The Rodinhoods OpenHouse At Gurgaon Roundup : Tsunami Of Ideas & Inspirations; The True Ides of March!

The Rodinhoods Openhouse in Delhi happened on March 22, 2014 at iSEED, Gurgaon. Once again the universe conspired and enabled us to converge, meet and share positive vibes. It was a pure tsunami of ideas and inspirations which left everyone present there dazed and asking for more.

The true Ideas of March!

The presence of Alok sir literally ignited the atmosphere as we screamed, shouted and created ruckus which would be hard to forget for all those who had the opportunity to witness the show. Asha, our lovely, enthusiastic and completely bindaas community manager was also present, in person, which actually set the stage on fire.

While commuting from Noida to Gurgaon, in the metro, I was reading an awesome book called “Tribes” written by Seth Godin. It was the 20th time I was reading the book, and I do make it a point to read it while going for the Rodinhoods Openhouse.  

When you see the actual implementation and executions of creating a great community, right infront of you, then something magical happens.

In a way, its always an open demonstration of the power of Tribe and the magic it wields on it’s members. After the event finished, I came back home and tried to post a short summary on my Facebook timeline, but such was the intensity of the event and the whirlpool of ideas swarming inside my mind, that I couldn’t do so.

The event started with Alok sir presenting his ‘ramblings’ (sic) while the screen warmed up and images adjusted. He shared his dream wherein he quietly sneaks into a Rodinhoods Openhouse and a random guy asks him, “Boss, what’s this all about?” The hidden significance of this dream is to showcase that the cause is more important than the medium through which it happens; and the cause here is Rodinhoods and the medium/messenger is Alok sir.

To confirm this theory, he ask the audience, whether anyone knows the founder of TED? Only one guy out of packed house of 150+ audiences was able to tell the name of founder of TED, the world’s most famous and respected gathering of intellectuals and speakers!

Before the talks and the presentations started, Alok sir appealed to all to empty their minds before listening; he told us that the only way we can absorb the information being presented is by having an empty mind. A very very crucial bit of advice from someone who regularly meditates and ponders over the questions this life throws at, without any warning.

Lesson: Unless you start learning with an open mind, all the education in this world is worthless.

As always, we recited the national anthem and an electric charge of patriotism and unity bounded us all. We were ready for the show!

Startup Launch: Dynofy

Shubhamoy Chakrabarty, co-founder of Dynofy launched his startup amongst us all. He presented his idea, what inspired him and the challenges he is facing while executing his dream. The presentation was quick and to the point, and once it finished, began the hammering and chiseling of the concept by Rodinhooders. And trust me, it was without any mercy.

Dynofy is a mobile app which checks whether your website is up and running or not and pings you after a set time interval. As of now, they are monitoring around 68 websites and they have some big plans to expand it.

The first question was asked by Alok sir when he enquired why should he leave Pingdom, which is one of the oldest and most reputed service in this domain. Some of the justification Shubhamoy provided:

–    Dynofy is free whereas Pingdom is based on a freemium model.
–    We can set the ping intervals between 1 and 15 minutes
–    It’s an Android app, and the ping results would be directly shared across your mobile, a feature which is not present in any other contemporary pinging service.

Some suggestions which Rodinhooders provided to Dynofy:

–    Laser target the market reach and maybe start with South East Asia where there are less players for this service
–    Introduce a missed call feature: everytime a website is down, the concerned webmaster should receive a miss call!
–    Alok sir asked whether those 68 websites which are being monitored by Dynofy are existing on Pingdom as well? A very important question; the answer of which was not present with its co-founder at that time.

Shubhamoy was drilled, tested and punched (figuratively) while launching his startup and I guess this is what is required as well. If everyone says pretty things about your startup, you wont be able to go far.

Lesson: When you are part of such a vibrant community of Thinkers Doers and Entrepreneurs, then rip apart your idea and incite the crowd to do a thorough post-mortem of your idea so that better and more relevant ideas sprout out.

We wish Dynofy best of luck!

Alok sir’s Presentation: Gamification of Everything

As the Openhouse moved into the thick of action and the audience was fully engrossed into the spirit of Rodinhoods, Alok sir began the most anticipated presentation: Gamification of Everything!

He explained that as per BMW more than 30 lakh cars all over the world are connected with their data centers as of now, which will increase to 1 crore connected cars by 2018. This shows that how much relevant is the gamification of everything today.

Google has introduced a driver-less car with a camera mounted on top of it, and it has traveled more than 500,000 kms in California and Nevada without any single accident! Infact, these driver-less cars are now more safe than an average driver (as per the experiment statistics).

Inter-relating with the gamification aspect, Alok sir said that in near future, our cars would be able to tell us how many kms we have driven, how many time we have honked, when we applied brake and so on, and this data will be shown to other connected drivers. Cars would be driven automatically and it would be kind of a big game happening right infront of us.

The future is all about gamification!

