Author: anandnataraj

Entrepreneur, Blogger, Traveller, Pet Lover, Networker, Social Drinker, Party Animal, Movie Addict, Startup Enthusiast, Organic Gardner, Avid Reader....

My Business Ventures and Failed Venture Lessons


I started as a freelance at the age if 18 and evolved as an entrepreneur from the age of 20… In last 13 years I’ve had my hand on couple of ventures…

FreeLancer: Between 1998 – 2000 I’ve been a freelance and I’ve been into web design and manpower consultancy…

Agriya: This was my first entrepreneurship venture… Agriya was a Web Services company… I learned the nuances of entrepreneurship… I’ve been a part of this company for 8 years and it was a #success…

Distributor Of a Pharma Product: Invested in this venture to help my friend and I had no earlier experience on the domain… This venture was a #failure…

People Justice: Invested and Operated a fortnightly Tamil Magazine which is into investigative journalism… Learned the nuances of the business where I came to know the types of printing, selecting paper, networking with journalist, editorial, layout design, proof reading and distribution…This venture can also be considered #failure… But still we occasionally keep releasing the issue…

Real Estate Venture: Tried my hands on Real Estate which has created a lot of millions in India… Unfortunately this venture is also a #failure…

Cogzidel Technologies: Cogzidel is a Web, Mobile & Social Media services company… I’m a part of this company for last four and half years…

Cogzidel Consultancy Services: CCS is an accounting and business services company… I’m a part of this company for last four and half years…

In all my #failed ventures I was an investor and I invested to help a friend of mine to settle down… Though I learned from those ventures my main take away is;

– Don’t invest if there is no investment from other partner…
– Don’t invest until the person requesting investment does a business plan and show you some commitment…
– Make tough things in written (agreement) and especially make exit difficult for the person…
– Never invest to help someone… If they give-up you loose your money and the purpose of gesture gets defeated…

Planning to set a Stationary Shop


For sometime I’m looking at options and opportunities in setting up some shop either directly or a franchisee… Looking at options where investment is less and less risk… This is more to engage my dad post retirement…

Also I’m fond of entrepreneurship, trying and learning new things.

Yesterday my friend was telling me about setting up a Stationary Shop ti engage his dad or dad-in-law… He chose a Stationary Shop because he has his cousin who is already into the business for some time and knows the nuances of the trade. His cousin has also volunteered in helping in shop choice, setting the shop, introducing to dealers & vendors, guiding in customer spotting and creation…

Mostly by this week we might start with Business Plan and understand the risks and opportunities… As we did an oral planning it was low investment and low return business… But I’m thrilled as I’m entering into trade and retail…

Am very eager to prepare the business plan… Also friends if you have any subject experience or any ideas or thought please share it….

Some People Create a Mark


Human Resource at Cogzidel has always been a challenge… First four HR concentrated more on recruitment and was not up to expectation… Faced many challenges with them like;

– They were too much aligned towards management or with the employees…
– They failed to carry management point to employee and didn’t carry employees grievances to management…
– Were not aggressive or innovative when it came to recruitment…
– Some misused power and became abusive…
– Didn’t understand the expectations of the role…

After failing four times we moved our SEO as HR…To my surprise he understood the dynamics of HR… He managed well between management and employees… He helped solve lot of challenges… Most important thing was he successfully executed things said by his superior… He was with us for year and half… As an HR he served for 7 months…

He called me on 2nd Jan and I thought he has called me to wish for the new year… As expected he wished me and slowly came to the topic… He said he was planning to quit… Without me asking he said he is planning to go abroad and he has taken a call… He said he can give notice as we expected…

All we told him is to give 45 day notice, find a replacement, train him and give Knowledge Transfer… He never shows the exit mood and he worked with same enthusiasm… He fulfilled all our expectations…

Yesterday was his last day and I couldn’t believe we are going to miss him…

I’ve never blogged about the relieving of many core people who had a descent exit… But this guy deserved more and he will always have a special place in our heart and Cogzidel… He has set a new benchmark for the role and for his successor…

I take this opportunity to wish Mr.Senthil Ganesh best luck for a successful career and future….

