A Crorepati Who Lives In A Hut

His story is an inspiration for millions. A self-made entrepreneur, his mission is to help the poor through job creation. E.Sarathbabu hit the headlines after he rejected several high profile job offers from various MNCs after he passed out of IIM, Ahmadabad two years ago.


He instead started a catering business of his own, inspired by his mother who once sold idlis on the pavements of Chennai, worked as an ayah in an Anganvadi to educate him and his siblings. As a child, he also sold idlis in the slum where he lived. “We talk about India shining and India growing, but we should ensure that people do not die of hunger. We can be a developed country but we should not leave the poor people behind. I am worried for them because I know what hunger is and I still remember the days I was hungry,” says Sarathbabu.
In August 2006, Sarathbabu’s entrepreneurial dream came true with Foodking. He had no personal ambition but wanted to buy a house and a car for his mother. He has bought a car but is yet to buy a house for his mother. The “foodking” still lives in the same hut in Madipakkam in Chennai. Today, Foodking has six units and 200 employees, and the turnover of the company is Rs.32 lakh a month. But it has not been a bed of roses for Sarathbabu. After struggling and making losses in the first year, he managed a turnaround in 2007.
How has his experience as a ‘Foodking’ been in the last two years? Sarathbabu shares the trial and tribulations of an exciting and challenging job in an interview with Shobha Warrier.


A tough beginning


As I am a first generation entrepreneur, the first year was very challenging. I had a loan of Rs 20 lakh by the end of first year. I had no experience in handling people in business, and it was difficult to identify the right people. Though I made losses in the first year, not even once did I regret my decision of not accepting the offers from MNCs and starting an enterprise of my own. I looked at my losses as a learning experience. I was confident that I would be successful one day.

Sleeping On The Railway Platform


My first unit was at IIM, Ahmadabad. When we started our second unit in October 2006, I thought now I would start makingmoney. But I made losses of around Rs 2000 a day. A first generation entrepreneur cannot afford such a loss. But I worked really hard, working till 3 a.m. in the morning. What reduced my losses were the birthday party offers.
I started the third unit again in Ahmadabad but it also made losses. All my units were cafeteria and I understood then that the small cafeterias do not work; I needed huge volumes to work. My friends who were extremely supportive in the first year when things were difficult for me. I had taken loans from my IIM-A friends. They were earning very well.
In December 2006, an IIM Ahmadabad alumni event took place in Mumbai and I decided to go there mainly to get a contract. I was hopeful of getting it. I also knew that if I got the huge contract, I would come out of all the losses I had been incurring.
I booked my train ticket from Ahmadabad to Mumbai for Rs 300 and I had Rs 200 in my hand. As the meet went on till late at night, I could reach the station only at midnight. I missed the train. I decided to sit on the platform till the morning and travel by the next train in the morning. I didn’t have the money to check into a hotel. I didn’t want to disturb any of my friends so late at night.
It was an unforgettable night as I was even shoved off by policemen from the platform. It was quite insulting and embarrassing. After two hours, people started moving in, I also went in.
A man who sat next to me on the platform gave me a newspaper so that I could sleep. I spread the newspaper and slept on the platform! I sleep well. I got my ticket refund in the morning and went back to Ahmadabad. And, luck did not favor me, I didn’t get the contract.
In March 2007, I got an offer to start a unit at BITS, Pilani (Sarathbabu was an alumnus of BITS, Pilani). That was the first medium break for me. For the first time, I started making profits there though the other units continued to make losses. The reason for our success at BITS, Pilani was the volume; there were more students and there was a need for a unit like ours while in Ahmadabad, they have at least a hundred options.
If I made Rs 5000 a day at Ahmadabad in two shifts, here I made Rs 15,000 a day. BITS, Pilani unit gave me the confidence to move on. Unless you make money, you can’t be confident in business.