There are three main fundamentals of this theory:

Fulfillment –> Achievement –> Vanity

This gamification of driving and traffic rules can save so many lives. Imagine a driver in Mumbai being allowed to play in a game wherein he gets Rs 1 lakh for being the safest driver in the city. Wouldn’t he give his heart out to win it?
 
Alok sir shared a very chilling fact: More than 400 people die in road accidents in India, every day. Such gamification of road safety can infact save so many precious lives. If we can connect every vehicle moving on roads, and then measure their average speed, their honking schedule, the number of times they applied brakes etc and then gamify the whole data to come up with top 100 safest drivers and such games to bring out the best among them.

Gaming and it’s principles can save lives as it does in business.

Linkedin example: The profile completion section which is displayed everytime we open our account is infact gamification of user-generated activity. LinkedIn prompts us, pokes us to complete our profile by incubating a simple game like feature. It shows how much percentage of the profile is over and gives us points. When we see the incomplete profile on our account, then our brain proactively tries to finish it off.

In fact, Alok sir shared some very cool ideas of gamification for Dynofy as well, as he shared that this theory can be applied to startups, companies, organization, employees, entrepreneurs and jobs. For example, the Dynofy app can showcase the whole world map, and zoom out a green light everytime a visit occurs on the website from a particular place. Say a visitor arrives from Australia and the map zooms on the Australian continent and throws back a green blinking light.

BuildABear.com is another example of gamification of an idea. Someone in the audience mentioned FunTheory.com, which further elaborates this gamification idea. (if you are reading this, please pass me a hi.. )

Here is the presentation:

What is your greatest Entrepreneurial Challenge?

After the presentation by Alok sir, Rodinhoods Openhouse transformed into the crowd-sourced problem solving session as Entrepreneurs came on stage and shared their biggest entrepreneurial challenge which bothered them and stopped them from achieving greater success.

Atamjeet Singh Bawa came up first and shared his art with us: Paper Models. He has this amazing gift of creating complex paper models of machines using only his hands and glue! He showed us one paper model of a bike, which was simply awesome. I have never seen such display of art, right infront of me.

The problem which Atamjeet is facing expanding this art into the world is that no one actually ‘need’ these paper models but everyone ‘likes’ them. How can he create a sustainable, economically feasible business model around his art so that art-lovers and enthusiasts actually purchase his art and help him spread the idea.

There were several brilliant suggestions and ideas shared for Atamjeet, including opening an institute where he can teach others how to create such awesome paper models using only hands and glue. Here is his post on his experience of sharing his idea with the world.

Atamjeet has written a brilliant post on his experience at Openhouse. You can read it here.

Lesson: There is some art, some talent, some unique treasure which only YOU have.. Never ever settle even if you have found one. I recalled Steve Jobs’s famous lines which watching Atamjeet present his case: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Darshan Bhambiru: “The Impresario”:

At this particular point, Darshan was specially mentioned and thanked and applauded for his initiatives. He relentlessly prompted and poked Atamjeet to share his art and his passion with the entrepreneurial world and get the feedback. You actually connected the dots and did a great work! We all are proud of you..

Finqa:

Sunaina; Abhik and Ankur came on the stage to share their challenges while running their startup. Finqa is a brilliant concept based on the ever increasing need of unbiased financial consultancy and financial planning. The problem with insurance agents and banks is that they are heavily biased towards the products they are endorsing, thereby offering incorrect or misleading information to consumers. Finqa wants to change that by offering complete financial literacy and suggestions of doing financial planning based on actual consumer needs and requirements.

Some solid suggestions which propped up during the discussion include:

–    Identification of your targeted audience is very crucial for success. Every entrepreneur should decide and determine who is their typical audience (this tip was shared by Mr. Dinesh Chandra)

–    A suggestion came up regarding financial planning and insurance for startups! Although Finqa doesn’t currently target startups and entrepreneurs, but this idea seemed very logical indeed.

–    The game theory again made an entry as several cool ideas of gamification of financial literacy and education came up

Do share your ideas, plans and opinion regarding Finqa by commenting right here!

CAS :: Create a Startup

Create a Startup is a session wherein we all Rodinhooders come together and share our ideas regarding a new startup.

Alok sir shared his wisdom by asking us all to ponder over 5 most important questions before we can even think of creating a startup:

–    Why
–    What
–    Who
–    Where
–    When

The most important question among these is “Why”.. We should infact meditate and think hard on the ‘Why’ aspect first before understanding the other questions. He said, we keep on taking about and revolving around the “What” of every problem, without thinking about “Why”, which actually puts us away from our goals.

(fellow Rodinhooder Ankur Sharma was so much inspired by this simplification of startup creation that he made these awesome banners and posters.)

For this session, we had Sumit Anand, who is an awesome standup comedian occupy the stage and begin the drill of creating a startup.

