Category: Kharcha paani

Categories
Trends

The mistakes of a start-up owner

Where every second person is the owner of a ‘start up’, business owners would fare better after changing their mindset.
by Reyna Mathur

Are you an entrepreneur with a fresh start up company just waiting (or struggling) to get off its feet? After the first heady rush of getting your ideas into action, securing funding for your venture, even getting a partner or two on board, buying or renting an office premises and hiring a certain number of staff members, it is time to ask – Now what?

Why do so many start-ups fail?

Most start-ups are born for a reason, fuelled by a passionate dream. They even find financial backing from partners who are as invested in that start up’s vision as the founder himself. And yet, once the first few days, then weeks, then months roll by, several start-ups fall by the wayside. Several shut down after the first year of operations, others scale down considerably, while still others cut their losses and sell. Many others continue to struggle, before finally giving up in the face of mounting losses.

1. Allowing the dream to die. “The thing to remember is that whatever happens, closing down is not an option,” says Manali Sengupta (34), who founded an online cooking class a few years ago. She is now based in the US. “What most people do is spend a lot of time gathering their resources for a year, maybe two years. What they don’t spend enough time is on internalising their vision, making it so powerful that even in times of obstacle, their dream should pull them through. A friend of mine also started a similar venture like mine, but she gave it up in a few months because she couldn’t find many interested takers.”

It is said that those who let their dreams die do not dream hard enough. The trick is to pull on and motivate yourself to push ahead, especially on the bad days.

2. Not doing market research. What may seem like a great idea to you might have already been implemented by somebody else. Take the time to study the potential market and the need for your business in it. If there are 10 people already doing the same thing that you are doing, you need to ask yourself if following on their footsteps is the right way to go. You might have to tweak your idea to come up with a better solution than your competition.

Studying your market with an expert and then floating the idea to people you trust will help you get initial feedback which is most crucial for any start up.

3. Not being innovative. Again, this deals with not thinking through your business objective enough, but we’re going to go a step ahead and explore the possibility where a person owns a start up with a great idea but whose mode of operations is about 20 years old. “A student of mine started a small news website two years ago,” says Geetha Sukumar, a media professional from Chennai. “She worked very hard at it, but she ran it like she would run a print publication. Very soon she began to struggle because she was not able to attract ad revenue to it. I advised her to reassess the medium she was dabbling in – digital is an instant medium, so you cannot give delayed updates. She quickly regrouped and now she owns five other web platforms.”

4. Trying to reinvent the wheel. In a world where zany ideas are being pitched by the second, it is next to impossible to create a concept or product which may be an actual new invention. It is sometimes enough to just give a new spin on a contemporary idea – instead of reinventing the wheel, it is sometimes sufficient to let the wheel assume a new avatar which others have not thought of before. Take the case of two Mumbai-based sisters who came up with a blanket that protects the wearer from mosquitoes. Instead of spending months in researching and trying to come up with skin creams or products to kill mosquitoes at their breeding sites, they simply understood that humans are at their most vulnerable when they are asleep – and hence created a protective layer against dengue and malaria-causing mosquitoes. Today, their patented blanket is being sold in large numbers and they have orders from all over the country.

5. Trying to make money from Day 1. Any good businessperson will tell you that a new venture takes a minimum of two years to make good money, and a further three years to stabilise. Sure, you may start making money in the first few months, but remember that each period of monetary gain is followed by a plateauing of creativity and funds. Only perseverance and more hard work can help you tide over these bad phases.

(Picture courtesy www.theocmx.com. Image is used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Kharcha paani

6 ways to make a sale

Making a sale is not difficult if you follow certain rules and have good people skills. Follow these 6 steps.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The first time you are called upon to sell a product or a service is surely the most daunting one. It is often said that marketing and sales requires a certain kind of work ethic and mindset – either you have them or you don’t. It is a difficult niche to crack in any business, and it requires perseverance and a never-say-die attitude.

