Yashventures

I started Uconomix in 2005. The intention was to build a company. A large company over a period of time. It’s been six years and I have seen lots of ups and downs. I started the company from a spare room in my house and moved into a proper office with a team of 8 at one point. Now I am scaling down. On May 31st I have stopped working on the IT services. All the people are gone except one.

What exactly is IT services?

In simple language, IT services is creating computer software for clients as per the requirements and maintaining it on a daily basis – fixing bugs, adding new features etc.

Why am I getting out of IT services?

It’s a bread and butter business
Providing IT services is not much different than working as a daily labourer. Difference being we work from an Air Conditioned Office and get paid more. But only if you are an employee. If you are an employer, it’s an earn-from-clients-and-pay-employees game for you. Revenue is directly proportional to the number of programmers you have.

Running a small IT services shop is a challenging task. Your playing field is way too small. The real juice and money lies in big mega contracts. Small companies only get small projects, small clients and small profits. Just enough to pay salaries of the team and the owner. And there is no inherent value of your business if you don’t have recurring income clients. And that is no different than a job.

It’s also a restless job. Yes it’s a job. 24×7. You will get a call from client at mid-night, on a weekend, on a vacation. And they expect you to take care of the problem immediately. Because they know you are a programmer and you have the means and capability to provide an instant solution.

People problem
IT services business is all about people. Employees want more cause larger players are paying more. If you can’t pay to that level good people will leave. You cannot really afford to pay that kind of salary because your client does not pay you what an Infosys’ client pays. Cause if client could afford to pay more why would he come to me in the first place? He would rather go to Infosys. So it’s a catch 22 situation.

Lack of passion amongst programmers is another reason. Nobody likes fixing bugs in code someone else has written. The best projects that pay well are also the lowest quality! You don’t get anything new to learn. That’s why they are most profitable because there are no challenging tasks, less chances of bugs, and overshooting the estimates. Really smart programmers will never work on such projects for long. They will move on no matter what you pay them.

And most of the new guys just get in the industry to make a quick buck. Nobody really cares about developing a solution for client’s problem. Everyone just thinks of it as writing code as per requirements.

Projects that go on forever
Software is funny thing. It’s too damn subjective. And there are One thousand dependencies. You take care of them all and your code will break on the issue number one thousand one! It will go on back and forth, forever. No matter how well you have defined the scope of the project, some items will never be agreed upon. Requirements will change constantly because clients are humans and humans are full of ideas. If people on the team change, new people will bring new ideas. Projects that are stretched beyond a limit start costing money to both sides and after a while the software becomes a nightmare for everyone. Seemingly simple tasks take so many iterations.

Client will say I need a registration form. You say it’s a couple of hours job. And you do have the form ready in couple of hours you show it to the client on your server. Now the game begins. Client will ask for changes in copy, font, colors, thank you message. Hey can you also capture the IP, the date of birth, the date of separation, number of cats, number of puppies your dog has, count of people killed by Rambo in all movies?! If you say no, client has the ultimate weapon, I won’t pay until this is added – its a small job. Yes its a small job but lots of small changes make it a big job!

Then you move it on client’s server. No one has the FTP info. It takes three days to get FTP info from client’s host then the email is not working. You spend your time figuring it out on client’s server why email is not working. And there you are. A simple registration form took you a week! Then client will say I will test this for a week and then pay you for the couple of hours!

It’s a small incident, but the story for larger projects is no different. Projects are stretched, you don’t get paid but you still have to pay the salary to your programmers.

Tired of begging money
It reminds me a dialogue from the movie Coolie starring Amitabh Bachhan. Bachhan works as a coolie and he says “Majdoor ka pasina sukhne se pehle use apni majdoori mil jani chahiye”. A labourer should get his wage before his sweat disappears. I wish it was true for IT industry as well.

Clients will never pay on time. Especially the Indian clients and especially the large Indian clients. One Indian client of ours paid after 1.5 years! A large fortune 500 company! That is ridiculous. They won’t pay any advance, they won’t pay in phases. And they won’t pay your usual rate. Why do you work for such clients then? To get the dues of the last project cleared you have to accept more projects!

