Month: February 2009

Tips to write a blog…


When I talk to anyone about blogging, they keep telling they wish they have there own blog but unable to do so because of lack of time… Then there is another set of people who have a blog but don’t have any topic or time to write something… Then there is another set of people who write blogs because of compulsion example employees forced by their employers or their reporting boss to write personal or official blogs…

What ever the case may be my answer for people who fall under the above mentioned segment is writing a blog is simple… You need not think out of the box to write something, it is as simple as writing a daily dairy… Most of my blogs are my own experience and even I run short of topic’s, when I fall short of good topic I just write my experience of the day…

Here are some tips

Be consistent: There is nothing great in having a blog, consistency matters. Your readers expect some news from you on regular intervals and for that you need to be consistent not only to gain traffic but also to hold the traffic…

Never worry about grammar: Believe me blogs are meant to improve our communication, reading and writing skills… I’ve followed and following many bloggers for long time… Most of the bloggers communication and grammar was poor, but only because of their consistency they were able to improve… So, never stop/hold blogging because of your language command…

Never stop for lack of topic: Blogs are place to share experience… In a day we all come across many things… It is more than enough if you share your days experience… After all humans are eager to know what others do and for sure someone from some part of the world would have benefitted by your experience…

Never think you are silly: Never think your thoughts are silly… Most of the blogs which I thought were silly has got me huge appreciations and blogs which gave me self contention and satisfaction never inspired readers… What is silly for you will be of great interest to someone…

Evolve with reader comments: Readers are best people to help you evolve… Pay attention to their feedback in terms of your mistakes, take their suggestion… For example my friend who happens to be a great reader of my blog Swaminathan, posts comments on my blog suggesting to improve my site design, he asked me to remove the ads inside content, which was disturbing and many times he gives me topics and asks me to write on that… That was great motivation and I evolve my site and writing based on those comments…

Never bow down to negative comments: There are people who keep giving negative comments and at times there might be genuine criticism or comments… Most of the times we fall prey to those criticism… Never get demotivated by it those comments… First learn to handle criticism… I got a suggestion from Mr.Gopal Ramanan to do proof reading before making a post… I’d have been happy if he had posted it in pubic, thought he didn’t want to criticize and hurt me… I’m a person who welcomes open criticism so that others can all take a cue from it… From today I’ve taken a resolution to proof read at least twice before posting a blog…

This is what I can think to the max and I request readers to post their points as comments… I must thank Mr.Gopal Ramanan to consider my request in twitter to share their points and for sparing his valuable time… Here are his point of views…

My thoughts on good blog:

  • Precise & Brief about the person writing the blog
  • Need to be neatly arranged
  • Ease of viewing (fonts – colour & size)
  • Goodies (not ads…hmm…like i have added timezones, NSE live prices, thesaurus etc.,) which will be of use to those who read a blog.
  • Before posting, do a spell check & preview it.

Softer side:

  • Blogger should clearly state what can be expected out of his blog
  • Contents should be of use to others
  • Regular writing
  • Before starting to blog, visit some good blogs and understand the layouts, know about the features available (archiving, gadgets etc.,)…

How CCS evolved…


Cogzidel Consultancy Services (CCS) was born to help startups overcome the difficulties I personally faced as a startup… I still can remember the days where I was taken for granted by bankers, vendors and bureaucrats… First I was ignorant, second I looked stupid to them and I more importantly was small… I felt many times that I lacked proper mentoring and I didn’t have any bootstrappers to knock at their doors… Also those were the days where startups were not taken seriously… There are some incidents which pester me even today…

