Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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Mr. Raj Thackery has now said that all the shops and establishments in Mumbai Maharashtra (or is it Maharashtra Mumbai) have to have their signboards in Marathi (IBN, TOI). He has also gone ahead and said that

Two days is what the shopkeepers have. Consider it a threat or whatever

I obviously respect Mr. Thackery’s enthusiasm and affection for the Marathi language but he has ignored a few very important things in his blinding excitement. Things like law and order in the state. Things like livelihood of these business owners. Things like putting the nation of a billion people first (compared to the proverbial Marathi-Manoos). Things like development of his beloved state of Maharashtra. Things like dividing the country into pieces.

I understand that with proliferation of media and advancements in technology, people, especially the youth today, are forgetting our rich culture and adopting things more western. It is creating a huge divide in the generations and newer generations are actually forgetting what Indianness is all about. A time might come when we would loose our centuries old traditions. When the kids would not know what joy Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and other regional languages are. And a time like that would totally suck. But forcing people to adopt regional languages and dividing people on that criteria .. ?

The implications of this seemingly politically motivated move by Mr. Thackery are very huge. To start with, it will create a divide between Marathis and Non-Marathis. It will disturb the law and order situation in the state of Maharashtra. It will create unnecessary and avoidable clashes between the groups. It will do everything but promote the Marathi language.

What about a Marathi Manoos? Do they really care? Are you trying to say that Marathi Manoos is so dumb that he cant read what’s written in English/Hindi on signboards? That he can’t identify global logos/brands from a distance?

What about the businesses? For them this is just one more nuisance that they have to cope up with while conducting business in India. They would incur one-time expenses in painting the new boards. And they would retain a life-long disgust for a political party and would hate with all their might. Who losses in the end? The political party, its workers and supporters.

Lets for a second assume that we go all-Marathi in the financial capital of the country. Fast-forward 10 years. No foreign company would want to open businesses in India. No investment would happen. No intellectual and/or academic and/or business exchange would happen and Marathis would remain where they are. Backward, poor, still fighting for Roti, Kapda and Makaan. Do we really want to remain there?

And yes, I love India, Hindi and my roots. I am as proud Indian as I can ever be. Yet at the same time I am forward looking and I don’t mind accepting new things that the world has to offer. I look forward to a day when people would introduce themselves as Indians rather than Maathis, Punjabis, Bengalis, Asamese. I look forward to a day when we would have a communal harmony and “leaders” like Mr. Thackery would have to find new ways of getting those idiotic votes.

And in the end, may be I am too blinded with the thoughts of development and progress and I am ignoring something very important. Can someone show me the missing pieces?

I wrote this for my Alumni Magazine - Footprints. A lot of things might be out of context for few people but the essence would hold true. I would love to have feedback on this. Please do write in if you feel strongly about something.

Why choose entrepreneurship

How do you define entrepreneurship? For me, an entrepreneur is a person who takes some initiative, hoping to change things around him (and in process change things for himself). An entrepreneur is a person who has a risk appetite. An entrepreneur is someone who does not mind venturing into the unknown territory (and in process feed his insatiable hunger). And finally an entrepreneur is someone who wants to stand out, and values his thought and independence of actions (more than straddling with the mediocrity in routine tasks).

With this broad a definition, everyone around us could be an entrepreneur. From a vegetable seller to a professor to doctor to a home-tutor to a student to a parent to a toddler to an oldie, everyone is an entrepreneur. From a time when you were a kid, you took initiative by trying to walk. When you went to the school for the first time, you showed exemplary courage (some kids do cry when they first goto school). When you first drove that vehicle, you knew that you might get hurt but still wanted to do it. When you decided to take CAT and choose a business school, you were experimenting with your career (lets be honest, we dint do MBA because we always felt like becoming managers – we did because there were no other options or everyone else around us was doing it).

