In the common market, if someone asks you “Which i-pod do you have?”.

If you say you have a nano, shuffle, touch… he would be confused! But if you say that you have an Apple, Sony or a Philips i-pod he understands!

I wonder how this happened. How did the word ‘I-pod’ takeover the name for an Mp3 Player? Is it because Apple did not spread the awareness very well in India and the buzz spread through word of mouth? I wonder if the following could have happened:

Person A: What is an i-pod?

Person B: It is something that can play music!

Now when Person A sees an MP3 player he thinks it is an i-pod!

Not sure if this is a boon or a bane for Apple! Yes, the word “i-pod” is now widely used, but not sure if that is translating to sales for them.

Anyways we are keeping a short name for our product. The hardware device will be called “TECI”, short form for Track Every CoIn. So that it is easy to refer it – “Do you have a TECI?”

Blog also posted at our company web site.

For the first time I heard all the big industrialist of India speak on stage. This was a three day event and every day was better than the previous.

First day the main highlight was the talk of Ratan Tata and Narayan Murthy. I was hoping this talk would be more about their experience and how they had built such an empire, but for some reason it was not moderated that well.

The talk was more of a political twist than an Entrepreneurial journey. Nevertheless they both answered the questions asked very well.

After this I heard Capt. Gopinath speak.

He really seems like the guy who has started from scratch. It was amazing to hear his talk about how he built such a big industry and sold it. He had a vision, a vision that everyone can travel and afford to travel by flight. How he raised money when no one was giving him any money. How he started off with just one aircraft by taking a loan. A very inspiring talk.

Now Entrepreneurship has become his lifestyle. He seems to have started a new logistics company.

On the second day my favorite talk was from Geeth Sethi and Leander Paes. When I saw these guys, I was wondering what are these sports celebrities doing in an Entrepreneurial Seminar. I was so moved when I heard what they had started.

It was a proud movement for me to hear about their venture – “Olympic Gold Quest“. They are really trying hard to get as many gold as they can in The Olympics for India. At the end of their talk I felt like doing a lot of sports. The whole audience was moved by their talks. Everyone stood up and many of them made some contributions to their organization.

That evening I got to hear R.D. Burman’s original band members playing on the stage.

This was one of the best Indian band performance I have seen. They played all old hindi songs. People went crazy for all the songs.

Finally on the last day I heard the king of Retail industry speak. It was none other than Kishore Biyani himself.

He is such a down to earth person and such a passionate Indian. He makes business sound so simple.

Overall the event is a HUGE moral boost. Seeing so many entrepreneurs doing so many different things makes me want to do more projects. Lot of people saw the look and feel of our product TrackEveryCoin and they loved the concept. I would be blogging about the new product in the next few days in our company blog.

]]> http://www.chadaga.com/2009/12/enterprising-india/feed/ 1 http://www.chadaga.com/2009/12/street-running-in-bangalore/ http://www.chadaga.com/2009/12/street-running-in-bangalore/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:33:06 +0000 Chadaga http://www.chadaga.com/?p=296 If I walk up to anyone and say that I love street running in Bangalore, people must think I’m crazy! But the fact is that by changing your strategy you can also love running on the streets.

If I walk up to anyone and say that I love street running in Bangalore, people must think I’m crazy! But the fact is that by changing your strategy you can also love running on the streets.

I asked myself how come I love running on the streets and others don’t. I figured I was doing a few things differently.

• Running in residential areas:

Avoid main road when you can. If you are running random and don’t care to do a loop  it is best to run on small roads. Here is an example of my run around Padmanabhanagar. You  can see on google maps that there is only a few spots I hit the main roads (roads shown in yellow). I run mostly in the residential areas and small roads (roads shown in white). You can go from one area to the other by doing this, once in a while you might hit a main road, but find the next cross road as soon as possible.

What I love about running in the residential areas/small roads is that there are quite a number of trees around you. And all the houses look so different. Every house in Bangalore has its own charm in the way it is built. Some are colorful, some are built big, some are small and cozy. I keep myself entertained looking at all this.

• When you hit the main road stay to your right:

I feel this is very important to see a head on traffic than traffic behind you for two reasons, 1. You hear less honks. People in India honk so that the other person knows they are coming. 2. It is safer to see head on traffic so that you can move around looking at the vehicles.

But yes… most important thing is to find the next small road and get into it!

• Music helps

Music has always made me stay in my own world while running. I listen to a lot of podcasts / audio books while running. This can make you run a couple of extra miles.

These are the top three things that I do that makes a difference. I’m sure the other runners will have more points, do comment your experiences so that this helps other runners. Let us make street running a culture in Bangalore!

My wife and I took part in this event. Click here to read her experience.

The event was held at the NICE road starting at the Bangalore International exhibition.