What Changed My Fortune

When all my friends who worked for various MNCs made good money every month and I made losses with my venture. But I kept telling myself, I am moving in the right direction to reach my ambition and vision. My dream was to provide employment and I was doing just that. I continued to work till 3 a.m. but I never felt tired.
Through BITS, Pilani, I got the BITS, Goa contract and that was the biggest break for me. It was not a cafeteria like the earlier ones but the dining hall that we got. We had to feed 1300 students. We started our operations in July 2007. At Rs 50, for 1300 students, our sale was Rs 65,000 per day. We soon started making a profit of Rs 10 to 15,000 a day. Around 60 to 70 people work there. I gave the charge of the Ahmadabad operations to one of my managers and moved to Goa.
I was still in debt by Rs 15-20 lakhs but I knew BITS, Goa would keep my dream alive. Within six months of starting our operations in Goa, I repaid all my debt.
I was called to give a speech at the SRM Deemed University. After the speech, I asked the Chancellor, can you give me an opportunity to serve in your campus?? He said, “If not you, to whom will I give such an opportunity?” It’s a food court but a big one, similar to the one at BITS, Pilani. There are around 17,000 students there.
Now, I have the BITS, Hyderabad contract, ready to start in July 2008. Other than the six units, I have approached a few more universities and corporate houses too. In the first year, I had made a loss of Rs 25 lakh. Right now, we have a turnover of Rs 32 lakh every month, which works out to 3.5 core (Rs 35 million) a year.
I have hired about 200 people. Indirectly, we touch the lives of around 1000 people. By this year end, we will have 500 people working for us. Only 10% of my workers are educated, the rest are uneducated. I want to make a change in their lives. If they have any problem, I will take care of it. We support the marriages and education of poor families. We are paying more to the employees as the company is doing well. Now that the foundation is strong, I plan to have ten units and a turnover of Rs 20 core (Rs 200 million) turnovers by next year.

His Advice Never Give Up

In the last two years, I have given more than 120 lectures in various institutions in India. When I got the first opportunity tospeak, I thought God had given me an opportunity to encourage or inspire entrepreneurs. When youngsters tell me they are inspired, I feel good.When you just dish out the theory, nobody believes you. But when you do it, they believe you. What I tell them is based on my own experiences.When I thought of starting a company, I felt India needed 100 people like Narayana Murthy and Ambani. If 100 such people support 2 lakh people each, imagine how many Indians get supported. Entrepreneurship is needed to uplift the poor. It is not easy to be an entrepreneur, especially a first generation entrepreneur.
There will be lots of challenges in the beginning but you should learn to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.
Never give up even if there are hurdles. There are many who give up within a week.
You need determination and a tough mind to cross the initial hurdles.
If you are starting without much money, you should not have any overhead expenses.
e still lives in the same hut
As I am in the food business, I know how much the price of every food item has gone up. Many people will languish in poverty because of inflation. Had my mother been working as an Anganvadi ayah today and earning Rs 1500, she would not have been able to feed us and educate us.
On the one side, we talk about India shining and India growing, but we should ensure that people do not die of hunger. We can be a developed country but we should not leave the poor people behind. I am worried for them because I know what hunger is and I still remember the days I was hungry. That is why I feel it is our responsibility to take care of them.
I wanted to buy a car and a house for my mother. I bought a car first, not a house. I still live in the same house, the same hut. I can build a house right now but I want my business to grow a little more. I feel good in the hut; that’s where I get my energy, that’s where I lived 25 years of my life. I want to remind myself that the money and fame should not take me away from what I want to achieve.
But within six months, I will build a good house for my mother. Her only advice to me is, don’t waste money.
Till I was in the 10th, there was no electricity in my house. I had to sit near the kerosene lamp and concentrate hard. That’s how I learnt to concentrate.
The two year journey has been very enriching. It seems like a 20-year journey for me. I was living every moment of the two years, from sleeping on the Mumbai railway station platform to this level.

The first thing I do after getting up in the morning is checking my Emails. But yesterday, I skipped this task and went on to read the newspaper. So, the thought of checking my Emails was still there in my mind even when I was reading the NEWS. I came across an article which pointed that there is discrimination between the girls and the boys even in the new-age society! I was quite shocked to read the examples given there but it gave a rise to a quite weird question in my Mind!