As a businessman you are constantly thinking of meeting your costs for the month. A programmer working on a project is better than the one sitting idle. So you get sucked into the vicious circle. You start thinking in the terms of – Ok this project covers 3 programmers’ salary for a month. Take it. And you get taken! And once the project is done you virtually have to beg for your money from the mighty client! And client won’t pay till the nth grammatical error is fixed for the 835th time.

No clear direction
Seriously I was just running day by day. I had no goal whatsoever of where I want to take my business in one year, two years or five years. Business is good and you tend to just play along. And I spent six years doing just that. One day I woke up and said to myself. WTF am I doing? I was doing a job! I was going to office, communicating with clients, working with my programmers and coming back home. Taking a vacation a year and the life was a drab routine! This is definitely not what I had in mind when I started the company.

May be I was never into IT services. I never really wanted to become next Infosys or Wipro. IT services was meant to be the bread and butter that will find the development of the real thing. Products! But that never really happened. Way back in 2006 I had created uMark – my first product and at one point I was selling 100 licenses a month! Life was so good. But the IT services side was so better then because of its seemingly larger cash flow that I virtually neglected the product for next 5 years! Biggest blunder of my life!

But better late then never.

So what’s next?

I am back to products. I have let everyone on my team go except one guy named Arokkia. And we have just launched a new version of uMark. I have many more products ideas in mind and soon I will decide upon the next product.

I was really inspired by the story of Nirav Mehta. Nirav is one guy I have always followed. Nirav was my first boss at Magnet. He inspired me to start my company. Magnet was in fact a breeding lab for entrepreneurs. Many of my ex Magnet colleagues are running their own small companies today. Nirav’s is an amazing story. He made Magnet really successful in IT services business but then had to scale down drastically probably because of similar circumstances. But he rose back like a phoenix. He built a products business from scratch. His success story was probably the impetus I needed to make the tough decision to close my IT services business.

I am lucky that I already have a super star product in uMark with more than 3000 customers. As I write this post, my existing customers are upgrading to the latest version of uMark and I don’t have to beg for the money! And I know that my software is making some difference to their lives.

Bye bye IT services. I will not miss you.

On my recent trip to Rajasthan we visited Chokhi Dhani near Jaipur – an artificial Rajasthani village. There was a tarot card reader as part of the village setup. My wife was curious so she checked out her fortune and also got me to do the same. I went along to know what the fortune teller comes up with.

He had a parrot. The parrot would come out and pick one card. The card had some cryptic things written mostly numbers etc. I didn’t get to read it, just got a sneak peek. The fortune teller said following things about me.

You are in some computer related business.
You are doing the hard work but not getting full benefits of your labour.
You are a risk taker in life.
You will not find the success in your birthplace, you will have to go out.

My wife was mighty impressed. I wasn’t.

Every job today has something to do with computers. My wife also spends her entire day in front of a computer. So is my dad. Not a brilliant guess.
Everyone thinks that he/she is not getting due reward and/or recognition for his/her efforts. The fortune teller guy was just playing on that psyche. Is a kind of ego massage.
He had asked me whether I do job or business. I said bluishness. Every businessman is a risk taker to a certain extent. What’s new in that? He should have been able to figure hat our without asking me about my nature of work.
Go out to find success? That’s just plain Bull Shit! He is advising a course of action to change my future!

But these guys are so professional and they put forth these things in such a manner that you do tend to believe them for a minute. At least it makes you think. They kind of baffle you with the conviction with which they speak. As if they do really know everything about your past, present and future. But when think more about it, the tricks of the predictions and fallacy of their reasoning becomes apparent.

I wrote an article on Trak.in – one of my favourie blogs on technology and business in India.

I slip into the shoes of Steve Ballmer – Microsoft’s CEO and discuss some opportunities with Skype.

Skype is in a different league as far as communication is concerned. Although every IM service lets you do voice and video calls between computers, nothing comes close to Skype in terms of quality and reliability of the service. The unique P2P approach behind Skype makes it super successful. If I was Microsoft CEO, this is what I would do with Skype

Continue reading it on Trak.in – What would I do with Skype if I was Microsoft CEO?

I have ranked the IPL teams in the 2011 season by the creativity of their names.

Deccan Chargers
Even without the city name the team name signifies its Southern origins. By eliminating the city name they have made sure anybody from down south can relate with the team. The best name of the lot!

