Building an Organization

Reposted from article written for our alumni magazine

I was wondering on what I should write about. The alum team approached me to write about my entrepreneurial journey straight after NITIE, however I felt it would be nice if I write something that is of interest to many. I decided to write about my learning's during the attempts in building an organization.

It’s been just about 30 months of bootstrapping experience and fewer attempts to build an organization, which is far negligible compared to magnanimity of this subject. I am just trying to pen my thoughts and understanding of what it is.

For a quick intro, I moved out of NITIE to take up fulltime job as the business that I had started while I was a student. During early 2009, recession came as an omen for me to take up the entrepreneurial journey, and I got my winter internship papers ready and moved out of campus without informing Pundir sir, our placement dean (frankly I did not have courage to tell this to him). It’s been a wonderful experience since then, growing from a 100 sft. space and 2 employees to a recent brand new 2000 sft. OFFICE and a 15 member TEAM.

Early out of college, during my stint with the Non-Profit - BHUMI (www.bhumi.in), I realized, identity of an organization came always from the people it is represented by and the culture it holds. I felt, the reason for me to business was not just making money and rendering my services, but to build an organization. I did not want to be a freelancer delivering out of my creative brain, but wanted to move ahead and bring together a great team that would bring and implement wonderful ideas.

The quest of understanding how organizations are built began. I wanted to take up this challenge on building an organization. I started reading, discussing, observing, and experiencing how people and organizations behave, and here are few quick that came as learning for me:

Defining Values & Culture
The first question for me was what kind of organization I wanted to build? What would its values / culture be? I wanted an organization that’s formed by people who are passionate, highly motivated, and do things for themselves, as of their own. Place where people rejoice their work. In simple words, the one full of ownership and responsibility.

This was a challenge! Ownership and sense of responsibility needs freedom & flexibility. I decided not to have any kind of monitoring system. Not everyone was ready to accept unbound freedom, many of them wanted to be monitored and looked into. With its abuse, projects got delayed and it affected deliveries. This was probably also the reason for why my partner decided to move out. I believed, it would take consistent and conscious effort to help the team to “handle” freedom. It’s just a matter of time, and needed another element called “motivation” that brings in the “responsibility”.

It’s still a struggle, every time a new person joins and also within me, but will soon be the culture of the organization.


Sharing a Story
For an organization / team to work together, it needs a string that binds them - a reason. Few call it a vision, and I call it a story. It’s a story that you believe in, and now embark on a journey to make others believe in your story. Every person in the team needs to have a reason to be a part of that story.

It took us about 5 failed attempts with various set of people to really get a team that believes in our product idea, before we made our first sale. And it was important for the team to believe it for it to come to life by itself.

Dealing with ambiguity
This is what is feel one of the most important challenge for both people and organizations. It is a paradox between having a clear set of instructions, expectations and deadlines versus being told everything, routine work & laxity. It’s always exciting to maintain a balance between both the aspects. I realized people left me for I was not able to maintain the balance neither was able to help them. As an organization what we are to do is build a culture that can balance! People find it easier to deal with ambiguity.

There is a lot more I wish to share, will do sometime later, and so much of learning with just 30 months, I am excited to see that the life ahead has in store of me lots of learning and experiences.

So, where are we today? We have a team of 15, fully motivated and passionate, wanting to work together and owning and building the organization. We have successfully built our first product – Vaave (an alumni engagement platform), started two more products, and by the time you read this article we would have shifted to our new office on Road No 10, Banjara Hills, an upscale location in Hyderabad. Kudus to all our team for their relentless effort.

Seeking all your wishes and blessings.

Warm Regards
Paresh Masade
Class of 2009, PGDIE

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Spiritual Entrepreneur

Satya Sai Baba! People who believe him call him GOD! Few tag him as fake... Few others Say, he did good despite controversies.. Some say he did no harm... I am not sure, i probably was never got a chance to get closer to peep into his life even... so wish to restrain and play safe!

What struck me when I was going through newspapers was... he built an empire of Rs. 40,000 crore! I don't know why, i quickly relate things to business and here are a few thoughts i could collect...

Entrepreneur solves "needs" of people, and creates a market..... for me he is no less than an entrepreneur who capitalized on the innate need of people - "Belief". We often fall short of belief in ourself and seek external support to reinforce it... More often its either GOD or people whom we feel are near to GOD! Trusting someone you feel is more powerful as it removes fear and gives us power!

So this (holy) man "May" have used various techniques to tell people that he is near to GOD. Spent money on projects to attract more funds... anyway religion and GOD is a complex topics! I would not wish to touch it with my limited knowledge!

What I really liked is the godly man is a really great entrepreneur... Built a 40000 crore completely tax free empire just serving a simple innate need of society  - "belief".

Please don't curse me if you are a follower... i just put what i thought!

Perspectives of Nation Building

For last couple of weeks… I was caught up in much of a debate with my fellow mates at BHUMI and few others who knew about Freedom Under Construction.

The discussions was mainly around points raised by my dearest friend Rakesh Dubbudu, An ardent RTI Activist (you read about his work in newspapers once almost every couple of months) and one of founding members of BHUMI. He raised simple and most valid questions that every citizen need to think on...Plenty of discussions already on the facebook page). One question that struck me was…

Why are we doing things that Govt. is supposed to do? 

Here is my attempt NOT to answer the question… but just wish to express my thoughts on them...

Are we supposed to do them? Govt. is supposed to do in first place; we need to remind the responsible authority and get things done. NGO’s just do all the work that Govt. is supposed to do… (NGO’s I mean all those emphatic people who take up activities feeling sorry about the situation)

The questions were very appropriate and sound logical to me… and so I dwelled on question, why do NGO’s and an altogether a parallel framework exist? Is there really a need for us (citizens) to take up activities that Govt. is supposed to do but not doing?

The viewpoints though looked contradictory; both converge at one thing - “Call for action!”.

They seemed to be just different schools of thought

1. Some take up protest, show the authority elected what they need to do and get things done. 
2. Some work on them as much as they can without any direct protest… but taking as little help they can get from people who are supposed to do. 

Both feel it’s their responsibility as citizen to do something and at the end they do it.

Is it a debate to find out which action is right or wrong, which way will get you sustainable results/ which one will quick results… I feel it is inappropriate. Everybody is contributing whatever they feel is best and in the right spirit, and every effort is needed. Right or wrong is just a perspective relative to the reference of time & circumstances axis. People view it from different coordinates and so have different perspective images. :)

Looking through our past, our freedom struggle… is it Gandhi’s non-violence movement that brought us freedom or is it activism of Azad and Bose… it’s difficult to say, and it’s even difficult to measure. Definitely a combination of every effort put in various forms for about 100 years resulted in freedom from British.

If you find a robber in your home… What should you do? Call police/ fight yourself / Shout for help/ leave him to rob (else he will harm you) and take action later? I can’t say… but I am sure... you will do whatever you feel appropriate at that point of time. That's it all about.

I feel it’s not worth to discuss which way is right… It like asking which cell in your body is keeping you alive? Cells take birth, do the duty they are supposed to do and die, and new cells take birth… they evolve and that’s how they made you man from a monkey. That was a result of each cell’s feeling to evolve as something better. The question, “which is better, monkey or man?” can again attract different perspectives and debate… fact is that they co-exist. Every cell wants to evolve to better, so do every human, and that’s how a nation is formed.

The most appreciative thing in both kinds of people is they were the people who wanted to TAKE ACTION in whatever way seemed appropriate to them. And that’s what makes the difference!