So why is it that when it comes to real life businesses, we loose this innate initiative taking ability and the spirit just fizzles out? Why do we get comfortable in work and seek solace in regular jobs and we don’t want to take risks? Is it because of our traditional outlook of having a secure government job that we keep on till retirement? Or is it because everyone around us seems satisfied and happy with their jobs and we simply want to live life like them? Content and happy. What else could it be?

Lets change track and for the sake of simplicity and clarity I will talk about three phases of life (“inspired” from the movie Pursuit of Happyness). These are

1. The Rats in Blindfold Race
2. Sundials in Shades
3. Round Pegs in Square Holes

Flashback to end of 2005 and beginning of 2006. The entire campus was abuzz with placement talks. Everyone was making their personal placement strategies in their secret hideouts. Some people were working alone. Some worked in pairs. Some found comfort in groups. You could spot flurry of activity outside library, computer center and rooms of academic toppers. Suddenly, new friendships were being forged. All enmities were forgotten. All broken walls were mended. All gaps were bridged. Everyone wanted to be friends with placement committee guys. Everyone wanted to master the art of cracking interviews and getting placed on that magic Slot 0 on Day 0.

Some people decided to revise whatever they had studied in 4 semesters so far (read as going over the notes made by the likes of Mansi, Supreeta, Manushree that have been painstakingly photocopied during these last 4 semesters, some people decided to study hard henceforth (this essentially meant mugging Kotler. Again), some people decided to start reading newspaper (and finally avail the facilities at the library), some people decided to polish their GD and PI skills (this essentially meant doing nothing at all), some people were oblivious to placement were busy partying and playing CS (these people were amongst the lower rungs of the CGPA ladder and were assured of Day 3 placement).

All of us were sure of one thing and one thing only. We wanted a placement with a prestigious company on a package of not less than 7 lakhs (this was the ACTUAL average salary when my batch was passing out). And that is all that mattered at that point in time. There were people who were very clear in their minds and thoughts about what kind of jobs they wanted and where did they see themselves in five years. They had all answers to all the questions that an interviewer could have had. Even the clueless ones wanted to make their careers in big corporations, rising to the top of ladder. All of us wanted to work hard for rest of our lives. For someone else. For peanuts. Doing the same thing for rest of our lives. Boring. Mundane. Regular. And still worse, trying to justify that whatever we are doing is fun.

There is nothing wrong with doing what the entire world is doing. After all we have interesting jobs that pay well, that makes families and friends proud, that elevates social status, that puts career on a fast-track path to that corner office on top floor, that gives a security of a pension post retirement. It’s a perfectly understandable that one chases dreams like second and third homes in suburbs, cars and membership to executive clubs. After all life is supposed to be enjoyed to the fullest. Work hard and party harder should be the mantra to live life by. We were doing what everyone was doing. We were like Rats in Blindfold Race running because everyone else is running and never for a single instant thinking why the race.

And this is where the problem is. We get so comfortable in our cocoons that we can’t imagine a life outside that. We become so comfortable doing our jobs that we simply don’t want to challenge the status quo. We become so myopic with our visions that we cant see what can be done. We become pragmatic and logical and hence we refute things even before we try.

Imagine if everyone in world became like that. There would be no new innovations and businesses, no Internet, no communication equipment, no electric bulb, no wheel, no fire, no evolution and no us. We would be in sleeping in caves or hanging from trees if the few daring ones dint venture out.

It was an entrepreneur who first decided to step out in the dark and for some reason decided to rub two dried wooden sticks against each other to discover fire. It was his curiosity that drove him to use two sticks. It was an entrepreneur who thought that a round object might be easier to move. He worked hard on making it round. It was an entrepreneur who first wondered why is that apples fall on the ground and not rise to the sky. It was use of common sense coupled with clarity of thought. It was an entrepreneur trying to solve a problem who invented the telephone and the Internet. It was an entrepreneur who thought a PC on everyone’s desk could make lives much more simple and better. It was vision and a belief in that vision.

