating & he suggested me to forget the 4 rupee difference as a loan and asked me to go. Yes, WTF.

I took the fare card and told him to take me towards the mall on the opposite side, where there were quite a few police vans given it was near about independence day. The auto-wala realized that I am not going to relent and snatched the fake fare card from me. He agreed to go on the opposite side but insisted on holding the rate card with him. I had to choose, either hold on to the tariff card or protect the iPad in my hand.

I allowed him to hold the tariff card, but remained seated in the auto. As he took a U-turn towards the mall, he hit the right lane and went towards the highway, ignoring all instructions to stop at the mall. I panicked and called a Murtaza (a young entrepreneur) who was going to meet me at the mall. He was holding on to the rate card  until we crossed the mall but it had disappeared by the time we reached the highway. I quizzed and he told me its in his pocket.

Luckily I found a traffic constable at the highway right where we stopped and shouted for him to help. As the constable took stock of things, suddenly two original rate cards came out of the auto-walas pocket and the story changed to me not having enough money to pay him. I couldn’t believe that such inauthenticity is happening right in front of me. I called in my friend Murtaza to the highway and asked him and a friend accompanying him to look for the rate card that he might have thrown on the road near the mall. While I argued with the auto-wala, Murtaza and his friend returned 10 mins later with the fake rate card in their hands. Bingo, we had the proof now and we were 3 vs 1.

The auto-wala still remained arrogant and denied the charge. We insisted the constable to take him to the police station and were surprised when he just took his license and gave it to us, asking us to take him to the Police Station ourselves (the auto wala was expected to drive us down.) A couple of mins later the constable suggested that we leave him as he will get f****d at the police station. He even made the auto-wala apologize. I insisted on booking him.

We three took a seat inside the auto and asked him to head towards the police station. He moved a little ahead on the highway and started pleading us to leave him. Offered to take no money for the ride from Andheri and a little later even offered to pay Rs 200 to us. We told him in no unclear terms that we are all headed to the police station. He didn’t comply, took a U-turn on the highway and tried to drop us at Oberoi Mall.

Luckily we again ran into a couple of cops (this time not the traffic ones) and asked them for help. They gave the auto-driver some good gaalis, questioned him about the missing uniform and handed his badge to us (his license was already with us.) He asked us to be firm and take him to the Police station. And there we go again. The auto-wala tried his best on the way asking for forgiveness, stopped a couple of times, but it took a little polite gyaan that ‘the more he wastes our time, the more he will suffer’ for us to reach the police station.

At the police station one of the cops just asked us to drop him there, leave my contact details and go away. No report, no paper work, nothing! We knew nothing about the regulations. They said he would be fined. We insisted on knowing what action they are taking and after spending some 20 mins at the police station, we left. Last we saw was the fact that he had been taken inside and they were in process of charging him. We were told that he would be made to wait there for several hours and it makes no sense for us to wait there. Guess we had enough for the day already …

The total incident lasted little over an hour, was intense and I was scared on multiple occasions.  If it was so much effort to just take a certainly corrupt auto rickshaw driver to Police Station, I wonder what happens in bigger cases. God bless the system.

Special thanks to Murtaza and his friend (guess Gaurav) for the support.

Things happened in a hurry and this is the only photo I could manage to click in between the chaos. After we reached the police station, I was out of time to click any more.

As always, most commenting on the post is on FB. You can see it here

]]> http://annkur.com/2011/09/the-day-i-took-an-auto-driver-to-police-station/feed/ 6 http://annkur.com/2011/09/the-day-i-took-an-auto-driver-to-police-station/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/annkur/~3/q2dgxvc_USQ/ http://annkur.com/2011/09/tower-of-london-history-guns-knights-canons-and-kohinoor-diamond/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:45:04 +0000 Annkur http://annkur.com/?p=890 You already know that I didn’t have much to do during my London stay, but hey, I did go around the museums in town including the Tower Of London. TOL is a historic castle that houses a good number of ancient artifacts, war time stuff and some weird stuff like the ‘accounts book’ pictured below.

