New Media, Marketing and Entrepreneurship

“We won’t leave the room, till we answer all the doubts”
One of the success strategies shared by Mr. Deep Kalra, a man who made planning your journeys easier, faster and cheaper, and the process, a whole lot enjoyable, in the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, 37th meet at New Delhi.

Mr. Deep Kalra, the founder, MakeMyTrip.com shared his learning’s, challenges faced, business models, entrepreneurship, the Internet, team, regrets, achievements and a turnaround story!

The session kick started with a welcome address by Mr. Ankur Lal, Founder and CEO Infozech Software. We had a gathering of around 33 people, which added to the diversity in experience and learning’s.

Deep started the session with an approach, expected of a seasoned entrepreneur. He divided the session into 3 buckets which contained a story which he started and towards the finish had motivated the participants.

1. Detailed discussion about MakeMyTrip
2. Challenges faced along the way
3. Learning and Takeaways

“Everyone in the world after achieving a certain level of education and experience wants to be an entrepreneur, the reasons may be many”
- Deep Kalra

Deep started with his journey, wherein he discussed about his life as a learner (a student) who started as an economist and “tumbled into a B-school”. He shared his thoughts on the emergence of B-schools introducing the process of taking in laterals from the industry who bring along with them practical experience which helps while you understand the management concepts relating to your experiences.

An IIM-A graduate of the 1989 batch, Deep belongs to a batch of graduates who are today some of India’s most reckoned success stories.

With a career start with a reputed multi national bank in India, Deep got his first learning’s which impacted his life immensely. A confession he made “all this while earning handsomely and learning from immensely successful people, he was always clear that banking was not his defining career choice”. As with every entrepreneur, a strong urge to free himself from the straitjacket, Deep started his stint as an entrepreneur by representing a multinational company dealing into Bowling Alley equipments in India. He was convinced the concept would catch on and the product was sellable.

Soon came the first learning: The product was great, the money was there, but the market was not ready! Hence Deep shared a learning that however specialized a product or service you may have, a solid market research is without any doubts necessary.

An intelligent speaker, Deep had the audience in splits with his wits of presenting his experience doing business with Delhi Businessmen, who are smart!

A very important issue of “Peer pressure” was touched upon by Deep with extreme subtleness. He shared his version of how peer pressure affected him as:

“I was not affected by how much
my peers were making, but about the fact
that I was losing out on my own personal development”
- Deep Kalra

Filling the Vacuum!
Deep, in order to fill this vacuum in life went ahead and joined a multinational as the Head Business Development. Innovation was his motto and Deep proved with his grit and determination, which were properly backed by facts and figures, that the company could be a successful turnaround using the Internet as a tool, which at that time was not something that the Indian consumer would have been very comfortable with!

After a brief stint of 15 months, Deep found his calling!

Before everyone in the room, could hop onto the fast paced F1 that Deep’s interesting life was emerging out to be, he smartly put the brakes and shared a few crucial lessons, which acted as tickets for the participants to hop on for the ride ahead!

“Big companies won’t get on the internet, I realized
change was difficult for them to introduce within
the existing processes. The moment you become large the chips get scattered”
- Deep Kalra

Be Lean, Be Fit!
Vision is never static; in fact the corporate vision should always keep changing with the changing structures of the corporate, as per the market conditions.

Nimbleness and Change, is necessary to be incorporated into the business model.

“You slow down somewhere down the way”, said Deep while he was explaining the growth of a venture and of the entrepreneur.

1999 was the year Deep was struck – with an idea!
After extensive research into the market conditions, Deep was convinced about the idea of either an online Financial Stock trading business or something to do with travel. With a flexible vision and all the life’s learning’s, Deep’s vision took shape with a venture capital funding of $2million for a 70per cent stake in MakeMyTrip.

A lucrative offer, a good salary, a dream getting fulfilled, life could never have been better, was Deep’s first reaction. It was a Win-Win situation for him.

A smart team to be supported by, Deep started off with a website and a vision of defining the travel space in India by becoming the largest company in the travel space. The company was earning good with a sound bank balance, what better for an entrepreneur right?

