What they say ...

1. Passion - Passion to create a difference and the ability to stick thru the ups & downs can only be there if there is that passion.

2. Patience - Sift them many ideas, validate & then launch. Understands that this is not about spreadsheets, but real revenue & real benefits.

3. Be a good listener - Ability to listen and willingness to accept another point of view provides flexibility. A good listener is always alert towards getting insights from those who may have a more experienced view about the topic under discussion.

4. Be a good team member - Understand that you need a team, by yourself you'd be stretched to execute.

5. Leadership - Must be a good leader, understand people issues and is able to manage them thru the difficult journey. Especially managing a peer group is a serious challenge.

6. Share - Be generous about sharing ownership of the company with others who take the risk with you. Team must stay intact thru thick & thin including your investors.

7. Value, not valuation - Must be focussed on creating value & not a valuation. If one creates value, valuation will automatically follow. Remember this is not & should not be a short journey.

8. Inclusive - In growing companies, people need to be empowered to keep them motivated to deliver. Delegation and, more importantly, inclusion in the growth strategy is a great motivator.

9. Flexible and not stuck on his idea only - Entrepreneurs who recognize that things do and can go wrong are more likely to succeed. Though this seems obvious, this often is the toughest aspect of entrepreneurship if not imbibed at the incubation stage itself.

10. Understand that success is not dependent only on a great idea. Execution is equally if not more important.

- Praveen Gandhi

First birthday in 'B'

Grown up men still celebrate their B'day ;-)

I am back from the traditional IIMB B'day celebration. I am still feeling my back n A%$ burning.
And now it has become really painful to sit anywhere. But I am glad. Though people are busy in Summers and Mid-term preperations ... our own CR and Khidki dragged me to the 'L^2' - normally that's where the Hooshing and other ceremonies take place.

Great to see great going day ahead. Though there are thoughts about Summers, etc .. having a nice time now.

Mirgadh Trek - Old pick

Nov 25-26-27 2006 -

This was one of the exhaustive trek, I ever experienced. Myself, Dr. Ayyaz, Dr. DattaSagar and Raju were the member of team to trek Mirgadh and no one of us had ever visited this area, around Pen-Panvel. Raju was the senior most member in our group in fact he is. I heard a lot about Raju from Ayyaz and in my opinion, he is gem of the person.
Despite being senior person, almost close to age of my uncle, Raju could easily get involved into the younger groups and I have noticed 'this' some more times whenever I visited B. J. Medical college hostel. By profession he is a photographer from Sangamner. Originally from Lahore, had to come with family because of 1947 India-Pak split and settled in Pune. Very particular about things, still very patient - key founder member and claimed to be the only one because of whom the Mountaineering club in B.J. Medical College is still active and has established as an autonomous entity. I know, I have much more to say about Raju, but I will stop here and share the trek pics.



One of very few silent moments in life. We were only four people on the top, we were sitting here almost for half an hour sitting silently. Ekdam chup. I can't calculate what is the outcome/ gain, etc stuff like that at this point of time. It is just different.


This is something to be seen in presence. Amazing example of human intelligence using primitive tools available, beside the indication of adaptability nature of human being.

We had been walking for last 5 hrs almost without any major break and here we were on the flat surface on the top and still unaware where to go !!

While we moved from one of the end of the Songadh to Vyaghreshwar, we came across a village of approx. 20 cottages. People out here were talking about the Bauxite elements of the metal, usage of it in the Aeroplane, space shuttle. We went little dumb here. We thought that they were saying something is there on 'BACKSIDE' :D

Next day, leaving the Mandir to next unknown destination, we wanted to go Sarpoli. Yeah and to the back side of this Mandir, there is a small water kink with constructed tank. Very cold water, We bathed in that tank, next day when I went there to fill the drinking water bottles, Cobra passed with the falling flow of water.

