Business

"If you think you can make it out on your own you should at least give it a shot.", "If you think you can, You should", "It is your life, you live only once" - These are some of the sentences that would summarize my opinion about entrepreneurship. I am an entrepreneur and am enjoying every second of being one. I know how difficult it has been to be in a system that does not, in any way, promote entrepreneurial spirit and does what ever it can to stifle the spirit. I have survived this long and I know I shall prevail. Because of what I have faced I have made it a point to do whatever I can to help get other entrepreneurs going.

I have always wanted to run a business where I get a chance to interact with people and it is one of the reasons why I started the PC Sales and Services division of Zyxware. It is very interesting to watch human behavior and very challenging to interact with people through a commercial transaction. I see different kinds of people and different kinds of behaviors. Yesterday I came across a gentleman who was working in a government organization and who wanted me to help him bend a rule to get some extra cash.

My pricing strategy at Zyxware is to price products as cheap as possible with the hope of building volumes and of building market penetration. We offer one of the cheapest prices for laptops in India and as a result we get queries from all over India. Additionally I don't believe in gimmicks like marking up the prices and giving discounts or giving free gifts as I feel that they amount to deception. In spite of all this people still surprise me with their mindsets about seller behaviors.

Some time back I had blogged about building owners manipulating the interpretation of building codes to construct illegal structures near roads being widened in Trivandrum. The Corporation of Trivandrum decided to take stern action against this and decided to demolish all buildings that had been built without proper sanctions near the roads being widened. The demolishing team turned off the local electric power distribution for their work and this left Zyxware in almost 1 1/2 days without electricity.

I really like to interact with students. I know that the future of the world is with the students of today and to be able to make any significant change in the world you have to reach out to the students. Another specific reason why I like to interact with students is that it gives me an opportunity to share my experiences and possibly inspire young entrepreneurs among them to set out on their own. I believe that only those people who are willing to take that extra risk will be able to make that extra impact in this world. Today I met one such future entrepreneur at my office.

I have been fighting tooth and nail in as fair a manner as I can think of in the local market for the last two years. It has been lot of fun. It is just like playing a big game where you have real life players. I have come across some bad business practices and some rotten ones. This is one rotten one that I came across recently from one of my competitors.