WRONG said Deep!
A majority of their business was coming from the NRI market and in India; consumers were only lookers and not buyers! Hence the Indian operations were making not much sense as the market was just not mature for such a concept. Deep could have pumped in more money easily but he decided otherwise, and said to his top management “We won’t leave the room, till we answer all the doubts” to where we are wrong! The decision was not an easy one, but was taken and the India model was put on hold for sometime.

A dream gone sour?
With the markets not doing well and the DOT COM Bubble already creating ripples in the subcontinent, Deep was faced with a situation which few had ever imagined. The VC’s backed out and the additional $1million promised never came.

Deep and the team had two choices, either to shut down or else have faith in their concept and buy back the 70per cent equity stake and keep the ball rolling!

As they say “When you set out to do something with all your heart and passion, everything around you supports you”!

Deep got funds from Angels who really proved right to their title “Angles” and bought back the 70 per cent stake, with a team which was not the same as it was sometime back.

How easy is it to take a 100percent cut in your earnings and for the top management a 50percent cut in their salaries? Ask Deep and the team at MakeMyTrip, and they will tell you what sailing on the boat named faith and confidence is when you have nothing else.

The Build-Operate-transfer model was touched upon by Deep and he advised everyone on the “Lure of Lucre”!

You cant Do It Alone!
A team which takes Serious Equity, a prospective for you who is ready to take cuts into hard cash for ESOPS, is the best employee for you!

2004 was the year of reckoning and establishment for MakeMyTrip in India, when the market opened to new models of online travel.

TRY!
Deep was of the suggestion that an entrepreneur should at least TRY! It was this attitude which made him get into the online travel space in India, with a fact backing his belief, that an ordinary Indian gets onto the Internet to book 5000 tickets daily using his/her credit card, in the Indian railways!

Learning’s
- Challenges
“Bootstrapping was the best time during the venture, when we had put all our life’s savings”

– Scaling up
Scaling up is a big challenge for any emerging venture which is looking towards a strategic expansion

Nicely heated up debated sessions have been regular features at MakeMyTrip.

There’s no Hiding!

1. Get good guys
2. Share your wealth (ESOP’s)
3. Hire guys who truly challenge you

“All your Yes-Men are truly useless. It’s about management by exception”

Failures
“The biggest regret and failure was that we outsourced our technology”

None of us knew how to build a web site!

The session drew to a close with an interactive platform for the participants to get their queries answered by Deep himself, which was of a big help.

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/07/14/confessions-of-a-dot-com-entrepreneur/

“It is not about who you know or what you know, but who knows what you know”

Remarked Mr. Ajay Jain, a man who firmly kept the foundation for the discussion on the 38th Friday’s 2.0 session on “Using online professional networking to get ahead at work” at New delhi.Mr. Ajay Jain, the author of “Let’s Connect, (using LinkedIn to get ahead at work)” shared his learnings, his passion for writing and how NOT overlooking intricate things can make your day!

“Indians Build Relationships”

The concept of offline networking and relationship building, remarked Mr. Jain, is still a preferred mode of establishing new relationships in India. Citing the success of the various offline networking chapters across India, Mr. Jain provided an insight as to how the Indian business scene is still the traditional way.The same gave direction to further discussion, which Mr. Jain generated quite an interest with, by introducing LinkedIn as a highly efficient and properly guarded tool for professional networking.

“LinkedIn is like a Business Conference” How to use LinkedIn to your advantage?

Like the Ten commandments, Mr, Jain established 10 effective steps!

• Your ever expanding Rolodex:Social contact building

All that comes your way….well no! LinkedIn gives an account only 3000 invites throughout the lifetime of your account, which makes sure that the professional ethic remains. - Have a LinkedIn-Thon @ office, if you have created a new account and are thinking as to how to grow your network! The idea that Mr. Jain shared with the community.

• LinkedIN Answers: A global focus group

Mr. Jain highly recommended the feature of LinkedIn answers which has multiple benefits, both for the community as well as the person answering the question.The answers get rated and the same puts the answering person profile in the limelight, and after a certain top rated answers in a certain domain, the person is profiled as an expert in the domain.

