HDCF Newsletter October 2013

CONVERGEOctober 2013

1CONVERGE - HDCF Newsletter www.hdcf.in



Dear Friends, Effectiveness should not just remain as end-result but transform as way of existenceThe more you think, the more you put effort… The more you put effort, the better the results… HDCF was also started with the goal of getting entrepreneurs in and around Hyderabad together in a humble manner. Many likeminded people flocked together and shared their ideas, initiated programs, contributed time and marched with HDCF in its journey.Program after program and event after event, HDCF has not only improved its quality of services and support but also quantity of members. Today, HDCF is happy to work with members who are stalwarts and experts in their own area of specialization.Many of the initiatives of HDCF were original ideas of its valuable members. HDCF IAC, HDCF Converge, HDCF Reflections and HDCF Panel Discussions were some of the successful initiatives ideated by HDCF’s members. In this journey, HDCF has organized many programs, events, training sessions, panel discussion, etc. to benefit its members. HDCF has created many avenues for member entrepreneurs to network with other likeminded entrepreneurs, explore synergies, exchange ideas, support for each others’ initiatives and celebrate entrepreneurship together.Today, many entrepreneurs look at HDCF as the single forum where individual ideas which are in simple state to escalate / accelerate to grandeur stage. Members seek the peer support within the forum to realize their entrepreneurial dreams. We are happy to share that HDCF is scheduled to celebrate its 2nd Anniversary next month (November) in grand manner as Confluence XV. I take this auspicious occasion to welcome business experts, mentors, business analysts, prolific business writers, etc to contribute articles, columns or compiled business analytics for Converge Newsletter and be part of HDCF’s journey. If you have any advertisement related queries, please mail us on [email protected] Let HDCF be a partner in your growth story.

with warm wishes, Praveen Kumar MachavaramEditor-in-Chief

From Editor’s DeskContent

From Editor’s Desk

Business Hacks – Guest Column

Magic of Digital Marketing

– Guest Column

Art of Smart Working

– Guest Column

My HDCF

Image Makeover – Guest Column

Reva-Thee – Guest Column

HDCF Reflections – Sep 2013

Member Profile

Confluence XV -2nd Anniversary

Celebrations

Register yourself today

@

onSunday,

10th November 2013



Business HacksGuest Column by Chandra Kuchibhotla

I meant, marry the idea! You see, when you are in love, you are spellbound by the charms of your love interest. You will be in a perpetual state of excitement. You will be hard pressed to focus your attention on routine work matters. You will also try to keep things under the wraps, until you are serious about each other and ready to face family and friends. This is fun time!

You see, this is the discovery phase and applies equally to your startup idea. You think your idea is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and spend enormous amount of time to flesh out the details. You are afraid to discuss it with any one lest they ridicule your idea or criticize it. Worse, they may even steal it!! This will be an exciting and fun time between you and your idea.

Once the initial euphoria is over and you are serious and committed, it’s time to move onto the next phase. You are no longer shy about your love and want the world to know. You will announce to your family and friends and start making appearances together. The problem is, everyone that matters to you seems to have an opinion or advice about your romantic life.

This is the validation phase! You go public with your idea and start talking about it with your friends, colleagues and family. You’ll keep hearing lot of opinions and different ways of going about it. People are worried that you’ll leave the comfort of a job and jump into the world of uncertainty. As you brace yourself for the upcoming

change, you’ll come to realize the value of support provided by friends and family.

You finally decide to take the plunge and get married. From this point, things turn pretty serious and business like. Formalities as per both the families will be discussed, in terms of traditions to be followed, ceremonies to be conducted, dates and venues. You’ll discuss how to conduct your future life, the rules of engagement so to speak. How to share your salaries, who’ll pay for which expense, how to share family responsibilities and commitments etc. Suddenly, from a life of freedom, you will be bound into a framework of rules, expectations and responsibilities. People begin to take you seriously and you suddenly realize that you have stopped acting on impulse and started to behave in a calculated manner. Earlier, you never gave a damn about your social image but now, you realize that you are very conscious of your image given your new relationship and new relations. Your life has changed forever.

This, my friend, is the launch story of your startup! Earlier, you were a rebel, if you disagreed with or didn’t like your boss you just changed jobs but not yourself. You happily spent all your salary within the first week and waited for the end of the month for salary credit. Now, you are your own boss and you can’t change your customers as you wish so you have to adapt your business model around them and change yourself if necessary. You have to plan ahead and can’t spend all the money because salary will

So you want to Startup? Get ready to marry!!



not be coming any more but there will be a pile of bills to pay for sure.