How CogzidelHR FaceBook Page Brand Positioned?


Two years ago I wanted a platform to reach to talent locally… I was thinking how Yahoo groups worked 10 years ago and was thinking how I can take it up socially… That is when I created this page http://www.facebook.com/cogzidelHR… I asked my HR to post Cogzidel’s job openings there and asked them to get 10000 followers in 6 months…

For many reasons we couldn’t take it the way we wanted the page to be… Also we were able to get only 400 followers in a year and most of them were our employees or ex-employees… Another thing started to happen was there was very poor patronage on the page none of the job posted on the page got shared or got the result we expected…

We came to know only by increasing followers and posting our job openings is not going to help because people were forced to join and we are not offering any value or giving anything… That is when I used the common question in my b-school days “What is in it for me?”…

Four months back we decided to have a person hired and concentrate on the page dedicated… First thing we wanted was to engage the audience and getting more followers was second priority…

When we started started by posting a puzzle or aptitude question every day… Slowly engagement started to grow…

With frequent conversations we were able to generate more ideas to engage the crowd and we slowly added more variety of topics to engage our audience…

Over a point we realised that we have become more like a finishing school… Then I thought it would be a good Corporate Social Responsibility for bridging the employability GAPS faced by Tier II & III youths…

This is the Brand Positioning Campaign for http://www.facebook.com/cogzidelHR

Cogzidel HR is a Social Media CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative by Cogzidel Technologies Private limited, for bridging the employability GAPS faced by Tier II & III youths…

What are employability GAPS??

      Soft-Skills
      Interpersonal Skills
      Aptitude
      Communication Skills
      Team Work
      Technical Skills
      Technology Trends

What is offered?

      Puzzles
      Interview Tips
      Opinion Polls
      Technology News & Updates
      Aptitude Test
      Self learning Tips
      Training Material on PHP & PHP PHP powered frameworks
      Video Tutorials on Soft-Skills, Communication Skills, Interpersonal Skills
      Corporate Etteqites
      Job Openings @ Cogzidel
      Cogzidel Job Culture

What you get?

If you are a student or fresher you will get to exercises and tools to become market ready…

If you are experienced you can be updated technology and industry trends… Also you can help your friends and relatives by sharing Job Openings @ Cogzidel…

Valentines Day Messup


Day before yesterday I wanted to surprise my Girl Friend who works in Bangalore…

After checking with couple of famous websites I settled for RosesandGifts.Com and ordered a cake and chocolate basket…

My mistake was I neither validated online reviews nor I contacted the Customer Support asking for a commitment on delivery…

Yesterday when I checked the order status it was unchanged… I kept calling the number specified on the site… Irony was night one picked the call… I’d have done 30+ calls from noon till evening… Another agony is am unable to send any message through their contact form…

Now I missed a good occasion to surprise my Girl Friend in our first Valentines Day…

Today I’ve shot an email to the Customer Support and send a SMS… Also must check with my bank about the possibility for a charge back…

Overall it is a bad experience with RosesandGifts.Com…

Anand – The Vagabond Entrepreneur


Its been 13 years when I flew out of my parents nest… From then on my parents complain about my transformation to a new species… I was the first in my family to be different and crazy… I did and do things that don’t match my parents expectations as;

– I didn’t want to work and took up entrepreneurship…
– I hate being organized… I’m clumsy and do clumsy things…
– I hate saving money… I spend a lot to keep the eco-system rolling and I invest…
– I hate to be disciplined…. I’m disciplined to be undisciplined…
– I don’t worry making mistakes… I’m today because I did many mistakes than my parents…
– I hate planning things… A lot of my golden memories come from unplanned experience…