We classify everything into three genders namely He, She and It. So, if anyone questions you weather the Internet is a Male or a Female, what will be your probable answer? [remember that we are neglecting the third gender here]


In the first place, this question will surely annoy you! It did to me too! I was cursing myself to think all such weird stuff, but I thought of taking your advice to land to any conclusion.


Just tell me your views about this topic. I would love to hear your answers to this question and your explanation regarding it. And remember, For a weird question, weird answers are expected!!

If it's Zero degrees outside today and it's supposed to be Twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?


Why do ballet dancers always dance on their toes? Wouldn't it be easier to just hire taller dancers?


Why do scientists call it "re"search when looking for something new?


Why is it called a building when it is already built?


If pro is the opposite of con, then is progress the opposite of congress?


How do you know when invisible ink pens run out of ink?


If vegetable oil's made of vegetables, and olive oil's made of olives...what's baby oil made of?


Is it possible to be totally partial?


If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?


What do you do when you see an endangered animal that eats only endangered plants?


Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice"?


Why does your feet smell, and your nose run?


If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?


If work is so terrific, how come they have to pay you to do it?


If you're not supposed to drink and drive, then why do bars have parking lots?


If you got into a taxi and he started driving backwards, would the taxi driver end up owing you money?

These are the personal views of Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan, Director - Tata Sons.
Great Stuff from a great ex-HLL manager.
A Story on how to manage your career & your expectations by R.Gopalakrishnan




There is a Thai saying that experience is a comb which Nature gives to man after he is bald. As I grow bald, I would like to share my comb with your people, about their career ahead.


1. Seek out grassroots level experience


I studied Physics and Engineering at University. A few months before graduation, I appeared for an HLL interview for Computer Traineeship.When asked whether I would consider Marketing instead of Computers, I responded negatively : an engineer to visit grocery shops to sell Dalda or Lifebuoy? Gosh, no way. After I joined the Company and a couple of comfortable weeks in the swanky Head Office, I was given a train ticket to go to Nasik.Would I please meet Mr. Kelkar to whom I would be attached for the next two months? He would teach me to work as a salesman in his territory, which
included staying in Kopargaon and Pimpalgaon among other small towns. I was most upset. In a town called Ozhar, I was moving around from shop to shop with a bullock cart full of products and a salesman's folder in my hand. Imagine my embarrassment when an IIT friend appeared in front of me in Ozhar, believe it or not he exclaimed, "Gopal, I thought you joined as a Management Trainee in Computers". I could have died a thousand deaths. After this leveling experience, I was less embarrassed to work as a Despatch Clerk in the Company Depot and an Invoice Clerk in the Accounts Department. Several years later, I realised the value of such grassroots level experience. It is fantastic.


I would advise young people to seek out nail-dirtying, collar-soiling, shoe-wearing tasks. That is how you learn about organizations, about the true nature of work, and the dignity of the many, many tasks that go into building great enterprises.




2. Deserve before you desire


At one stage, I was appointed as the Brand Manager for Lifebuoy and Pears soap, the company's most popular-priced and most premium soaps. And what was a Brand Manager? "A mini-businessman, responsible for the production, sales and profits of the brand, accountable for its long-term growth, etc.,etc." I had read those statements, I believed them and here I
was, at 27, "in charge of everything". But very soon, I found I could not move a pin without checking with my seniors. One evening, after turning the Facit machine handle through various calculations, I sat in front of the Marketing Director. I expressed my frustration and gently asked whether I could not be given total charge. He smiled benignly and said, "The perception and reality are both right. You will get total charge when you know more about the brand than anyone else in this company about its formulation, the raw materials, the production costs, the consumer's perception, the distribution and so on. How long do you think that it will take?" "Maybe, ten years", I replied, "and I don't expect to be the Lifebuoy and Pears Brand Manager for so long"! And then suddenly, the lesson was clear. I was desiring total control, long before I deserved it.