There is always a downside to any business and in order to become successful, it is necessary to manage and contain the downside and develop the upside. Entrepreneurship is like running a marathon, not a 100-meter dash. If you are not ready for the long haul or unable to invest the time and energy necessary, do not startup, it is not for you.

MakeMyDabba.com (http://www.after3beers.com/?p=193)

Let us consider a case study: makemydabba.com, founded by my good friend Akkiraju Bhattiprolu. It was founded in February 2013 and by July 2013, it was already shutdown. This is surprising because Akkiraju and his team are very experienced and this is their second venture. They did their homework very well and have connected well with both supply side and the demand side. Sales were happening and they had built up a good number of good suppliers. They were operating in a niche where there is not much competition too.

The problem was that they ran out of cash to run the business. The margins were not enough to fund the ongoing operations. They hoped to raise cash to fund the expansion and ongoing operations and when that did not materialize, they had no option but to close down to avoid major personal liabilities.

The main takeaways from this: 1) Plan ahead and have enough cash to fund your venture until you can raise venture fund. 2) It is not given that you could always raise venture fund, so you need to have high enough gross margins to sustain your day-to-day operations. 3) It is not always possible to control or maintain the margins in the

business, as it is governed by market forces so factor this when you are starting up.

How to sustain operations?

1. Do your homework on pricing and product lines. You need to ensure there’s enough mixture of high margin and low margin products and services that give you enough cash to keep running.

2. Plan and introduce premium products and services. Competing in the mass market with wafer thin margins is not a scenario for startups. Apple has consistently maintained a gross margin close to 50% on iPhone until 2011 and even now it achieves a healthy 37.5% in the most recent quarter. This helped it to fund its innovation and absorb market expansion costs better than its competitors. On the other hand, Nokia heavily focused on the lowest end of the market, which has negligible margins and see where it is today.

3. If the main product line does not give you enough margins to start with (longer gestation period), add a complementary product/service that gives immediate returns, such as a services division. This is the strategy adopted by companies like rootwork (rootwork.co), which develop mobile apps and games. As not all apps or games are successful, they undertake consulting assignments to fund their ongoing operations.

4. Always have a well thought out exit strategy. This gives confidence in tough situations, as you know you can always fall back on plan B if necessary.

Chandra is a seasoned software professional and serial entrepreneur with 20 years of global experience. He can be reached on [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Every business owner must ask himself: What your website is doing for your business? Is it really taking care of visitors, or driving them

away!

Most don’t have a clue, and leave it for long time, after having website is up and live! And it’s not right strategy. Your website must reflect your changing marketing strategies.

There are innumerable tools to make your website ROCK, to get the best out of website. A few are briefly touched upon as below, to give a gentle push!

Web Analytics

Web analytics help you

• understand about your visitors, where they are coming from, which pages they are visiting etc.

• reduce your customer acquisition costs.

• know how your customer segments behave on mobile vs. desktop etc.

That’s a huge plus when you make key marketing and product/service decisions.

Live ChatWebsites with a slick and attractive live chat box option tend to engage visitors better and sell better.

Irrespective of whether yours is B2B or B2C site, you can use this tool, as it helps your visitors leave a message, that might be the initiating for further interactions.

Visitors prefer to avail of live chat, as that’s easy to communicate, with no strings attached, compared to making a phone call or sending an email.

Market ResearchThere are tools that help you to get Collective insight into your website visitors’ needs, wants, perceptions, and preferences, to understand how they feel, their purpose of the visit, and whether the visit is fruitful, etc…to ultimately help you know about the rating of your site and how best it’s performing.

There are other leading market research tools, offering services in doing surveys, and polls to the targeted recipients. And there are tools for collecting quick user feedback, which is immensely useful when a visitor just has a chance to give a quick feedback, or a message, or a suggestion.

Real time searchYou can keep a tab on real time conversations, as it’s

Magic of Digital Marketing - Guest Column by Ravi Janardhan

Your website is your best MARKETING tool



often necessary to know what is being said about your company or your competition

Site SearchIt’s gold mine of info, if you come to know what visitors are searching for within your site. Whether the visitors are getting what they are looking for, and if not, you may think about providing for the same. With search box, it will be make user experience better.

It also helps your SEO team with right keywords to optimize upon. The search terms visitors are using, help understand customer better, and to improve the site to meet its business objectives.