• Networking Plus: Meet people

Mr. Jain, shared an idea yet again, being a travel writer himself, he travels and meets a multitude of people all across. LinkedIN he said, could be highly instrumental in meeting people while you travel. You can send a message across to someone where you are traveling, to catch up at a certain place for a coffee!

• Branding and Marketing: Yourself

The topic generated enough interest in the room, to get ahead professionally or to a platform, Mr. Jain, presented to the members, unique ways of leveraging the power of online networking to get ahead at work.

“Dress up your profile, like you do in real life”

Keep your profile updated and leave no chances for networking within the groups that you may have been linked to professionally in the past.In the summary section, be crisp and to the point!

• Hiring People: Its not a job site

Though LinkedIN is not a Job Site, still said Mr. Jain, the feature of posting and searching for jobs is a high revenue generator.  As a recruiter as well as a prospect, LinkedIn could serve your purpose in an efficient and better manner, as the feature of writing an endorsement, provides a good background to be searching for the right candidate.

• Finding a job: You Love!

A job you love! Well, LinkedIN could help you interact with your prospective future employer, the employees and may be your reporting manager. You could use it to your advantage in settling down pretty, with the Job you Love!

• Vendors and Service Providers

Mr. Jain shared an interesting thought which could spell business opportunity for many a participants in the session. LinkedIN could help you find suitable vendors and service providers for your business needs.

• Running Background checks: A boon for the recuiters

LinkedIN could be a great source of information about prospective employees for the recruiters. the process of background checks could not be fudged on the online platform, as the endorsements for a person come in true, by people whom they have worked together with. Such features make it easier for the future employer to check for the identity of the prospect and also take the authenticity of the employees, relative to the people who have endorsed them.

• Entrepreneurs: Get investors and opinions

For Entrepreneurs,  which Mr. Jain, himself is, LinkedIn can prove to be a great source of doing market research and netowrk with prospective partners and investors. He again stressed on the Q&A feature, which could be used to one’s advantage and can prove to be a low cost and effective market research tool.

• Selling and Brand Building: For your company

As an employee, you can be highly instrumental in selling your companies brand value to attract more clients and generate higher revenues. Also the same may act towards making the organization a “preferred employer”.

“The world of business is a small one, LinkedIn made it even smaller”

A few key points that Mr. Jain re-iterated were of Etiquette. He stressed that though online, LinkedIn, still becomes your professional identity. Thus its reflects you online and keeping the rules of the game as in the real world, would help you in gaining traction with the people you wish to network with!The session drew to a close, with the floor open to questions and quite an interesting and knowledge driven debate ensued. With member audience pitching in with answers and solutions.

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/08/11/using-online-professional-networking-to-get-ahead-at-work/

Higher Employee Engagement Today Does Not Necessarily Reduce Attrition

What happens when you have a room full of HR pro’s from the industry? Well, sparks fly, literally but in the minds! Human Resource, one of the most crucial parts of any organisation today has evolved and how! A team of experienced human resource professionals came together on the 29^th august at VYK, NASSCOM office, a revival of the NASSCOM HR Best Practices. Mr. Aadesh Goyal, Chairman, PeopleStrong HR services, graced the occasion, with his thought provoking address to the members present.

Known for his meticulous business ethics, Aadesh, from the very beginning of the session, had the participants engrossed in the discussion.A two-way discussion ensued, which had innovative contributions by the fraternity. With a strong hold into the HR industry, Aadesh started by discussing the basics, which essentially helped in breaking down the ‘myths’, and giving a new shape and direction to what works, and how as a HR professional you need to mould and create customized solutions for your organisation, in accordance with industry standards. A heady mix of “theory” in the form of an engrossing power point presentation and “practical experiences” which discussed in detail how various companies across the board approach the problem and the various successfully implemented solutions.  Some of the key words discussed in the forum which created the ground for the talk were:Employee engagement, Compensation, Right Staffing, Attrition, Quality, Layered process, Deferred compensation, Line managers. The key words, though initially scattered across the table, were intelligently put together by Aadesh.

What would you say if someone told you, “A 1% decrease in compensation in software business would increase profit by 0.6 percentage points”?

Well, Aadesh did just the same, and the participants consented!

The questions at this stage that came up were:

• How do we create a nice compensation environment?

