She was born in America, but felt like she had to give back to the women of Gujarat

While it is now rare to see people house a sense of community with their family’s hometowns, what’s even more uncommon is seeing people who harbour gratitude towards them. But for New York-based social and serial entrepreneur Megha Desai, when the time came to give thanks to the elements, communities, and institutions that made them, the path was strikingly lucid.

Megha Desai

The road not taken

Growing up in suburban Massachusetts, 37-year-old Megha was training in Indian Classical Hindustani singing one day, and taking ski lessons the next. She then went to university in NYC. Her first-ever job was in politics, which also sparked her interest in communications, leading to a switch in fields — from politics to advertising. Her father, who was an entrepreneur and one of the founding charter members of TiE ( TIE-Atlantic at the time) dragged her along to act as the secretary at some of their first few meetings, planting the entrepreneurial streak in her.

However, about 12 years into her career, she realised she was meant to do more with her life, and that her volunteer work with her family at the Desai Foundation, which they had crafted together, was the missing piece.

It was actually on a family vacation in Peru that the idea for the Desai Foundation really started to come to life. The whole family had climbed Machu Picchu and ended up in a discussion on family, legacy, evolution, and how all of those things collide. “So we started a foundation composed of all of those things: community, culture, health, and education. That was 10 years ago. We started by just writing a few cheques to causes we cared about, and three years ago, we decided to become a public foundation. That's what we're continuing to build,” she says.

Teaching a man how to fish

From a community perspective, they knew they wanted to operate within the communities that have moulded their journeys — Gujarat, where her parents are from; Boston, where they grew up, and New York, the place Megha ultimately chose to call home. “We chose to focus on women and children because women are the backbone of society. When you empower women, you're empowering an entire community. And children are the future,” she explains.

They believe strongly that development comes from within communities, so they simply provide the tools and training for people to improve their own lives and the community at large. “If you go to our operating villages in Gujarat, you'll find that most people we're serving have no idea who we are, nor do they recognise the Desai Foundation name. We're proud of that. We tap the resources closest to the people we're serving, and that's really the only way to have a lasting impact,” she states.

A deeper dive into a couple of their programmes:

Since 66 percent of girls in India skip school when they're on their periods, they instated a sanitary napkin programme that not only employs women but also provides their communities access to sanitary pads. The Desai Foundation will be able to provide jobs for 30–35 women across three regions in Gujarat, ultimately reaching 2,50,000 women and girls. The project provides women and girls with valuable health resources while empowering women with entrepreneurial skills.

Columbia University and IIT Gandhinagar’s Community Impact: At Columbia in NYC, there is a student-run programme which uses the students as volunteers to serve the community in which the university resides, namely, the underprivileged sections of Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Washington Heights. There are 900 students a year that serve up to 9,000 people. Inspired by this model at Columbia, they helped forge a similar model, NYASA, with the team of students at IIT Gandhinagar in Gujarat, creating a social initiative benefiting local communities through health camps, workshops, and computer classes that teach technical skills to the youth. “As it is a newer programme, our numbers are modest, but growing rapidly, and the possibilities are endless. We are working not only to continue serving the population around IITGN but also to bring these students beyond local communities to inspire our other regions like Balsar, Valsad, Navsari, Talangpur, and beyond,” says Megha.

Their sewing programmes are also hugely impactful. A three-month vocational sewing class for 40 women that costs around Rs. 60,000, can secure them employment at local textile companies, where they stitch garments such as salwar suits, churidars, blouses, and dresses. These jobs pay them nearly Rs. 3000 a month in salaries collectively. Over the course of a year, that results in a million rupees in salaries for the women who take the jobs, of which 90 percent is reinvested in communities. “So, we can literally turn Rs. 60,000 into a million” says Megha, adding, “But what’s amazing is the camaraderie and dignity it gives these women, many of whom didn’t finish school. Beyond the money, we think this is the true value of the programme.”

Their Bal Mela health camps serve up to 2,000 young children at each of their four current project sites in Untdi, Talangpur, Kharel, and Palaj. These life-saving camps provide basic services such as checkups for general, eye, and dental health as well as for diabetes; distribute medicine, spectacles, and other resources; promote awareness through health education; and particularly address the health concerns of women and children. These camps have created four lakh beneficiaries so far.