This happens to us all the time - in terms of responsibilities, in terms of postings and promotions, it happens all the time that there is a gap between our perception of what we deserve and the reality of what we get. It helps to deserve before we desire.




3. Play to win but win with fairness


Life is competitive and of course, you play to win. But think about the balance. Will you do anything, to win? Perhaps not. Think deeply about how and where you draw the line. Each person draws it differently, and in doing so, it helps to think about values. Winning without values provides dubious fulfillment. The leaders who have contributed the most are the ones with a set of universal values. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King for example. Napoleon inspired a ragged, mutinous and half-starved army to fight and seize power. This brought him name and fame for twenty years. But all the while, he was driven forward by a selfish and evil ambition, and not in pursuit of a great ideal. He finally fell because of his selfish ambition. I am fond of referring to the Pierre de Coubertin Fair Play Trophy. It was instituted in 1964 by the founder of the modern Olympic Games and here are two examples of winners.A Hungarian tennis player who pleaded with the umpire to give his opponent some more time to recover from a cramp. A British kayak team who were trailing the Danish kayak team. They then stopped to help the Danish team whose boat was stuck. The Danes went on to beat the British by one second in a three hour event!


What wonderful examples of sportsmanship! Play to Win, but with Fairness.




4. Enjoy whatever you do


Sir Thomas Lipton is credited with the statement, "There is no greater fun than hard work". You usually excel in fields, which you truly enjoy. Ask any person what it is that interferes with his enjoyment of existence. He will say, "The struggle for life". What he probably means is the struggle for success. Unless a person has learnt what to do with success after getting it, the very achievement of it must lead him to unhappiness. Aristotle wrote, "Humans seek happiness as an end in itself, not as a
means to something else". But if you think about it, we should not work for happiness. We should work as happy people. In organisational life, people get busy doing something to be happy. The more you try to be happy, the more unhappy you can get. Your work and career is all about your reaching your full potential. Working at one's full potential, whether it is the office boy or the Chairman, leads to enjoyment and fulfillment.


A last point about enjoyment. Keep a sense of humour about yourself. Too many people are in danger of taking themselves far too seriously. As General Joe Stilwell is reported to have said, "Keep smiling. The higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see of his backside".




5. Be Passionate about your health


Of course, as you get older, you would have a slight paunch, greying of hair or loss of it and so on. But it is in the first 5 - 7 years after the working career begins that the greatest neglect of youthful health occurs. Sportsmen stop playing sports, non drinkers drink alcohol, light smokers smoke more, active people sit on chairs, starving inmates of hostels eatrich food in good hotels and so on. These are the years to watch. Do not, I repeat do not, convince yourself that you are too busy, or that you do not have access to facilities, or worst of all, that you do this to relieve the stresses of a professional career.


A professional career is indeed very stressful. There is only one person who can help you to cope with the tension, avoid the doctor's scalpel, and to feel good each morning - and that is yourself. God has given us as good a health as He has, a bit like a credit balance in the bank. Grow it, maintain it, but do not allow its value destruction. The penalty is very high in later years.




6. Direction is more important than distance


Every golfer tries to drive the ball to a very long distance. In the process, all sorts of mistakes occur because the game involves the masterly co-ordination of several movements simultaneously. The golf coach always advises that direction is more important than distance. So it is with life. Despite one's best attempts, there will be ups and downs. It is relationships and friendships that enable a person to navigate the choppy waters that the ship of life will encounter. When I was young, there was a memorable film by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart and Dona Reed, named IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. It is about a man who is about to commit suicide because he thinks he is a failure. An angel is sent to rescue him. The bottomline of the film is that "No Man is a Failure Who Has Friends".


Conclusion:


My generation will never be twenty again, but when you are older, you can and should be different from my generation. Ours is a great and wonderful country, and realising her true potential in the global arena depends ever so much on the quality and persistence of our young people. Good luck in your journey, my young friends, and God be with you and our beloved Nation.

