Chetan Bhagat

Chetan Bhagat

A former banker turned author, Chetan Bhagat is credited with having helped extend the reach of literature to a broader audience in India.

Seven years ago an Indian investment banker penned a story of three friends at the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the country’s top schools. Soon after, the book became a best seller, hugely popular among India’s college crowd. Same thing happened a year later, when he published his second novel, this time on the life of call center employees .
The books were “Five Point Someone” (2004) and “One Night @ the Call Center (2005).” The former banker is Chetan Bhagat, an author credited with having helped extend the reach of literature to a broader audience in India. While some critics initially brushed off his success as mere fluke, his lasting popularity proved them wrong. Among the country’s teenagers and twenty-somethings, he is little short of a youth icon. Last year, he even made it in Time magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
His books have gone on to become Bollywood hits, the most successful of which has been “3 Idiots,” a blockbuster inspired by his first novel starring Aamir Khan.
After tackling the sensitive topic of the Gujarat riots in “The 3 Mistakes of My Life,” (2008) and inter-communal marriages in his “2 States,” Mr. Bhagat’s fifth book is set released in October.

The book, “Revolution 2020,” addresses the hot topic of corruption, a theme that resonates loudly in India in the aftermath of the mass anticorruption protests led by social activist Anna Hazare.

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20 Business Ventures Ideas for budding entrepreneurs which can be started within Rs 5 lakh only

No.	Business	What's it about	Skills  Needed	Amount you need to start (Rs)	Gross Profit (%)	Break even period	Company in  the Name	Entrepreneur(s)
1	Ultra-short temping services	Arrange temporary manpower for event managers. There are young people reaady to make some quick money and event managers are looking for more hands.	Networking	1,000	20	10 months	Radicals, Mumbai	Chirag Bhatia, Varun Parekh
2	Shoe wash	Canvas shoes were cleaned earlier with just detergent and an old toothbrush. But people who wear today's fancy sneakers prefer paying a bit to have them cleaned by experts.	Knowledge of using the chemicals involved, marketing	7,000	40	3 months	Shoe Laundry, Mumbai	Sandeep Gajakas
3	Food delivery	How do you lay out a dinner spread with the best dishes from the best restaurants in town? Or, get food from your favourite resturant? A specialist food delivery service can do just that.	Marketing and sales	15,000	20	2 months	Dial-a- Meal, Hyderabad	Pani Kumar Reddy
4	Uniform making	B-schools are making dress codes compulsory for students. Law and medical colleges may do the same. Tie up with these institutions to deliver dresses at student-friendly prices.	Man management	20,000	N.A.	1 year	Ecstacy Enterprises, Kolkata	Atiq Shah
5	Property management	Find a suitable workplace for business enterprises and save their time by doing all the cumbersome paperwork for them.	Marketing and sales	50,000	50	1 month	E-States International,Pune	Sundip Joshy, Sachin Dhanwala
6	Telecom Business Consultantcy	With the spirit of entrepreneurship reaching new heights, leverage your knowledge and expertise to make business plans for budding entrepreneurs.	Networking	50,000	N.A.	4 months	Tons Telecom, Bangalore	Sridhar Pai
7	Wedding planning	Weddings in India have unmatched opulence and are a long drawn process in some parts. Organise them for people who do not have the time.	Creativity	50,000	15	Depends on projects you get	TAB Events, Delhi	Rita Bhasin
8	Concierge services	Arrange services like medical treatment, babysitting and even plumbing for newcomers to a place.	Networking, communication skills	50,000	10	6 months	Concierge 4 India, Delhi	Arvind Pandey
9	House keeping (hotels)	Help hotels keep their rooms spick and span.	Man management, communication skills	50,000	20	N.A.	Pristine Interiors, Delhi	Ritu Mukherji
10	Pre-recruitment and assessment exercise	There is a talent crunch in India. Help cos hire workers by preparing tests and then evaluating applicants on the basis of their performance.	Marketing and sales	75,000	25	2 months	MeritTrac, Bangalore	Madan Padaki
11	Custom-making chocolates	Prepare the perfect food, chemically speaking, and serve in fancy wrappers.	Creativity, love for chocolates	100,000	30-35	1 week	Rage Chocolatiers, Bangalore	Rashmi Vaswani
12	Bus service website	Inter-city bus service is booming. Create a webpage that shows all the bus routes and their rates and through which tickets can be booked.	Knowledge of IT, bus routes	200,000	10	5 months	RedBus.in	Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju, Sudhakar Pasupunuri, Bangalore
13	Custom-making festival gifts	Innovatively choose festival gifts for a client and have them appropriately wrapped.	Sensitivity, idea of direct gift makers' outlets	300,000	20	3 months	Sacred Moments, Mumbai	Prakash Mundhra
14	Online ads	Have a directory of websites and use your access to those in charge of them to get the right niche ad space for a client, so that he maximises his reach to his target audience.	Media planning, knowledge of Net, networking	300,000	20	1 year	Ozone Media, Bangalore	Kiran Gopinath
15	Verification services	Informaton security is a big concern for BPOs. Check the background of prospective employees to avoid corporate fraud.	Networking with police, legal knowledge	400,000	10	6 months	Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations India (PCII), Gurgaon	Krishnendu Biswas, works for PCII as MD
16	Tank cleaning	Growing use of water tanks and concern for hygiene gives you a chance to displace the guy in dirty overalls and professionally clean tanks with the right equipment.	Tech-savvy	400,000	30	7 months	TanClean, Mumbai	Sunil Uplab
17	Travel guide	Pollution, long working hours, stress - customise trips to forests, fishing riverines and mountains for those who just wanna chill	Knowledge about getaways, high fun quotient	1,50,000	35	24 months	Outrigor, Bangalore	Sandeep Chakrabarti
18	Revenue credit billing	Manage the credit finances of hospitals that are outsourcing this job. The quicker you recover money for your client the more the chances of success.	Knowledge of insurance, networking	2,00,000	20	3 months	Health and Insurance Integrated, Noida	Deepak Mendiratta
19	Merchandising services	Merchandising by business establishments is growing. Do it efficiently for them.	Marketing, creativity	2,00,000	10	15 months	Desk Digital Print, Delhi	Yogesh Bharadwaj
20	Housekeeping (offices)	Help Shining India. Get its offices cleaned.	Man management, communication skills	5,00,000	5	12 months	Collections, Delhi	Ramesh