Though this trek was exhaustive, it gave me very nice friends - Raju and Datta. Raju is in regular contact with me. He keeps on calling and inviting me for Treks, rapplings, etc. Datta is busy doing his internship in Sasoon Hospital. Ayyaz is extremely busy studying in Delhi. And here I am - engrossed into the flow of the activities in I-I-M B.

I am really missing the environment during rains and it is a different fun of having treks during rains. I am feeling jealous of my dear friend Yogesh, he is trekking almost every weekend and that too in this season. But I am happy about him - at least he is consistently able to do it.

Bloodbath on Street

'This' is I think is unavoidable in today's circumstances meaning the way effect of the prime, sub-prime lending crisis in US housing industry is causing ripples across the world markets especially in the Asian Market, it can not be ignored.

'Financial services, investors, etc have been focusing more global, the FII (for us they are normally from US and European countries) investing into the developing countries like India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan etc. But any significant moment in their respective base countries make them to withdraw their money from these market to remain cover their position it with the gains obtained from the developing countries. Which obviously creates panic in the local investors in these developing countries.

Who is worst off ?
The small investor who is unable to understand the happening in the global markets or unable to understand the money making minds of the FII, etc.

But any small investor can be prudent enough if he is able to track the events around and little judgments about the market in general so that he can save himself from dragging in such situations.

Disclaimer - Such a vague article. I just tried to scrap something without much thought.

Learning what I missed to enjoy

This is not any sort of introspection of my past. Just that I realized something 'dé·jà vu'.

...... When I was working with Selectica, everyday I used to check my clock to record the travel time to office from home. Lesser the commuting time, I used to feel more challenged (??? ;-))

....... By that time I had just learned to swim. I used to set a mark on the other bank of the tank and used to record the time to cover the distance in shortest possible time. Again challenged (??? ;-))

Slowly after few days I realized that it is not fun of driving so fast or swimming so fast. I am missing the point to enjoy the journey. I started driving and diving(?) slowly (sorry!!! it was not equivalent of dragging - it was normal pace), while driving I started observing people around me. Then I watched them at the signal, how most people become race runner. It was fun watching 'those' people, some days back I was also one of them. I started looking around, bazaar, banners, Bolds & Beautiful, and realized that -yes- really serious and funny things happens around and we don't notice because we are running behind something for almost nothing.

Now when I have landed on this campus, I again realized that I am undergoing the same phase of getting carried along with the fast pace of this place, then come the day, I felt that this is not something what I enjoy the most or what I want the most out of this place, I sat back for some time, started moving around the campus, started talking to my friends on campus, calling up my school friends, colleagues, family, etc. More important is I realized that it is required to have 'Bigger Picture' out of whatever I am looking/understanding currently.

Cheers,
:D


Post to be completed ...

Nothing to write

????
This blogger.com really sucks ! Its usage of Ajax has removed all of the text I typed for last 10 minutes from the posting window. It has strongly reminded me of 'Windchill' - The copyright product of PTC. I was part of the Windchill development team. In Windchill one can have multiple versions and iterations of the documents, parts, assembly, etc. And he can selectively delete the iterations and versions of the same.[Too much techie!]

Unfortunately it is not the case here.

Anyway. On the Wednesday night, our mid-term was over. All exhausted ppl, especially junta from my section who had undergone three exams in a single day were omnipresent (at least) in PVR, Banaglore ;-)

Chilling,
:D

Now the pressure levels are rising each and every day as the mid-term is nearing. The people who were chilling last week are engrossed into the preparations. The PlaceComm has its own pace which is least bothered about what is happening at the acad, cultural way of the PGP1. They know their 'business' or 'the Trend' which is carried for last decade or so. And one can not skip the PlaceCom guys, ultimately they are the people within campus who will be showing the snapshot of post-MBA for us to the outside world.

Above all there are presentations, group activities, games which are sucking significant amount of important time. It's like hell. Again one can not skip any of them at all 'cuz they all carry some credit (though it's mininal) of the curriculam. But everything happening here makes life funny in a way. I know these two years I am going to remember for my whole life.

