HEALTH, WELLNESS AND FITNESS

Health is Wealth. But we tend to forget the same in our life, especially Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs try always to take all the burden on his/her shoulder and keep on stretching themselves. Hence working beyond schedule, sleepless nights, extensive travels, concentrating on work skipping meals are quite natural phenomenon. We tend to work 16-24 hours and compromise on sleeping habits. We fail to exercise with an excuse of time management. In effect we get screwed with stress, diabetics, hypertension, insomnia, stomach issues, gastric, fatty liver, ulcers, and heart diseases. When we are being attacked with any such problem, we tend to look back, but it is already late. We will not be left with any other options other than defending it. Hence It is high time , we honour our health, take proactive measures to have it in our control so that we can contribute more to the society and also our beloved family.

There was a great initiative by TiE Kolkata last week on this issues. The event was having speakers like Smita Roy Choudhury, Preeyam Budhia , Kripa Sagar and Harsha Banthia with Nayantara Palchoudhuri as Moderator.

The panel was filled all Women Entrepreneurs and their inspiring stories were so simple, free flowing , but extremely motivating.

Smita is a Dietitian with a deep domain expertise on food service or nutritional programs. Her message was to follow the nature. We should take heavy breakfast within 10 am (when metabolism is kicked off and in full swing) and Evening snacks (when metabolism tends to get slow down). Lunch and Dinner should not be heavy. When Sun rises and when it sets are the high time to take food. Our kids tends suffer with lot of problems due to wrong life style. They fail to have morning clearances with constipation, very light or no breakfast, also no tiffin in school or junk foods, 1^st heavy meal at late afternoon. If we can have disciplined food habits, we may not have to opt for several slimming diet programs (like GM Diet etc)

Preeyam shared his very personal story which touched all of us and most of us were not able to hold our tears. She was working in UK. But she left the job and came back to Kolkata to join hands with her mother to start their venture AddLife. The aim is to support mental health. In Kolkata (probably in India as well) we do not have proper eco system to get guided healthcare support when ever we are into a problem. Our healthcare system, methodology are driven by patient’s paying capability, not by their diseases. Out of the entire domain she is trying take care of the mental health as specialization and she aspires to rule not only Pan India, but the Globe. Lets wish her all the best.

Harsha  is a Yoga Trainer. She spans her expertise in physical fitness,Sound Therapy and Pranic Healing. She inspired us to foucs on physical fitness. Instead of thinking big, we should focus on small milestines like 10minutes yoga/jogging/walk in the morning to startwith instead of doing nothing. Getting the kickstart is most important. Then gradually we can increase and will get automatically motivated once get refreshed. She believes that a “Healthy body leads to a healthy mind which in turn brings all happiness and positive power to lead a beautiful life”.

Kripa  was a smoker for 26 years and she is running marathon now leaving behind her addiction. Everyday running gives us lot of life to our Lungs, Heart. She was not a runner initially. She started running in an amature way alongwith one of here relative and now it has become her passion. She came to Kolkata as 9^th City to run marathon. Her message included the campaign “Take A Breath of Fresh Air” which promotes running as an aid for those who want to quit smoking (or any other addiction) and have fun doing it.

Let us awake. Let us take small steps to have our health well. Let us love our life and run for our Heart everyday morning.

We do not have any control on our Birth, Desease, Oldage and Death. But we can be disciplined in life and rest will fall in place. Lets surrender to Supreme Lord and start working on our Health.

Our Entrepreneurial Journey will extend.

Lets celebrate Entrepreneurship.

Entire Panelist along with President Mr.Radhakrishnan

Emerging Entrepreneurship in Bengal

Date: 30-08-14 | Destination: JIS-Kalyani | Agenda: E-Summit on Entrepreneurship

It was almost a weekend trip towards kalyani by road with fellow entrepreneur friends.

I started from Birati at around 10am and reached the destination by 11.30 along with Sandeep and Arijit.

The entire journey was spent knowing each other’s journey in the field of entrepreneurship. It was clearly evident we were not much of aware on each other’s business even though we met several times. Hence the journey was the opportunity to know each other.

JIS Kalyani is a familiar place to me since I have been here for few of our integration projects for them.

The time we reached the inauguration and some initial pitches were done.

I was thrilled to see Bengal is gradually building the culture of entrepreneurship. The college/eco system is trying to create platform for the student to inspire them to become entrepreneur. This was missing even 5years back.

We could start listening carefully from Mr.Ganesh who inspired the next generation with his book “Bhaag”. Entrepreneurship is a journey, we can succeed even after the series of failures if we can stick to it.

