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Kasol
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
The 4-day trip to Kasol with a friend was meant as a stress-buster, to find new perspectives and to just BE. It turned out to be much more amazing than I had imagined. Listening to crazy stories of other travellers first hand had a huge impact. These stories are what made the trip memorable. So, instead of talking about the touristy stuff - what to do, what to see, where to eat, I would like to share with you, some of these very real and personal stories.
Ivan, pronounced Eevan was a storyteller. 40, divorced, father of a kid he had with a girl he married because he got her pregnant, Ivan is a traveller. He studies chess books and recreates moves between Kasparov & Kramnik but says he doesn’t understand why they made this move or that. He sailed from the Africas to the Carribbean with a friend and 2 other people he had just met. He comes from a country where he says “ Israelis have had the worst”, with his family moving from Bosnia after the 2nd world war because the forces wanted people to build houses and infrastructure. He got me into reading Osho books and says they are cinema for the mind.
Kent, a young South African, IT guy, travelling alone and with a crop of hair which would put David Luiz to shame. I asked him how he feels about travelling alone and if he ever gets bored. He said something which stayed with me till long after - “You have to like your own company. I like mine and so I enjoy travelling on my own”.
Zooey, British, still has her accent but doesn’t know it, left home when 18, fell in love with an Israeli in India. Travelled with him for two months, broke up, went to Cambodia and Vietnam to travel where she bumped into some people she met in Kasol. Now lives in Tel-Aviv a floor below a drug dealer and studies psychology. Talks fast, doesn’t care if someone’s listening or not.
One of our many Israeli neighbors was Shachar. During her time with the army, herresponsibility was to ring the alarm whenever Palestine shoots a missile towards Israel. Just 21, she dreams of having her own farm full of dogs and training them to be with and aid blind people.
Another one of them was a dude whose name I forget. “I’ve had too many loves (sic), they all break my heart”, he tells us. Guitar strumming, didgiredoo playing, drum beating, ‘McShit’ tee-shirt wearing, with the most brilliant tattoo on his arm, he sits outside his room playing with the little kids. He was a very happy man.
The owner of the guesthouse we stayed at was a sweet lady with long dark hair and in the words of another person the ‘smile of a queen’. She sits with us listening to our stories and sharing her own while her two beautiful little daughters who played with us while we and the neighbors did you-know-what in Kasol.
Perhaps the most interesting character we met was a Baba, who called himself a Naga Sadhu. He wore aviators, grooved on ‘Badtameez Dil' listening to it on his high end phone, and wore a tiger skin print cloth around his waist. Devotee of Lord Shiva, he told us of the number of years since he left home and now finds his residence in a cave high up in the mountains around the place.
Jaipur
A couple of weeks back, I took a weekend trip to the pink city, Jaipur with a couple of my friends. It turned out to be one of the most relaxing and fulfilling trips I’ve had. And this was a sentiment shared by my friends as well. For a man who has lived in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi for the last 3 years, Jaipur’s slow pace was a breath of fresh air. The place seems relaxed, running at its own pace and has a nonchalant charm about it.
This is a short account of what I experienced. All the information is based on what the locals there told me and intentionally not verified from any other source. Excuse the quality of pictures, the three of us are noob photographers.
1. Jal Mahal, The Lake Palace:
This is a beautiful, glowing palace in the middle of a lake. What amazes me is that the place was so deserted. You know how many people were there except the three of us — 5. And three of them were street food and ice cream vendors. If this was somewhere in Mumbai, it would be perennially crowded. Marine drive in South Bombay, for example, has a pretty similar feel minus the quiet.
2. The climb up the hill
Rajasthan is known for its forts. And jaipur being the capital at the time, has some of the most amazing ones. The route, like all hills, is pretty awesome and makes for a pretty comfortable ride. We stopped at a place on the way where we clicked this. The big glowing thing is the Lake Palace. And the best part, there was absolutely no one else there which is crazy and immensely relaxing. This lack of crowd and being able to just be was a constant theme on the trip. The peace and the quiet was almost overwhelming.