Not that I have to remind myself - enough environmental parameteres and creatures are here to remid me that - every now and then - it is THE Time for preperation - I am going to learn some more things before the exam-papers ! Will gaining some funda's cleared the night before the paper which is going to be kind of funny. I can remember the days in my engineering when I used to prepare for the papers - (AppMech, Graphics, DSF, DSP, CC, CN, MO, etc) just the night before the paper and used to enjoy the course, I mean it. Just before my practical exams (MO, CPL, AC, DSF, CN, etc), I had done some programs and I really liked the way I was able to appreciate most of the subjects, logics to be applied, tools used, etc.

Let me get back to the books and xerox!!
Till the chill time come again,
:D

Exec's Life

I read lines below from the Harvard Mgmt Review presented by David Nadler .

---------------------------------------------------------------
CEO of one of the !Top Notch! company saying "Every night I go to sleep asking myself 'Why people think, I have all the answers?' and every morning I wake up thinking 'Is today the day they figure out that I don't'
---------------------------------------------------------------
Again, CEO of one of the top notch companies - he looks forward for weekends 'because I know I could open the front door in the morning without seeing the Wall Street Journal lying there and wouldn't have to explain to my wife and kids why the newspaper was saying all these terrible things about me.'
---------------------------------------------------------------

Torna Trek last year - Old Pick

A little background : Prachandagadh or Torna. By conquiring this fort Shivaji Maharaj included the first fort into the Hindavi Swarajya account (?) . (Swarajya Toran)


Torna is close to Pune with Velhe goan a place of Taluka at its base. Velhe has a a court, Tehasil office, and I was surprised to see all these in such a small village. We had breakfast at Nasarapur - place 20km before Velhe. I am sure Sandy will never forget this breakfast for years to come or at least whenever he will visit Torna or Rajgadh.


I parked my bike at the Ashram Shala at Velhe, kept part of the luggage with the superitendent of the Ashram shala. Then Sandy and I started trekking in this route. Initially the way looked all dried as you can see in the pic and it was also dehydrating but we have taken water bottles along with so it wasn't the issue.





It is just at the start of the climbing up. We were accompanied by the group of 3-4 local people and they were easily climbing as it was a daily route for them. A young girl from that group guided us how to climb and later we never seen that group again even when we returned to the base.



Sandy tried some of his photography skills.
Again this time also I was not expecting such reasonble quality picture to be captured by mobile camera.

Budhala Machi a trailing arm of Torna and a opening for the way (sond) coming from Rajgadh.Earlier ppl used to run between Rajgadh and Torna with this way. and it was considered to be the smoothest one.

Zunzar machi. Real pleasure to look around from this place. Breath deep at this place and you will realize the relaxation and some kind of larger than life stuff ;-) yeah but that is true, some kind of strange feeling fills up our heart. It tells us there is lot things to live with. Move around.

View of the Rajgadh from Torna.

Someday I am planning to trace the whole route - Velhe-Torna-Budhala Machi-Suvela Machi-Rajgadh-Padmavati Machi-base village in one go. I have started counting days for that day. Lets see what is the count.

Study Hard and Change the World

One of the nice things being in IIM B is - as a part of Forum for Industry Interaction activities, we get to hear from eminent personalities. Last week we (PGP-1) heard about the Changing Paradigm from Kris Gopalakrishnan. Today we interacted with James Abraham about 'Building for future'. James Abraham is MD and Partner - Boston Consulting Group, India. In his speech, he talked about the experiences he had when he was working in North America, Europe and now in India with different private sector corporates and Public sector majors. He put across his idea in 10 things learnt, experience which he found the most important.