They have also opened ’science schools’ named ‘Lok Vidhyalay School of Math and Science’, serving 13 villages in rural Gujarat. Besides that, the organisation also works in the area of prenatal care to protect young mothers and children

A new dharma

MSD was a bit of an accident. Megha had quit a traditional advertising job and was plotting her next move but the 2008 recession made it a terrible time to be job-hunting in the United States. “While I was looking for a job, a few of my entrepreneurial and creative friends asked me to help them with projects they were launching. These small projects turned into a bit of a revenue stream. I eventually went back to a full-time advertising job but left in 2010, knowing that I needed to revisit this ‘side project’ from two years prior,” she recalls.

That is what led to MSD, which is, ‘Marketing. Strategy. Dharma.,’ her marketing company established in 2011 to help startups and impact brands connect better with their brand, their audience, and with other companies through strategic partnerships. “We are an affordable company that knows what it is like to start your own venture and to work in the social good sector,” she says of their ideology. Over the years, they have associated with NPR, HP, the TV show Project Runway, Universal Pictures, General Assembly, ONE.org, Starwood Capital, and more.

And when her work with MSD and the Desai Foundation collides, she feels most alive.

As of three years ago, they have shifted from a family foundation to a public one, meaning their funding now needs to come from external sources. “Fundraising is always a challenge, and an art that we will continue to learn,” she says. Their achievements of the last three years, however, are validation that they’re doing something right. They claim to have impacted over 3,00,000 lives in the US and India.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/megha-desai/

10 times when less is more

“You might do serious damage to your brain,” my 14 year old told me. She is my nutritionist.

I tried a three day fast. I drank only water and had no food or anything else.

On the first day I was hungry but I watched TV at night to distract me and then I fell asleep early.

Falling asleep is a great way to fast. By the time I had woken up I hadn’t eaten in 36 hours. Then I tried to go through the rest of the day. This was yesterday.

Around noon I had trouble standing. When I stood I would see yellow lights everywhere. Yellow lights, in a traffic situation, mean things are about to change. Means you might have to STOP soon.

Sometimes the yellow was so bright I’d fall into a wall and hold on. Then I’d slide down.

I had read that going on a three day fast is perfect. That maybe you could get mental clarity from cleaning out all the toxins.

Maybe this is true. But at 46 hours the worst thing of all happened.

I logged onto the computer, specifically onto the place where I play chess online.

I lost about 20 games in a row for the first time in my life. I decided I needed to eat.

I had salmon. I had avocado. I had some nuts. Fast over.

I tried it. It was an experiment. Did it work? Did it not work? I don’t know. It was something I just tried. If you don’t try things, you don’t have experiences.

Thinking about things is not experience. Doing things is experience.

About ten months ago I threw out all my belongings. I gave up the apartments I was renting. I had someone go there and throw everything out.

I gave up my diploma, my books, my dishes, my beds, my sheets, my desks. My 40 year old comic book collection, my computers, my collected animated cels from the 70s TV show “I Dream of Jeannie.”

I gave up my original drawing of the seven dwarfs from the animator of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” I threw out my diploma.

“But you worked so hard for it,” my friend told me.

“I’ve worked a lot harder for other things,” I said. Ditch it.

I gave up everything that the prior James could say, “This is mine.” I was left with two outfits. A computer. A phone. I turned off all email from my phone and deleted all apps except Kindle.

I wasn’t being minimalist. I just didn’t want those things anymore. I wanted to be like a newborn baby again.

There’s a bestselling book about “tidying up” that says, “hold up each object close to your heart and keep the things you love and throw out the things you no longer love.”

This is a stupid idea. Why are there objects you love and other objects you don’t love? They are just objects.

I got rid of everything.

But then I found that I had many more things to give up.

Someone insulted me. I got angry at him. Now I had to give up anger.

Another person I had bad memories about that would come up almost every morning.