3. Nahargarh fort:
Goofy friends: Mohit and Nishit
On the way up the forts, we had an option of going to Amer or Nahargarh. We chose Nahargarh and man was it worth it. I was so surprised by the fact that the place was still open at night at 10. Again, there were not too many people, just one small group of 4. And guess what, the open air cafe served beer! For a token entry fees of 50 bucks, we got some refreshments as well. The whole city is obviously visible from the fort and looks beautiful.
4. Choolgiri, The Jain temple
View from the top
Most of the cities in Rajasthan are surrounded by mountains. So, the roads are often made by cutting out a part of the mountains as you can see in this. This place is a pretty steep climb with some sharp turns. And it is usually hot so even though you can walk, I’d recommend taking a car up to the temple. The temple itself is pretty much what you’d expect from a Jain temple if you’ve ever been to one.
Tunnels shaped in royal arches
New ride
5. Prem Pan Bhandar
Mouthful of happiness
The happiest guy you would see is right in that picture, behind the two of us in that photo frame. Who wouldn’t eat at that shop after that picture. This place had the most delicious paans ever and we made it a point to go there both the nights.
6. Lassiwala
Out of stock at 3 in the afternoon
I wish I had a close up picture of this place. Lassiwala is supposed to be the best lassi place in Jaipur. When we arrived there at 3 in the afternoon, his stock had finished up, all the instruments packed and the shop owner was still sitting there doing absolutely nothing, smiling at us as if saying, “Yes, I am that good”. Like any good thing, this shop also has its share of copycats who have opened up shops next to it where we eventually had mediocre lassis. They still have to slog through the day while the guy next to them finishes up a day’s worth of business in the first few hours.
8. City Palace
The City Palace was an extensive tour of almost 3 hours. The yellowish palace is the actual current residence of the king who happens to be 15 years old and studies at Mayo. The flag hoisted is the official flag of the kingdom. Whenever the king is in the palace, an additional blue flag goes up. The rest of the place is open to public viewing. We got to see old pictures, robes, courtyards, weapons and lot of interesting stuff. The kings of Jaipur are called ‘Sawai’ - translated literally it means one and a half. They were known to be extremely strong and could take on more than one man in a duel, hence the name.
Other places we visited:
Food was a major part of the trip. Here are some other places we went to.
Rawat Kachoriwala - Started the trip with the must haves onion kachoris at probably the most popular mithai shop in Jaipur
Tapri: A very chilled out teafe serving good tea.
100% Rock: I wasn’t expecting much from Jaipur’s pubs which was a wise decision. This place played the same songs you’d hear over and over again in most places. And I think they were trying to copy Hard Rock Cafe but did so with much less taste - they had crappy pictures of guitars instead of real guitars hanging on the walls.
Laxmi Mishthan Bhandar: Even though I am a Marwari, I am not a big fan of Dal Baati, unlike my friends. And according to them, the daal baatis they had here were some of the best.
Another kachori shop: They used to serve the kachoris in Raj Mandir, Jaipur’s oldest movie theater.
Discouragement for future entrepreneurs
For those of you who are thinking of starting up your own company, know one thing — startups are incredibly difficult. Entrepreneurship is not exactly as romantic as it looks from the outside. Here are some of the things I have learnt from experiences of my own and of my entrepreneur friends.
1. Building a startup is a lot of hard work, much more than you would have ever imagined.
2. Your friends will get tired of asking you to come hang out with them and getting a ‘no’ all the time. Your ‘social’ circle will consist mostly of entrepreneurs.
3. Your conversations would revolve mostly around startups. Anything else would seem trivial to you. This will irritate you and your non-entrepreneur friends.
4. There’ll be times when you will feel lonely and disheartened. There’ll be days when it would get difficult for you to get out of bed. Here’s a great interview with AirBnB founder on this.
5. Your relationships with your loved ones will suffer. You will find much less time and put in much less effort to make them feel special.
6. Your parents won’t understand what you do. And when they ask you how much money you make or how much you save, you wouldn’t know what or how to answer it.
7. You will become very ambitious but you will get rejected over and over again.
8. After a point of time, your account balance will be low perennially.
9. Every press that your competitor gets will make you feel as if someone punched you in the stomach.
10. There’ll be doubters — a lot of them, even your friends, family and your loved ones.
11. At some point, the realities of life, like marriage, sickness, emergencies will come up and you will have to deal with it.