Split Testing toolsYour website needs to have goals that you want your visitors to accomplish (e.g., make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter) or metrics you want to improve (e.g., revenue, visit duration, bounce rate). With split A/B testing, MultiVariate Testing (MVT) experiments, you can try different

variations of your web pages, to know which versions are performing better, and keep them..

Your own eyes n ears The most ignored, probably because, it’s freely available to everyone, without expense.

But if you keep asking feedback about the site, you will get it directly from people around.

With so many sophisticated free (or otherwise) tools available, your website is to be the most powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal.

Rock On!

Continued...Magic of Digital Marketing - Guest Column by Ravi Janardhan

Your website is your best MARKETING tool



Reasons could be many, but the problem remains the

same; be it in India, America, Australia or anywhere

in the world. Be it a CEO, a manager or a clerk; the

feeling is unanimous… the weekend just vanished!

I would have generalized this to some extent, but I

have chosen to go with majority.

Yes, there are few powerful leaders who beat

Monday blues hands down. But a majority of them

get stuck. On top of this, people are filling this time

by spending their valuable time on social media

sites like facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc.,

unfortunately. I feel that these activities should have

Art of Smart Working - Guest Column by Shivadhar Soma

How to beat Monday Blues!their own space and time.

The trick of the trade is of

course ‘balancing the act’.

While you use these sites to

de-stress, they should not

exhaust you and eat away the

pudding in the process.

I have read few tips online

just to see if I can get some

dope. Trust me, they are crap.

One of them said, you need

to look for the next weekend

to beat Monday blues. What

the hell? Is that how you want to start a productive

week?

I personally use some of these 7 methods to avoid

Monday Blues. Needn’t to say, I have figured them

through my own experience and they work. I have

observed this with few corporate leaders and recently

with the new age entrepreneurs:

1. Start early: Never go late to the workplace on a

Monday. As it is you are half dead, and you don’t

want the guilt of going late or start working late

to kill the other half.



2. Music: Switch on to some fast beats/tracks. These

beats will push your adrenaline and boost up your

senses. This will also help in erasing your sweet

weekend memories, which otherwise will create

a lot of disturbance. Why do you think music is so

powerful otherwise? On the same note, you could

even read an inspirational quote or a page from

your favourite book sitting on your table.

3. Activity: Choose an activity that you like to start

your week with. If you are a sales guy, don’t

start your week with a review. Have a customer

meeting in the first half to get back to serious

work. If you are into projects, start with a group

discussion or a brain storming session. Trust me,

you would love the outcome.

4. Planning: Always plan your Monday’s schedule

in the previous week itself. This is important

because, your start to the week depends on what

you do on a Monday and this sets the pace for

the week ahead. Fix the appointment with your

customer in advance, or share the discussion

notes to the team in advance. You don’t want to

spend your Monday, thinking what to do for the

Art of Smart Working - Guest Column by Shivadhar Soma Continued...

How to beat Monday Blues!

week; right? Especially not on a precious Monday

morning.

5. No social media: Don’t start your day/week by

logging into facebook or LinkedIn. This eats up

your work enthusiasm and priorities. Focus on

other activities but for this. Keep a portion of the

lunch hour for this or a little later.

6. No emails: Yes, at least for the first 1 hour. You

have all day to check your email and respond to

them. If they can wait for the whole weekend,

they can wait for another hour. Emails consume

a lot of time and they eat away your important

time. You need to do one of the above activities

before you get onto emails, so that you can set

the direction for the week ahead. Remember, a

good start is half job done.

7. Food & Sleep: Last but not the least. It’s not easy

for people to control their food on a Sunday. I

suggest you have a gala brunch or a lunch and

keep the evenings light, So that you get a good

night sleep. You need to recharge your battery

right?



My HDCF - 14th Sept 20131st HDCF Members Meet

Around 30 registered members of HDCF attended the 1st HDCF Members Meet - My HDCF at Akasam Consulting on 14th September 2013. Members have given their feedback on various initiatives of HDCF. Some of the active members came forward to work as part of various upcoming executive teams. It was also suggested to conduct “My HDCF” on regular interval so as to get appraisal of members on various events and initiatives and improve the same accordingly.



Image Makeover - Guest Column by Mahua Gorthi

Is it true that the human brain takes upto 11 decision about a person in the first 7 seconds?? I do not know. Let us try to analyze if it is true.

Think about the last time you went shopping to the store and approached one among the 5 sales people on the shop floor. Well, why did you choose to approach him and not the other 4? Not sure, isn’t it?

Actually, when we look at a person, there are instant signals given out by human brain about the trustworthiness, likeability, approachability and much more about him.