I had to give up those bad memories. Another time I was thinking about money. How much money will I make in my lifetime? I wonder this in the shower.

I had to give up thinking about money. I might die tomorrow. And then what? And worrying about money never made me any money.

The most common question people asked me after I threw everything away was, “Do you feel more free now,”

I want to say “Yes.” Yes, the burdens of objects no longer chain me to the Earth.

But it isn’t true. I didn’t feel more free. I just had no belongings or place to live.

I no longer had my Dr. McCoy doll sitting next to my computer. I no longer had my hand-carved Go board. Or the original sketch used to pitch the 60s cartoon, “Underdog.”

I no longer had an address.

But none of these things were freeing. But it was a starting point. And since then, every day I try to be more free. to find the spots where less is more.

10 things where LESS IS MORE:

A) Arguing.

When someone wants to argue with me, I take a pass. I remind myself of this:

My dad had a stroke while arguing and he never woke up again even though he was in bed with his eyes open for almost two more years.
B) Investing.

Warren Buffett says, “The first rule of investing is don’t lose money.” Then he says, “The second rule of investing is…don’t forget rule #1”.

The best way to avoid losing money is to realize you don’t have to invest. You and I work hard for money. Don’t give it to the people who try to scam us every day.

I pick my spots carefully. I used to invest in and out of the markets all day long. I’d feel every heart beat. Now I don’t. Now I take a walk and my heart does what it will. I don’t need to feel it.
C) People you love.

“Love everybody” is good advice. Fine. But this is a bit abstract. It’s not really practical.

I actually love very few people. I gave up on loving everyone. That’s a lot of people to care for.

My first priority is to my kids. And my friends who are closest to me. These are people I love and will do anything for.

After that, I am very curious about everyone else. Is this someone I can love? I prefer that question to the statement, “I love you” about people I don’t know,

Starting with curiosity is, for me, better than starting with love.
D) Work.

When you rest, you rejuvenate. You get more creative. You have more ideas. You read more and learn more and observe more and more time to get curious about people you might love.

These are all good things.

I work a couple of hours a day on writing, reading, and podcasting. But I can’t even call those things “work” because I love doing them.

It took me 40 years to realize this.

One thing I always remember: Anataly Karpov, who was World Chess Champion from 1975 – 1984 was asked how long he studied chess each day.

He said, “At MOST, three hours a day.” The rest of the time he spends with family, or playing tennis, or studying languages.

And that’s the best player in the world.

Why is everyone working more than three hours. For those of us not the best in the world, maybe one or two hours a day is enough.

The lion doesn’t hunt for food all day. He stretches out in the sun. He closes his eyes. Maybe she dreams of planets and lovers and blackness.
E) Education.

I went to college. I went to graduate school. I took 100s of tests to prove everything I was learning. I failed the last three of those 100s. And was thrown out of “learning.”

I use zero of it now. Zero.

Here’s what you need to know in each subject.

The MAXIMUM you need to learn to be good at 99% of things in life:

Math: basic probability and statistics that you can do in your head. For instance, know that 1/3 of 10,000 is 3,333 (roughly).

English: Learn how to read. Because later you might like reading and reading will make you a better writer.

Note that whenever you read a book, you might remember 1-2% of it. If you read lots of books that will add up. But no pressure to remember more.

History: A two page outline of the history of the planet. Because all the books are biased.

And then later they get rewritten.

Much later in life you might want to, for fun, explore those biases and read books about it.

Three good history books I think are worth reading:
“Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari
“The Evolution of Everything” by Matt Ridley
“Wonderland” by Steve Johnson

Science: Nothing. You don’t even really need to know that the Earth is flat. If you want to be a scientist then learn more science.

Sometimes science is fun. I like reading science fiction.

Art: I don’t know. I never learned art. I’m only starting to appreciate it and read about it now. I’m 48.

In the past few weeks I went to The Broad museum in LA and The Whitney in NYC. Fascinating!

So now I am reading books to learn more. But I’ve never learned about art before because I had no interest.

If you try to teach people with no interest, they won’t learn.

To this day, at every conference I speak at, nobody can tell me the birthdate of Charlemagne within 500 years.