12. Your health and general fitness will deteriorate. You will stop taking care of yourself. You will eat shit food.
13. Those who believe in you will expect the world from you and when you fail, it is going to hurt.
14. You would wonder where the next month’s rent is going to come from. You will have to borrow money from friends and family.
15. You will go to a lot of meetings which you’d be excited about but they’d eventually come to nothing.
16. Your lifestyle will change - there’ll be much lesser drinking out or travelling out of station. Going out to watch movies would be a rare event.
17. You will spend your weekends at work.
18. You won’t get good sleep. Sometimes, you will lie awake in bed, thinking of all the stuff you have to do. One of my friends actually speaks Android code in his sleep.
19. There will be disputes between you and your co-founders, sometimes ugly ones.
I don’t want to tone down this post by saying that it is easy to handle these problems because these are very real things that might happen to you, so be prepared. This is not to discourage anyone but to warn people who are getting into it because they have a romantic notion of entrepreneurship in their head and are unaware of the challenges that come up.
Get into it only if you enjoy solving the problem you’ve taken up. Don’t do it unless you enjoy the whole drill, the extremes of emotions, the roller-coaster journey. Do it because you’d rather not do anything else.
I do it because this is what puts my heart at rest.
Additional reading:
How we found our designer
And almost did not hire her:
One of my mentors once told me: “Good design is no longer a USP for internet products. It is table stakes”. We’ve believed in this all along and have wanted to build the best possible experience at Musicfellas. A major role in that has been of our designer, Sneha Patel. This is the story of how we found our designer and almost did not hire her.
It was a Saturday, the day of the monthly Startup Saturday meet. As a newly turned entrepreneur, I thought it would be wise to meet some of the people from the startup community. So, I went for what would be my first and only SS meet.
But before that, let’s turn the clock back a few hours: In the morning, I get a call from a newly opened Dentist chain called MyDentist. They offer me a free consultation. I decide to go because it happens to be close to the venue of the SS event as well.
Back to the SS. I got late at the dentist’s and thus reached the event a little late. Sweating and panting, I signed up and paid the fees. Suddenly, someone asked for people who were going to make a presentation about their startups. I had no idea why, but I raised my hand.
The presentations began, and they were full blown powerpoint presentations. And I obviously didn’t have one. I just didn’t know that you were supposed to actually bring a proper presentation. So, I decided to just swing it.
I tore up two pieces of paper and wrote MUSICFELLAS across them. Holding it up in front of the audience, I spoke. I spoke about music. I spoke about the independent artists industry. And I spoke about design. I must have spoken a lot about design because at tea break, a girl I just said hello to said she was looking for me. I had no idea why. So, we just spoke a little bit about what we do, exchanged cards and bid goodbye. I did tell her that we were looking for a designer and she happened to be one. She was a self taught designer, who had just recently started out on her own and we would have probably been one of her first few clients.
A few days later, I got an email from her saying she would like to discuss where we left off. I checked her portfolio and honestly, I wasn’t impressed with the website designs she had done. What we were looking for at the time was a website designer but her expertise seemed to be in identity design, which by the way was pretty damn good. So, I told her so. And, that was that.
A few days later I got an email from her with an attachment — Musicfellas — website design. And I was completely blown away.
Musicfellas - Original website proposal
The rest, as they say is history.
Key Takeaway: Never discount first timers. Never take things at their face value. And most importantly, talk about your startup. And I mean really talk, communicate. Let your passion reach out and touch others. Because the best people see a good fit when they see one. You are the biggest evangelist of your startup, behave like one.
Oh and why the dentist story, later I got to know, that our designer was also the identity designer for my Dentist chain. Happy coincidences.
Pale Blue Dot
This is one of the most epic photographs I have ever seen. Have a look and take a guess what it could be.
You know what this is? That tiny pale blue encircled dot - that’s you. And me. And everyone you ever loved. That dot is Earth. Yes, our Earth.
This photograph was taken from space at a distance of about 6 billion kilometers from us. From that distance, we look like a tiny dot in the space. Our actions, what we do, what we don’t, what we worry about are all happening inside that blue dot. That’s all that there is.
We are nothing but a tiny speck. Stardust in the sky. We are small, invisible and probably inconsequential in the grand cosmic scheme of things. There is no reason not to do what you love. Nobody’s keeping a score. It is you, at this moment that matters. Fear not the unknown, because there is very little that we know and much to learn and explore. Go out, find what puts our heart to rest.
