Z-Blogs

It gives me great pleasure to start the interviews on this blog with Kiran Nadkarni. Kiran is Founder & Director at Kaati Zone, a chain of quick service restaurants specializing in Indian foods. Kiran was among the early VCs in the country. Prior to starting Kaati Zone, he has held positions such as President, ICICI Ventures, and Managing Director, Jumpstartup Ventures. He has been an entrepreneur for over three years now and has raised funds for this venture.Read on to know more about why he turned to entrepreneurship and his experiences in running his venture started in Namma Bengaluru with…

As an entrepreneur you may have prepared a business plan or may be in the process of preparing one. What about an action plan? What about the results of your actions? Have you reviewed the results of your actions on a regular basis? In fact, many times, start ups miss out on this aspect, thus missing out on signals, that something that has been planned is not working out. Regular capturing, monitoring and analysis of data can help. In my first post in this blog "Thinking about the how and why of costs" I had mentioned one Bangalore Company in…

There was this story I once read... I do not remember the source, but I remember the story ... it has left its mark on me. It beautifully communicates the essence of what I want to say. So to this source .. whoever has thought of this story or has experienced it .. I convey my thanks. Now for the story...There are three young men who want to become actors. Those who look at the three persons see similar young men and club them together as birds of the same feather. One person gets more curious and asks the three…

Barcamp [Apr 19 - 20]I had gone to the Bommanahalli CMC today to help somebody submit Form 6. The BBMP control room lady was busy. Her colleague responded to my first question. When I asked for a clarification, he snapped, ‘I have lots of work, elections are coming up‘. Well, elections are the reason we were there too. Agreed it is our duty as citizens to ensure we get on the voter rolls. It looks like sometimes, we have to go through some agni pariksha for this! How many people can afford to take off from their work for hours…

It was a quiet Saturday afternoon on the first of March this year that Citizen Matters, Bangalore's first online community news publication went live for the city public. The two of us at Oorvani Media, and Gokul Janga at Tecdost, our technology friends, had had a frantic week. March 1st was our final deadline, and we were not going to miss this. Working furiously at our keyboards, it was around 5.30 p.m, that we had addressed the last of the publishing wrinkles that were fighting for our attention, and gave the finishing touches for the launch version of www.citizenmatters.in. We…

VIPs continue to be stumbling blocks in the paths of ordinary citizens. My daughter and I had another brush with a V/VIP at HAL Airport on Friday (28 March) morning. This time it was Rahul Gandhi. There were no noticeable signs at the entrance to the road into the airport to let the public know that it was being cleared for a "VIP" to go the wrong way on it. But, half way down the road, we were brusquely waved to the side by a belligerent policeman so that the political convoy could whizz straight out from the tarmac. Clearly…

 Last Thursday evening there was such an exceptionally grim gridlock at HAL Airport that landing passengers had to cool their heels or wander about between cars and puddles for over half an hour while their pick-up vehicles were stuck within the airport premises, unable to move in any direction. The reason? "VVIP movement." It wasn't even a visiting head of state: just a regular, home-grown neta (in this case, apparently, Arun Jaitley - but it could have been any number of other politicians whose fawning parties treat them like latter-day royals; I shudder to think of the likely situation during…

I thought I'd begin my blog on Citizen Matters with the question: does the citizen really matter? Recent experiences in Bangalore suggest that they do not, especially in the context of public policy. The ongoing brouhaha over the Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) is only the latest example of the total lack of transparency and complete disregard for citizens' rights to information and self-determination that mark planning (if any) for the city's development. This aspect of the issue has received far less attention so far than more obviously emotive ones such as inadequate infrastructure for effective connectivity. Although reams of newsprint…