Infosys, Wipro and Innovatrix are competing !

It was in my 4th Year, when I was in the Training and Placement Cell of my college. I had access to the HR of most IT companies and a few very informal moments with them. The guys from each company had a one liner to hook the students to their company. The lines like... "Once you have a degree, cash it! Then do your MBA" were winners. I did not understand what craze freelance writers, graphic designers, dancers and music lovers had in IT companies. Everybody is not the same, and so are their qualities. Most of them had unique talents but did not have the heart to follow it. They were debarred of the bigger picture and did not have the guidance to go after them. This is at least what I thought till the college days.

I always thought that my real struggle will be to get new clients for the company, to expand the business and explore new avenues. These things are as important but the last few years have made me think otherwise. Since my college days I knew the imporatance of a good team. In those days, it was diffcult to ask everbody to give their 100%. They had their own commitments to study and other personal ones. It was difficult to motivate them and people kept on dropping every year from the team which was very disheartening.

I never thought my competitors are Infosys, Wipro, TCS and Accenture!! I know whats on your mind, these guys are so big and I am so small that even if they sneeze i would be snuffed out! But it is not that I am fighting them eye to eye but their policies that have taken the young minds. It is the AC offices, larger than life work place, promises to go abroad on site and all this at the cost of job dissatisfaction and punching down their passion in life. These things do not seem that important as everybody seems to be doing it. Eveybody makes compromises with their passion and follows a path that will lead them to a comfortable life. They seem to take advice of their parents who take the advice of other parents and family friends. This advice chain continues on and on and eventually nobody knows who gave advice to whom in the first place, under what circumstances and for what purpose. If two people can't be the same, how can the same advice be given to both?

When we compare a start-up to an MNC. Sure, everybody is concerned about the risk. But nobody sees it this way. You work for yourself in a start-up, your working day and night gives results that reflects directly upon you. You work on what you are best at and increase your skills with each milestone. When you see yourself after years you will see that you have become what you always wanted to be and you will be doing what you always wanted to do.

I know everytime someone from my team goes MNC hunting, it would be disappointing to see them miss a great opportunity in their life. I will stay the course and keep moving forward.

There is a line from border I always remember....

Chaman mein ittelaate range bu se baat banti hai, hum hee hum hain to kya hum hain, tum hee tum ho to kya tum ho?

What do you need to be an entrepreneur?

Is it tough metal, decision making power, convincing power or a post graduate degree? I have gone through all these text book answers over and over again for the last two years. I will just share what works for me. In a day's work you have to make tough decisions, show some mental toughness to bloopers and unforeseen expenses and issues that rise from nowhere. You  have to be steady when you have a months salary left in your bank account and you have people leaving the company for a better job and also when you cannot meet the deadline ( I haven't seen anyone doing that as yet ). The problems are immense and never ending. If you start contemplating, you will end up in a vicious circle. 

I decided to become an entrepreneur when I realized the difference in working for someone and working for yourself. I think entrepreneurship teaches you to know your limitations and then come over them. In every new challenge there is a lesson to be learned. I am not scared of challenges anymore, I am on the lookout for the new ones every time. I just affirm faith in myself and keep moving forward. 

It is the passion and love for what I believe in. I must be honest here, I am a bit dreamy. I dream about my goals with open eyes. I dream about reaching to the end of the tunnel and imagine how life will be at the other end. I must confess it was not the same. Bigger projects mean bigger responsibilities, more working hours and more head scratching. It pushes me from inside to go out there and bring out the best I can. One thing I have learned is that you have to be alert with a sound mind all the time. You cannot spend long hours coding yourself because you never know when an opportunity comes banging at your doorsteps. You should be on guard most of the time and take out time to think ... where do you go from here. 

It is said in our world... If you dont grow... You Stultify!

The First Project...