"To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die" - Carl Sagan
One year
Today, I complete 1 full year of quitting my first job. The ride since then has been adventurous to say the least. It has been a, *cliche alert*, roller-coaster year.
Before quitting my job, I had certain fears. Not being able to maintain my lifestyle was the biggest one. While at work, I had gotten used to spending money whenever and wherever I wanted to. And I was afraid that I might not be able to handle losing that freedom.
That lifestyle did go away. But, I managed to pull through. Eating out now means roadside aloo paranthas, and rolls or eating in Dhabas rather than Pasta Arrabiata and Fondues in fancy restaurants. Maggi has become a staple part of the diet. Exploring new pubs and sports bars is replaced by drinking beer at home or scouting for happy hours in cheap watering holes. The waiter no longer remembers our usual drink.
Honestly, it is scary at times. There have been times of immense lows, some which I had never experienced before. But the highs more than make up for it. The past one year has made me a better and wiser person, and I hope that the people whom I care about feel the same.
If I had a choice, I’d do it all over again because you know what, chilled beer still tastes the same at home.
What makes us a pirate
And my story from a pirate to founding a digital music store
In the last 6 months, two important things have happened:
1. I am more broke than ever before in my life
2. I have purchased more music than I did in my 23 years before that
This might seem odd. After all, who pays for music these days, anyways - just the rich kids and audiophiles, right? Certainly not a broke entrepreneur. It was my belief that people who pirate and later turn to buying music do so because they are financially more well off. Because of the simple reason that many considered ‘buying’ music a luxury but not a necessity. I did too. And boy, was I wrong.
Back in college, I did what any music loving, self respecting, on-a-small-pocket-money-budget college kid would do. I grabbed a senior’s hard drive and copied his complete music collection into my machine. I was so high on the shining new music collection of 50 GBs.
Watch Out! was the monthly student magazine of our college. It was what the cool kids read. For one of the columns called Almost Famous,they interviewed one famous student of the campus. All the young kids wanted to be on that column one day - it was the peak of popularity you could attain. I remember reading one particularly well where the interviewer asked this highly popular chap: “What do you consider your most prized possession in 4 years of college?” His answer:“My 34 GBs of hard drive full of amazing English music by bands from all over”. I was so amazed and blown away. I wanted to be that guy. Imagine having 34GBs of new music to listen to and show off. I craved for his music collection and more. It didn’t matter to me that it was pirated or not, which of course it was.
The important thing to note is that this answer came from a senior student of one of the best engineering colleges in India. He was actually proud of his feat. Whether he was unaware of the implications of his actions or was just playing the fool is anybody’s guess. The magazine editors who pride themselves on their slogan We have Issuesdidn’t seem to have any issue about him pirating music. That to me is the crux of the piracy problem - ignorance.
When we were young, a lot of us were ignorant about what piracy actually means for the artists. Unfortunately, some of us are even today. A lot of us don’t know that it is illegal and harmful to the artists to do so. I met the ex-head of a major record label once who told me that his teenage kid doesn’t buy music because he thinks it is stupid. And I found this a common trend with most people I spoke to. Very few seemed to have the idea that it was hurting the artists.
Earlier I used to think it’s about the money - that as soon as I start earning, I would start paying for music. I did, by going out and paying for gigs, but not so much for digital downloads or CDs. Then, Musicfellas happened.
My first music purchase was a CD by the band Sulk Station. I emailed them requesting their CD and they were kind enough to send me one with a hand written note on the envelope. It felt good. But it wasn’t until I started working on Musicfellas that I started purchasing music. I was completely unaware of how badly it is affecting the artists.
As I got to know the artists personally and hear their stories, it made me realize how hard they work to give us the music we love. Stories of having to worry about the next month’s rent - every single month were not uncommon. I met artists who sacrificed sleep, comfort and even food to do what they loved. And it changed me.
Thus, it is my opinion that, like me, there are others out there who need to be educated. Most people are not stingy, but simply ignorant. I have a seen a lot of my friends convert into paying users on and off Musicfellas and it warms my heart. We need to tackle piracy at the root level by educating the next generation and not merely by putting bans on torrents or releasing DRM-restricted music. People will always find ways to break the rules until they know in their heart what right thing to do is.