We, proud mandevians have all that it takes – curiosity, hard-working attitude, bag full of common sense, vision, conviction and finally problem solving skills. In fact we label ourselves as change masters. And thus wondering why is that we have very few entrepreneurs amongst us? What is stopping us? Arent we being what Benjamin Franklin called Sundials in Shade?

More I think about it, more I realize that it’s because of two things. Foremost is the avoidance of risk and second is pure laziness.

Most of the ones reading this would have reached a stage where they would be married, possibly with a kid, a home loan to pay off, a very stable routine job where we would be yelling on our subordinates and would be on receiving end of our bosses whims. Life would be really rosy. No major worries on any front and everything going on as planned. Probably we guys look at entrepreneurship as something that would shake things up. Make things unpredictable. Add a lot of unnecessary work, effort and emotions in life. And other such factors. And since we are MBAs, we will do a cost-benefit analysis. The analysis would prove that leaving a comfortable job is not required at all. And thus many interesting minds remain hidden in the layers of hierarchy.

Coming to the end and, a very famous advertisement from Apple Computers sums it very well. It says

“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.”

And as this ad says, its about a choice between mediocrity and expertise, a regular guy and an exceptional talent, working for someone else and working for yourself. We need to choose. We need to choose life. We need to choose sides. Which side would you choose?

Saurabh Garg is from batch of 2006. He is an aspiring entrepreneur working on couple of ideas around computer gaming and communities. He updates his thoughts at http://saurabhgarg.com/thoughts when he is not thinking of ways to take over the world.

The leading headline for this Friday has to be India’s show at Olympics. We have ended our Olympic run with three medals (One Gold and Two Bronzes). As on today, we are at 45th place (link here). Wrestler Suresh Kumar came out of nowhere and got us a Bronze. Boxer Vijender Kumar got us another Bronze but this one got way too much attention - thanks to a day’s gap and his boyish looks? I will not get into rant about the game and how we need to look beyond these Olympics and prepare ourselves to take on the world in 2012 at London. I would move on to my Hits, Misses and Random Musings section.

Hits

• Blogging Tip: Make sure that the About page on your blog is done really well. I have always placed importance on these pages but Google Analytics for this blog has helped me understand that it is really important. My About page is the most visited page on my blog. I have updated it since but its still work in progress. If you can recommend some changes there, please do.
• Twitter: I have crossed 700 followers on twitter. This is not important to please my ego but this helps me get in touch with more people and more ideas to lift from. Actually I am trying to get the network effect going on for me. More people I follow, more ideas I get, more conversations happen, better is the quality of ideas/work. I actually saw it work for me when I wrote about Nokia’s use of social media and all the people I wanted to read the post, read it.
• Flickr: I recently discovered flickr as an awesome way to conduct secondary research. With people uplaoding all kinds of images on flickr, if you use the right tools, you can mine amazing data. I will post a simple example. I want to know what things are important to people. What if I looked in their bags to determine what all they carried with them? There are few ways to go about this. I can ask them to fill a questionnaire. Or I can ask them to think what would people carry. Or I can simply go to What’s in your bag Flickr group. The possibilities are endless. Its one of those New New Things that I love chasing.

Misses

• iPhone 3G launch in India: Finally after months of waiting, Apple finally launched iPhone 3G in India. It has been priced at Rs. 31, 000 with no mandatory contracts. For an average Indian 31k is very steep and I already know a lot of people who wanted to buy but aren’t because cost is very prohibitive. Also becuase people were waiting to buy a device like and iPhone and its high price, I can see Nokia N96 etc. getting a larger chunk of market share. IMHO there was simply too much hype around iPhone in India. Lessons for marketers? Hype is good. Very good. But not delivering on the hype can make you most ardent fans into die-hard opponents. If you were to fix the entire thing, how would you do it? Is there a way Apple can salvage the situation? Any ideas?
• n00b.in: I was in Delhi and yet could not meet Kunal and decide on the future of n00b.in. Looks like n00b is yet another project that would die an premature death without ever seeing the day of light. I need to somehow salvage it. Off all the ideas that I have ever come across, I am most excited by the possibilities that a place like n00b holds. From content to brands to entertainment to information to geekdom to thoughts, everything is there.