However, though most of us are not natural salespeople, there may be a point in our professional lives when we may have to try and sell an idea, a product or a service. It is wise to hire a professional to do this task for you if you are not up to it, however, in the absence of outside help, you may have to do it yourself. Though initially difficult, you can soon get the hang of the process if you follow a few ground rules:

1. Do your research. Find out all you can about the person or business you are approaching with your sales pitch. You must know how big their company is, what are the goods and services they deal with, and the projects they normally associate with. Then step back and analyse what you are trying to offer that company or individual. Ask yourself: if I was in their place, would I be interested in associating with this idea? After doing this, find out the details of the person you will be meeting at that company, and make sure to get his or her name right.

Making a sale2. Prepare a good presentation. This is a tricky one, and your final product will depend largely on how the company prefers to get information. Find out if the company only looks at PowerPoint presentations, or if they are open to reading information from a compiled document as you speak. Some offices ask for audio-visual presentations, so you can make a short creative film to get your point across. The essential thing is to gather and put together all the relevant data in one file or dossier so that the company has all the information it needs in one place. Then you can think of presenting it cleanly and in a way that gets their interest.

3. Be on time for meetings. A sales job requires you to travel to several offices, so you will have to master the knack of winding up earlier meetings and reaching the next one right on time. It is tacky to reach a meeting late, especially if you have requested it. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, like an accident or a terror attack or a transport strike, you have no good excuse to be late for a meeting. When you walk in, make sure you are not sweaty and your face is fresh. Keep a sanitiser in your bag because you will need to shake hands before the meeting starts, and nobody wants to shake an unclean hand.

4. Be polite, firm and confident. Your manner while speaking to a potential client goes a long way in cementing the deal. When making your presentation, be polite, put your point across with as little speech as possible, invite the client to ask as many questions as they want to, and field each query with confidence. Do not ever use the phrase “I am not sure of this” or “I have not thought of the point you are raising” because it just tells the client that your concept and pitch is half-baked. Take some time to rehearse your pitch at home, or hold a mock presentation for your boss or staff and invite suggestions. The better you perfect this step, the more effective your presentation will be.

5. Be consistent, not persistent. You should have enough acumen to gauge in the first meeting if the client is interested in pursuing the idea further or not. You have to set the bar on how much room for negotiation you will allow, and stick to it. When you sense that the company is open to discussing further, set a date for the next meeting at once. Ideally, ask for a meeting not later than three days after the last one, so that the client does not lose interest in the project. When you ask for follow up meetings or make a telephone call to find out what the company is deliberating, don’t grovel or plead to be considered. Also, don’t hound them with emails and calls every single day. Allow them time to revert to you.

6. Be prepared for a long slog. Making a sale is not easy for one primary reason: you are asking an individual or corporation to part with money. Any monetary decision, big or small, takes time to reach a successful conclusion. Be patient and prepared to have a series of meetings to try and convince them that they will gain from associating with you. If it is your first project, be prepared to slash your prices drastically. You might even face a situation where the deal is struck off at the last minute. Don’t take it personally; they are not rejecting you, they simply don’t see the merit of your idea or probably don’t have the wherewithal to come on board. You can approach them with another pitch in the future.

(Pictures courtesy mashable.com, www.thepersonaldevelopmentcompany.com. Images are used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Kharcha paani

Reverse the earn-spend cycle

People follow a wrong spending pattern and fritter away their salaries. Reversing or changing spending habits will help you save more money.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

‘Khush hai zamana, aaj pehli tareekh hai!’ exulted the popular ad for a chocolate brand a few years ago, and the country agreed with the sentiment. Most of the workforce in the country is a salaried one, and the first of every month is an occasion for celebration in most households.

Naturally, the first two weeks of the salary reaching us is spent in settling bills, making grocery purchases, settling our house rents or EMIs, and then shopping for ourselves and our families. Add to this expenses for food, daily travel, children’s school and tuition fees, and money spent on recreation, and it is little wonder that most of us are broke by the end of every month. Then the salary comes in the next month…and the whole cycle gets repeated again.