About that 50GBs of music, I am slowly deleting more and more of it and replacing it with legally bought music - Thanks to iTunes’ entry into India.
The gates have opened - redBus acquired by Naspers
redBus acquisition by Naspers group feels almost like my own. It is so heartening to see a big success story come out of India.
It is a great milestone for the Indian startup ecosystem. Complaints about the lack of exits here both from entrepreneurs (that includes some of us) and investors are pretty common. We need more optimism in our system and this is just the perfect dose.
Congratulations redBus team and Thank You for opening the gates. To my fellow entrepreneurs, let’s roll!
On Flyte Shutdown
This article was originally published as a guest post on YourStory
India’s biggest e-commerce player, Flipkart shutdown its digital music store Flyte. This comes as a surprise to me given the fact that Flipkart had invested so much in building it. They bought a company navigating a can of worms, built the technology, made licensing deals with the labels which can take ages to close and of course built a whole team to do that. Then why did this happen?
As a digital music entrepreneur, here are my thoughts on this:
1. iTunes: This could be the single biggest reason on why Flyte didn’t work out. A lot of people I know preferred iTunes over Flyte, I do too. The ease of buying and having it downloaded automatically into your Apple devices is one of the biggest reason to do this. This convenience even overrides the lower costs that Flipkart had for some albums.
2. High content acquisition cost: The record label-online store partnerships work in a way where the store has to pay a minimum setup/guarantee fees at the beginning which could be in the tunes of crores depending upon the catalogue size. This is to hedge the label’s risk in case the store shuts down (like Flyte). After the minimum fees is recovered, revenue share on the sales begin. So, even if the store makes huge revenue, it might end up paying most of it to the labels.
3. Few paying users: India is among the countries which pirate the most and it is not without reason. There are just not enough people buying music here. The funny thing is that a lot of people who are just getting into the music scene don’t even know the concept of buying music. They think that torrents is a genuine way of doing it. That is tough to change.
4. Changing patterns for paying music: World over, people are increasingly paying for access to music rather than for its ownership. Spotify, Rdio, Pandora give the users access to a huge library on the fingertips without giving them the ownership of the content. And users have responded fairly well to that. Thus, digital downloads are also probably going to become lesser as the cost of music access comes down.
What this means for the digital music scene in India:
From our experiments in the Indian market with Musicfellas, we’ve learnt that, there are just not enough paying users to make it a big sustainable business. Sure, you can probably make it a decent lifestyle business. But, that’s not what Flipkat would want, right? They would probably want to focus their efforts in some other directions instead - would say it was a commendable move. To build a big business solely on digital downloads in India is super difficult. At Musicfellas, we entered the business thinking of India as a test market and with plans to expand into international markets. Our assumptions that there are just not enough paying users was kind of validated.
Sure, there are some among us who would disagree with me and tell me that they pay so much for music. I know, I am one of you. But, there are very few of us - few enough to not make good business sense.
What I see as the future:
The future of digital music according to me is going to be more and more about being able to listen to any song whenever you want at the exact moment. Not 5 minutes later after you download it but right when your heart desires it. So, models like Spotify, Rdio or in India - Gaana, Saavn and Dhingana are probably the way forward. But, then again, these services have to be careful as to what happens to them once Spotify comes to India (which should be sooner rather than later, given its entry into Asian markets via Singapore). Because honestly, these services are not even half as good as Spotify when it comes to the product.
As to what happens to services like us - we will continue serving niche yet large enough markets of independent content. We are not Gaana’s/Spotify’s competitor but are complementary to them. We are not fighting for the same listening time - we want to help you discover new independent music (which you probably don’t find on these services). We operate at lower content acquisition costs (since we don’t work with the major labels). And, our users are passionate music fans, usually willing to pay for the music they love. We will always find space in that hipster heart of yours wanting to find good new music and break the usual clutter of overplayed commercialised music.
We are rolling out a mobile app pretty soon and would offer it on subscription only, hoping that a combination of downloads and subscription in the international markets should do it.
Disclosure: Times Internet Limited, the parent company of Gaana.com is an investor in Musicfellas via TLabs. The opinions in this article are my own and do not represent TIL.