Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

This is how Rithesh Prasad, a first time entrepreneur and the co-founder and ideasmith for TolMolBol.com, sums up his ideas about entrepreneurship.

Rithesh is a BE (Computer Science) graduate from BITS, Pilani, who drives all aspects of tolmolbol’s operations, data management, product design and strategy. He also has 3 US patents pending, and is an avid movie freak.

In an email interview with Rithesh, I had the pleasure of discussing about the website, the company and entrepreneurship. Here is what he had to say:

The design looks great. I am just wondering if you have had experience in designing before or is this a first time?

Thank you very much for your feedback. We are so glad that you liked it and our design team was absolutely elated to hear your views.
  The biggest factors behind the success of many technology products, like the iPod for example, have been simplicity and ease of use. And that has been our guiding design principle as well. As for our experience with design, our parent company, Pennywise Solutions, has been delivering a lot of projects for the web. With every project we execute, we’ve learnt something new. Building on top of this knowledge, we also spent many weeks understanding usability aspects of several successful internet products and imbibed some of the best design concepts we found into tolmolbol.

Your site covers more cities that any site I’ve seen before. I would like to know how many cities have any kind of conversation going?

As of today, our members have written reviews of local businesses across 14 cities and have asked local questions in 12 cities. Just yesterday, I was happy to see a new member from Hyderabad who also wrote a review about a school in Thiruvanananthapuram. And that is the beauty of our country. A lot of Indians have probably lived in several cities during their lifetime. Hence, it would not be too hyperbolic to say that there are billions of experiences about businesses waiting to be shared and countless conversations waiting to happen. The thought of creating a future even remotely close to that is what excites us tremendously.

How much traffic is the site currently generating? Alexa says it’s picking up quite fast.

We don’t release specific figures regarding traffic and we don’t believe in misguiding you with fancy numbers. That said, we are quite pleased with the page views and the visitor numbers for tolmolbol. And despite the pickup that Alexa shows, I believe it is only a vague indicator for traffic. Our analytics show that about half of our visitors have Firefox as their browser and that they obviously don’t use the Alexa toolbar. So, I’ve stopped paying attention to Alexa.

The classifieds board is still empty. When do you expect the advertisers will start running to paste their ads here?

We believe it is only a matter of time before our members adopt the classifieds board. As for when advertisers will start arriving in droves, it is hard for me to make a precise prediction. But I am guessing it will happen sooner than later. As a country, we lack a great pan Indian classifieds portal. So, the opportunity is large. We are also exploring tie-ups with specific partners to seed our classified advertisements page across verticals.

What cool features should we expect in TolMolBol in May 2010?

By 2010, we would like to leverage tolmolbol and extend our business model on top of multiple channels. We are also aiming to be the local portal of choice for not just India but several other countries as well. On a different note, we have been pleasantly surprised with the level of member feedback and the support we’ve received with regard to feature suggestions. We will continue to listen to this feedback and work on providing whatever cool features our members demand.

As an entrepreneur, do you think opening up an internet company in India is better than sticking to a job, in terms of the money you can make?

The right answer is that it depends on the capabilities of the individual. If a person with an entrepreneurial bent of mind has a good understanding of technology and is also market savvy to boot, he or she can do very well. While there is no guarantee your company will leave you rich enough to retire before thirty, you can rest assured that it will come with a lot more fun, freedom, learning and a sense of accomplishment.

Also I’m interested in the timelines, about when you decided to quit your job and startup, and then when did the idea come about, and how long did it take to create the team, and finally how long did it take to roll out the beta.

Pennywise Solutions was started around mid 2003. Today, it provides IT solutions for a number of small & medium businesses across Europe and the US. About a year ago, in mid-2006, when I was still with Adobe Systems, I received a call from Anand asking me if I’d like to run the portals division of Pennywise that would later be spun off as a separate company. Needless to say, I seized the opportunity because of the enormous market potential that abounds in the internet and mobile space. We found it impossible to use the internet for locating dependable information about our neighbourhoods. And we decided to build a fun product around local search, reviews and communities that would solve the problem. An immensely talented team within Pennywise then worked amazingly hard to ship tolmolbol beta in less than 5 months.

Is it feasible for students in engineering colleges to open up? What would be the minimum amount of funding they should be looking at?

Since I haven’t started a company whilst in college, I really can’t talk about any first-hand experiences. However, as a big fan of Paul Graham’s writings, I do echo most of his entrepreneurship related advice directed towards college students. With regard to funding, it would really depend on the kind of idea one has. Within the technology domain itself, there are so many things you could do. You can have a services or a product based offering. You can work on hardware or software; on mobile telephony or the internet. The bottom line is that there are so many great ideas out there that are waiting to be built and tested out in the marketplace. Moreover, with the amount of open source tools available, the cost of building many of these solutions is quite low. Today, many colleges offer adequate hardware and network infrastructure support. With the opportunities that are out there in the marketplace, now is an especially good time for students to start up.

What is the one thing that if improved, would really help Indian entrepreneurs in starting up?

We feel that banks need to be more receptive towards entrepreneurs and should relax a lot of their norms and regulations. They should have incentive plans and also lower interest rates. There should be loans available without collateral and they should stop wasting too much time of any one who approaches them. And if we can add one more factor that can help entrepreneurs succeed, it would be increased media coverage.

I would like to know one incident from your company, after you began, where it felt like everything was going down. And then how did you manage to get back.

Fortunately, we haven’t had such a situation with regard to tolmolbol.com. However, our parent company, Pennywise Solutions, does have an interesting past. It was initially set up as a product company that developed fleet management software. However, when our US based marketing partner pulled out after some time, instead if shutting shop, our company shifted its focus towards IT services. Today, we cater to a number of small and medium businesses based in Europe and the US. We also have over 70 full-time employees and have made a name for ourselves around web application development and internet marketing. That’s one story that inspires us every single day.

The government has started some kind of initiatives to fund entrepreneurs. Would you ever go to them? If not, why?

We do not have any experience with such initiatives. If we do find this option attractive, we will definitely consider approaching the government as well.

Pennywise solutions was there in Proto.in. What kind of an exposure did that get you? This time around, they are charging 10k from each company that features. Do you think it’s worth spending your initial capital on that event? If yes, why? Did any VC contact you after it?

Tolmolbol was still in private alpha when we participated in the first edition of Proto. The group behind this event, including Vijay Anand, Kiruba, Amit Ranjan, Syed and the entire Knowledge Foundation team put in a lot of effort and it seemed as though some of the volunteers hardly slept a wink in the days leading up to the conference. I believe that ten thousand bucks seems right for a start-up to earn the right to participate in Proto. The best part of this event is the opportunity it provides for you to interact with other young entrepreneurs. Their dynamism rubs off on you and gives you a fresh dose of enthusiasm. While we have been speaking to certain investors after the event, we have not been in a great hurry to seek outside investment. As of this moment, tolmolbol.com is completely self-funded.

I would like to thank Rithesh for taking out the time to answer my questions, and to the whole TolMolBol.com team for bringing out such a great product. I wish them the very best of luck for the future.

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