1. Find a passion. Passion will drive you to your way desired for happiness and success
2. Be less insecure and be more humble
3. Learn from failure, they teach better than success
4. Do not always run behind where the crowd is running, they might go wrong
5. There is always somebody is better off than you and somebody is worse off than you
6. Overestimate things possible for today and underestimate things possible for tomorrow
7. Sell yourself. Be salesman, saleswoman
8. [missed this item, I will update it sometime later whenever I will recollect ;-)]
9. People remember only three (3) things
10. Study hard and change the world.

Though it is true that James has delivered an impressive speech, his won experiences with people he mate, industries he worked, different geography he lived in marked the session entirely with his won identity but I find that moreover now people tend to deli ever things at academic institution, the way Steve Jobs had delivered at Harvard. Hats off to Steve Jobs. He really do stand at a very high level with his incredible battle with life, people stood against him, etc.

One thing I have found common with the exec. level of people at various organization - they are very humble. They listen to the almost everything that the any concerned individual (poor mortals - somebody like me) standing in front. Mostly because they are aware that the vision in their mind can be transferred/ made understood to the other peoples, subordinates only when they are clear with about idea/vision. -

I know that this is something globe stuff that I tried putting here. SO refraining myself from doing same, I am terminating this post with little note ;-)

With this forum, I know we will have opportunities to know about the great people from all over globe, interact with them, hear their experiences, their utmost values, passions, expectations from us i.e. the generation sitting next to them.

Ratra Thodi Songe Phar

Yes, that's what my situation is. I have limited time and there are so many things that I have to do, rather complete before I sleep. Definitely this kind of management education is testing people's capability to handle stress and to manage time.

I am realizing that my reading habits have changed over last 3 years since I have not been reading proper books for this period after leaving college. And while accessing Internet and computers, I got bad habit of skipping things all together or sometimes only looking for the key/interesting stuff. Soooo I am finding it painful to read the paragraphs lasting for 1-2 pages and conveying all global things.

Let me get out of this habit.

Insurance Premium

I have never thought about how a insurance premium is calculated for any person by any insurance company. All I was aware of this, is through my limited knowledge of the insurance policy I applied for couple of years back.

Now I am understanding how a statistical data collected over a period of time is essential for insurance companies to define their margin based on the probability of any given 'insurance policy holder' person's living.

By the way, thinking of the scale and structure of the insurance companies which provide insurance to the Aircraft, jets etc. What would be the insurance premium for such huge things and what would be the turn over of such insurance companies.

Jivdhan - II

It's called Nanacha Angatha - The shape of the part of the ridge came outward resembles Thumb.

Beautiful ridges close to Jivdhan. It reminded me of the Kokan Kada of Harishchandragadh. Unfortunately when I and Ayzu climbled Harishchandragadh we were not having camera (It is different story that we still don't have it). So we missed to capture our experiences to show to the others.

Rock patch - Santy beware - you are on your toes till you get down. That's what really happened, despite we ppl were guiding him from the side below about where to place feet and where to clamp the palms. and I still remember what Sandy thought for a moment.

Jivdhan from the base village.

Was it stressful ?

Jivdhan Naneghat - I

Guys get started.


Vegaat (vedaat ?) daudale marathi veer ;-)

Left the base an hour ago and it was still half more to cover to get onto the top.

Getting here was tough - and Sandy slipped afterwards but could control himself ;-)

This pic was my desktop wallpaper for almost a month after I trekked Jivdhan.

Rajgadh

Jacks and Jill (0). And here Jack fell down n his jacket became colourful.




I am going to missing these scenes this year.

We were sitting at a place which is a hole left in the rocky ridge. Next time when I was climbing on the 'Torna' I could easily identify this big hole in the rocky ridge on Rajgadh from far distant 'Torna'. Climbing Rajgadh was an amazing experience. Thank you guys for making those two days such wonderful and memorable - may it be start climbing at 8:00 pm in total dark night and in heavy rains where anybody could not see and hear to anything happening after person walking next to or on the back side of him. Where after reaching on the top and and on the next morning we realized how many difficult patches that we had crossed considering it was dark and raining heavily. We reached on top - the Padmawati Machi around 10:00pm and the temple was wet inside too, cooking in such a cold/humid and when it was raining around was just fabulous. Next day every one was claiming that he could not sleep a wink.