I have been building websites for almost 8 years now. I remember, I started with making pages in Yahoo Geocites and boasted about it. :) I started building a webpage for myself and then moved on to take up a social cause. Obviously it was too immature. I wanted to come up with something revolutionary, somthing that would make maintainence of websites easy for organizations that need regular updates. It took me 8 years to finally figure that out. During the period I kept on improving the designs but never really cared about making it easy for updation. 

I was blessed with a wonderful team all throughout my college life. We were a tech team first, that was the stepping stone. Our projects attracted a lot of public attention. If there were praises, there were critics too. We heard the critics and worked on our limitations. We created documentries, websites and loads of other services. We always had a good start, good response to our work but that vanished very soon. We did not understand despite our best efforts we put in, our projects didn't serve the purpose for too long. We probably never thought in this area, but kept on making stuff that would be a show stopper! We liked the limelight so didn't care about the outcome. 

When I started doing web development commercially for living, this issue popped up again. I prepared a few websites in my starting days and the clients demanded for maintenance. I was working on a software to find a solution. During my initial struggling days, I met medury sir in noida, he asked me to send a proposal for the 3 websites of the Jaypee Institutes. I sent him a proposal in a week. I did not get a response for a long time. He said, yes I read the proposal, give me some time to think. I started comtemplating, what are they actually looking for? I had made JUIT website in my college days and it occured to me... the most important thing is maintaining the website! I called up Dr. Medury and told him we have made a Content Management System! The response... Ok Pramir, Come to JUIT, we will strike a deal!

Everything came back to me in a flash. It was maintenance that was the key! We signed a contract and we were on it in a flash. We explored a new technology Adobe Air, which was a revolution in software development. It had beautiful interface which helped in cracking the deal. It is the simplicity in a system that sells! The website development took more than the time we quoted. But there was regular progress, so nobody complained.

It was the first fifteen days, when we had loads of ideas in the table. Some ideas went wayward, others we thought could be executed. Jaypee had a brand name in construction, so our website was aimed at highlighting these. Hence, came the SWF which starts with an animation of constructing the buildings. Then the colours had to be in sync with the logo and the colour Jaypee uses in most of its projects. We were here to sell our stuff... so the client was kept in mind all the time. Integration of Podacsts, Videos that we believed would communicate better and a Google Map to be updated with the technology. 

But then something came up that stole all the limelight... the Virtual Tour. This Virtual Tour was a 360 degree view of the campus and finally became the USP. People talking about the website, talked about the virtual tour first.

The Content Mangement System was the reason I got the contract, so that was built with great care and dedication. This system came out very well, it made the content management very simple. The System was pretty complex in design but the interface came out nicely making it easy for a layman to update stuff. I do remember the numerous fights we had over perfection. Shivam, Lakshya and Me are perfectionists and thankfully the guys associate with us are too. We would fight on phone, gtalk or in face to achieve that. Sometime we lost interst in work, but the motivation was there inside everybody to prove a point, "If we are given a chance we wont let you down". Lots of hiccups came during this project, our files were lost, the computers crashed, we had to build the whole stuff again a couple of times. We started taking frequent backups because work was being done at a great pace. 

I used to attend office in the morning, finish my daily work and then get home by 8:30. It was by 9'O clock our work started. And most of the time, continued all night till 5 in the morning. We loved the work we did, so there were no regrets about the routine. I was exhausted till november when I made a visit to the campus and installed Notice Management System which became a big hit! This relieved some fo the stress. By december I had interns, we started working rigorously all day on my original website. The nights were all for the Jaypee project. I had to sync things, keep the stuff in mind. Think about the deadline and making my team ready to meet that.

It was on 8th Jan '09 that we finished the Jaypee University website, uploaded, checked for errors and made it available. It might look a simple website when you browse through it. But do you remember those lines... 

It is so simple to be happy, but so difficult to be simple! 

It was simplicity that we were searching for, through our technical knowledge and our experience of working in this area for all these years. We achieved simplicity upto a level that we aimed for. But everytime we reach there, we set the bar higher and it has been set. We are all set too... to achieve that. We are ready for the next challenge! 

The Link: http://www.juit.ac.in