Going Live Finally!!

The last 18 months have been a roller coaster ride for me professionally. There were times when I have doubted my own ability and judgement. I was going through a terrible phase in my professional life before I embarked on the journey of bringing Plick.in to the public. I was royally ripped off by an unscrupulous bastard who promised me projects and ruined my life (I am writing a book on this). My life was at crossroads when I decided to start an online marketplace along with Jacob Kurian, my brother in law and Pretty Sunny, my wife. She was the brain behind Plick.in, even though she plays no part in it.

When we decided to go ahead with Plick.in, we had no idea of what we were gonna do and how we plan to get the sellers. The first thing we did, like any entrepreneur, was to jump into Facebook and started marketing our Brand without even realizing we didn't have anything to market upon. Then we started searching for Boutique owners, designers and artisans in Facebook and bombarded them with details about Plick.in shamelessly. There were hardly any positive effects from this strategy.

We decided to change our strategy now. We started collecting the details of all the sellers from Facebook (I know FB comes over again and again.. Guess I would have been working behind a desk for a lousy company, if not for Mark Zuckerberg) and decided we will do an email campaign to attract more sellers. Now this had a better effect and we got our first seller on board. It was a great morale booster and we started getting confident. We visited many flea markets and started talking to sellers over there (Mind you, we didn't even have a business card with us). Though the response was generally positive, it didn't actually convert into seller sign ups. We were disappointed and started to lose our confidence slowly. We decided to wait and watch.

The next challenge we had was to recruit employees. I never thought getting manpower would be this challenging. We had 5 positions to fill up. We started our process in June 2013. We had gone through 1000s of profiles and spoken to 100s of candidates. Either we were not happy with the candidates or the candidates were not happy with our salary package. Even fresher with just an Under Graduate degree was demanding INR 400,000/- as salary. It took me 5 months to fill up 3 positions. We still have 2 openings and God Knows when I will be able to fill them up (this is why genuinely pray for IT companies to downsize big time).

After going through all this, we are finally launching Plick.in on December 4,2013 (even the launch date was changed twice because we were not ready).

We are going live on December 4, 2013 with 15 sellers and some very good products. We request you to visit our site www.plick.in and encourage us with your feedback and of course PURCHASES!!

Movie Review: Aadhi Bhagavan (Tamil)

Six years is a long time to write a story and screenplay for a movie, that too after delivering a hard-hitting movie like Paruthiveeran that went to become a critical and commercial success. So when a director like Ameer takes a sabbatical, we expect greater things from him. Does his new movie meet the expectations?

Aadhi Bhagavan is a commercial movie with an Ameer touch. Why so? Unlike the universal formula of Good Vs. Evil that has been ground to dust in our movies, we have a movie about Evil Vs. Evil. The movie starts off in an exciting manner with an IT raid at the residence of Rao Brothers who control the mining business in Andhra Pradesh. After swindling crores from the Rao Brothers in the name of IT raid in Special Chabbis style, Jeyam Ravi (Aadhi) flies to Thailand where he is shown as a Mafioso. As the tagline suggests, the first half is a Mafioso love story with Neetu Chandra playing his love interest. The first half meanders at its own pace with Pattaya and its captured beautifully. Just when I was wondering why Ameer made such a movie, the interval block makes you sit up with the introduction of effeminate Bhagavan (Jeyam Ravi again). After that the movie is a cat and mouse game between Aadhi and Bhagavan and who prevailed in the end.

It is Jeyam Ravi’s best role till date. He has delivered an intense performance as Aadhi and had a ball playing the effeminate Bhagavan. His mannerisms and the way he walks, his body language suited to the character perfectly. Jeyam Ravi has worked on the voice also, which has added more intensity to his character. Neetu Chandra has proved before that she can play negative roles with élan. As the devoted lover of the perverted Bhagavan, she steals the show with her transformation from a helpless demure girl to a scheming vixen. Shaiju Kurup has a brief role and he has done well as the cunning Police Officer who does anything for money. I felt Sudha Chandran’s talent was wasted in the miniscule role of Aadhi’s mother.