Random Musings

• Rant on Internet: While talking to a colleague about my Cannes trip, I was telling him about seven things that I think are the current trends in advertising (probably most of them are already things of past but they are still very new for India and there is a long long way to go). I think the themes are large enough to actually create a separate blog post on and make a presentation and upload on slideshare. In no order, these are seven things would be
  1. Empowered customers: Customers now know what exactly they want. And if they dont get it, they would make sure that they pester brand owners as long as brands dont deliver it.
  2. Emergence of Personal Media: Its so easy now to create any kind of media at drop of a hat. From blogs to pics to videos to complex mashups, people are trying their hands at everything.
  3. Collaboration: People talk to other people about their lives and brands. Increasingly over the Internet and often with strangers. Participation has gone to an entirely new level altogether where people contribute not for monetary incentives but social currency. Classic example is MadV. More on this on my post on Youtube.
  4. Mashups: Remixing of things to create new things. More on this follows.
  5. Mass Personalization: With technology advancements, it is possible to mass market a product and yet customize it. Simple example could the way you are greeted by your name when you board a Kingfisher flight in India. Why aren’t more brands adopting it? And with personalization, there is no limit to which you can go.
  6. Brand Ownership: Increasingly, marketers and brand owners are giving away the ownership of brands in the hands of the customers. Started with things like Orkut where you could report malicious behaviour of other users to keep the system clean, it has trickled down into main-stream advertising where marketers are giving tools to customers to take the brand forward. In a lot of cases, brands are actually asking customers what should they do with the brand. Most famous example? My Starbucks Idea.
  7. Branded Entertainment: I have spoken about this earlier here. Would not add more gibberish.

• Mashups: I think mashups are the way of the future. More and more companies will make data and APIs available freely and more and more people would allow access to that data. In fact I think everything in future would be publicly available and with easy to deploy and easy to use tools like Popfly and Pipes, creating mashups would become a child’s play. Only constraint would be the imagination. I have to think more on it. Read more on it.

Come to think of it, this weekend could be really interesting if I get time to think on things. I can speak about the 7 new things that can be used in advertising in India, write on Flickr ecosystem, read about mashups and hopefully create some and understood two very important lessons on blogging. Still about 6 hours to go before the end of the week. Might write more.

I got this SMS from Sonali (she doesn’t blog yet)

While v celebrate 61 years of independence, i hav just one ques fr u - after spending more than 2 decades in this 61-yr old country, r u a proud indian or an apprehensive indian? I first heard the latest rabbi song ‘bilqis’ 5 days back on india’s independence day and am still haunted by it. And i am still looking fr n ans to the ques raised - ‘jinhe naaz hai hind par woh kahan hai?’

And since its 9:30 PM, I am in office and don’t have anything important to work on, I thought why not some self-reflection. Please beware that this is going to be a rant where I go on a mental trip and hopefully get an answer. And to put things in context, the song that Sonali is talking about is this. And while I am writing this, I am listening to it.

So the question asks me if I am a proud Indian or an apprehensive Indian. In one line, a short and sweet answer is that I am a proud Indian. And more than apprehensive I am confident, curious and motivated, all three at the same time. If you asked me why, I would have no real reasons except for the statement that everything India is, defines me (large, full of contradictions, basking in the past glory, struggling to cope up with realities of world fast changing world) and everything I am, defines India (young, mediocre, forward-looking, ambitious, trying to prove a point, wanting to lead the world).