But definitely getting close to nature gives pleasure.

Beautiful ridge on Rajgadh.

Honestly, I was not expecting such a clear snap from a mobile phone (those we were having - : Read : Yogesh was having )

Cheers for those memories :-)

:D

Inside the college

My Hostel block 'L' : Inside view

PlayGround in front of my hostel block

My Hostel block

Central Pagola -

The Entrance

Way to Library - All the ways are through the rocks and pillers and greenary.

The ground again.

Photo Courtesy : Andrew R.

My L.D.A.P.

Today is my last day at Pxx. Me and my family have shifted to our flat just for a week. (My parent's summer vacation is the main reason to celebrate vacation just for a change :-) ). Because of this I headed to office for my last day from a new place. With mix of emotions in my mind. I kept remembering that how Pxx was my second stop next to my home by all means. I really had nice time at this place, I met nice people here and availed the flexi working hours to the max extent.But when I reached office the situation turned differently. I am being told that I won't be relieved today. I am not expecting this to happen to me. Though it is true that I have kept on hearing such incidents happening with other ppl who were leaving 'the company'. Anyway I dealt with the situation in front of me and now I am relieved from Pxx. Sadly my company-wide account's password has expired by the end of today. I could not even access my official emails. Thanks to kind 'IT-HP' dept, I could get it done as well and could send last couple of mails before leaving.

All I can remember is the childish play performed by the India-Management at Pxx. Thankfully there is sensible man on top of them who helped me to sort out the 'stuck in protocol' situation. Only thing I wish to tell 'them' is - 'come on, grow up'.

Finally I am leaving the place where I kept coming for last couple of years without hesitation and without bothering about what the time was. I was remembering the days when I used to travel to my earlier company and always passing by the nice building of Pxx and was dreaming of getting into this building. Then I was first interviewed at this place 2 years back, I was offered to work here, it might sound surprising to you but the fact is I refused to join Pxx because of my own reasons. There I was standing at the security gate outside the 'nice' building and so called 'dreamed' company declining to join them. And later some circumstances and my choice led me to join the same company to which I refused to join one month back. Then I was happy to work here and I really mean it - that I have enjoyed working here. I have got some really nice friends here. Daily post lunch was 'tonic' and happy break for me.

Now Now Now I am again in front of the security gate and looking at the same 'nice' building and with mix of emotions in my mind.

Overnight night out at DiveAgaar

I liked this snap very much. I think it is one of the classical pic.

Before leaving Pxx, I had my whole night-out (that's true we were awake the whole night ) beside the DiveAgar Beach.

New Calender year 2007 celebration - Old pick

I can tell you and believe me (though the picture can't capture the details of what we have been actually seeing and ecstasy we have been feeling at this moment ) - we are on top of the world. It's a night trek.
Running out of time, till the moon was in sky still no hurry and worry for us. We started after moon set.
At Bedse caves, this was my consecutive 5th weekend in Dec 06 that I was not at home in early morning. But this morning is much special, after night travel we reached here and unlike last year's dilemma to see the sunrise awaiting rest of the friends to come together- I had missed the sunrise. But this time we were fortunate.
The view was awesome. Met new guys here.

NEW DAWN, NEW BEGINING

Now levels are reset, again it is a new beginning.But I am happy for this new start. I want to make the best out of these two years waiting for me and ultimately best for whole life.

Excitement and bit of nervousness are peeking every now and then. Let me work it out with my all good things gained, learned till date. I want to enjoy the learning process in all rather than getting stressed, ahh I mean getting the stress on me - stress is obviously going to be there, let me be strong but cool enough to let it not control my way of thinking or doing. Remaining cool but with firm stand is something I have definitely being exercising in PTC for last couple of years and seen that it really pays off.