Wrong assumptions about salaries

Our basic assumption about the money we make from our jobs is that we are ‘safe’ for a month till the next pay cheque arrives. While that is true, the notion is also flawed on several levels – if the salary is a safety net for us, how is it that we use this safety net so carelessly instead of keeping it as our second or third option?

One might argue that with high inflation and no other sources of income, it is obvious that only our salaries will save us. However, stop to think: what if we are using this basic asset wrong? Is there a way to save more instead of going broke every month?

Check out these ways to reverse your spend-save cycle.

Save moreChange your mindset. At the very outset, you must change your thinking about how you are going to spend your salary. Do you think of saving only after you realise that you are going broke every month? Do you consciously set aside a sum of money every month as savings? If the answers to both questions is ‘No’, you need to rethink your spending patterns.

How much are you really making? You are making a big mistake by assuming that the entire salary you receive is at your disposal. At the start of the fiscal year, calculate the total gross income you will make by way of salaries. From this, deduct taxes that you will pay the company at the end of the financial year. Now deduct the premium you will pay on any insurance policies or mutual funds at the end of the year. After this, subtract your fixed monthly spends on EMI or house rent, school tuition fees, school transport, domestic help salary, building society charges, for a full year. Subtract any other fixed monthly spends as well, for the whole year. The amount you are left with is the amount of money you are earning.

What state is your income in? After following the above step, consider that you will have to also count other monthly expenses on groceries, commuting, etc. which can change from month to month. After all these deductions from your annual pay, if you arrive at a negative number, it means your spending habits are completely wrong. If it is a positive number, it means you are saving at least some money. The higher the positive difference between income earned and money spent, the more you are saving per year.

How to increase money saved? Every month, remove a chunk of the salary and set it aside as mandatory saving for the month. Compel yourself to spend only from the money that is remaining after deducting the saving. Consciously try to set aside bigger sums every month as savings, and do not dip into this money unless there is a big emergency. Do not be tempted to use this money to shop on things that are avoidable for the moment. When you have saved a sizeable chunk of money, open a Fixed Deposit account or opt for a Recurring Deposit to maximise the savings. Alternatively, you can open a Public Provident Fund (PPF) account and put the monthly savings in it; however you cannot withdraw the amount you save in PPF till at least five years have elapsed, and you get only a percentage of the total money deposited at that point.

(Pictures courtesy blog.creditkarma.com, musingsofahomemaker.com. Images are used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Become

A business in weddings

Tarun Sarda came up with the unique idea of hosting exhibitions that allowed for the entire wedding shopping under one roof.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

India is currently witnessing a wave of start-ups, of all forms. Whether IT-based or home baking based, whether large or miniscule in scope, we’re seeing a start-up revolution like no other. Bolstered by the growth of technology and people’s fondness for transacting over the mobile phone, many start-ups are doing steady business.

Tarun Sarda..Tarun Sarda embarked on his start-up journey way back in 1992, when he started an agency that produced ad designs and catalogues, with a seed capita of Rs 5,000. In 1998, he helmed Vintage Publications that published Celebrating Vivaha and Timeless Jewels. The magazines were an instant hit, as were the concurrent road shows, which prompted him to launch the first Vivaha exhibition in 2003 in Delhi, followed by Timeless Jewels in 2004.

In 2002, he won the WYBA (World Young Business Achiever) award in Manila for Entrepreneurial Management where he first shared his vision for the Celebrating Vivaha exhibitions – he believed that weddings in India were recession-proof and forever growing. 2003 saw the launch of Celebrating Vivaha exhibitions in New Delhi and Mumbai.

The Vivaha Luxury Homes – a specialised exhibition on high-end interiors – followed soon after. The unparalleled growth of the wedding industry prompted Tarun to launch the Vivaha Pre-Wedding Solutions, an exhibition for back-end wedding service providers.