As we are moving towards a faster lifestyle, we seem to be getting quicker in taking decisions about people, situations and happenings around us. Yes, we are speaking about the influence of “First Impression” on the human brain.

There are actually 3 aspects of “Appearance” - Dressing, Grooming and Body Language, which is visibly speaking about you.

Clothes cover about 80% to 90% of our body and hence play a major role in creating impression. While selecting clothes, we need to keep in mind certain important things like “appropriateness to the occasion”. A Denim Jeans and a round neck faded T-shirt could be a great choice to hit the disco but not so great when you are rushing for the

important meeting. Or, the gorgeous Silk Saree with gold jewellery and flowers in the plait is surely a great ensemble for a wedding but is no way the right choice for attending an official event. Other important aspects are choice of colors and right fitting.

Irrespective of gender, it is important to choose an attractive color combination and perfect fitting so as to appear presentable and at ones best. Other than dressing, the accessories, hair style, grooming, skin care and hygiene. These aspects create the extra aura around a person. To complete the picture, mannerism or etiquette and overall body language gives the total impact of an awesome image and creates a wonderful impression. To our rescue, now we have professional help for guiding Hyderabad in constructing and projecting powerful personal appearances in form of “Image Consulting”.

This wing of training and Consulting works on the 3 important aspects of Image, viz., Clothing, Grooming and Etiquette. Whether it is a company, looking out for employee efficiency enhancement, colleges aspiring to train their students so as to fit in the corporate world or an individual aspiring to enhance the power of his or her personal appearance, Image consulting has the answers to all. Here is hoping most of the residents of Hyderabad get to look “fabulous” with the various Image management solutions extended.

First Impression



Reva-Thee - Guest Column by Revathi Turaga

from Creativity to Innovation

“Ideas... Ideas... Ideas... bring us more ideas... we need more ideas... we need to be creative... we need to be more innovative...“

...words that one hears a lot from almost every organization as well as employees these days. A little deeper probing into the situations however many times shows that not all organizations encourage and foster the culture of creativity within, not all create space and time for their employees to think creatively and innovatively. But studies also show, that even where organizations where there is a culture of creativity, where there is encouragement to constantly brainstorm and generate ideas, even those organizations keep feeling the dearth of innovation!

How does this happen? How is it that even when an organization is open to, encourages, as well as trains employees on idea generation and techniques of creativity, the organization does not end up being as innovative as it can be, the ideas do not get transformed into the reality of innovative solutions? Sometimes, the answer is not in the culture or the intelligence or the value of the organization, but rather in the action taken by it over a period of time.

Let us understand this from the perspective of the following 2 parameters:

- Variation

- Execution

Variation here means the amount of ‘deviation that occurs from the given status quo’ i.e. how much does the organization, its people and the culture, to thinking of a number of different ideas, how interested are they in variety and viewing things differently, how open they are to listening to the range of perspectives that may come out in a brainstorming session. When variation is accepted, acknowledged and practiced, an organization has no dearth of creative ideas.

Execution here means the ‘actual extent of successful implementation of various ideas’ i.e. when after a number of ideas are generated how much time and effort is put in analyzing them, realizing which can be implemented immediately and which need further work, and in creating teams that take ownership of each idea and see it through successful implementation.

Depending on how much of variation and execution are each done in an organization or a team or by an individual, we can understand to what extent ideas are generated or to what extent they translate into actionable innovation. Let us look at the picture here and realize these 4 scenarios:

- Low on variation and low on execution: This is an organization that does not encourage nor bother to get its people to think differently, that does not place any emphasis on brainstorming, and that does not value nor motivate its employees to think creatively. This is also an organization that does not recognize existing ideas and their potential thus converting them to any action which can lead to solutions for most problems. This is an organization that neither encourages variation nor recognizes opportunities for execution. This organization constantly stays in a state of ineptness and may become obsolete over time!

- Low on variation and high on execution: This is an organization that does not proactively encourage nor bother to get its people to think differently, brainstorm, and that does not talk to its employees to think creatively. However, this is an organization which recognizes and opportunity when it sees one and can launch into action to execute and accomplish many tasks thus leading to closure of many situations. This is an organization that though does not encourage variation, it however supports execution any number of existing thoughts and ideas. This organization creates great processes and implements them without varying them, and may



over time stay rigid to change unless essential!