Even if as an organisation, we are not the best pay masters, still what is that we provide, which would be a major factor in attracting and retaining employees? See what impacts special events have on attrition!A one liner by Aadesh, powerful enough to have people thinking in the common direction. With a discussion over the same, newer ideas on Employee Engagement came to light!

• What delivers consistent quality?

‘Quality’, a highly debatable topic was very subtly handled by Aadesh.With a simple example of “if you are a packaged drinking water manufacturing company, how do you maintain quality?” Well, answers by the participants threw light on the importance of the topic and various innovative solutions came to the fore. Examples of organizations like HCL, were put across, which boast of such high HR practices, that allow them to make sense of Employee Engagement in the real sense. With attrition being the basis of the discussion, quality again lead to addressing the issue with a highly effective and efficient methodology of keeping a check on quality, while addressing attrition!

“Look at the kind of different attrition engagement techniques for different types of employees” remarked Aadesh.

The common voice consented to the same! Effectively addressing your attrition concerns, controlling costs, Aadesh put forth the suggestion of employing different engagement techniques for the various set of employees.

“I would not put my best engagement techniques, to the bottom most performers in the team, instead utilize the same for the top 20-25 percent of best performers”

The role of line managers?Research shows, in a normal BPO set up a team lead spends 80 percent of his time in preparing reports on his system, fro his boss and the boss’s bosses. If the team lead does not spend his maximum available time with the team on floor in action, well he is not being effectively utilized. Thus the suggestion of having line managers creating and following proper dashboards, which suggest to the senior management, the quality, attrition and various other factors about the base level employees. A line manager is the best person, who knows his subordinates, hence he should have a major responsibility in catching attrition young and in time, thus allowing the management to take effective measures. The same was put together by Aadesh in a structured three (3) layered process. 

Deferred compensation, does it work?YES! Remarked Aadesh. Its just a matter of mindsets. The same action that you consider as stopping someone’s basic salary, can be more structured in a structured salary break up (ex: incentive based) and told to the employee before joining. Aadesh sees the same as an effective tool in addressing attrition concerns, by the organisation.

Shape up or ship out!Though as an organisation, none would like to enter the hire and fire mode, but measures have to be taken to effectively address the attrition concerns! Training and development was discussed in this part of the session! Shape up or ship out the bottom performers, remarked Aadesh. With an interesting case study which brought about a great deal of change in increasing the effectiveness of the human resources, Aadesh captured the brains of one and all present. An eye opener for some of the non IT professionals and others who did not belong to the mainstream HR. The session concluded with a quick point put forth by Pankaj Bansal, the CEO and Founder PeopleStrong which pointed out the still hanging gaps in the HR industry!

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/09/01/higher-employee-engagement-today-does-not-necessarily-reduce-attrition/

At the NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave on 29th September, New Delhi, we will be putting forth an interactive session on “On-Demand business in India”.

The session would be led by Kishore from PK4 technologies and Arvind from Movico Technologies and this would be a unique mix of a segmented approach with the platform providing enough space for the participants to interact and seek clarifications and share experiences.

We invite the EMERGE community to share what value would they like to take away from the session. Your responses would help us in creating a more customized session with a high value proposition for the participants.

Companies, world over, are investing large sums of money to grow their top-line revenue while maintaining their focus on profit. They are being cautious about over heads, and when they do invest, they are looking at measurable returns, broken down in months and not in years.

Call it survival tactic in a rapidly changing business world, where change is driven by a whole new set of emerging business development tools as SaaS, which support the model of On-Demand Business and SOA.

With new business models such as SaaS, Cloud Computing in place, more and more companies are leveraging web technologies, thereby supporting enourmous economies of scale in deployment, management, and support for the application through the SDLC.

The session on the “On Demand business in India” would be structured on the SaaS model, which would have anchors introducing the key issues which would be presented to the audience, (acting as the multi tenant’s), thus we invite high interactivity and creativity.

We intend in creating high value propositions through all the sessions at the EMERGE OUT Conclave, which would be possible only through your inputs.

Looking forward to your suggestions.

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/09/08/on-demand-business-in-india-unconference-session-at-nasscom-emergeout-conclave/