Quick notes of Mumbai visit

Morning: Sat in an auto and saw that minimum fare is just Rs. 1.00 Felt something must be wrong somewhere. Asked the driver why it is showing  Re 1. He couldn’t see anything wrong with that and after some discussion I learnt that I need to pay 10 times whatever this meter shows. If it shows Rs 2.5 at the end of the journey I need to pay Rs 25…Was a nice experience this but why can’t they have a proper meter that shows correct amount?

Evening: Rented a car for to drive around Mumbai to make use of few hours I had during the evening.

Saw Shivaji park-driver told me that Sachin Tendulkar used to practice in this ground in his childhood. Saw Bandra-Kurla complex from a distance, saw Rolce Royce Phantom on display at Navneet Motors in Atria Mall, Haji Ali. Saw Marine drive, Hilton Towers and Taj Mahal Palace & towers. Ferrari cars were on display infront of Taj and had a close look. While the Phantom is known for its luxury and elegance, Ferrari on the other extreme is worshiped for its speed. Which one shall I buy?

Gateway of India was under renovation and since it was night time couldn’t see much. Saw BSE building from a distance-felt secure that my shares are safe inside. May be I could have asked the security- बाबु, अ०दर् मेरे कुच् शेर्स् पडे हे, जरा जाके देख्के आउ?? (Some of my shares are inside-can I have a look at it?)

Requested driver to let me drive a bit, enjoyed driving on Marine drive. Victoria Terminal and Church Gate looked magnificent from outside. Missed experiencing a journey in Mumbai’s local train and also getting a glimpse of Dabba waalas. As we neared Zuhu beach driver said “साब् आपका हाथ बहुत साफ् है जो मु०बइ मे गाडी चला सक्ता है, वो भारत् मे कही० भी चला पायेगा” (You drive very well-one who can drive in Mumbai can drive anywhere in India) but he was quick to add “साब् आगे बहुत् ट्राफिक् हे, मुज्हे चलाने दीजिये”(there's heavy traffic ahead, let me drive)

Juhu beach was very flat. Siva Sagar restaurant near the beach (on Juhu-Tara road opp Ramada Palm Grove) served some good food. I just wanted a small piece of pickle but they served a bowl full. The mango pickle was so tasty, I felt like taking the rest with me to home. Why do they serve side items in excess quantity?

Autos are allowed only in some specific areas in Mumbai. Elsewhere over-aged Fiat taxis rule the road. Also felt that number of two wheelers in Mumbai is relatively less.

Will be looking forward to visit this city again.

Event Blogging at WebInnovation08-Experience

It was a good experience attending webInnovation 08 at Mumbai this week (8th May 2008). Live blogging the event was even greater experience.

Live blogging was a good new experience for me. Enjoyed every bit of it. But there were some challenges too- the conference room didn’t have any power points where I could charge my laptop. It is impossible to live blog whole day on battery- I had two of them- a 4 cell one and another 6 cell one, together I could manage for half a day and by charging during lunch time I could extend life of laptop for some more time post lunch. Still, if Hotel could have provided electric sockets (which I asked but they said they don’t have) it would have been good. Tata Indicom Plug2Surf was performing decently during initial hours but post lunch the connectivity was very bad. Because of these limitations and because the fact that I had to take down notes while speaker is speaking, I had to sideline several activities like approving comments, editing/improving posts etc.

Below: Myself with Kaushal Karkhanis, fellow event blogger.
About the event: As I was a sponsored delegate probably I am not supposed to speak negative, but don’t want to suppress my observations. Participation was good, but many speakers were from companies that had sponsored the event. That happens with all the events- you can’t deny 10-15 minutes of presentation time for companies who have shelled out lakhs of rupees to sponsor the event. But a delegate who has paid Rs 7000 is, in all probability, won’t be interested in attending advertisement sessions of products/services being promoted by the sponsors (as the information will be available on the company website, why should one pay to attend such sessions?). Nevertheless, most of the sessions were good-the one on raising VC money by Bikas Birai of iViZ, on demysitifying the web 2.0 by Amit Somani of Google India, about email marketing by Dominic Powers were personally interesting to me.

Don't know what happened at other 2 tracks. In this event there were three tracks- Business, Technology and Enterpreneurship, all running parallelly. Since I cant be in 3 places at once, I chose to attend Business track. Don’t have much idea what happened at other 2. There were supposed to be 6 event bloggers (me one of them) but I guess only 2-3 turned up. Only Myself and Kaushal live blogging and Siddig live twittering the event. As 3 tracks ran parallelly, any delegate is guaranteed to miss 2/3rd of the event. If organizers can arrange for transcripts of the talks given by other speakers to all delegates it would be good.