Kolkata Knight Riders
When you have SRK at the helm, creativity is bound to flow. Remove Kolkata and you still have a very strong brand name.

Kings XI Punjab
Another team owned by a woman with brains that has not used a city name since inception. Even if you remove Punjab, the name sounds good.

Royal Challengers Bangalore
Vijay Mallaya is very good at integrating names of his popular sprits in his his other business ventures taking surrogate advertising to a new level! Can’t think of a better name than Royal Challengers!

Rajasthan Royals
They have also done away with city name since the beginning. Broader identity. But if you take the Rajasthan moniker away, you don’t have much left.

Delhi Daredevils
Very strong city identity. And Daredevils just sounds right with Sehwag being their captain.

Kochi Tuskers Kerala
It comes up before the others because of the clever use of the term Tusk, cause Kerala is famous for its elephants. But Why Kochi and Kerala both? Just Kerala Tuskers would have been perfect and I would have put it before RCB.

Pune Warriors India
Pune Warriors is good but why India? Using India/Indian in the name of a local team doesn’t make much sense to me.

Mumbai Indians
My favourite team but I don’t like their name! Mumbai Indians?? What? Are only Mumbaikars Indians? Or is it a team of Indians from Mumbai? Then what is Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh doing in the team? Very very unimaginative name Mukeshbhai!

Chennai Super Kings
Super Kings? This really sounds like a name coming from a B-grade comic strip! Super Kings!!! Who came up with that name? The guy who came up with “Singh is King”?

What do you think? How would you rate them?

The biggest problem is that the people who write code at the root level just aren’t interested in programming.

I run an IT services company so I know this by experience.

People who come for interviews for the position of a programmer just aren’t interested in programming! That’s a big deal for me.

A typical interview of a fresh graduate goes like this -

Me: So you want a job of a programmer. Why?
Ans: Because I have done my BE in Computers OR I like programming

Me: OK so you like programming. Tell me about the programs you have written.
Ans: I have written this xyz app during my college project…

I interrupt

Me: Don’t tell me about your “academic” projects. Tell me about any programs you might have written during your spare time.
Ans: Ummm, no I haven’t written any programs apart from my projects..

Me: Why?
Ans: Didn’t get time / Don’t have computer at home / Don’t have .Net/C++/Java at home… / Didn’t get a chance….

Me: Sigh….

Once I asked an aspiring programmer to define who he thinks is a programmer. His answer – “A programmer is someone who creates software as per client’s requirements”
I was like “Okay!!! Does it always have to be for a client?”
The guy replied, “No it can be for internal company requirements as well”
Me: “So it means that a programmer always creates programs when someone asks him to? Can’t a programmer write some program just for himself? Just for fun?”
The guy said “Yeah he can…”
Me: “It’s just that YOU won’t write a program for yourself right?”
Guy: “Yeah I don’t need to”

Sigh……

Creating computer programs is not a job. Majority of the people aspiring to be programmers won’t write a program until they are FORCED to by their college or by their employer. And that is NOT good.

I would say 90% of the people opting for this profession are doing it just because it has easy money. Easy money and a very convenient way of getting out of India.

And when people do something without having a real liking or passion for that thing, it shows up in the quality of the output.

You can teach people syntax of C++ and SQL and PHP. But you can’t really teach people to think creatively. Think of a solution for a problem. And certainly you cant teach someone to love their profession.

A lot of times I read articles about why companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Sun, Apple don’t come from India. This is one of the reasons. Not many Indians who take up IT as a profession love the tech. And those who do end up in the Silicon Valley and help build tech giants there. Yes we do have some small product startups from India but nothing on the level of companies I have mentioned.

And this thing is worrying not just for startups who are trying to build something great but even for IT services companies! Missed delivery dates, buggy code, unhappy clients are all a result of that.

A Little Sweet, A Little Sour
A Little Close Not Too Far
All I Need, All I Need
All I Need Is To Be Free……….

Enough of taking responsibility for others’ fuck ups! Life is too precious to continue to bother with all that.

Here I would try to answer some frequently asked questions about Anna Hazare and his hunger strike.