Go ahead, guess right now!
G) Food.

If you eat a lot, your cells get inflamed and this is the cause of every disease known to man.

This doesn’t mean fast (see above). Our ancestors ate at random times. They didn’t stuff their faces with processed sugars 21 three -course meals a week.
H) Fears.

I’m afraid my kids will get hurt. I’m afraid to go broke. I’m afraid whatever woman I am dating will cheat on me. I’m afraid people I work with hate me.

Or…not.

When has a fear solved a problem for me?

Some would say, “fear is motivating”. Don’t be stupid.

Being smart should motivate me. Not trying to avoid some insecurity or fear.
I) Yes.

A “Yes” takes time.

If I lose $1000 I can always make it back (hopefully). But if I lose five minutes, I can NEVER make it back.

This doesn’t mean never say “yes”. But figure out how many more “Yesses” you have in life.

By the time you are 30, maybe you’ll only have time to make 10-20 new good friends in your life.

Make sure you say “Yes” very carefully to new friends. You only have 10 Yesses left.

Same for books, loves, meetings, coffees, everything. Same thing for the messages you send on a phone. To the people you are curious about.
J) Lists.

You can listen to this list. Or not. I might eventually start owning things again. Or I might change my mind about anything above.

It doesn’t matter.THE ONLY THING I WANT MORE OF:

True joy is infectious. It’s contagious. It’s a virus.

If you always do the things you enjoy then other people will become excited about them, excited about you, excited about the ideas you have

If you want to have impact on the future, bring as much joy as possible to the present.

I wasn’t enjoying fasting. So I ate a dead fish and some plants pulled out of the ground.

And then I won some chess games and watched some TV, went to the bathroom, slept eight hours.

And the next day I wrote this article. I said “Yes” to this. To you.What are other things where “less is more?”

Maybe: medicine, talking, the middle aisles in a supermarket, drug laws, romantic intrigue, gossip, etc.

Maybe even words in article I write.

Love, James.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/10-times-when-less-is-more/

Maybe a pilgrimage can save your life…

Kamal was totally lost. His father had died. His job over. His relationship gone. He felt adrift, depressed, broken.

He was so lost he wandered the world trying to find his way back.

Twenty years later he wrote the novel about what happened “Rebirth.”

The novel is about how he discovered for himself the ancient art of the pilgrimage. How to be a wanderer.

How to be lost in a world with too much GPS raining down.

Would a pilgrimage, a wandering, solve his problems?

I read Kamal’s book. The book comes out today. I had him on my podcast (also out today). I wanted to find out how even in our daily lives we can go on a pilgrimage.

Even if I’m in a cubicle, can I break free, can I become a wanderer.

Sometimes I also feel stuck. But I don’t want to go away for months at a time. I want a pilgrimage in my life right now!

From what I can gather from reading the book, “Rebirth,” and talking with Kamal, a pilgrimage has several parts:

Listen to the FULL interview with Kamal Ravikant here

A) Seeking an answer

Something happened. Something confusing. Something that wasn’t in the plan.

You have to get off the regular path. Try a new one. Try one that takes a bit of courage and discipline. To meet stranger along the way

B) It takes time

I’m not a believer that you have to go to a far location.

But take time for yourself each day to do something you’ve never done before. Think about things you never thought about before.

Find the places in your life that you never looked before. They are there every day. The pilgrimage awaits.

Do a dare you never would have dared to before.

C) Struggle

Maybe some people find life easy. I don’t.

Life is filled with worries about money, about relationships, about (for me) kids, about decisions, about the people who hate you, who annoy you, who scare you. Anxieties, regrets.

Every pilgrimage begins with the struggle. And every journey is a struggle.

The struggle doesn’t stop. It just changes. It changes into one where you are lost to one where you have vision.

Where the struggle is not being trapped in the vision of others but for the unique impact that you want to create.

D) Benefits of a pilgrimage:

You see more clearly: Everything you see on a pilgrimage is different from “normal life”. Enjoy them. Learn from it. Even a single day, a single meeting, can be a pilgrimage. What is your takeaway from it.