I also went hands-on (well almost, just a glass separating us) with the Kohinoor Diamond. Given the hype that diamond is, I spent a few mins trying to get a good view of it, walking wrong way on the moving belt that gives you a glimpse and moves you out of sight. But looking back at the Tower of London visit, the Kohinoor Diamond is not the thing that runs on my mind, it is the Lance pictured below. May be I am not a jewelry person…

Its been a few months and I am almost losing track of what is what, so here is the Tower of London in pictures:

Remember seeing these in Age of empires series, only here in real life

Real and Serious Guard At The Tower Of London

I don’t even remember which building this is, but there are many there. The hot chocolate coffee at the cafeteria inside the Tower Of London is Yummy!

Yes this is an old age accounts book, no wonder I hate accounts

Trading in the Indian sub-continent, the East India Company had the opportunity to acquire examples of finest Indian workmanship. Helmet and Dagger. Dagger: The blade is decorated with Hindu religious scenes. This side shows Krishna playing a flute! – From the Tower Of London

When arms and ammunition are on display, how can one miss long rifles

And yes this comes froms the 90s, a somewhat modern one between the old antiques at the Tower Of London

Guns and fancy guns at the Tower of london. The lighting was just too bad for a clear picture, apologies

A fancy rifle along side the super antique collection of rare weapons. This one is a german make (German Heast Collection) from 1580! believe me, photo does no justice to this

And last but not the least, straight out of hollywood studios, a real lance!

]]> http://annkur.com/2011/09/tower-of-london-history-guns-knights-canons-and-kohinoor-diamond/feed/ 1 http://annkur.com/2011/09/tower-of-london-history-guns-knights-canons-and-kohinoor-diamond/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/annkur/~3/ooo3wxMN3Ho/ http://annkur.com/2011/09/dear-technoholik-where-is-the-link/#comments Sun, 11 Sep 2011 09:39:17 +0000 Annkur http://annkur.com/?p=1022

Today morning while I was searching for some news on the Samsung Nexus Prime, I came across over a dozen sites who have covered the news of Nexus Primes UAprof being leaked on Samsungmobile’s website. One of the results on the first page was from an Indian site and I clicked through. As I read through this article on Technoholik, I notice something weird. They haven’t given any credit to either PocketNow or elsewhere for this story. PocketNow being the one who broke the story originally.

And that’s not all. One may argue (would be stupid though) that the link on Samsung Mobile was publicly accessible and thus demands no source credit, but what acts as a final nail on the coffin if the fact that the image used for the story  on Technoholik is stolen from AndroidOS. As I tweeted about Technoholik failing to cite a source for a story they broke, Gaurav of AndroidOS.in noted that the image in use belongs to him. See it for yourself – AndroidOS vs Technoholik. 

It’s no new thing for a publication on the Internet to lift content from another source and fail to attribute it. Happens all the time. Many large media houses in the US would take a story from you and credit you by name on their online site, but won’t link. That is still acceptable, but when you pitch yourself as THE Economic Times and pull writers on your platform, you better maintain high standards!

This is just probably just one of many cases where a top publication (or a sister concern of a top publication) failed to maintain the most basic work ethic on the Internet. Seeing the standard of tech journalism I have seen in India (add to that some internal bits that I keep hearing), I am worried that there are very few like Nixxin doing a good job. We need a few more Medianamas in India.

Disclaimer: I should point here that I am the Editor & Publisher of Onlygizmos. Thus Technoholik is a competitor. But I write this post as just another reader who refuses to accept lack of integrity from a publication that he ends up reading.

Update: Seems like Technoholik has taken note of the issue and added the sources as AndroidOS and Pocketnow.

]]> http://annkur.com/2011/09/dear-technoholik-where-is-the-link/feed/ 3 http://annkur.com/2011/09/dear-technoholik-where-is-the-link/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/annkur/~3/fTovB8k_RiA/ http://annkur.com/2011/09/startup-weekend-cambridge-to-hyderabad-the-experience/#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:04:01 +0000 Annkur http://annkur.com/?p=1011

Back in March (2011) I disappeared for a month to UK and while I spent a month there, there are only two significant things I did. The First being a visit to Stone Henge (picture below) and the other being ‘Startup Weekend Cambridge.’

Startup Weekend is this 54 hours madness that brings together business folks, developers, designers and jack of all trades like me to build a startup over a weekend. Ones with an idea pitch it, voting follows and teams are formed organically. These teams have to come back with a product / prototype / demo / whatever by Sunday evening and present to the judging panel. In march, Startup Weekend, which has as of today done over 100 cities and 250 action packed weekends, came to India.