Music by Yuvan Shankar Raja is above par though it is nowhere close to the duo’s earlier collaborations. Bhagavan Rap is foot tapping. The background score lifts the movie in a big way especially in the second half. The cinematography by R.B. Gurudev & Devaraj is really pleasing to the eye. The editing by S.P.Ahmed is slick in the second half and it could have been better in the first half as it tends to drag a little bit.

On the whole, Aadhi Bhagavan is a very good commercial movie, but it is not meant for the faint hearted though as there is a lot of graphic violence. Go and watch the movie without expectation, you will not be disappointed.

MY RATING: 6/10

Book Review: When the Signal Turns Red

Synopsis:

Girish and Prajakta are in love. Very soon Girish will be joining the numero uno IT company of the country. He prepares himself by buying expensive clothes and other accessories he had always dreamed of. He and Prajakta have together planned to build on a good bank balance and then meet each other’s families to talk about marriage, probably after a year or two. Unexpectedly, the families get involved before Girish can join the IT Company. Against all odds, the couple manages to convince their family and an engagement date is fixed. But destiny has other things in mind. A global catastrophe mars their plan which leads to the engagement getting annulled.

Will Girish find a way out of his predicament? Will he ultimately win Prajakta’s hand or will he move on in life, learning to live without her?

My Review:

I received this book as a review copy from the author. It is the first publicized work of the author who happens to be an IT professional. The story revolves around two love-struck engineering graduates and how the turbulent financial scenario plays spoilsport in their lives.

There isn’t anything complex in the narration. It’s a light read which you can finish in a few hours. The language is very simple and highly relatable to the youth. The author, being an IT professional himself, has dealt with the aftermath of the financial crisis in a commendable manner as it has come out very well in the book. Even the few romantic portions involving the protagonists are devoid of any melodrama and it has been narrated in a way that is believable.

Being the author’s debut work, there were a lot of areas that I felt the author could have written better. We know that Girish & Prajakta are in love, but since we have no idea about how they fell in love or any backstory, we don’t have an emotional connect with them. This itself will make the reader disassociate with the characters. I also felt that addressing the parents as Mr. & Mrs. Chitre and the same for Girsh’s parents was very odd. By doing so, the writer has distanced these characters from the reader’s mind. The author also needs to work on his writing skills a lot more as I found a lot of phrases repeating itself throughout the story. The most unbelievable part was the ending, which I felt, was written in a hurry. The reasoning for the ending was very clichéd and the narration was very cinematic. It gives a feeling that the author lost the plot or didn’t know how to finish the story.

The author had a good plot and I believe that the narration began well but lost steam after the first few pages. The author could have dwelt into the lives of the Khedekar & Chitre households a bit more. The author also needs to work a lot on the characterization as all the characters lacked depth and conviction.

It is definitely not a bad book but it could have been a great book had the author taken care of the minute details.

MY RATING: 2/5

Women in my life

Today, being the International Women’s Day, I decided to pen down a few things about two women who have played a very important role in my life.  They have been highly influential in what I am now and what I go on to be in the future. I am writing a tribute to the two lovely ladies in my life: MOTHER & WIFE.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about my mother is the image of her standing outside my LKG classroom from morning till evening for more than a week because I used to cry in class as I had difficulties in acclimatizing to the alien environment. In fact I used to cry in school till I graduated to the Lower Primary level. I spent the first four years of my life in a village in Northern Kerala where I didn’t have any friends or relatives. My mother was the first and only friend I ever had there. She also used to keep me engaged and I never felt bored at all. Those were the days of Doordarshan alone too and being the only child, it can get difficult to handle me. But my mother was exceptional in managing my activities and me.

As I grew older, we moved to the metros (as my father used to get transfers every 2 or 3 years) where I had many friends to play with. But I have always been a Mama’s Baby and I always wanted her presence to be felt around me. Imagine this, the first time I went on an excursion was when I was in my 9th Standard. That was the first time when I had been without my mother for a day.

I lost my father when I was 13. That was a hard blow for me because boys need their father when they are in the adolescence. But my mother never let that affect me and helped me get over the void created by father’s demise. She is my teacher, mentor and everything in my life. She has always given into my wishes and gotten me everything under the sun.