Sandeep Sengupta was the next speaker. His presentation on cyber security, forensics, ethical hacking were really interesting to the entire audience. He explained his experience and market potential on the segment.

  

Next was the panel discussions with Atul Gupta and Abhinava Dey, the successful entrepreneurs from Kolkata and our fellow members from Kolkata TiE. The panel discussion revolved around their journey to the question answer sessions.

Arijit Bhattacharyya took charge next just before lunch. The students were already tired and hungry. Hence it was difficult for him to attract them and keep the momentum up. But he did it spontaneously. The video on his entrepreneurial journey was awesome. He explained his domain on Gaming, Animation, Cartoons, and Real Time Applications of Virtual Reality/Simulations etc. Since 1998, his journey was inspiring to everyone. The way his business scaled over domestic and international was really appreciable. Session was concluded with a sample of his one of high quality 3D Game.

      

Session started after lunch with Saptarshi. He talked about his present venture on Big Data and Analytics. He was also like one of us which is having courage to leave a safe job (that is also in global arena) and starting venture back in Kolkata, India.

He was followed by Samit. The start was wonderful with a motivational video. The message was to go little extra mile to convert boiling water to steam so that it can power the Steam Engine. Samit continued with briefing on his venture on Healthcare and the journey on entrepreneurship.

Final one was mine and obviously the difficult one. Coz all speakers by this time covered almost every aspect of entrepreneurship. Moreover students were overloaded, stressed, bored and exhausted. And I was standing between “The Vote Of Thanks” (post which students will get Attendance certificate and that was the most motivating factor for them that time).

I tried to make it little interactive and attempted to summarize the entire coverage by all speakers so far. Initially I briefed my view point on entrepreneurship (beyond bookish definition as available in Google, Wikipedia). Then I tried to explain them the road-map of becoming entrepreneurs, challenges and the resolution plans. It was combined with few stories so that they can relate it better than a boring lecture. Finally I tried to put light on some domains which are emerging presently so that they can evolve their ideas to that domain to build an enterprise. Entrepreneurship is not easy, having lot of challenges. But end of the day it gives Freedom, Fun & Fulfillment if we can stick to it with big heart, risk taking appetite, fearless mind and loaded with positive energy.

      

Yes, It is not only possible, but Easy! Aasan Hai (Concluded with the Video Song “Aasan Hai” by Sandeep Maheswari)

Entrepreneurship is a Journey. Let us enjoy it.

More detailed photos can be viewed in facebook album. Please click here to view the same.

NB : The volunteers/organizer students were awesome. We were discussing why don’t they plan to start an Even management Start-up.

(I will try to upload my presentation with little voice over in YouTube shortly).

Why Pradip Left the Job?

It is a true story, not fiction. But in order to hide identity, the name. Address etc. has been changed.

It was early days of our start-up, end of 2010. Our office was at Park Street (near Mallick Bazar).

Pradip was one of our few initial employees (most probably 4^th employee). He was taken into our organization for strengthening Linux vertical. We were happy with his skills. Initial days, we had lot of dreams, visions to work on Linux based open sources and Pradip was one of the key member to those initiative. I still remember we were doing a POC (proof of concept) on packet fencer (network access control tool) and we were on the verge of completion.

It was Thursday evening around 5pm and I was at a customer place for an important discussions. I received a call around 5.15pm from one of our existing customer at Saltlake and he was at extreme urgency to have a router on immediate effect. I was trying to convince him about sending the same at his office next day morning since it was already late. But he did not agree. Rather he suggested to come over to our office himself and collect the router that evening itself by paying cash ( he was not willing to waste time even by issuing a cheque after passing several stages of approval). I sniffed the urgency and planned to support him even though the router was not in stock in our office. I had requested him to come over and in parallel asked the office boy to go the manufacturer warehouse for collecting the router (meantime backend co-ordination was done with the manufacturer and distributor). This stage got completed in 15minutes and customer had already started from Saltlake to Park Street by a Taxi.

It was 5.30pm in the evening. I suddenly realized no one else is available at office that time other than Pradip.

Hence I called up Pradip and briefed him the situation. I told him to greet customer on his arrival and request him to relax and wait at office. Once the office boy comes back, he needs to handover the router to the customer and collect the cash in lieu of the money receipt. Once everything completed he may lock the office and leave for the day.

Pradip was very unhappy with this and was instantaneous in his reply, apprehending delay in work and late arrival to home. Rather he started arguing with lot of justification like he might miss the scheduled train, more than 9 hours no one can force employees etc. I smelled some problem and was in a request mode to execute this. Moreover I promised him to seat face to face next day morning to resolve his grievances (if any).