The event didn’t get much visibility in print media- I was in Mumbai airport next morning and couldn’t notice event reported in any of the leading papers- DNA, Indian Express, Free Press, BusinessLIne and Asian Age. Infact Yahoo launched its new gen search features "GLUE" in WebInnovation 08 event [details] but they held a press conference in Bangalore to release this news, so all papers reported this launch, but without any mention of the webinnovation08 event. Would have been good if Yahoo could hold the press con in Grand Hyatt, Mumbai (where the event was going on)

More photos of the event
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/webinnovation08

I spent most of my time listening to speakers at the Business Track, noting down key points and publishing it as a blog post next moment. Now I feel it would have walked around and interviewed few people as well. Will try this next time.

Right-with Kiruba Shankar at the event-He giving admin rights to us so that we can approve comments that were pouring in on the event blog site.

I wish to thank Kiruba Shankar and other organizers for this opportunity (of contributing as an event blogger). In fact I was answerable to two stake holders in this-The organizers of Webinnovation who invited me with a complementary registration for which I was required to live blog the event and another stakeholder who has provided travel and accommodation, to whom I had to take back some value out of the summit. Hope I will be able to meet their expectations.

The conference bag sponsored by WebEx was good.

Be sure to watch this video on start-ups

Event ended a bit ahead of schedule and I could go for a drive around Mumbai City.

Related: Manipal Media Students Convention

Start-up woes-how to raise money from VC?

This post was originally composed for WebInnovation Blog and shares some key extracts one of the speakers (Bikash of iviz) shared about dealing with venture capitalists, in one of the most humorous sessions at webinnovation08, Mumbai.

Felt this might be of some use to my blog readers, hence cross posting here with oral permission.

Here’re few notes from his talk: How to go about while seeking funds from VCs?

• Have a strong team-VCs bet on jockeys and not horses. People who lead a startup are scrutinized more than the technology or business.
• Identify customer pain to understand what would a customer want. Customer is not always bothered about security, but is naturally concerned about the impact on his business continuity. BC, Compliance and Trust building sells.
• Develop a pain killer-you may be different, but how does that matter to the customer?
• Stay focused and ask for advice- if you ask for money, you get advice, if you ask for money you get advice-(lol!)
• First impression is best impression
• Make a point to tell them who you are not-that might help them not to generalize you
• Persuasion doesn’t work-seduction does. Early traction, global recognition, leveraging influences, phased excitements (not revealing all excitements at once but in phases) and moving fast are critical
• How to chose a VC?- You don’t. They chose you. See if you can make VCs chase you.
• How to negotiate? We don’t negotiate-create options
• What to do after raising money?- reset expectations (joke)-meet and exceed the expectations

Pondy Trip, QN, Liveblogging & Other updates

5 days since my last post may look like a long time considering I have been publishing new posts every alternate day so far. Have lots of stuff to blog about but running on a very tight schedule. So compromising a bit and giving quick updates.

Quick Jump: Pondy Trip | Questnet Scam update | Live blogging @ webinnovation.in |

Enjoyed a one day trip to Pondy and surrounding areas covering MatriMandir at Auroville (an under construction spiritual township some 15-20 kms north of Pondicheri (130 kms from Chennai)), Puducheri (Pondy) and Mahabalipuram last Saturday with Krishna Shastry, Gulshan Raj and other classmates from JNVC. [Related: JNVC memory snaps] The places we visited were nothing great (in fact many were disappointed as Pondy and Auroville had nothing exiting to offer and it was evening by the time we reached Mahabalipuram) but had some great time with old school pals- all are doctors and IT professionals now. We also sang lot of songs we were taught during JNV days. The best thing I enjoyed during the trip was me driving the Tavera for about 60 kms. (A review on this vehicle by me can be read here on Mouthshut)

Photos of this trip are available as a slideshow below. (Trouble viewing it? Try http://enidhi.slide.com/)

Branding tender coconut
Observed that some coconut vendors in Pondy have started branding the tender coconut they sell, by attaching a sticker to it. To me this looked like a cheap and useless imitation. A detailed post on this I have guest authored at Churumuri blog. Read that here. I think it is a good idea to guest blog in other blogs once a while. Your regular readers will be seasoned to your way of writing and may blindly agree with whatever you say. Also well known friends may hesitate to give negative comments. Guest blogging at other blogs bring whole new set of readers and gets new new perspectives and also some sharp criticisms. Some nice debate has already triggered there...

