Turned DAD this week

It makes me very happy to let you all know that I turned DAD last Monday. My baby boy was born on Jun 16 and was 3.6Kg at birth. See my son sleep in this picture on the left.

Also attached is a little video of him ... I must have watched this video over a 100 times in the past 2-3 days. Whenever, I am not with him and I find any time at all, I tend to put on videos of my son or slideshows of his pics .... it feels great to be a father !!!

My little baby is saying "Hi !!" to the readers of this blog.

Who are your customers?

The key thing for any business is its customers. Now, customers come in various shapes and sizes ... also depends on the kind of business you are in.

At Wirkle, we are in the mobile technology business, both products and services. A significant percentage of our customers tend to be startups working on cutting edge mobile products and we at Wirkle add value by providing our technology expertise. Now the good part about that is that we are usually at the fore-front of technology working on next generation mobile products.

The down-side, however, is that startups are usually cash constrained and it is quite possible that work might come in spurts when business suddenly picks up and might stop when business is low. In some not-so-good circumstances a startup might even be forced to stop work altogether.

Now that does not mean one should not work with startups. I believe the key is to have a balanced customer base including both - the more established bigger companies as well as the younger companies ... the former keep your business moving by maintaining steady revenue while the latter keep you at the fore-front of technology.

Long time, no see ... Again !!!

Well, well, well ... looking back at my blog, I see that my last post was on Nov 4, 2007. One thing I can tell you, maintaining a blog and running a business at the same time is not easy ... do-able, but not easy.

A lot has happened over the past couple of months - Wirkle has moved a bigger office ... very colorful (it took quite some effort to select the right layout of the office, the color combination ... see pictures below). As a company, it continues to grow ... over 30 people now, hiring is one of our biggest focus at this time.

Scaling to the next level is the next challenge ahead of the company, forming the right processes that ensure satisfied clients and employees is what we're trying to figure out right now.

The journey this far has been very eventful, a lot of hard work and a lot of learning. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to post about my experiences ... hoping that the readers of this blog will be able to gain something out of it.

Running the Vodafone Delhi Half Marathon

You guessed it right, this post is going to have little to do with Wirkle ... this is about the Vodafone Delhi Half Marathon which I ran on 28 Oct 2007, and to sum up the experience ... it felt GREAATTT to cross that finish line after running 21 kms for over 2 hours !!! Yup, thats me on the left ... very close to the finish line (my wife Preeti taking the picture).

If you have been reading my blog, I had made a post earlier when I had completed 10kms of running. If you don't recall ... just click here. Now if you look at that post carefully, it was on 22 Dec 2006. You might think it took me quite a few months practicing, but the reality is it wasn't until Sep 2007 that I ran 10kms again ... all the months in between were pretty low in terms of my running practice.

To avoid sounding too cryptic let me just walk you through the story. It goes back to when I was in the US. I have a bunch of friends who completed their first marathon ... their stories were my first inspiration. I didn't do much about running in the US except for running on a treadmill for about 2 miles every now and then.

After I returned from the US to India at the end of Aug 2006, I heard about the Hutch Delhi Half Marathon that happens in October. Unfortunately, by the time I got to know about it, it was too late for me to practice anything and besides there was too much settling down I had do here in India. Nonetheless, I told myself that I will run the next time around.

So after the Hutch Delhi half marathon in October 2006, I made my modest beginnings and started practicing. I managed to reach 10kms by December (remember my last post on 22 Dec, 2006). Starting January the weather became so cold in Delhi that I didn't do any practicing. After Feb-Mar when the weather got better, I did start practice ... but that was casual running mostly around 5-6kms.

Many months passed like this and now it was almost the middle of Sep in 2007 when I realized that the Vodafone Delhi Half Marathon (28 Oct 2007) is only 7 weeks away. I started to look out on the web if there was anything I could do now to train myself to 21kms. MarathonRookie was a website that I found very useful. Based on the plan in there, I prepared the following plan for myself -

Week Beginning	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
10 Sep	Rest	Rest	Rest	4.8km	Rest	Rest	6.4km
17 Sep	Rest	Rest	Rest	4.8km	Rest	Rest	9.6km
24 Sep	Rest	Rest	Rest	5.6km	Rest	Rest	12km
1 Oct	Rest	Rest	Rest	7.2km	Rest	Rest	14.4km
8 Oct	Rest	Rest	Rest	8km	Rest	Rest	16.8km
15 Oct	Rest	Rest	Rest	9.6km	Rest	Rest	20km
22 Oct	Rest	Rest	Rest	Rest	Rest	Rest	D-Day, 21km

I would run every Sunday to increase my running distance, and I would run once during the middle of the week where the distance would be half of the distance of the Sunday run and would act like a warm up. The other days of the week would be for recovery. Other than this I started to consume more carbs and proteins, my wife mostly taking care of my diet. I also made sure to drink lots of water especially before and after the running sessions to prevent dehydration.

The good part was that I was able to stick to the above plan ... although it was hard to wake up at 530am in the morning twice a week to run that distance. I would run in Delhi's Dwarka Sports Complex on their track which was 0.8kms long, I'd usually complete a certain number of laps of the track, which is why my plan is in multiples of 0.8kms.

As per the plan, a week before the Vodafone Delhi Half Marathon I had completed 20km in 2:05hrs. The last week I said no to running, just allowing by body to recover. As per the timings of my practice runs, on an average it took me 5 min to run 0.8km. I could run a little faster in the beginning but then I got quite slow towards the end. At this pace, I figured it was possible to complete the half-marathon around 2:11 hrs.