And now the longer version of the story. I am confident because I know that in last decades, thanks to few good decisions by some individuals (including my parents, policy makers and my professors), I have got myself bare minimum education required to actually understand things and take an informed decision. I am confident that since I know quite a few things, I would take a decision that is in the best interest under prevailing circumstances. I am no magician with a magic ball to gaze through and predict what the future holds for us. However, at the same time I know that I am on an adventure trip where I chase things like glory, intelligent company and huge rewards for my efforts. And I am ready to take the risk for the same. I am not sure about the results but I dont mind trying.

I am curious. Because of my background, I know a few things and now with all the learning opportunities that this connected world gives me, I want to know a lot more. I want to learn and apply the lessons in real life and use them for my advantage. My curiosity keeps me going. To look beyond the obvious. To dig deeper. To investigate further. To reach the root of a problem and work on it from there. And once I am informed, that is the time when I feel I can be at my best.

And I am motivated. I am motivated because I cherish the freedom that came as a result of a long and hard struggle by millions of Indians. I understand that my life is so much better simply because I can take decisions without fearing any retributions of any kind. I understand that the very act of thinking like that is a privilege. And since I have that privilege of thinking and working in a free world, I know that I need to make the most of it. twiI need to preserve it for the generations to come. I have to leave something behind as a legacy (or even a simple gift). What better gift can I leave behind than freedom?

So what does Independence mean to me? I have thought about this a lot of time and every time there is a different answer. At times conflicting and at times comforting. But the essence remains the same. Independence for me is the complete freedom of thoughts and actions. This would mean being financially, morally and socially free. Apart from the financial freedom, all the other kinds are offered by the environment you live in. In my case it happens to be India. I did not choose India. It was something that was forced upon me (along with a lot of other things like my parents, my family, my physical appearance, my receding hairline etc.). To be very honest, if I could choose a country, I dont know if I would have chosen India over other “developed” and “free” countries. But now that I am an Indian and I have become what I am, there is no choosing things/people/countries. Only thing that remains debatable is how to take India to new heights.

There are tons of things that are awesome about India. And then there are many more tons that needs to be changed. Stories of corruption, favoritism, red-tapism, bureaucracy, laziness, mediocrity, procrastination, organized religion etc. are in abundance. Rare are the instances of honestly, brilliance, dutifulness, obedience etc. Still rarer are stories of Manjunaths, Dubeys, Kumars who have raised their voices and laid down their lives fighting for causes that they believed in. And there are people like Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijender Kumar who have broken the age old shackles and have proved themselves on the toughest platform they could have participated. I can go on talking about the likes of Kalpana Chawla, Kiran Bedi, Lt. Saurabh Kalra, NR Narayamurthy, Azim Premji, Dr. Bose (not Netaji), Sam Pitroda, Mother Teresa and host of others who have not only raised the bar and made us proud but changed the way, the world at large perceives India as a country. More than changing the perception of the world around us, we should be talking about changing the way we think about India as a country. The way we think about ourselves. What we have and how we can leverage them to reach farther.

A country is made of its people and is what all these people, decide to make it, collectively. It is very easy to play the blame games and curse the “system” but it takes courage to actually voice an opinion. A country is a place where we all have agreed to live (in a lot of cases by choice and in few cases by default) but since we are here and now is our time, one needs to contribute and do whatever one thinks is in the best interest of the country and self. It can be as elementary as teaching your maid or as monumental as casting your vote in the elections (which as numbers would prove, only less than 65% of Indians do). A country is not about You. It definitely is not about me. It is about us. It is about we. It is about India. We need to move beyond the petty battles of YOU and ME and work collectively for US

Change is something that is very interesting. Change is one of those things that everyone desires and asks for. And moment there is even a glimmer of change, everyone starts resisting it. But why am I talking about change all of a sudden when we are talking about India and being an Indian? What do you think things like our opinions, our leaders, our policy makers, our education system, our perceptions, our thinking, our actions need?