You meet people. I like to pretend everyone has a fortune cookie to give me. A little bit stale, a little bit crunchy, with a folded message inside. Read it.

There’s an end. We’ve made pilgrimages too easy. We can go to a museum and see 2000 works of art.

It used to be that people would travel a 1000 miles to see one painting hanging up in a chapel. Then you can really appreciate what you see.

The more you appreciate the people, the things, the emotions around you, the more you are a pilgrim.

Come back changed. A pilgrim doesn’t just fly a plane from LA to NY. A pilgrim changes because of the journey. You do that by using your senses: listen more, see more, taste more, observe more.

The convenience of modern society comes at a price. It’s too difficult now to be a pilgrim because everything is two taps away on our phone.

There is an “otherness” to being disconnected for a bit. To search. To wander.

And finally, to give up looking. To surrender to the results.

It’s freeing to give up, even for a few minutes, everything you ever knew. To become a Wanderer.

To look around and see everything as if it were new.

“Rebirth,” by Kamal Ravikant, got me thinking about these things. He went on his pilgrimage. He met people. He went on an adventure, a journey, and reading his book showed me how.

I need to leave. To struggle. To find an answer.

And then to completely give up all hope of ever finding one. To find again the beauty of being completely lost.

If I get lost enough, maybe I can find something worth looking for.

Listen to my full conversation with Kamal here:

Timestamps:

Years ago, I learned from Kamal you can self-publish your own book and it doesn’t have to be 200 pages. It can be 10 pages, it can be 40 pages. You can write a short book, right now and have it published in a week. It’s possible. I’ve seen it. Hear how Kamal did it [6:20]

Kamal says, “If you want to learn life lessons, but want to do it really quickly go…” do this (listen at [15:42]

“Everyone’s interesting,” Kamal says. He explains how to make the most interesting parts of you come alive [23:00]

“What should someone do when it feels like everything’s falling apart?” Kamal’s told me how to deal with fear and how to move forward [24:30]

Kamal talked to a monk. He asked him, “How do you find peace?” The monk said, “Easy question, huh?” “If I’m going to ask a question, that’s the question,” Kamal said. The monk gave him three answers. And I didn’t understand. I kept asking, “What do you mean? What does that mean?” He kept explaining, and I learned the number one philosophy for a peaceful life. Kamal lives by this rule. I struggle with it. You can try it. Hear it [48:40]

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/pilgrimage-can-save-your-life/

Alternate therapy can heal better, says Healclinic

Healclinic allows clients to shortlist practitioners based on multiple parameters such as experience, type of therapy, and gender. A Healclinic counsellor also recommends a practitioner and handholds the client till the end of the treatment.

When you’re suffering from a disease, multiple visits to the doctor only add to your woes. Having medical professionals who can handhold you with the alternate therapy remotely using the medium of video might be a relief.

Deepti and Vishal Arora founded Healclinic in December 2015. The husband and wife duo came up with the idea when one of their close relatives who was suffering from an autoimmune disorder and was not responding to conventional medicines developed severe side effects.

Healclinic Team

However, when an alternative treatment approach was suggested by a friend, finalising one credible practitioner involved a prolonged search and several meetings.

Healclinic was bootstrapped with their own personal savings. “In the past six months, we have worked with over 50 clients and have over 200 practitioners empanelled with us. We are growing by 25–30 percent month on month,” says Deepti, who, having worked at Citi, HDFC Life and Xchanging, comes with over a decade of corporate experience. She has done her MBA from the University of Mumbai.

Vishal brings over 18 years of experience in sales, marketing, and management consulting.

Empanelling practitioners, creating a structure and ensuring professionalism on the supply side, and educating and converting clients to use alternate therapy remotely using the medium of video cumulatively posed challenges for them at the beginning.

Getting the first client

Luckily, they got an enquiry to provide online yoga treatment when they took part in an event abroad. After understanding the client requirement, they identified the right practitioner, convinced her to do an online consultation, conducted sample sessions with her, helped her install Wi-Fi at her place, and started the sessions.