  • My first company incorporation was a mess… My company secretary had some dummy company registered 5 years before and was not functional… When we approached him to incorporate our company he just changed the name of that company, instead of forming a new one… We were not informed of this and this lead to lots of complications… For any inspection by statutory bodies they demand all information starting from the day company was incorporated…
  • Then after creating the company I ran to bank and my office for at least 50 times without exaggeration and this happened with a private bank, which was more irony… Even the entry level sales guy didn’t bother to come to office to collect all documents and verify documents from my office… They found something missing every time I resubmit the documents and I’ve to run back to office and bank to get a bank a/c…
  • In my early days even vendors didn’t bother me much… I ordered for 10 PC’s one shot and made upfront payment… Vendor said he can’t deliver and asked me to take delivery… I was totally ignorant about competition in this space, because of my ignorance I was taken for a toss from that particular vendor…
  • Then I was not aware of any bureaucratic obligations and statutory compliances to be done to the company… Every time I get caught by inspectors and then I comply with them by paying a penalty… I had to do this in spite of having an auditor… Auditor’s job is easy; customer ends up paying them even for their mistakes…
  • Over a point we started growing more than 100% YoY on turnover, but our profits always remained less… We didn’t have proper account practices… Since we didn’t have account’s background we had to hire someone… Even they they lacked many information because of lack of experience… A company needs accounting reports to review their performance time on time… There are companies which have been closed because they failed to manage their accounts well… This is very important functions which is taken easily by many founders…
  • Then we had a need to register with STPI to get income tax benefit… Our company secretary did this for us… He used our resource, manpower and also this being his first initiative he learned from this experience… I’m not worried about his experiment with us… But when he learns something using us and using our resource and manpower we expect some benefit out of it… He charged us an exorbitant sum as professional charges… I wonder many times if they are professional charges or charges for their unprofessionalism…
  • Then there were employee issues… We didn’t do any tax planning for them, what ever their salary is we cut TDS and deposited in bank… When job market was so high, people started quitting company just for these benefits… Initially I thought they were quitting for silly reason, but when I hired a CFO and when he worked out and showed my the difference in my own salary, I felt how I was throwing away my hard earned salary and my employees salary…

All these are only some of the challenges I faces, I can keep listing more, but the point is when I see startups they also over come same challenges… There no use is overcoming touch cycles for all business… There are lots of business incubators, business mentors and bootstrappers… I personally started a company called CCS for bootstrapping startups and help them to in

  • Company incorporation
  • All post incorporation needs like opening bank account and many more…
  • Managing accounts process and give them timely accounts reports to take que…
  • Taking care of HR process other than recruitment…
  • Managing statutory compliances…

For any information please send an email to info@cogzidel.in…

Agriculture as Corporate Business


Agriculture in India is considered to be the backbone of our economy, but not considered as a potential job/business… I don’t know if I can get married if I were a farmer… But the reality is other wise… Agriculture is a great potential business and we can help create lots of jobs with the help of it…

It is true that agriculture in India is becoming a challenge and we keep hearing/reading  lots of news about farmer deaths… Currently I’m working on a project with my friend Vijay Krishna… We are planning to venture in large scale agriculture & benefit from economies of scale…

There are two types of farmers; one is farmer with big farm land & money and one with small land & less money… Farmer with small land has bigger challenges and there are challenges for some well to do farmers too…

Let me start by telling the challenges & simultaneously solutions too…

Fertilizers and Seeds: This has been a challenge for small farmers and for many big farmers (cash rich) to source these products on time & end up procuring them when prices are high…

Solution: When we have a huge land bank our consumption will be more and we can gain better discounts and can work out credit terms for purchase of huge volumes… Also we can have the luxury to procure them when they are cheap and stock them…

Sourcing of Manpower: This is one big challenge for Big Time farmers and to some extent for small farmers too… Agri products are time borne and harvesting has to be done on time else it will result in huge loss… It is big challenge to source people because everyone will need people at the same time as harvesting time is common & since the demand is high the wage also increases because of our urgency…

Solution: There are machineries which can help harvest huge acres of lands within days… But these machines are expensive which farmers can’t afford to buy… Again when we have huge land bank we can buy these machineries and improve efficiency doing right things at right time…

HR in Agriculture: Agriculture jobs are unprofessional, unorganized and are disjoint units which makes sourcing & coordinating with people to get work done very challenging… Also we need to source different people for different skills, which results in time loss and productivity loss…

