Mixed Pot

To start with this weekend post, I like to tell you about my sharing house. We, four of us (from same college) stay here in Bangalore. We usually clean the house once in a while. If the period of cleaning stands a month, we all be surprised and keep guessing why so soon? Next day, a satisfaction of keeping the house clean would be drawn on all our faces. For a while couple of us went for client assignment. As usual, the remaining of us never bothered of how clean the house is. Naturally, the house was open to all kinds of dust, dirt, road side sediments - thanks to Bangalore Corporation, Thar roads are yet to be laid in our area! - and the worst affected is our bathroom. I don't want to describe it. Its open to your imagination. So after all these description, what I want to tell is I feel completely satisfied today, meaning Our House is completely cleaned up with help of a maid! Happy faces all around :)

PJs (or attempt to crack them or mokkai in Tamil slang) apart. Now, some serious stuff. I am following a Indian web based product company for a while but not keenly though. It is Zoho - a web based office suite app. It doesn't stop with word, spreadsheet, presentation etc., it goes one (more) step ahead and provides enterprise software products like CRM to its customers. It's target is small and medium scale companies. Its services (to be precise, Software as a Service) comes with dirt cheap prices (comparing to its competitors). Guess who are its competitors. None other that Google!. Yes, Google docs and the leader in web based Enterprise office suite, Salesforce. Zoho's founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu is an exemplary person with great vision and character, maintains very low profile and at the same time sends a million dollar a month to his company's kitty. Most of the networking guys would easily relate him if I say he is the creator of a wonderful product called Adventnet. Read more about him here and also Robert Scoble has a say. I am very much impressed. So whats up with him here. I read one of his blog posts few days back. He talks about how Salesforce tried to acquire in non-open fashion and how he rejected them outright. It was very good post. It drives the point like a nail hitting its target. Top CEO can communicate and dissipate information to everyone - its employees, investors, competitors, public - through his/her blog more effectively. Now you need not conduct big meetings, give number crunchig figures and explain your comapny's vision and plans. Just a web blog with backed up story, people will listen and take notice. I certainly second Kiruba's thoughts here.

And yesterday, a sudden interest on Indian podcasts sprung on me. So was searching for some good podcasts that deals with Indian tech and business stuff. I don't know if I found a good one, but surely an interesting one. IndiCast is the one I am talking about. If I am not wrong, they do three podcasts in tech, business and some interview kind of show. I was listening to their business podcast. It is a conversation between a guy and a girl (both of them MBA grads). They speak about business in India and the related stuff in dialogue-cum-informal chat like fashion (think, they are just out of school). They want information to reach common people. That's how they define their shows. What amazes me these people know lot of stuff and speak amazingly simple manner which make you wonder about how many hours they spend doing their home work. I downloaded all of their audio casts. Will be listening to them in coming days.

I will end this post here with some info that I am planning to write about my experiences, bargainings, questionings, telephone bills & "starrings" from my co-workers, when I dealt (still dealing) with a personal loan.

Update: This one from Indicast is too good. Harsha Bhogle speaks his heart. Do check it out.

Update: About Sridhar Vembu in Forbes site.