Comedy is a serious business, all right. And some serious questions and suggestions were shared across the stage. Highlighting the importance of comedy and its effect on the minds, Alok sir shared an interesting story. Back in the good old days of Kingfisher Airlines, they had included “Comedy Circus” in the banquet of videos to be shown to passengers. As he was once traveling with King Fisher Airlines, he saw big burly CEOs and Managers of large corporations laughing their heart out with those famous red earphones on their ears and screens infront of them. It was pure meltdown of their brains up above 30,000 feet in air.

Such was the intensity of comedy shows that it can completely blow out your mind.

Some questions which were thrown at Sumit for this comedy venture:

–    Why are you a comic?
–    Why should I fund it?
–    Why should I watch it?
–    Who is your targeted customer?

Some interesting facts also tumbled out during the discussion; such as of now, there exists no company in NCR involved in comedy niche which is active in both offline and online shows. Hence, this proves that there exists a huge gap between demand and supply in this niche.

Sumit was able to provide brilliant comic breaks inbetween as well, true to it’s business model! On one such occasion, when everyone was asking him to share a joke, he said that everytime he meets new people, the same demand arises.

Often he wonders what would have happened if he was a gynecologist? The hall erupted into a wild chasm of laughter which went on for few minutes.

At the end, Alok sir shared that “How” of a problem doesn’t exist. If “Why” is being found out, “How” just happens somewhere.

Preeti from PreetiHoon.com generously shared she can connect this idea with some insiders of TV and movie industry. A special thanks to her!

Rodinhooders shared one idea after another, which can be actually tried and experimented to convert this art and fun into a real sustainable business.

Do share your ideas and suggestions by commenting right here!

                                                                     
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Entrepreneurial Challenge session resumed after “Creating A Startup” as three more entrepreneurs shared the stage and we discussed their problems and possible solutions.

SandWedges.in

They aim to provide nationwide QSR or Quick Service Restaurants, selling only sandwiches. The idea originated after the founders found it really hard to find special Mumbai sandwiches in Delhi. The burning desire prompted them poked them and finally they opened their first venture in May, 2013.

Their entrepreneurial challenges include:

–    It’s a student startup, hence very less exposure to venture world.
–    Very view actually are aware of this product. (I asked 3 of my colleagues, and no one knew. )
–    A mentor, a guide who can give them direction.

They are raising funds from friends and family, and they are all set to open their first store in May, 2013.

Gurpreet Singh Tikku, who is quite passionate about food and is quite active at food enthusiasts meet-ups and food tasting events, shared several golden nuggets of information. He said that food business from Kiosks at Colleges, Business Parks and Hospitals is actually booming at a very good rate. He gave an example of Lovely Professional University(Phagwara, Punjab) which is a 600 acre campus with 20k Students and has more than 200 food kiosks in its premises. Apart from 5 Dining halls that serves 3 Meals per day to 15000 Hostellers!

You are welcome to share your ideas and suggestions by commenting right here!

VakilSearch.com

VakilSearch provides legal services, which is actually quite beneficial for entrepreneurs. Legal requirements and documentations are as important as running the operations, and VakilSearch can chip in with their services. I told Hrishikesh that I am a customer of VakilSearch, and found the services quite good. The facility of sending all documents via post and then opening closing bank accounts etc becomes super easy.

At the same time, there were several complains and issues as well, and during one such issue, Garima was offered free service from VakilSearch! (I will update you regarding this offer. )

For any service oriented company, their greatest challenge is customer support. Marketing and advertising doesn’t make any sense, if the existing customers are not satisfied. But again, 100% is just a myth!

CookJunk.in

CookJunk is trying to make education fun and easy. They want to make science popular and interesting by showcasing the principles live and in physical form. They have created several ‘gamified’ versions of scientific theories and interesting experiments.

Though some of the experiments presented on stage had some hiccups, but the message and the passion was clearly broadcasted, loud and clear.

If you have any issues or suggestions then do share them by commenting right here!

After that, as always, Alok sir presented The Autobiography of a Yogi to all those who were present, and went a bit further in his goal of reaching Guinness Book of World Records, for the Yogi.

We networked and shared cards and understood one another, better.

Do share your own opinions, comments and views right here!

If you have images, videos of the event, then do share them at The Rodinhoods Facebook page or right here in this forum.

 ISEED provided us with the venue and the infrastructure to make this event a rocking show. Special mention of Patankar Pramod and Sanjeeva Shivesh, who are the co-founders of iSEED and share a tremendous vision and passion for spreading the entrepreneur message. Sanjeeva mentioned that it was the first day of iSEED, and he shared his excitement and happiness that so many Thinker; Doers and Rodinhooders have converged to make this opening day a gala success

 A Big Thank you!

About Me: Writer, Marketer, Wanderer and Traveler! I blog at MohulGhosh.com . I am pretty such active on facebook.. My primary mode of communication is hello@mohulghosh.com. I am a proud Rodinhooder.