Category: Personal

My Birthday 2013


This has been a very different birthday without party, glamour and fun… This time spending time in hospital to care take my dad… This time I’m glad that the first person whom I got blessed was my dad… From mid-night there were calls, wishes thru FaceBook, email and text messages…

Tough this birthday is something unusual compared with my usual celebration… I’m enjoying this moment too…

  • Got wishes from Cogzians
  • Wishes form MOM, Sister & Wife
  • Wishes from 300+ friends and relatives and still poring
  • From Hemang K Bhadani (former cricket player)
  • Director Vikraman Sir
  • Suresh Menon Sir
  • Actor Prem
  • Actor Vimal

Another good news in the morning is one of my good friend Satheesh Seelan has become a proud father of a baby boy and he happily said from next year it is going to be 2 birthday celebration this day…

Also big thanks to Mr.Vipin Sachdev Chairman of Willi and Burgandys for offering me 25% discount voucher on my birthday… A special thanks to you for your gesture SIR!!!

Also it is pouring text wishes from Corporates too…

Text From Franklin Templeton

Dear Anand Nataraj S Birthday Greetings from Franklin Templeton Investments. Looking forward to celebrating many more special days with you.

Text From Standard Chartered Bank

We at StanChart wish you a very Happy Birthday and a wonderful year ahead.

Text From HDFC Bank

Dear Mr.ANAND NATARAJ SIVANESAN,Wish you A Very Happy Birthday,May this year bring you all the Success,Joy & Happiness.Regards HDFC Bank Ltd – Retail Loans

Text From Vodafone which also gifted me with 25 free text messages… Thank you Vodafone…

Hello! Mr. ANAND NATARAJ S , Birthday Greetings from Vodafone! Have a great year ahead.

Dear Customer, on your special day spread happiness with 25 FREE Local and National SMS being gifted to you from Vodafone. Thank you for being with us.

Gift Zone

Got this special gift from my loveable better half and she made my day… Thanks a lot honey…

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Then it is Anand gifting Anand… Yes I wanted to buy As The Crow Flies and I placed an order in FlipKart on Saturday and just it got dispatched… And what an experience it is to make a self gift…

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This would be my bed room cum wardrobe soon…


Am fond of carpentry and modular designs… When I came across this marvel somewhere online I’ve decided this is going to be mine one day…

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It is OK to disobey Parents


Normally an Indian middle class family has too much of caring and intrusion into the upbringing of children… For Indian parents their kids remain a kid always… In my case which is common Indian parental syndrome I still;

  • get approval for taking decisions…
  • career choices had to be discussed…
  • show credit card bill and explain the reason for expenses…
  • tell them the reason for terminating a policy or for delaying any payments…
  • liberty to read my personal emails and mails…
  • liberty to police my blogs and social media posts…

Over a point our parents gets out dated and most parents resist to update themselves… In such cases it is better to disobey them… In India disobedience means a big crime and you will have to face the warmth of relatives and neighbours explaining them why we are irresponsible… In my case;

My parents and grandparents look at me a different person as I took entrepreneurship and my approach towards things… My practical approach has often or always offends them and they keep complaining my behaviour… In reality from my angle they look different 🙂 which they don’t realise…

If you are a person with dreams and a prisoner of parental obligation it is ok to break it by means of ignoring or disobedience… What all it matters if success and when you can surpass tough times and show success you can always win over their confidence… Sometimes even when they don’t recognise your success or efforts there is nothing to worry as they are tuned to be ordinary…

Overall folks don’t bother much about disobeying because;

  • Gandhi got us freedom because of civil disobedience movement and today we are calling him father of the nation…
  • Many successful entrepreneurs like Dhirubhai Ambani, Naraya Murthy, Muchael Dell disobeyed their parents and ran behind their dreams
  • We wouldn’t have got a SuperStar Rajini Kanth if he had obeyed his father

Though emotionally it is tough and difficult to disobey our parents we have to do it considering we have a genuine dream and goal which is not against law or anti social…

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…

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…

Moving with Faith & Determination


I’ve always seen GOD to be crazy as he has given many parameter of experience like happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety, loneliness, relationships, separation, laziness, pain and a lot more…

We are all happy when we FLY GOOD TIMES and mostly when we run through tough most people break some fight it out…

I first had my experience of breakup, backstabbing, losing wealth, dreams shattered and castle broken a couple of years back… My mind was filled with lots of unanswerable questions, unacceptable and dreaming for a miracle…

It took a lot of time for me to understand the reality and come to terms… Slowly I came across a world of experience which I wouldn’t have unless I’ve faced a tough reality….

This experience was on my capacity and I managed to overcome it…

Now god has put me on to the next phase of challenge where I’ve to win my father back, give strength to my mother, motivate my sister, calling (showing) my love to my wife and of course managing professional commitments…

First time god helped me get a trait of gaining self-confidence and a skill of independently handling turbulence…

This time it is managing emotions and managing a team… I keep running with this FAITH;

FAITH is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes sees us darkness…

Last two weeks have shown me how to handle life when it is beyond our control… I did get down on my morals sometimes… But now I started seeing the future where I can motivate a lot depressed people…

I see the future where I’m going to take care of my DAD like how he care-took me…

Prayers and showing more trust on god will definitely pay back….

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting…

Pigeon Chicks in my House


Just noticed a pigeon has formed a nest and has hatched 2 chicks in one of the bedroom window…

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Nervous Day


Woke up to take my dad for a CT scan and after 2 hours doctor visited and said he immediately needs a surgery…

We were asked to do the arrangements for surgery and that too by evening and we were never given time to take any opinion…

My sister reached the hospital and consultations with my uncle and our family friends doctor started… There was complete nervousness and confusion…

By now couple of relatives who were informed started giving their opinion… I was already disturbed and when I saw tears in my sisters eye I thought it was time to act…

I asked my sister to talk to the doctor on surgery… I took up an appointment with a doctor referred by my doctor uncle… I had to collect the CT scan CD and take it to get the opinion…

After begging and showing my emotional cry I could get the CD from Radiologist with lot of fuss… After getting the CD immediately rushed to doctor and got our second opinion and he too recommended for a surgery…

Already he has undergone 3 major surgeries under last 4 months… It was a tough decision to take… We decided to go with surgery… It was very delicate in handling the doctors… For them it was yet another surgery but for us it is our dad…

By leaving the burden on god and praying him we are done with surgery which is said to be successful…

Now our concern is to pray for our dads recovery… He has already undergone a lot of pain and trauma… I plead all the renders to pray for hiatus quick and full recovery…