Today, Tarun Sarda is the man behind some of the most recognized and well attended exhibitions that take place in various parts of the country – Celebrating Vivaha, Timeless Jewels, Vivaha Luxury Homes, Vivaha Pre-Wedding Solutions and LIFE (the Lifestyle, Indulgence and Fashion Exposition). His business has now spread its wings in the international market with exhibitions in New Jersey and Dubai.

In an interview, Tarun explains how he started his business, the response that prompted him to expand the company, and his vision for the wedding industry.

How did you first hit upon the idea for the Vivaha exhibition?  It’s not an idea that would normally occur to anyone.

The idea of the exhibition came after seeing the positive response to the magazine. Seeing people react so positively to the magazine because it gave them wedding solutions, I thought, ‘Why not have a platform where people can shop for the entire wedding including venue, catering and other wedding related services under one roof?’ Since a wedding is such a happy occasion, why not make wedding shopping a happy affair as well, where people don’t have to go market to market or city to city struggling to look for the right product?

What was the response to your first exhibition?

Overwhelming, to say the least. We had a 3 km traffic jam outside Taj Palace hotel where the first show took place. People were buying in a frenzy. There came Celebrating Vivaha exhibitiona point when we even had to stop people from entering for almost half an hour till the rush inside the hall subsided a bit. In the initial years, the footfalls of 25,000 visitors (which were numbers unheard of in those days) redefined the exhibition market in the capital. In future years, the same happened in the main metropolises where similar visitor numbers made the exhibitions successful.

Which city or part of India has the most interested Indians?
Indians love to shop and weddings are occasions where they shop maximum (sic). So it is difficult to pin point any one particular city. But having said that, North India for sure has a distinct quality when we talk about shopping. They are impulsive buyers and buy without blinking an eye if they find something to their liking.

What are some of the points to remember when putting up a great exhibition?

A good wedding exhibition is one which has all categories related to the wedding segment. So instead of concentrating only on clothing and jewellery, one should see that there is everything one may need – from make-up artists to caterers, photographers, wedding planners, decorators, wedding venues and honeymoon destinations.

What are some of the points that will ruin an exhibition?

Lack of advertising. You may have the best brands exhibiting with you but till you don’t advertise to tell people you are putting up something unique, all your efforts are in vain.

What are clients looking for when they hire you?

Our clients look for a platform where they will be able to showcase and sell their products to their clients as well as the aspirational TG they work towards.

If somebody wishes to follow in your footsteps today, what advice would you give him/her?

Treat the exhibition seriously – don’t take it as a short term project where you sell booths and think your job is done. Your job is only done when you pull in the crowd which will make the exhibitors happy and pull in the exhibitors which will make the crowd happy.

(Pictures courtesy Tarun Sarda and everythingexperiential.com)

Categories
Learn

5 ways to teach your children about money

It’s never too soon to teach your child the value of money and how to spend money responsibly. Here’s how.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Kids these days are so attuned to what’s happening in the outside world, they will quickly demand some new product they see on TV, or ask for money to eat the new pizza advertised in the papers. As indulgent parents, we go along with most of our kids’ demands, but stop to ask yourself this: are you harming your child by indulging his every demand?

Instead, why not teach your child the value of proper spending? By giving them whatever they ask for, children do not learn to value money or the effort it takes you to earn it. Unless they learn these lessons, they will grow up fiscally irresponsible and suffer from reckless spending habits.

That is not to say that you clamp down on your child’s every demand and keep preaching about money to him – doing this will instil a negative connotation in the child’s mind, that money is the most important thing to possess. Here’s what you can do:

1. Be a responsible spender yourself. You have no right to preach to your child if you are a reckless spender. Nor can you tell your child to share his possessions or pocket money with a sibling or close friend if you don’t know how to share. Take the middle ground, instead. Cut the temptation to buy everything in sight when you go shopping, and make sure your child sees you shopping for household groceries and paying the household bills before making personal purchases. Let your child see you compare the labels on products and explain why you chose one product over another. This will get the child thinking that shopping must be done thoughtfully and not recklessly.