1. Who is Anna Hazare?
Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare is an ex-army man. Fought 1965 Indo-Pak War. Read more about him on Wikipedia

2. What’s so special about him?
He built a village Ralegaon Siddhi in Ahamad Nagar district, Maharashtra

3. So what?
This village is a self-sustained model village. Energy is produced in the village itself from solar power, biofuel and wind mills.
In 1975, it used to be a poverty clad village. Now it is one of the richest village in India. It has become a model for self-sustained, eco-friendly & harmonic village.

4. Ok,…?
This guy, Anna Hazare was awarded Padma Bhushan and is a known figure for his social activities.

5. Really, what is he fighting for?
He is supporting a cause, the amendment of a law to curb corruption in India.

6. How that can be possible?
He is advocating for a Bil, The Lok Pal Bill (The Citizen Ombudsman Bill), that will form an autonomous authority who will make politicians (ministers), beurocrats (IAS/IPS) accountable for their deeds.

8. It’s an entirely new thing right..?
In 1972, the bill was proposed by then Law minister Mr. Shanti Bhushan. Since then it has been neglected by the politicians and some are trying to change the bill to suit thier theft (corruption).

7. Oh.. He is going on a hunger strike for that whole thing of passing a Bill! How can that be possible in such a short span of time?
The first thing he is asking for is: the government should come forward and announce that the bill is going to be passed.
Next, they make a joint committee to DRAFT the LOK PAL BILL. 50% goverment participation and 50% public participation. Because you cant trust the government entirely for making such a bill which does not suit them.

8. Fine, What will happen when this bill is passed?
A LokPal will be appointed at the centre. He will have an autonomous charge, say like the Election Commission of India. In each and every state, Lokayukta will be appointed. The job is to bring all alleged party to trial in case of corruptions within 1 year. Within 2 years, the guilty will be punished. Not like, Bofors scam or Bhopal Gas Tragedy case, that has been going for last 25 years without any result.

9. Is he alone? Whoelse is there in the fight with Anna Hazare?
Baba Ramdev, Ex. IPS Kiran Bedi, Social Activist Swami Agnivesh, RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and many more.
Prominent personalities like Aamir Khan is supporting his cause.

10. Ok, got it. What can I do?
Spread the message.
How?
In whatever way you can – copy this article and post it on your blog, Facebook/Orkut, email and share it with every Indian you know.

The least we can do is make people aware of who Anna Hazare is and what he is doing.

You can write letters to your local MP and urge him to support the LokPal bill in the Lok Sabha. A single letter won’t have much impact but if thousands of letters reach the MP’s mailbox, it will force them to sit up and take notice. I AM going to write a letter to my local MP Sanjay Nirupam to support LokPal bill and help the bill become a law as soon as possible.

India won the Cricket World Cup last night and what followed that on the streets of Mumbai and rest of the country was just amazing.

People of all strata just poured onto the roads. On bikes, cars, auto rickshaws, trucks, waving flags, shouting, dancing, cheering, high fiving!!! People were stopping cars and congratulating strangers, young boys and girls were popping out of cars, people were sitting in car trunks with tailgates open and car stereos blaring at full volume!!!

It was euphoric! It was unprecedented. In my life of 29 years, I have never seen anything like this. It was something different!

I have never seen so many Indian flags on roads. It was middle of the night and no one was sleeping. There was a traffic jam on all roads and no one was minding. There were no quarrels, no fights, just pure jubilation!!!

Nothing unites this country as cricket does. The sense of Indianness, the sense of patriotism was in the air. Young people of India were chanting Jai Ho, Vande Mataram, Bharat Mata ki Jai and it wasn’t a political rally! It was the Gen X at its best! People were drinking beer, waving flags, whistling, shouting and there were no inhibitions!

I feel this is advent of a new India. We Indians have never been so confident. The celebrations last night were not just for winning a sport, it was a celebration for something much more.

It was an announcement by the India of today that we have arrived! The way team India won the world cup, it was a show of sheer determination. It was the will to fight against all odds. A strong resolve to prove all nay sayers wrong. Team India lead by the charismatic Mahendra Singh Dhoni was out to prove a point. They wanted to win it. Every individual of the team wanted it so badly that they just gave it their all. Everyone wanted to do it for the team, the nation and ONE man that the nation loves – Sachin Tendulkar. This one man has been playing for the country for past 21 years, he has played in the six world cups and achieved almost every glory except the one that matters the most. The young Indian team was determined to do it for Sachin. AND DONE IT THEY HAVE!!!