These days we quite often find a small graphical image depicting the strength of our password whenever we type it, while registering with any website. The inbuilt program finds the relevance of your password with your username and also the characters used in the password. The lesser the resemblance between the username and password the more secure is the password. Also a good combination of numerals, special characters and alphabets is supposed to be the characteristics of a good (unhackable) password

Hacking or guessing of passwords are on the rise and you need to create unhackable and secure passwords which others cannot guess. Also, there is no use of password which you yourself tend to forget. Today I am going to bring some tips for you which will help creating strong passwords, which wont be difficult for you to remember:

1) Consider any iconic number like your birth date. A perfect combination of your birth date in numerals and words works wonders.
Example: Birth date is 9th January 1989
The password can be: 9y9r8a9u1naj
The logic we use here is 9th-day of month, last to first characters of the month alternated by last to first characters of the birth year. The remaining characters after alternation are used in the reverse order. I understand this was difficult to follow. But this technique creates among the strongest of passwords.

2) Use your car number and your name in alternate order.
Example: If my number-plate of my car says- MH04C678 and my name is John.
Then the password can be: MjHo0h4nC678
Remember here that we are using a good combination of uppercase and lowercase characters.

3) You can use any combination of characters but use the website name where you are registering.
Example: You have decided to use abcd1234 as the password and you are registering for yahoo.com
So you can use the first and last characters of Yahoo within your password.
Password can be: oabcd1234y
Here we are using the first and last characters in yahoo in reverse order at the start and the end of the password.

Share any good ideas for creating secure passwords if you have any. I will keep updating this list..

Many-a-times we create Internet accounts and Ourself doubt our own capability to use Strong passwords which cannot be hacked easily. Guessing of passwords have been on the rise these days as people are getting clinged to corrupt activities.

Password Meter is an online utility which can help us in creating strong passwords. It basically uses some Algorithms to check how secure the password is. For Example: It checks the repetition of characters.
Also, it shows your password score of reliability which tells us how much secure we are from our password being guessed. Complexity of our password is also being checked and displayed.
This tool is a must before setting any password, if you don’t want it to be guessed easily. Also you can download this Software for offline use

Password Meter website

1. Which president smoked marijuana with a nude playgirl while he joked


about being too wasted to "push the button" in case of nuclear attack??



2. Which president allegedly had affairs with both a winner AND a

finalist in the Miss America pageant??



3. Which president had sex with one of his secretaries stretched out

atop a desk in the oval office??



4. Which president allegedly had an affair (as well as children) with a

slave who was his wife's half sister??



5. Which president called his mistress "Pookie"??



6. Which president married a woman who hadn't yet divorced her first

husband, and was branded an "adulterer" during his re-election

campaign??



7. Which future president wrote love letters to his neighbor's wife

while he was engaged to someone else??



8. Which president had a torrid affair with the

First Lady's personal secretary??



9. Which president had sex with a young woman in a White House coat

closet, while, at one point a secret service agent prevented the

hysterical First Lady from attacking them??



10. Which president had sex in a closet while telling his partner about

the other president who did the same in a closet??



11. Which Vice-President was ticked off because he felt that HIS record

of sexual conquests was much more "impressive" (i.e.

numerous) than the President's??



12. Which future president, while a college student, enjoyed showing

off his penis, which he named Jumbo??











Answers:

1. John F. Kennedy

2 Bill Clinton

3. Lyndon B. Johnson

4. Thomas Jefferson

5. Bill Clinton

6. Andrew Jackson

7. George Washington, Lyndon B. Johnson

8. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy

9. Warren G. Harding

10. John F. Kennedy

11. Lyndon B. Johnson

12. Lyndon B. Johnson

Living in today’s world we cant stay away from spam, As it comes from the most unexpected sites.We are tortured by various unwanted emails which we don’t expect and don’t want.These spam emails mostly come from websites which want us to register so that they can send a conformation message to our Inbox to verify our Email address.After verifying these websites tend to publicize our Email address and we start receiving irrelevant Emails from various sources.The only way to stop spam from flooding your Inbox is stopping it at its root.