My friend Pankaj Jain was (he still is) passionately spearheading the India leg of SW and I decided to jump in and help organize Delhi and Bangalore. Events were planned, dates final, lots of pre-event work done and then UK happened at the same time as SW Bangalore and Delhi. And right then, Pjain pointed me to Startup Weekend Cambridge and I signed up for it immediately. So as the folks in India were organizing Bangalore, I participated in Cambridge. Left home with a view of seeing startup action in UK, getting a feel of the event, floating around multiple teams and chilling over the weekend.

What happened was crazy. I pitched an idea in UK, got enough votes, failed to make a team. Another interesting fun gaming idea by Fabian got enough votes and I followed Joe to join that team. Before even we got started with the idea on Friday night, the model failed during our discussions and we came up with a new idea: a geo-social network it was. Didn’t go back to London and worked at the awesome St Johns innovation center to make this a reality with a fabulous team. Pitched it on Sunday evening… no we didn’t win. But the madness was an experience of its own.

Fast forward to Hyderabad, September 2011, I am again with Pjain and gang, organizing Startup Weekend Hyderabad. Jumped forward, bought a ticket, participated. Pitched an idea, didn’t get votes, no team. Joined a simple yet determined guy Sundaram for his ideas around Kirana stores and remodeled it to make it a reality. In Cambridge we were 5 geeks sitting on a PC, designing, coding, conceptualizing and making a ppt. In Hyderabad, we were 3 in all, 1 developer and 2 business folks. We spent almost all our time travelling, taking to street vendors, hawkers and trying to understand the ‘grass root’ level of entrepreneurship. Finding easy ways of automating things, understanding how society sustains thousands of these small entrepreneurs everyday.

We made a delicious pitch. Decorated the hall with mosambis, lady fingers and did a live demo of a tool empowering hawkers. Shot a documentary style video and showed it in-between our 5 min pitch. Below is the video, the viability of the project was tough, business model was difficult and not a big surprise that we didn’t win. But yet again I went to a Startup Weekend, expecting to chill-out, sit on the fence and co-ordinate work with my team in Mumbai… well that didn’t happen. Startup Weekend somehow always manages to put me in action, brings the best out of me and I am glad I joined Sundaram and did this with him and Sanghi (our champion dev for the weekend.)

Across Cambridge and Hyderabad, I have met and worked with some amazing folks and at this point it is so very likely that I might not meet a lot of these people every again in my life. Yet they are a part of me, whenever I want a little dose of energy, I just remember the moments spent in Cambridge and Hyderabad. Looking forward to many more such weekends!

Video Link

On a day when I find myself defending two companies who have me as a client since years, I find it so obvious to share this simple lesson on customer service. In any industry it isn’t possible to give 100% satisfaction, something ought to go wrong sometime, somewhere. Specially if you are a bank or a hosting service dealing with large no of users. So I find these two gentlemen one after the other, complaining about their experience with HDFC and Hostgator respectively.

Both HDFC and Hostgator are service providers whom I have been very satisfied with (In fact this site is hosted on Hostgator since inception).  When I saw the first tweet from Ashutosh about HDFC asking for a photo identity for a simple work, I replied and defended HDFC. My defense was partly from my experience and largely in good faith. HDFC has been good to me, not perfect, but generally very good. And I jumped to defend them. Pause.

Take 2. Tanmay tweeted about issues he was having with Hostgator and I jumped to defend Hostgator. Hostgator has been nothing less than fantastic for me and a lot of my small sites including this one is hosted with them. For a long time even Onlygizmos was hosted with Hostgator and we NEVER had any issues. Shared hosting services are known to give poor performance / oversell under the ‘unlimited’ tag, but yet HG found me defending them.

Now, as things turn out to be, in both these cases I was wrong. HDFC acknowledged to Ashutosh a little later that they indeed need a photo ID from him and Tanmay informed me that Hostgator has acknowledged the problem to him. My reply to both of them was within seconds of their tweet going public, way faster than any PR mechanism or online reputation management system would kick-in for them on Twitter.

What does this tell us?

As a service provider / business, your best customer service agents are your existing customers. The best publicity you can get is from word of mouth and who better then your own users to do that? You may not be able to deliver a 100% all the time, but if you have good karma, it will come back!