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Business Leaders should Learn From Steve Jobs

Every speaker these days refers to Apple. They cite Apple case studies and constantly quote Steve Jobs. If we were to allow every speaker free rein to talk about Apple, we might as well rename our events 'Apple this' or 'Apple that'.
9 out of 10 speakers cite Apple. Of course, the brand didn't achieve such universal reverence without reason. So let the following advice, inspired by Steve Jobs, form the blueprint for any company with serious brand ambitions.

1. What industry category do you operate within? Break out of it.
   If you had to choose one option, what industry would you say Apple operates within? Computers, music, telephones, or retailing? In terms of revenue, the answer is phones. However, the name Apple first came to be associated with computers. When Apple released the iPod, Walt Mossberg, a product reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, interviewed Steve Jobs. Mossberg spoke to Jobs about his reasons for venturing into the music industry. Jobs explained that Apple is a digital products company, not simply a computer company.
   Had Apple defined itself as a computer company, it would wave goodbye to 2/3 of its current revenue. Is this where your company is heading today?
2. "When you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud, either."
   So said the legendary advertising man Leo Burnett, although Steve Jobs could just as well have uttered these words. When attending a board meeting of what shall remain an unnamed Fortune 100 company, the chief of innovation announced 31 new revisions to their existing product portfolio. After his presentation, he felt best represented his iPad moment. "Two perhaps," he replied. Wrong answer. There's only room for one. Neither you, your company, nor the world has patience for 31 tweaks these days.
   Will your next product release represent your iPad moment? If not, go back to the drawing board.
3. Even if you predict the future just one minute before it happens, you're still in good time.
   In San Francisco during the late 1990s. Steve Jobs made a surprise visit on stage. That was the moment he threw the new Apple Newton message pad into the iconic Apple bin on stage. Apple was too early in the game and once the game began, they were too late. This was a lesson Steve Jobs learned the hard way. The Walkman came before the iPod, Microsoft's tablet arrived before the iPad, and the Blackberry arrived before the iPhone--though Apple's impeccable timing managed to beat them all.
   Being first isn't necessarily best--understanding timing is the essence of a breakthrough.
4. "What do you want the stores to say to people when they walk in?"
   Steve Jobs questions to Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, when he was asked for advice on the redesign of Disney's retail stores.
   If your storefront, product, service, website, store fit-out could talk to the customer, what would it say?
5. Identify and attack your enemy in public.
   When Apple's iTunes program was already well ensconced on millions of PCs, Steve Jobs was asked what it was like to be a major Windows developer. He replied without hesitation, "It's like handing a glass of ice water to someone in Hell." Jobs never shied away from pointing out Apple's number #1 enemy in public. CEOs could learn from this.
   Often behaviour that's too self-consciously politically correct can lead to a watered-down focus and profile, both internally and externally. An enemy can define who you are, and who you're not.
6. Don't read about your competitors to learn more--visit them.
   However, it is probably a good idea to conduct such a visit before they've become your competitor. During Steve Jobs's early days in the business, he did, in fact, pay a visit Sony. He wanted to learn about the Walkman, as well as get a sense of Sony's well-oiled operation. Jobs was heavily inspired by both. Indeed, many companies can boast of Jobs visiting them in the past--providing Apple with inspiration.
   When did you last pay a visit to a potential competitor?
7. Don't take your success for granted--reset your watch every time.
   I've always been amazed by how some of the world's most successful organizations continue to work as tirelessly as they did when they first began. For example, take the rock group U2. Their most recent promotional tour was as intensive as the first one they embarked on 15 years ago, impressing even the most jaded rock journalists both then and now. Steve Jobs's unwavering enthusiasm for Apple was the same. Walt Mossberg recalls first seeing the iPad at Jobs's home, because, as Mossberg explained, "He was too ill at the time to go to the office."
   Act entrepreneurial. Assume you have no equity--fight as hard for your product as you did the very first time you promoted it.
8. Every company should learn from their own mistakes and success stories.
   In reality, all companies experience a regular turnover in staff. So, the filing of experiences and the internal education often fail to capture invaluable knowledge for future reference. Apple managed to circumvent this by entrusting their HR department to employ academics and historians to document events (both good and bad), publish internal papers, and systematize the transfer of information to new Apple employees.
   Have you systematically captured and transferred the good and bad experiences within your organisation?
9. Make your brand sticky.
   Gillette is the master of the "sticky" brand. Once you buy a Gillette razor, you are forced to buy Gillette's blades. Similarly, once you've installed Windows on your PC, it's almost impossible to avoid installing Office. True, you can buy an iPod shuffle for not much more than $100 but, beware, this is just the beginning--the chances are you'll soon be buying anything and everything that starts with a small "i."
   Have you made your product or service sticky?
10. Treat your brand as a religion.
    If you've read any of my blogs or articles, you'll know all about my obsession with the parallels between religion and brands. 

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