2. Ask your child to help you balance the books. Children enjoy being treated like grown-ups. The next time you list the monthly expenses in your budget book, invite your child to help you calculate the numbers with a calculator. Your child will be happy to be trusted with the calculation process, and will also learn to see numbers in a new light. Discuss simply where you overshot your expenses and where you saved up. Your child will immediately get an idea about the household budget and if you are in a position to buy him or her something new.

Teaching how to save and spend3. Take your child into confidence. Too often, parents make the mistake of shielding their children from their financial troubles. They are doing so with the intention of not scaring their children and making them insecure. However, if you don’t reveal to your child that your current financial situation is slightly worrisome, he or she will have no clue why you are not increasing their pocket money despite repeated requests, or avoiding giving them money for a new mobile phone. Sit your child down and explain that you are currently facing a slight crunch. Don’t burden them with too many scary details but let them know that you are trying your best to tide over the problem. A sensitive child will even offer to help by breaking his piggy bank for you.

4. Insist that your child save pocket money every month. Give your child a weekly or monthly allowance, and tell him or her that no extra money will be given in that time period under any circumstances. This automatically prompts your child to watch how he spends his money. Also inculcate the habit of saving a part of his pocket money every month. When he or she has saved a sizeable amount, give him a small treat. If he or she has been saving up to buy something, add the equivalent amount that he has saved to encourage him further.

5. Let your child earn privileges. The one thing we must take away from Western parenting is the manner in which parents in the US and UK make their children earn their pocket money by taking up small jobs. We must follow a model where if a child wants to treat his friends on his birthday, you can give him a job to do around the house and pay him per completed task. This teaches the child to help around the house. Also, encourage older children to put their talents to use to earn money – they could give tuitions to younger children, or take art and hobby classes. Let them keep the money they make, but occasionally ask them to go out and buy vegetables or a few groceries without giving them the cash for it. This will inculcate the habit to contribute to the household expenses without being selfish.

What are the ways in which you teach your child about money? Tell us in the comments section below.

(Pictures courtesy micheleborba.com, www.speakingtree.in. Images are used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Become

Talking weddings with The Wedding Filmer

Vishal Punjabi started working in the wedding industry purely by chance – and today, most weddings are incomplete without him.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

He has converted ‘Look-here, look-there’ static wedding videos to marvellous, organic and personal wedding movies that every bride dreams of. Vishal Punjabi, with his boyish charm, is the go-to guy if you are looking to have a treasure trove of shaadi memories. His company, ‘The Wedding Filmer’ is on the wish list of every to-be married couple.

An NRI, Punjabi was born and brought up in Ghana before he moved to England for further studies. Having visited India a couple of times, he definitely didn’t know that his destiny was being planned here.

Their video ‘Heartbeats’ was the first Indian marriage video to enter a film festival. The original background song ‘Din Shagna Da’ in the video, is oft heard today when a bride and groom enter the reception hall.

The Wedding FilmerHis soaring popularity has kept him away from the annual family Christmas dinner, which is a ‘big deal at my place’ he confesses – for the past 5 years! But despite the bane of working in the chaotic and evergreen wedding industry, Punjabi is all smiles. Today he teaches youngsters from various cities how to make wedding videos while capturing the essence of a family. He believes that a wedding is a perfect time to invest in family portraits. And if you call Coldplay to perform, he will be there for sure.

In an interview at TWF’s Andheri office, he reveals his roots, the reason for having workshop sessions and why an original soundtrack is the next big thing in the wedding industry.

How did ‘The Wedding Filmer’ happen?

I was trying to make a film based on an Indian wedding but didn’t have a proper script or well-etched characters. My only connection with weddings till then was my sister’s wedding, and Bollywood, which is not real and so glossy.