However the transaction was very smooth. Customer arrival, router collection, handing over the router to customer, payment collection – all synchronized well and got completed 6.30pm with great customer satisfaction.

Pradip kept the cash in office and handed over the key to the building caretaker and left around 6.45pm.

Everything was very well co-ordinated and I felt relived.

But it was just the beginning, surprise was waiting for me next day.

Pradip did not come to the office and his mobile was switched off. I was anxious since that was the day to complete the POC at customer place.

We got his resignation at 11.30am over mail and he never turned back to office. He did to neither completed handover formalities, nor passed any knowledge did transfer and in effect we landed into deep problems. But nothing is indispensable in this world and eventually we recovered from all issues.

But I was in a mode of introspection – Why Pradip left the Job?

My logic was there could be two reasons:

1. Option I: He was unhappy with our organization (may be culture, our words etc) and was not in need of money. May be he was from a rich family and Job was only a time-pass activity and he did not hold any liabilities.

Or

1. Option II: He was already having a Job and he immediately switched due to the grievances with our organization.

(Though I was clue less why he could be unhappy us. We did not use any foul languages last day, rather was in an appealing note. That was the time we used to disburse salary last day of every month instead of waiting next month to come. Being an early stage of start-up we used to have lot of liberty, enthusiasm and he was with us around six months).

I was immediately jumped into investigation. The documents (which was collected during his joining in the organizations) were scrutinized and following facts were identified:

• He was from a middle class Bengali family at Barasat.
• He was the only earning member in the family with his aged parents, wife and child.
• He had his baby girl (only child) two months back only.
• He was earning INR 15000/- from us monthly.
• He got a flat in Barasat one year back and was holding EMI of INR 8000/- per month.

In nutshell, he was having enough liabilities and in effect it was literally impossible for someone to leave job. Hence option I became null and void. So the option left out is the second one.

I was keeping eye on the market and found him searching jobs next two months (as he was getting interviewed in my known circles and my friends called me for reference check seeing my organization as his last employer).

Till date I am clueless. Why Pradip Left the Job?

Readers having any clue? If yes I will be delighted to know from you.

God Bless Pradip!

Are we Independent?

15-08-2014

The 68^th Independence Day for India.

The day of celebration for Indians. The day we spend as Holiday, raise flags, distribute sweets, eat/drink and adopt all other steps to freak out. We spend times in facebook, twitter, whatsapp, sms and wishing “Happy Independence Day”.

How many of us relook at History? Do we remember the sacrifice of our forefathers?

Our independence is an illusion. This is the day which should remind us the Mistrust and Conspiracy which got deep-rooted in our country and will continue for centuries to come.

India and Pakistan (further Pakistan got split to Bangladesh even) got divided without even thinking about common man. Our forefathers taken the pain of becoming “Refugees” overnight.

Subhas Chanda Bose, the real hero, was in command to earn Freedom for India instead of begging it. Unfortunately we lost him and still we do not have any official news about his missing story even after several commissions. Don’t you feel the same as “Conspiracy of the Decade”?

Independence is fallacy for common man. Name a domain like education, healthcare, food, transport , law and so on, there is no improvement for common man. I found a post in Facebook that India will be really independent when we will be not see a child selling Indian National Flag in the Traffic Signal in an Independence Day. This is brutally true. Who cares about Child Labor?

Building huge flyovers, beautifying the nation with skyscrapers will not have any values for those who sleep on footpaths, get wet in rains and sell flags for basic food.

India is one of most potential country with lot of wealth. Our mythology, our knowledge, history, Literature, Intellectual Strength, Natural resources are so rich. We can rule the world. But somehow, we are been highlighted, ashamed for wrong reasons always like politics, corruption, conspiracy, crime, gambling, fraud, Bribery and so on. Let it be commonwealth games or IPL, our wrong reasons continues. Our child know about Bhagat Singh, Surya Sen (master da) after a Bollywood Movie gets published.

But time has come to bounce back by the common man like us. No one else can help us unless we help ourselves.  Let all of us awake and take small steps in our life to change our life, surrounding, society, state and nation.

Let’s understand the meaning of national anthem and sing it once again. It has inline spirit of unity in diversity. Rabindranath Tagore (though his greatest creation) invited Indians to wake up to move forward for the victory with the auspicious blessings of the supreme lord (goddess).

“To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains…but, to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” – Nelson Mandela