What if we have a temporary Email address which expires after 10 minutes? Sounds cool.10 Minute Mail is a service which provides you with a disposable Email address which automatically expires after 10 minutes.So you you don’t need to give up your real E-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists. This is a nice and free.
10 Minute Mail will give you a temporary e-mail address. Any e-mails sent to that address will be show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.Enjoy!

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html

It costs money to send a text message from your Mobile Cell phone to another Cell phone. So, why cant we use another Free text messaging options available online? You can send Free SMS to any mobile phone number anywhere in the world from your Computer enabled with Internet.I am listing 4 Sites which give a good service when it comes to sending Text message from Computer to Cell Phone. I am personally tested all of these websites in India but they are meant to work in most of the countries around the world. So you get Worldwide free SMS Text Messages for free!

SEASMS
 

This is a Cool website where you can send a free SMS and you can receive the Delivery repost of the SMS too. This is an amazing feature. They don’t even require you to register to their website. There are two different sections in their website, one to send SMS to people in India and other to the Worldwide Audience. You can also select some Cool SMS from their Gallery and send it to your friends.

160by2

You need to register to this site using your Cell Phone. Just give then your Cell Phone number and they will send you a confirmation Password. You need to put that password on the Confirmation web Page of the Site and you can use the website from then on to send Unlimited SMS to anyone for free. [it allows sending you to Seven countries in the worldThe best part is that, the message is received by the recipient from your phone number. So basically the recipient thinks that you have sent him the Text message but actually it is sent through the Internet

WAY2SMS

The same registration format as above is used here too and even the features are the same. But you can send Text messages to many more countries through this site. The recipient receives the message as if it was sent from your Phone.
Google SMS Channels

You can create your own Google Channel and Add your friends in it. You need to verify your Mobile Cell Phone number and then you can send messages to anyone in your Subscription list.Tell me how you find these sites. I hope it will help you for sending Free Text messages to your friends..

Windows PCs have a text editor named Notepad. Everyone knows about it and I am not going to say anything new. The new things which I am going to say is about playing and have fun with Notepad applications. Notepad can be used as a fun Application too and it shows some weird behaviors too.. So I have brought in front of you some Notepad tricks which give weird results when executed.




Notepad tricks

Notepad Trick 1 : Use Notepad as a Log Book

Open notepad >> Write .LOG in the first line >> Save the File and close it.

When you open this file again, you will see the current date and time and you can enter your activities there to keep a Log of what you have done at what time. You can save this file as a Diary! You can press F5 to refresh and get the current time.



Notepad Trick 2 : World Trade Center Attack

Open notepad >> Write Q33N >> Increase Font size to 72 >> Change Font to Wingdings

This will show you how the World Trade Center episode happened. First the Plane hit two towers and then caused lots of damage.



Notepad Trick 3 : 4335 Trick
Open notepad >> Write this app can break in the first line >> Save the File and close it.

After opening the file again, you will see that it contains all encoded characters. It happens if we enter four words separated by spaces, wherein the first word has 4 letters, the next two have three letters each, and the last word has five letters. Then Notepad Automatically hides the text into unknown code.

It also works if you type AAAA BBB CCC DDDDD or any other 4-3-3-5 letter combination.



Notepad Trick 4 : Shut Down the Computer

Open notepad >> Write

@echo off


msg * I am tired.


shutdown -c “So, Bye Bye” -s

>> Save the File as AnyName.bat

When you will open this file, your Computer will Shut down on its own after showing the message in it.



Notepad Trick 5 : Open Notepad Continuously

Open notepad >> Write

@ECHO off


:top


START %SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe


GOTO top

>> Save the File as AnyName.bat

When you try to open this file, Multiple Notepad Windows will keep opening up.



Do let me know if you had fun with these tricks! I had written some more tricks some time back, you can check then out too..