Wanted to write part 2 of Manipal visit but that is still pending. Some updates are too small to qualify as blog post, so posting them at my twitter account-you can keep an eye on my twitter page for quick updates.

QuestNet International and its members in troubled waters
Chennai police are cracking whip on Quest Net, a multi level marketing company which has spread its tentacles all over India (mainly among IT folks) and many other countries, spreading false hope that everyone can become rich by buying coins and referring others to do the same. Now several victims who were lured to invest in this pyramid scheme coming out to lodge complaints against QN. We need to see if law enforcement agencies can do something effective to stop this kind of companies. I had written earlier about this company in this post but due to time constraint unable to keep track of the latest developments. Mohan BN is following this development effectively and closely in his blog. Keep an eye on his blog for latest happenings on Questnet scam.

Live Blogging at WebInnovation.in Summit, 8 May, Hotel Grand Hyatt, Mumbai
Leaving for Mumbai this evening to take part in a one day summit on Web 2.0, called Webinnovation.in. Taking '1 minute manager' for inflight reading. With the complementary registration offered by the organizers I’ll be live blogging the event on the event website. I enjoy journalism (read my journalism experiences) and live blogging will be akin to live reporting. I am sure I’ll be able to enjoy that. Keep an eye on blog section of event website for my live blogging posts.

Each of my trips generate enough content for atleast 5-10 blog posts but not sure when and where to write and publish them all…

Rice, in its most nutrient form...

It is quite a common scene in Chennai roadside to see carts selling unpolished rice with its gravy. Called KooLu or Kanji in tamil and Ganji in Kannada, they sell nearly 500 ml of this for Rs 5. Many of you will term this as roadside and unhygienic , but this is the most nutrient form of rice available and is certainly worth having. I sampled it twice and don’t see any side effect or harm in this. Mixed with buttermilk and onion and served with fried chilli and raw mango slice, you might actually enjoy eating it.

The highly polished white rice we eat sans most of the nutrients, more so with the liquid filtered out. The original, unpolished version of rice takes extra time to cook and not that tasty, hence most of the hotels and households never use it. If you can think of any hotels in your locality which serve this variant of rice in their meals, please drop a comment. Kamat hotel in Milagris, Mangalore is one place where I have enjoyed such a meal.

Any thoughts on this issue?

Similar posts: Toddy Palm * Coco Fresco Hyderabad *

Few updates & some random pictures

Poll: The poll I ran to find out what kind of contents my readers like has given results which I had suspected. Majority of you liked personal observations and experience accounts, followed by Business posts. Thanks to each one of you for casting your vote.

Unable to comment? Send it by mail.

Many of you conveyed your inability to write comment here as blogger is blocked. In case you wish to write a comment but unable to, send a mail to admin at enidhi dot net. I will manually publish the comments.

I have created a twitter account sometime back. If you wish to follow me, you can do that here (Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where one can give quick updates about anything) (links to LinkedIn and orkut profiles are available in sidebar, if you’re interested)

The legendary Club Mahindra post, the most popular one so far in this blog, has scored 200 comments (includes about 80 comments from me, written in response to other comments). Last time when the post crossed 100+ comments I did an analysis of the comments [read that here]. That post didn’t receive much of response so not planning to analyze the comments again for 200 posts. Will consider at 250-300 comments

Even the quarterly summary of posts I used to do doesn’t appear to have any takers. Do you find it useful? I feel once in a month summary of posts, written on the same month, will be more appropriate, as this post will be available in the archive of same month. Any thoughts/suggestions welcome.

I feel the sidebar is getting crowded. Need to simplify the same by removing not so critical elements- which one do you think can be removed without a second thought?

May 22 will be 2nd anniversary of this blog. 3 weeks to go.

Installed second life client and logged in for the first time… Realized that it can be extremely addictive and time consuming, if taken seriously. Decided to stay away from it for now.

The mobile version of this blog was not working for sometime and is up now.(http://m.enidhi.net)

Some random photos taken in near past

Flower vases
Yellow water melon. A bit uncommon.
Happy journey ! ! !
Pineapple that grew in our garden

Watching T20 live-A first timer's experience

In a sudden turn of events I found myself heading towards MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai and watch the IPL T20 cricket match between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders. This was the first time I ever watched a match live in a stadium and this post shares some experiences of the same.