Solution: We need to train people in Agriculture and help them to gain a steady source on income and make the sector organized, by giving them frequent training and improving their standard of living… Currently people work on daily wage basis… We must train them on different skills so that we can hire them and pay them on a monthly basis…

We are working ways to coordinate with HR professionals and train them in agriculture and in turn make them interact & collaborate with Agri universities to train and mould people with the type of skills we need…

Risk from Cattle & Theft: We have to keep a vigil on the crops from being destroyed from cattle and from thief’s… This brings down yield of the crop…

Solution: We must fence the field and work with security agencies to guard the fields… Also this can be done only when we have big land base which can be added in our ROI…

Selling of commodities: Once the harvesting is done we have the yield, we make money by selling the commodity… Most farmers don’t get information on price and they sell it for lesser price or they will be compelled to sell to meet their ends or to their repay debts… Even if they have information they might not have the facility to stock the commodity…

Solution: We can have a separate team to get information on commodity prices, fluctuation and we can build warehouse to stock the commodities and we can sell it when the prices are high…

Also there are many more challenges like excess water or deficit water supply… We can over come this by storing excess water and work on efficient supply chain methods to carry the surplus to water to draught farms…

Over all this one is very big and challenging project, we are planning to bring in professionalism by bringing HR, Finance, Admin, Marketing, Accounts and Operational functions and improve efficiency & productivity…

We are currently working on the project report as we need huge funding to make this a reality… We are planning to take debt and equity route to meet our needs…

There are lots of advantages to convince investors like

  • There are lots of government subsidy
  • No income tax on income from agriculture
  • Growth in consumption/demand on food products
  • Returns on Investment are high…
  • Also we have a contention that we have fulfilled our Social Responsibility…

We don’t want to wait till we finish the project report… We are planning to start this in a phased manner and start with a small module which will help us to build a brand and reputation…

To start with we are planning to start with paddy, by procuring the yield from different farmers, stock them and sell them when the price of paddy is high… To start his we need an initial investment of Rs.20 lakh or 2 million INR… Though we can raise this capital ourselves we are planning to form a consortium of people and take investment from them and start it… As this will help us to learn how to manage investors and we have an opportunity to create & develop relationship and build a trust… Also with this experience & credibility we can approach Banks, VC’s, PE’s for investment…

You can be a part of this initiative by making a small investment… We are planning to collect Rs.50,000/- per head ($1100 USD)… You can also help us by promoting this post by sending email forwards, by posting it in your blog and through other social media initiatives… Please email me to get more information about this project…

Classic Coimbatore


Today slept long and missed to see my friend tying mangal sutra that is the purpose of my visit to Erode… Then went to the marriage and had my breakfast wished my friend… He thanked me for making to reception and for the wedding thought I was late…

Then planned to proceed to Andhiyur which is famous for horse market… Again the person who promised me to take there didn’t turn up and I immediately proceeded to my Coimbatore…

Reached my uncles house in Coimbatore had lunch and proceeded to Ndot.in along with my cousin… Then met founder of Ndot.in Mr.Nanda Kumar a first generation and budding entrepreneur… Once I entered a place R.S.Puram where his office was located carried me away… It looks like old Brigade road, with lots of branded showrooms and food joints…

Then Nanda took me to his office… It is a small home come office with a typical setup of a startup… Then Nanda introduced me to his employees and we proceeded to a Juice Shop names Seasons in R.S.Puram, as we entered I was shocked to see such good looking girls all over the road and inside the juice shop… I carried away by a girl and she still lives in my eyes :)…

Then we went to book ticket for a movie Naan Kadavul and to my surprise we were able to get a ticket tomorrow evening… In Chennai & Bangalore tickets are full for atleast for next couple of days…