So I thought, if I shot a wedding, I would get to meet these people first-hand and know them. So it was a kind of script research while shooting. And while doing that, I fell in love with the whole process. When I did my own wedding video, I realised I loved the feeling of watching other people watch their own film.

It has been four years, ‘The Wedding Filmer’ has taken off but my script is still in process. Despite the time, I am sure the material will be very rich in content and based on human understanding.

15 years in the industry…tell us how you started?

In London, I was designing websites for an Indian company. One such website won a couple of awards. At that time, Shah Rukh Khan wanted to make a Bollywood portal and asked me to come down and design it. But that company soon shut down. So I moved to his production house, Arclight Films and Dreams Unlimited.

Over there, I worked on the website and VFX work for the film Ashoka. Doing Ashoka was fun as it was my first time on a Bollywood set. I had never seen anything like that before. I started doing a lot of VFX and found a niche in advertising. I also did quite a few product designs for SRK – who sells anything and everything from pants to pens. We did commercials for every known product to mankind – including Mankind.

One day my director didn’t turn up for the shoot and that’s how I started directing the commercial. I went on to do some 20 to 30 commercials.

How did the transition from commercials to weddings happen?

When you work for SRK, you get spoilt as a director. You get the biggest budgets, the best DOP, the sets and costumes are always amazing. But when mail.google.comyou need to shoot on your own, you realise you know little about the nuances of film-making.

So I went to visit my father in Ghana and over there I tried making documentaries. That’s when I realised I didn’t know much about film-making. So I started learning about smaller camera formats, editing, bringing down the cost of the project and doing most things on my own. You buying the costumes yourself, go for the recce yourself. This got me more involved with projects.

That is why when I started doing weddings. The purpose was to make really good cinema in a very low budget. At TWF, we try to make a nice film, which if we could release in the theatres, we would. We try and find a story that is so powerful, it can move you to say, “Agar yeh theatre mein hota toh kitna achcha hota.”

Tell us about your shooting process.

It is organic because we capture it from a distance. My beautiful team is the one shooting it. We just try and interact with the family as much as we can and give them their space.

The idea for us is to not direct them. We don’t make them act like SRK and Kajol. These are real people, so we honour their ceremonies, respect their guests and their space.

Today, brides demand that their family or fiancé set aside a budget for a wedding shoot by you. How does that feel?

It is very exciting. You know, earlier we would think we wouldn’t be able to shoot more than 12 or 15 weddings a year. But we are doing these workshops and training sessions and are trying to expand as a team, so that a lot more brides can have their dream come true and we can make it a lot cheaper for everyone to afford something like this. We want to shoot it very nicely and package it the way they want it.

Tell us about your workshops, ‘The Classroom of Love’.

We get thousands of requests every year and we can’t shoot them all. So somebody needs to shoot them because everybody needs a beautiful memory. It is exciting to know that so many people like your work and want to learn from it. So I wish to inspire the participants with the fact that I didn’t learn at any film school. I learnt film-making on my own. In these workshops, I just guide and teach them that they can also learn on their own.

What would you say is the easiest and the most difficult part of the job?

The easiest part is shooting, anybody can shoot. But the difficult part is editing and cutting. Finding the right song, the right mood, the right emotion, the words and to keep doing that over and over again and staying inspired every time – that’s the difficult part.

What do you enjoy the most about TWF?

Meeting different people and the different cultures I get to experience.  I hardly knew much about India, now I get to travel the world. We get to make a difference to people’s lives. We get to work with them and learn from them.

You think music makes for a great theme at weddings. Why?

Because if you record your own song for your wedding, that song will be yours for life. It will be the song which you danced to, it will be the song you walked to, the song that your father gave you away on. It could be the song that will play in the lobby of the hotel when your guests arrve. It could be played on every anniversary.  It is your song, so music becomes the theme of your wedding and it is way cheaper than any Moroccan fibre palace.

Hear the song recently recorded by The Wedding Filmer:

Chal le Chal | The Wedding Filmer

Exit mobile version