It was fun to see Raghu Dixit perform at the show.

We had a lot of fun cheering…

Our cycling route: click here. I took 59min for 26.5KM. Hope to beat this next time.

Click here to see all pictures of the event.

There has been series of delays in our product release, we thought it would be a good idea to let everyone know what is happening and how our journey has been so far. We are really close to the finish.

When we first believed in the Track Every Coin idea, we started prototyping it.

We bought some ready-made, off the shelf LCD displays. These displays were just numeric displays, so one had to select the category from the list given. Never the less we were able to enter the expenditure and categorize it too. The system would talk to a computer through USB and transfer all the data successfully. And yes… the product was HUGE!

After this we decided to work on the LCD part a little more.

We got rid of the numeric display and got an LCD which can display numbers and text at the same time. This gave us options for many more features like someone owes you, you share a trip with a friend, track reimbursements, etc.

After this we further worked on the size of the PCB and finally reached a small size of the PCB.

We got our first plastic prototyped and now working on reducing the form factor and making it smaller and sleeker. After that we have to think of some colors and some cool graphics on it.

Here is the rough size of the device with two buttons on top. The final size will go down further.

The experience has been great so far and all of us are really excited to bring this product our for everyone to use. We are hoping the product will help everyone to get financially organized and “Track Every Coin“.

Click here to see the wedding site for more pictures

When I first met Roopa she had got me a gift from Brussels. It was a make your own ship kit. I was excited about the whole project. This was the first project together. I had seen a lot of these models when I was at Germany.

The Pirate Ship…

Making of the ship… We first started of finding all the different pieces and putting them together…

We enjoyed building the whole ship. It is best to do these small projects over the weekends. Keeps your mind occupied and a productive outcome

View all the pics here.

What I love about this route is the bangalore-mysore road stretch. Lot of this road is incomplete which makes it a great route for mountain biking We took a small deviation at Uttarahalli towards subramanyapuram, this is a great route for cycling. There is no traffic, no pollution.

The best thing I like is the way google map shows exactly the way bangalore-mysore road is! It just ends at once!

Three cheers to Garmin GPS

This is a pre-launch site, we are letting everyone know what the product is all about and we request everyone to signup if they are interested in the product. This will help us to be better prepared when we launch.

Track every coin is a personal financial tool that will help you get organized in your financial life. If you ever thought you had no idea how much you were spending per month, what were you spending it on, or how much is your saving, then this product is for you. It also helps you do a lot more than tracking your expenditure, like goal setting, reminders, sharing, events etc.

We appreciate it if you blog about it, tweet about it, let all your friends know about it. Let people know that such a product is going to come soon to solve their financial management problem and help them.

Pre-book the product to get special offers when we launch it.

Please visit: www.trackeverycoin.com

 Here are a few things that I tried my hands. Might be worth giving it a shot!

1. Traffic and noise

When I came back from the US the first striking thing that hits you is the honking. When you sit down and think for min about honking it is very interesting. Honking has different meanings in different countries. In US it means – “Dude you are making a mistake watch out”, and in India it means – “Dude watch out I’m coming, give way”. How can we make a difference in the noise levels of traffic. The first thing that I did is – “I NEVER HONK IN BANGALORE”. When I first said this, most of them say it is not possible. I’d say it is. If you think about yourself while driving then you have to honk. If you think about others while driving and yield, you will never need to honk. I’d say take this up as a challenge and make a difference!

2. Garbage on the street

There are a few wonderful things that I learned in the west. One of them is not to litter. Most of us don’t know that we shouldn’t litter. If a small boy is given a chocolate, the first thing he does is he opens it and throws the wrapper down there. Why does this happen? We have never been taught not to litter on the streets. We don’t realize that we play a big role in the society and not just the Govt. My solution to this is: 1. I never litter any place. 2. If I see someone doing it and if he doesn’t look like a big guy, I give a BIG smile and say, sir please don’t litter the place!

3. People urinating in the city

It is very sad to see that urinating in public is legal but kissing in public is questionable! This is a hard one. There is no use in blaming people or the Govt. I’m really glad for Nirmala for installing so many public toilets in the city. But here we need a social movement to make a difference. If everyone of us object people who do it in a very polite way it just might work! The other day when I was running in lalbagh this guy was urinating right next to the public toilet!!! After he was done, I waked up to him and said – “Sir please use the toilet next time”. Don’t know if it helped, but I did my job.

 Again these are very small problems, might not even be considered as real life problems in India, but, the point is to act on every problem to make a difference.

 Germany rebuilt itself from ashes after the world war. If someone says it was the Govt alone, I’d disagree. I believe a country can do better only if people work towards the betterment. We as Indians should believe in our own people only then we can make a HUGE difference.