I am not a cricket fan and am quite ignorant of the happenings in that business (you’ve to agree-Cricket is no more a sports-it is pure business). I don’t watch live matches on TV and my interest is confined to checking the result in next day’s newspaper, if possible, for the purpose of GK.

Yesterday afternoon, 1430 hours IST, yet to have my lunch I reached home, casually asked my roommate, when does the match starts? He replies “I have got a ticket-do you want to go?” He said his friends had bought few tickets but plans got changed and they won’t be going. They managed to sell of all ticket except one. It was bought at cost price of Rs 200.

After an emergency board meeting eNidhi India board of directors approved the purchase of that ticket and entrusted its CBO to explore what it feels like to watch the action live from stadium.

I got ready to leave and invoked Protocol 32 (Precautions to be taken while going to places with unusually high density of human population)-offloaded Credit cards, extra cash and other important things from my wallet, added Rs 100 emergency cash to a safe pocket and left. Decided not to go in bike, fearing possible shortage of parking space and high parking fees, reached there in public transport.

Reached the stadium 45 mins late-There was no frisking at the entrance and no scanning of barcode printed on the ticket. Everyone were busy watching the match-the metal detector didn’t raise any alarm though I had some metal objects on my body (belt buckle). 5th wicket fell as I entered.

I was thinking there will be some reserved seat for me for the ticket I had (like in movie theatres) but there was no such thing. People would have laughed at me if I had asked: where is seat number 002108?
The stadium was jam-packed. I quickly noted nearest exit points, managed to get myself a seat and started observing the gathering.

The view was good, but it was not easy to identify what is going on. Players’ face was impossible to identify from such a distance and there was no running commentary. Most of the time I could locate the ball but that is no fun. Where I sat the sun was directly on me, forcing me (and others) to cover my face. You will have to watch everything from only one angle of view which is quite boring.

Suddenly someone wearing red shirt started dancing in the middle of the ground- kind of balle balle stuff. I was clueless why he is doing that. After few seconds both his hands went up and I realized that he was doing all those circus to tell everyone that it is a six. Watching this umpire dance was the only thing I enjoyed throughout the match. Unfortunately the other umpire wasn’t dancing at all and I missed some possible entertaining moments. If you ask me, IPL should penalize this other umpire for not properly entertaining the crowd.

Few police constables on duty were during an Ukkaro, Ukkaro (tamil for- sit down, sit down) at regular intervals. Spectators in front would act as if they are settling down but would get up next moment...After sometime, these cops abandoned pursuit and repositioned themselves in a slightly elevated position.

A group of spectators started to make some strange sound-everyone around turned to see what that is-These people were trying to get the attention of Kolkata team’s cheerleader girls. How pathetic. The group settled down only after those girls turned towards them, gave a smile and danced a bit.

The music was loud and unbearable. Add to that, several spectators had bought this locally made whistle like noise generating device (I don’t know what to call them- in childhood we used to call it Pee-Pee in Kannada, for the sound it makes. Look at the image.) Blowing that thing every now and then, creating and irritating experience to ears.

The digital score card didn’t work during second half- from their desktop which was displayed on screen at times, it looked like they are using Windows 98.

It was written at the back of the ticket that camera is not allowed, hence I didn’t carry my digicam. But several spectators were carrying their digicams and clicking all around. (Last year, a journalist cum blogger was suspended for live blogging the cricket match on his blog)

I could identify several places where they could have displayed advertisements, but was left untouched.

Had a closer look at some international players but it was more interesting to hear girls in front row yell-Ganguleee.
Thank god it was a T20. The whole match would end within few hours and only 10 min break between the innings. I certainly don’t want to spend whole day watching cricket this way. TV would be more convenient.

About the match I don’t have much to write-you might have already seen in TV or read in newspaper. Chennai team defeated Kolkata team by 9 wickets. Btb no one spotted me on TV? (How sad, I thought I would be a celebrity by now)

Finally I present a true Knight Rider-Everyone else are FAKE.
Btb, don't you think IPL may have some impact on National cricket-dressing room secrets of Indian Cricketers will be shared with international players by fellow team mates, which may backfire later. Any comments?

Similar: Kiruba Shankar writes his observations on MAC * Sandesh writes what he feels about IPL commercial