When I look back all my happy moments come from my vagabond life… A vagabond might be deprived of wealth and richness but I can vouch they are the happiest…

My own parents have created layers of materials that brings them happiness… I’ve never seen them being happy as they never get contented with what they have…They always felt sad for what they dint have and hardly took steps to get what they wanted… They always expected miracles to happen…

Someone who has been raised in such a middle class attitude nest I longed to live like a vagabond… I occasionally take break and live like a vagabond and return back to the nest… Now I long for my next vagabond adventure…

Looking for a hobby


As a student I had hobbies like stamp collection, fish breeding, browsing, poster collection and writing to my pen pal…

Once I became an entrepreneur I was fully into it and there was a gap… During 2008 when I was running thru a tough phase I wanted to distract myself and that is when I started with hobbies like blogging, Tweeting, Travelling, Driving, Watching Movies alone at home and amateur photography…

After 5 years blogging has become a habit… Travelling, Driving and Movie watching has come down drastically… For some reasons photography hasn’t caught up my interest…

From this year on I want to get hooked to some new hobby and not sure what to do and how to do… Also I want to work independently and work from different places… Want to drive somewhere halt in an unknown place and work… Goto my favorite Andaman island and work from there… Some of the hobbies I’ve in mind are…

Running a e-commerce site: One option have a hobby as per my liking is running a website… From my childhood i’m hooked indian arts like Kashmiri crafts, Tanjore paintings, Mamallapuram sculptures etc… It would be an idea to total all arts and crafts makers and create a platform online to sell them…

Coffee Brewing: Though I’ve passion to learn coffee brewing and create a unique (or secret) recipe… But not sure if I can do this as a vagabond…

Write a Book: Again this is another I can do with my tablet, smart phone, some good apps and internet… This will allow me to be a vagabond and pursue my work…

Entrepreneur Training Academy: I always evangelised Entrepreneurship and wanted to make it consistently…

Start an Incubation Center: Am setting up a small incubation center in Chennai which has all infrastructure to start a company and a small seed capital for startup…

In the above I prefer to run a e-commerce site or write a book as that gives me flexibility… For the incubation center it would be started with my friends companies and probably neXT year I can have that as a new hobby…

Reality Behind Fresher to Employability GAPS


We hire a lot of fresher at Cogzidel Groups and we put a lot of efforts on Training them… These days we work more on their Personality, Soft-Skills and Inter-Personal Skills than on their core competency…

The reason for this is the education system in the country and the attitude behind institute owners… Colleges are more business oriented than working on student skills… Institutions are reluctant on hiring skilled teachers and investing on proper infrastructure…

Last month when we went for a campus drive… Correspondent of the college asked for feedback on their student skills… We said they were very low on confidence because of the limitations on communication, soft skills etc…

Correspondent immediately asked for ways to improve things and we immediately gave our recommendation… Particularly we asked them to tie-up with a finishing school…

He immediately asked if that will cost him? When we said it will… He said what they are offering in college is more than enough… This experience showed opened an ugly truth and we decided it is waste of time to work with colleges…

After that incident we have stared to tweak our training process… These days we work on the gaps and we do more of finishing school training initially and then move to training on core competency…

Had meeting with Bala Murugan


It was long time since I’ve spent time with Bala… Finally it ended to be a productive and fulfilling meeting…

– I had asked him to help me on insurance refunds for my dad and to get it done..
– Discussed about PF…
– Discussed about Group MediClaim…
– Discussed about gratuity…
– About sales team building…

Then it was in-depth discussion on Sales strategy and I covered most of the places where I failed when I was handling the sales team…

We have jotted the points for a 2 week intense training program… And their one month pilot sales project…

Have the training program scheduled by 11 am today… Am rushing to office and will post a separate blog on the experience….

Albert Einstein: 10 of his best quotes


“No problem can be solved at the same level of awareness that created it ”

“If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y, and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

“Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.”

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

“Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it’ll spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

“I don’t know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”