On 28 Oct, i.e., the D-Day, Preeti and I woke up early and reached the venue. There were about 7000 people running in the 21kms half marathon ... the energy was tremendous. Vodafone had also arranged for a timing chip which was to be strapped around the ankle and would be used to track one's time. Other than that, on every km there were people to give you bottled water to prevent dehydration and there were photographers (arranged by www.marathon-photos.com) all along that were clicking pictures. Besides that, the traffic was blocked on the route of the marathon, however, there were people almost on both sides of the route just seeing whats going on and cheering ... great energy !!!

When the marathon started at 7:45am, it seemed as if there were sea of people in front of me and well as behind me ... over a couple of kms the crowd gradually wore away. The route started from nehru park, going over the safdarjung airport to India Gate and finally to the Le-Meridien hotel in Connaught Place and all the way back.

I was going pretty steady in the beginning, keeping track of time as I completed every km ... i was doing just fine, speeding ahead of a bunch of people (as you can see in the photo on the left taken by Marathon-Photos). I was having fun and I was enjoying the scenic route. Once I reached Le-Meridien, I told myself that I'm done with half of the distance, I sure can complete the remaining half.

One bad part was that the day was a little sunny, also I usually run in the early morning when it isn't as hot. As such, I was sweating more than I usually did. The other bad part was that, we had go over a bunch of overpasses/flyovers ... that also got me a little more tired than usual. At the last flyover after completing about 16km I was pretty tired, finding it hard to run over it ... at the time most of the people on the flyover were just walking.

By the 18th km I was really tired, my legs were going numb ... my pace had slowed down quite a bit. The picture on the right describes my state more accurately (again courtesy Marathon-Photos.com). The last 3 km were the toughest ... I wanted to take a break but I was worried that if I did, I might not be able to get back to running again ... so I kept running.

Finally, I thought I could see the finish line ... that was such a relief. I picked up pace and tried to make it fast to that point as you can see in the picture on the left. I was caught by surprise to see Preeti there at the finish line clicking my picture. I completed the run in 2:16:40hrs. The finish time was 2:17:45 since I had started a little later than the others.

A short while after I completed my run the prize distribution ceremony started with Rahul Dravid (India's ex- Cricket Captain) and Sheila Dixit (Chief Minister of Delhi) on the stage. I was barely able to stand after the run ... but I did manage to catch a glimpse of them.

Looking back, I had lost 5 min as compared to my original estimate of 2:11hrs. That was mostly due to the sunny weather and the flyovers. Nonetheless, I ranked around 700 out of the total of 7000 people that ran and overall it was a great experience and a great sense of accomplishment.

A success story

This story goes before Wirkle had even come into existence ... the Wirkle concept was presented in the i2i business plan competition where it was selected amongst the top 8 of the many-many plans that were presented. Unfortunately, we were unable to go beyond that because at the time it was merely an idea and had not reached anywhere in terms of execution.

The other day, Lomesh pointed me at their website where Wirkle is being talked about as an i2i success story. You know .... its funny thinking about those days and seeing all that has been accomplished since then ... it feels good. By the way, here is the link from the i2I website.

FYI - i2I (ideas to implementation) is one of the biggest business plan competition in India, it is organized by the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIM Calcutta.

The Startup FAQ - Post 2

This is in continuation to my previous post "Startup FAQ - Post 1" on this blog which I had posted on Dec 26, 2006 ... approximately 8 months back. Now, I'm not sure if you folks are even keeping track of this anymore, nonetheless, I'll try to be more regular now hoping to provide some value to the entrepreneurs out there.

• I think we should focus on investment first, right? Once we get investment, the revenue piece will get sorted out automatically.
  Having done this ourselves, I can give you some food for thought. Lets think about it for a moment ... a business ultimately has to earn revenue, Im sure you wouldn't argue against that. Think of investment as a buffer that will help you get to the point when you have revenue and you are self sustaining. So first you need to think about revenue, then comes investment or any other route that will help you get there.


• I have figured out the revenue model, now lets move on to investors?
  Waaaait a minute ... we know our revenue model so I presume we know our customers. The next step is not to go to investors, but to go to customers and ask if the service that you'll provide is of any value to them or not. If it isn't, then you need to go back and do more homework. If it is, then you need to ask them if they'll pay for it, and if yes ... then how much?


• I have customers and they are willing to pay, so Im all set?
  Well, do keep in mind that there is a little difference between willing to pay and actually paying. So you need to make sure they really mean what they are saying. One way would be to ask them if they'd be willing to pay a small token amount that would help build such a service ... and if they're willing to do that, you're all set


• Hmmm ... i see, is there anything else that I also need to do?
  One more thing ... a successful business has to solve 2 problems -
  1. Solve a need that exists,
  2. Enough customers should have that need.
  So problem 1 was solved by finding customers and making sure they are ready to pay. Now that we have done that exercise, the next step is to make sure that there are enough such customers in the world. This is important because you need to make sure that the need you are solving affects enough customers to give you that scale that will allow you to grow your business going forward ... makes sense?

... shall have more in my next post, until then Happy Entrepreneuring.

3 long months ... OH BOY!

I just opened my blog today and I was shocked to see that my last post was THREE MONTHS BACK ... OHHH MANNN. Lets see what all happened in the past 3 months ...

1. Lomesh (Wirkle's COO) got married, Sunil's (Wirkle's CTO) father went through a surgery ... so both of them were out for a bit. That was a really tough time for me when I had to practically take care of everything.

2. We continued to grow, we have filled up our current office ... and after a lot of looking out we were finally able to close on a new office for Wirkle. We'll be moving there next month. Trust me if you can, finding an office in Gurgaon is not an easy task.

3. One of the bigger projects (sorry, I won't disclose the name here) at Wirkle went through a phase I delivery. This was a very tight milestone for us, a good chunk of the Wirkle team was working on that.

Things are looking better now, I'm hoping I'll have more time the coming days and I'll be able to blog more frequently.