Then from there we dropped Nanda in his office and proceed to Mettupalayam Road to Marverick GYM… Again I was surprised to see the quality of people; it is on par or even better than Chennai or Bangalore… Again there were nice looking girls… Also GYM here is much better than the one in Madurai… Once consoling point is quality comes with a cost… When I enquired the tariff it is  50% more than what I pay in Madurai… I think better option is to enroll in Madurai and use Chennai or Coimbatore :)…

Then from GYM again proceeded to Nanda’s office & Nanda asked me to take a session to his employees… I started casually by telling how I started and my early days experience and mistakes I did and where I’m today… Ndot.in guys are very much enthusiastic and they flooded with questions… I answered them to the best, and I hope so it was informative and they liked it…

Then Nanda joined after a meeting with his clients & he said he wanted his folks to write blogs and he said he didn’t know how to motivate them… Then I immediately thought of conducting a contest where every folk starts writing blog and by the end of this month who ever writes lots of blog will get a Allan Solly shirt from me and there are some guidelines for it…

  1. Content must me unique and must not be copied…
  2. If a person writes less than 10 blog must pay a penalty….
  3. Each blog must have more than or equal to 400 words…
  4. Contest ends on Feb 28th 2009…

I need to think of more Guidelines for the contest, if you have any points to be added please post it in the comment, it will be of real help… Then I conducted a small interactive training on Business Communication GAP… With that I had to conclude as it took 2 hours and didn’t want to show negative vibes and throw me out…

Then we Myself, Arun(my Cousin) & Nanda proceeded to a movie called Dev D… I don’t think I can write a review for the movie because I didn’t understand anything, but I liked the movie because I didn’t understand anything :)…

Then dropped Nanda and reached home and writing this blog… Over all I started creating an admiration for Coimbatore and the place looks alike how I saw Bangalore before 2000… I might consider this place for future business developments…

From Chennai to Thamaraipakkam


Itz been 2 weeks since I’ve been to that place and I must have posted a blog immediately… But anyways let me compromise myself with famous sayings “Better late than never”…

I’ve a friend by name Vijay Krishna and he is my investment consultant… His hails from a village in Thiruvalluvar district which is 3 KM away from Thamaraipakkan (Famous for Lingam temple) and 45 KM from Chennai…

Vijay came to me asking for a help in taking Agriculture in a large scale & he wanted my help for raising capital and some business tips… I readily accepted the offer and excited with the project… Before getting into business I wanted to know some know-hows of agriculture and Vijay asked me to make a visit to his village to explain how things happen…

I’m surprised once we entered into his village… Firstly it didn’t look like a village, none of the house looked like a traditional village house… All were bungalows and looked as if we are entering an area like Boat Club in Chennai… Also I was carried away when Vijay told me all the people in the village have created their fortune thru agriculture…

Then we reached Vijay’s house, which was a 50 year old house and the hospitality was beyond excellent… Right behind Vijay’s house flows a river and I forgot the name of the river… Lust green paddy crops, they river and traditional house were all worth a visit…

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This is the entrance of Vijay’s house and this door is 55 years old…

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Myself and Vicky near the river which flows behind Vijay’s house…

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Paddy fields near river and Vijay’s house…

Then Vijay took us to the go down where all the paddy bags are stored and Vijay gave us some insights about how they trade the produce in the commodity market… Vijay introduced me to one of his relative who made a fortune just by trading…

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Paddy Bags & Anand Nataraj…

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Myself & Vicky inside the store room…

Then we headed to one of there farm land where they were harvesting Sugar Cane… They have cultivated Sugar cane in around 300 acres and Vijay’s father multiplied 20 acre of land which he inherited from Vijay’s grand father to 400 – 500 acre empire…

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Look how brave I’m… This is in the Sugar cane field…

My visit to Vijay’s village showed me the potency in agriculture… I agreed to consult Vijay because subject was different, but after seeing the potency I’m even more excited to see his dream come true and get my name behind his success story… I’ll keep you all posted about our experience and plans about the agriculture business…

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Tried my hand driving a tractor…

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Wanted to take a serious one, but ended up funny :)…

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Old ploughing instrument…