- High on variation and low on execution: This is an organization that constantly encourages its employees to proactively think outside the box, to brainstorm with each other, and motivates them to be as original as possible by generating as many ideas as possible. However, this organization may not know what to do with all the ideas generated, may not know how to harvest and strengthen these ideas, and thus will not take steps forward in executing many of these ideas thus losing out on many an opportunity. This is an organization that though proactively and emphatically encourages variation it however lacks the ability in immediate and effective execution. This organization will be known for its creative culture and idea generating capabilities that leave opportunities for others!

- High on variation and high on execution: This is an organization that constantly encourages its employees to proactively think outside the box, to brainstorm with each other, and motivates them to be as original as possible by generating as many ideas as possible. However, this is also

Reva-Thee - Guest Column by Revathi Turaga Continued...

from Creativity to Innovation

Revathi Turaga is an International Trainer & Inspirational Speaker. She can be reached at http://www.revathionline.com

With best compliments from :

an organization which recognizes and opportunity when it sees one and can launch into action to execute and accomplish many tasks thus leading to closure of many situations. Thus here a variety of ideas are generated as well as executed and implemented accordingly thus providing effective solutions for any problem situation identified. This organization is known to be innovative in its approach and solutions!

Thus we see that the difference between creativity and innovation is the action! The successful implementation of creative ideas makes an organization and an individual innovative!

Stop being just creative... start being innovative!

You have the power!

http://www.revathionline.com/



HDCF Reflections - September 2013 Art of Delegation

HDCF Reflections, an interactive Session for the members of HDCF held on 27th Sep 2013 on the topic “Art of Delegation” by Mr. Jagan Metla, Entrepreneur & Member HDCF at Rachnoutsav Academy, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad.

With best compliments from :



Member ProfileSUKUMAAR DG -CEO, UBC Money

Sukumaar DG, CEO of UBC Money has about 13 years of extensive experience in financial research and wealth management. Much before venturing into media, he was working as a Regional Head (South India) at Fortune Financial Services (India) ltd . In his undying endeavor towards developing the masses on financial education, he is actively working to take the financial services to the rural as well as tier two cities in South India. He had worked as Sr. Vice President in Unicon Investment Solutions in the past and has achieved a critical acclaim in his career by developing several branches and increasing the organization revenues yoy.

Significant Achievements :He was awarded by JCI (Junior Chamber International) for his stupendous contribution to general public as a Financial Analyst. Received appreciation award for conducting investment awareness program in association with FAPCCI from Shri Salman Kurishid then the Minister of Corporate affairs, Felicitated by Telugu association of Canada in Toronto and got 3 best business live show awards in national TV awards for the most viewed MONEY BUSINESS program in Mahaa TV.

Challenges :Sukumaar hails from a small village near Tirupathi and he did his schooling in Maharshi Vidya Mandir, which laid foundation to his character, and which in turn ignites the passion in him to serve the rural India and build a knowledge based society. Though it was challenging in the initial years but as the time passed I gained a lot of self confidence and developed several contacts in the media Industry and started hosting investors awareness programs to educate the masses.



Member ProfileSUKUMAAR DG -CEO, UBC Money

Continued...

Things I learned about getting funded :First and the foremost is the business plan, an well drafted and professionally presented business plan is always a priority for me. next comes the genuineness of the whole idea behind raising funds. A powerful board which is versatile and with experts at their field of study an promising ROI for the funding companies.

Mistakes:Lessons I learned all the while are very important and have been stepping stones in my success. one important thing In investments which I would like to suggest to all is learn your trades, try to know as mush as about the company you are investing into. always test the waters before you step into it this applies to all men out there who want to get started and build their something on their own. Make mistake every day but never repeat the same.

Three strategies I used to gain market share: Hard work, right timing and sincerity in trying things.

Role model : Warren Buffet and Rakesh Jhunjhun wala.

One suggestion for new/starters: Never give up come what may... Plans are day dreams till they get executed on time.



Members

Editorial Team

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For further queries, please mail us on [email protected]

Hyderabad Director / CEO Forum (HDCF)HDCFLevel 1, ‘akasam’10-1-17/1/1, Masab TankHyderabad-500004A.P, India.Email: [email protected]

Allipuram Rajasekhar ReddyChairman & MD – Brio Group of Companies

Praveen Kumar MachavaramFounder and CEO – iProMentor IT Solutions Pvt. LtdEditor-in-Chief

Revathi TuragaInternational Trainer & Director – Revathi Online Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Mentor

Mahua GorthiCEO- Panacea Consulting Services

Narsing Rao BonguralaCEO- SMweblinx

HDCF Newsletter October 2013

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Transcript of HDCF Newsletter October 2013