And coming back to what Rabbi asked, “Jinhe Naaz Hai, Hind Par Woh Kahan They, Jinhe Naaz Hai Woh Kahan Hai?“. Do we have answer? I dont know about a lot of things and I dont know how to weave beautiful stories and poetic text but I know one thing for sure. Next time, there is someone who challenges my India, I would be there and I would stand tall and be counted.

What is your story? Please share. Please ask yourself. Please ask your friends. Please ask strangers. Please investigate.

August 15 2008 - India’s 61st Independence Day. Most of the post would be a rant on India and what it means for me. Please ignore my over enthusiastic patriotism. In the past too, I have written about Independence Day on my blog. Links: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

For me independence means a lot. Freedom to act. It is the freedom to choose things I want to do. Freedom to think on things I want to think on. Freedom to express myself. One might argue that

Hits

• Gold at Olympics: India won a Gold at the Olympics. An Individual gold. After 108 years. Abhinav Bindra in 10 m Air Rifle. (Wrote about it here).
• Berlin-School: Berlin School of Creative Leadership has accepted my application. According to their email, people from more than 25 countries applied and I am one of the select few that have been accepted. Wow. I can not afford the course. I will see how to go about it.
• Saurabh Garg gets popular: For the first time in my life, my website was suspended for exceeding the bandwidth limits. Wow. This means two things. Either my website is too popular or I have too less bandwidth. Anyways, I got myself upgraded and hopefully my demands for bandwidth last longer.

Misses

• Omar Abdullah, one of the few leaders I really admire has decided to shut down his blog. I think the decision is short-sighted and impulsive. I sent comments, messages, posted on mutiny.in, Facebook and here. Hopefully he would not shut down his blog. Our politicians need to know more about powers and reach of social media and reaching out on the Internet.
• Freedom Blog: Back in July, I thought if it would be a good idea to collate opinions and views of people on freedom at one place, would it be a good idea? I posted it here and asked friends to share their opinions. Sadly the response was very limited (I got couple of comments and two emails). I wasnt expecting everyone to write in anyways but I did not know that people who read my blog are not really bothered about our country and what it offers us. Or may be my approach was incorrect and flawed? I would want to believe later.

Random Musings

• Other Indian Athletes at Olympics: Others disappointed at Olympics. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (medalist at Athens games) dint even qualify for finals. Surprise was Saina Nehwal - Shuttler from Delhi who reached the quarter finals. She is all of 18, hopefully, we will have more medals in future from her.
• Sania “trackpants” Mirza: Sania Mirza as expected lost out in the first round itself. But she did something even more audacious. She walked the opening ceremony in track pants. IMHO this is as big a disgrace as you can bring to the country. You might be busy with all the preparations but somethings are just sacrosanct.
• Hopes at Olympics: Only hopes left are now from Paes-Bhupathi and Kumar. I expected 5 medals but now at most we can have three.
• Movies: There has been a long list of really good movies that have released in last few weeks: Kung Fu Panda, Dark Knight, Jaane Tu. I need to get a life and think beyond businesses, money and twitter.
• Blogging: I changed my blogging policy. I will now try to create “Saurabh’s personal Wikipedia” rather than a blog. More on this here.
• MBA: I was thinking about my MBA from MDI. On one hand it gave me friends and idea about life, world. On the other hand it took away time and made me a more complex person. Still dont know if I should recommend a MBA to people.
• Marketing: I happened to walk past a Levis’ store and I was surprised to see real people dressed as mannequins and using synchronized movements in store to attract traffic. This is something that I have not seen ever in this country. Hats off to them. I dont know how much sales did this generate but people did look at these people and people did walk-in to the store.

In the end, since it is 15th Aug 2008, need to renew the vows to take the country to greater heights. I will make sure I do my bit. Future looks uncertain but there is a glimmer of hope somewhere hidden behind the clouds.