The young members of the team showed yesterday that they are confidant of their abilities to win against all odds. After loosing the two match winning openers at the start of the game while chasing a huge total in a high pressure game, no one would have given team India a chance. Me including. But the young lads Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir rose to the occasion and showed the nation and the world that they CAN win! The captain of the ship, came on the ground and played the best innings of his cricketing history. He demonstrated to all those questioning his ability and his decisions on the field that he is the master and he knows what he is doing. Dhoni won the cup! He won it for a nation of 1.2 billion people.

And people erupted. 1.2 billion people are sick and tired of corruption, scams, terrorism, inflation and this team gave them a reason to rejoice. It gave them a moment of pride, a sense of Indianness and a really proud feeling that yes, we Indians have finally arrived at the stage. Our victories are not a fluke. It was a show of confidence. It was a show of consistency. Beating World Champions Australia, fierce Pakistan and competitive Sri Lanka on the trot was not a stroke of luck! It was pure brilliance and the way we came back in the final after the initial jolt – it was our moment!

Cricket is the religion in India and Sachin is the GOD. And yesterday the young lads gifted their GOD with the ultimate glory – one for which he had waited 20 years! It was team that paid its homage to the GOD of cricket when they carried him on his shoulders. It was the tribute for what he has done for the people of this nation. And they also demonstrated that they are now capable of winning even if he has an off day. That must be making Tendulkar really proud. That he is going to leave behind a team that is the champion and no more dependent on an individual’s genius.

It was a team effort, and people of India know it. If we can win the cup, we can do ANYTHING.

WE ARE THE WORLD

Ponting’s century in the face of all the criticism that he has had to take in lately. Can not take away the fact that it was a brilliant innings on a testing track.

Defiant Aussie nature – the way Lee was bleeding after that ball hit his eye, I thought he wouldn’t come back, but he was back after 2 overs and bowling with fire.

Sensible batting by Yuvi and Raina – After Dhoni got out, I thought it was all over. ANOTHER collapse looked imminent. But thanks to Yuvi and Raina, who batted sensible without taking any undue risks which made sure we got thorough.

Viru, Kohli and Dhoni gave away their wickets on stupid stroke play. Dhoni should have taken a cue from his Aussie counterpart and played a more responsible innings.

Gambhir, well I give him benefit of doubt. It was more of Yuvi’s fault. But he did his job well. All’s well that ends well.

And the GOD! It was GOOD to see GOD bowl after a long long time! Bowl more often sir. We can not get enough of you!

Ever since Egypt has erupted, I have seen some Indians and some media people asking when will such a revolution take place in India keeping in light the scams of Kalmadi, Raja, Radia etc.

Such a revolution (thankfully) will not happen in India.

It’s because Indians are employed. Employed people have better things to do.

Look around. People are buying. Buying in big numbers and buying everything – food, apparel, electronics, home appliances, gold, FMCG, insurance, cars, bikes, air tickets, movie tickets you name it and people are buying it! And the consumption is not led by a handful of of rich people, it’s the middle class that is buying. Go visit a Big Bazaar, Croma or Hypercity and you will see it literally thronged by people. People from all classes.

Gone are those days when jobs were scarce and even double graduates would find it difficult to land a job. The power has shifted to employees. I run a business and I know! Finding people from Peon or Project Manager is a daunting task. Finding and retaining people is becoming a challenge. Even finding a domestic help, a cook, baby sitter or a carpenter is becoming difficult. Everybody and anybody who has some education or some skill is able to find work, is earning and in turn SPENDING.

Indian democratic system, however corrupt or inept makes rotation of power possible. Our judicial process may be slow but our judiciary still has power. A corrupt democracy is better than a dictatorship where the money is engulfed by a single person. At least in a democracy, people will be wary of open corruption. It’s the power of democracy where ministers have to resign for a scam and get arrested. People don’t need to get on the streets like Egypt to remove the corrupt from power.

As long as there is democracy and hence rotation of power, economic progress will keep on going. Politicians need popular support to retain the power. In a democratic society the only way is to share the progress with people. As long as the economy is doing good, people won’t mind a few corrupt people. It’s better to have 10 corrupt people in charge and sharing the loot amongst themselves than having a dictator who runs the country as his personal kingdom.