My mother & wife

Now, moving on to my wife. What can I say about her? I met her 11 years ago in my college. She was the first person I saw on the first day of our college. I have been in love with her ever since then. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about her is the image of a coy girl from a small town arriving at the college gates wondering how she is going to manage. But then she has transformed into a career woman of respect and has a broader outlook towards life than me.

She is the best thing to have happened in my life in the last 10 years. Though we have had our shares of ups and downs in our relationship, her love for me has no bounds. She has always been there for me and stood by me during my tough times. I have been very lucky to have her as my better half. Truly… she has been the BETTER HALF.

My mother and wife has been a pillar of strength and have supported me in all my endeavors. They have been with me through my tough times, as life is not easy for a Mother and Wife of a young Entrepreneur. My life would have been empty without these women.  I take this opportunity to salute them for what they are in my life and also to tell them I love them a lot…

The Inside Story of "The Inside Man"

After pondering over for a long time, I have finally decided to pen down my thoughts and become a blogger. There a quite a few reasons for this EARTH SHATTERING or LIFE ALTERING decision (you can choose whichever you want to, after reading this), the main reason being my venturing into Entrepreneurship. 

As a Founder of a Startup company, I found myself having a lot of time at hand till the time, operations are kickstarted. So while I was thinking about umpteen ways to promote my company, it suddenly struck me that I should become a blogger and write. The company automatically gets promoted if the Founder promotes himself well, isn't it so? By the way, the name of my company is Monkey Minds Technologies Private Limited.  You might be wondering as to what prompted me to select this name which is crazier than monkeys itself. The reason is very simple - "My wife suggested this name".

Didn't I tell you I am gonna promote my company shamelessly
www.monkeyminds.in

The next reason being the "Me too Syndrome". I find that every Tom, Dick & Harry of the Indian startups are having their own blog. Whether they have anything to write or not, they still keep their blogs active by adding pictures and sharing links. I suggest people use Facebook and Google Plus for these purposes, after all they were developed for the exact purpose of sharing and networking. Looks like I am deviating from the topic and its going haywire like the screenplay of the movie "Kadal". Coming back to what we were discussing, I decided to become a blogger to join the band of entrepreneurs who are informatively intelligent.

What better way to improve one's language than writing a blog. It is not going to cost me a penny to try. Frankly speaking, the last time I wrote more than 5 lines was during my university exams. Being a startup, our company budget is bootstrapped. The online shopping portal "Plick.in" which we are going to launch soon requires a lot of content writing. These content writers charge you per hour more than what a doctor charges for a day. You will be shelling out 10k for a sheet of paper. Hence I thought if I can improve my language and writing skills, I can try my hand at content writing for my shopping portal and save a few bucks in the process.

Plick.in - A marketplace for all things Desi
www.plick.in

The mother of all reasons behind this Blog is the hope of a Book Deal (I know its sound highly unrealistic). But when you look at the arrival of the plethora of Indian writers today, I think even I stand a chance of grabbing a book deal. Jokes apart, I hope I could continue writing and improve my skills as a writer.

Who is "The Inside Man"?

The Inside Man has done sting operations on all the tainted politicians and officials. 

The Inside Man has ground zero reports from the battle zones of Iraq, Afghanistan & Sri Lanka.

The Inside Man has even tapped telephonic conversations of Bill Clinton & Monica Lewinsky.

The Inside Man will give Julian Assange & Wikileaks, a run for their money.

Have I gone nuts? Am I being serious? Hell No..... I don't do any of these nor do I intend to. Well I dont even know "What Young India Wants?" or "Who let the Dork out?"let alone the above mentioned. 

I decided to become a blogger to promote my company shamelessly. But then how long can I do that. So I thought I will write about anything under the sun. It can be Politics, Sports, Movies (I am good at that), Books and Current Affairs. The primary purpose of my new avatar of a Blogger is to get some writing practice. God knows how long it has been since I wrote more than 5 lines. Being an Entrepreneur, I am forced make my presence felt in every platform possible. The best way to do that is to become a blogger. Thus my journey as a blogger has begun :-D

PS: Kindly go through this and give me your feedback. If you have something good to say, feel free to post you comments. If you feel like calling names after reading this, kindly mail me in private :-)