October 2009
“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans”- Peter Drucker
We asked ourselves many times – What is the guarantee of success? None. Did we have the capabilty? Likely. Was our idea good enough? Maybe.
But then I always believe that the more important ingredient for success is the belief that we could do it. With this belief we could acquire the capabilty to do it even if we did not have it in the beginning, and we could overcome any obstacle to make the idea work. And unless we act with this belief at every step the chances of failure are very high.
I had belief in analyzeVietnam and the intent to give it my best shot, yet, how could I forget my biggest distraction – our one year old daughter Aabha. Aabha was the new found joy of our lives and she did not tire from offering me new and delightful challenges everyday. My latest challenge was to find the necessary time and energy required for a start-up and also satisfy my infant’s ever growing needs. Isn’t that the clichéd dilemma of every working mother?
So it turned out that most of my slog hours came after Aabha’s bedtime when I burnt the candle till late in the night. As analyzeVietnam development progressed my nights of hard labour only became longer and longer. I would go to bed exhausted only to be awakened in a few hours by my daughter crying for her milk and a diaper change. analyzeVietnam soon turned out to be a leech that sucked every spare moment and energy from Uyen and me. But the rush of adrenalin for analyzeVietnam and our commitment to the business compelled us to put in the hard work and to make the small sacrifices.
“The heights by great men reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night” – analyzeVietnam would be a true test of H W Longfellow’s words.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Project Inception
Early October 2009
Now that we had decided on the business it was time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We embarked on this venture pumped up with an enthusiasm that comes only from working for oneself, with ones own skin in the game and for a cause that we were passionate about. Easily we slid into the roles that we had carefully honed over years of work experience.
My husband, Sandilya Vadapalli laid out the vision and roadmap and was not going to be involved in day to day activity going forward; Uyen Dinh Thi To who brought an indepth understanding of the Vietnamese market drew up the business plan and I, Aarti Ashok took responsibility for all operational aspects. Our trump card was Uyen’s husband, Nghia, who is one of the earliest internet entrepreneurs of Vietnam. He would help grow analyzeVietnam and realize its potential.
The initial days comprised endless checklists, white boards and post-its. There were so many decisions to make – “What will be the content of our website? Who will buy it? Where should we outsource the software development? From where and how do we source our data?”... And then there were even more basic ones - “How do we structure the business? What is our budget and timeline? Given our various commitments and constraints how do we work together?”
As you can imagine business was thriving in the coffee shop. Finally most of our answers were either plastered on the wall of our meeting room or were bulleted out on the white board.
We would build the prototype in Vietnam but would outsource the actual software development to India. We had the names and contacts of the various sources for the data and maps. We worked through long afternoons and late nights on templates and frameworks.
And so.. analyzeVietnam was officially kicked off and we drank one more cup of “cà phê” to that.
Now that we had decided on the business it was time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We embarked on this venture pumped up with an enthusiasm that comes only from working for oneself, with ones own skin in the game and for a cause that we were passionate about. Easily we slid into the roles that we had carefully honed over years of work experience.
My husband, Sandilya Vadapalli laid out the vision and roadmap and was not going to be involved in day to day activity going forward; Uyen Dinh Thi To who brought an indepth understanding of the Vietnamese market drew up the business plan and I, Aarti Ashok took responsibility for all operational aspects. Our trump card was Uyen’s husband, Nghia, who is one of the earliest internet entrepreneurs of Vietnam. He would help grow analyzeVietnam and realize its potential.
The initial days comprised endless checklists, white boards and post-its. There were so many decisions to make – “What will be the content of our website? Who will buy it? Where should we outsource the software development? From where and how do we source our data?”... And then there were even more basic ones - “How do we structure the business? What is our budget and timeline? Given our various commitments and constraints how do we work together?”
As you can imagine business was thriving in the coffee shop. Finally most of our answers were either plastered on the wall of our meeting room or were bulleted out on the white board.
We would build the prototype in Vietnam but would outsource the actual software development to India. We had the names and contacts of the various sources for the data and maps. We worked through long afternoons and late nights on templates and frameworks.
And so.. analyzeVietnam was officially kicked off and we drank one more cup of “cà phê” to that.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
How analyzeVietnam came about?
Late September 2009
Every venture starts with an idea, a conviction and the enthusiasm to make it happen.
My husband, our dear friend and business partner Uyen and I were sipping strong Vietnamese coffee on a hot, humid afternoon in Hanoi. While the office premises with its transparent meeting enclosures was just across the road it was still a road side cafeteria that provided the stimulus for brainstorming. This time the debate was about finding a way to give vent to our entrepreneurial urges.
“To what business venture will our collective talents do justice? What value-add can we profitably provide for the people of Vietnam?”- I mused aloud. My husband had the answer. He was convinced that one of the biggest problems faced by companies investing in Vietnam was getting reliable and comprehensive data for doing market research. Uyen thumped the table in agreement.
In their previous avatars, before they became self styled entrepreneurs, and when they were both working for a multi-national, this was a huge hurdle. They had a mandate to launch a new product in Vietnam and they just couldn’t get the right data to help them assess their market potential. The data at hand was fragmented, inconsistent, not detailed enough and mostly in Vietnamese (a big handicap for English speaking business people like my husband and I). It did not afford any practically oriented market research and did not provide any insights on the size or quality of their customer base. My husband and his team had to painstakingly collect the data from multiple sources and hire a company to build them the software to meaningfully slice it. Needless to say, all this cost a lot of time, effort and money. On enquiry they learnt that this was the stumbling block for a lot of other companies operating in Vietnam.
Their arguments were indeed very pursuasive and I was convinced we could do a business in this space. We agreed that we would build a website that provided complete, insightful and robust market data to help businesses make informed decisions about their marketing strategy. We would provide a way to turn complex information into insights that could be used for business advantage. We would provide this research for all the provinces and let the user slice and dice it in a variety of ways. And this is how analyzeVietnam was born.
Every venture starts with an idea, a conviction and the enthusiasm to make it happen.
My husband, our dear friend and business partner Uyen and I were sipping strong Vietnamese coffee on a hot, humid afternoon in Hanoi. While the office premises with its transparent meeting enclosures was just across the road it was still a road side cafeteria that provided the stimulus for brainstorming. This time the debate was about finding a way to give vent to our entrepreneurial urges.
“To what business venture will our collective talents do justice? What value-add can we profitably provide for the people of Vietnam?”- I mused aloud. My husband had the answer. He was convinced that one of the biggest problems faced by companies investing in Vietnam was getting reliable and comprehensive data for doing market research. Uyen thumped the table in agreement.
In their previous avatars, before they became self styled entrepreneurs, and when they were both working for a multi-national, this was a huge hurdle. They had a mandate to launch a new product in Vietnam and they just couldn’t get the right data to help them assess their market potential. The data at hand was fragmented, inconsistent, not detailed enough and mostly in Vietnamese (a big handicap for English speaking business people like my husband and I). It did not afford any practically oriented market research and did not provide any insights on the size or quality of their customer base. My husband and his team had to painstakingly collect the data from multiple sources and hire a company to build them the software to meaningfully slice it. Needless to say, all this cost a lot of time, effort and money. On enquiry they learnt that this was the stumbling block for a lot of other companies operating in Vietnam.
Their arguments were indeed very pursuasive and I was convinced we could do a business in this space. We agreed that we would build a website that provided complete, insightful and robust market data to help businesses make informed decisions about their marketing strategy. We would provide a way to turn complex information into insights that could be used for business advantage. We would provide this research for all the provinces and let the user slice and dice it in a variety of ways. And this is how analyzeVietnam was born.
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