A contented Deepti said, “The results were so spectacular that the client has been referring all her friends in her community in her country to us.”

She added that a large majority of practitioners who are empanelled with Healclinic have started receiving enquiries from prospective clients from different parts of the world. A couple of practitioners who provide healing online through the video platform have been able to grow their income by over 100 percent.

Healclinic allows clients to shortlist practitioners based on multiple parameters such as experience, type of therapy, and gender. A Healclinic counsellor also recommends a practitioner and handholds the client till the end of the treatment.

The task does not end here. The counsellor even keeps in touch with the client after the conclusion of treatment so as to monitor the progress. Based on the health challenges and client requirements, Healclinic also designs customised treatment plans. The plans, which cost between Rs 1,000 and a lakh are charged based on the severity of the health issues.

“Since we offer customised treatment plans, the package price depends on the severity of the health condition, number of sessions needed, and combination of therapies being utilised,” says Deepti.

Cash inflow

Healclinic generates revenue from online healthcare packages and commission on the online sale of natural and holistic products. Currently, the startup conducts 25 consultations every month.

As a part of the online healthcare packages, the practitioners offer more than 30 non-conventional therapies.

The online platform offers holistic products across various categories like apparel, Ayurveda products, nutritional supplements, aroma oils, rudraksha, and skin and hair care. The startup adds more products and brands every week.

“Overall margins for online consulting and e-commerce put together have been in the range of 15–20 percent,” says Deepti.

Based out of Bengaluru, Healclinic currently has a team of 10 employees and has offices in Mumbai and New Delhi. Their clients are now spread across India, Southeast Asia, Australia, and North America. Going forward, the startup is planning to have integrated clinics and use wearables to provide preventive healthcare and early detection of illnesses. Deepti anticipates Healclinic’s revenue to be in the range of Rs 1.5–2 crore for the next fiscal year.

Though considered a traditional healthcare system, Ayurvedic medicines and treatment go hand-in-hand with modern allopathic treatments. Major players like Dabur, Baidyanath, Zandu, Himalaya Drug Company, Charak Pharmaceuticals, Vicco Laboratories, and Emami Group have been thriving, in the Indian Ayurveda industry.

One of the frontrunners in the industry is Patanjali Ayurved. Started in 2006, Patanjali, with its wide range of products, has already hit Rs 5,000 crore and aims to touch Rs 7,000 crore by FY 2016-17.

According to an Exim Bank Report, the Indian herbal industry is estimated to be around Rs 4,205 crore with the export of Ayurvedic medicines and herbal products being worth Rs 440 crore. The industry has the potential to scale up to Rs 7,000 crore by 2020.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/12/healclinic/

Touch, shake, drag, swirl ads –MCanvas bids adieu to banner ads with this new wave in mobile advertising

Reports surfacing in late 2014 suggested that banner viewability on mobile was under 27 percent. Out of those, 86 percent are simply ignored, because the user’s brains tune them out. Another report suggested that over 60 percent of the clicks on mobile banners are accidental. Imagine the wasted resources behind that! Now, when you put your marketer’s cap on, you will realise that the banner does not even give you enough real estate or creative flexibility to tell your brand story. Plus, you’re putting your brand’s burgeoning message in a box that is not only criminal to your cause, but also something that consumers detest so much that they’re installing ad blockers. It was thus time to bring a paradigm shift in the mobile ad space, decided “Madmen” Lavin Punjabi, Vishal Rupani, and Nikunj Soni.

Developing an Affinity for Ad

Lavin and Vishal, and Nikunj, all in their thirties, were coworkers and buddies at Directi’s Skenzo. And when Lavin left Directi to setup Affinity as an advertising network in 2006, Vishal and Nikunj didn’t hesitate to trust his vision, and got on board, and are now part of the leadership team at Affinity. The three have thus been working together for over eight years, dealing with the daily ups and downs of the adtech business, and have established a Domain Parking network, PPC Network and a Display network.

In 2014, they studied the alarming statistics about the engagement of banner ads, and put their heads together once again to address the mobile ad monetisation problem for their publisher clients. Upon reviewing the state of the industry, they learnt that the biggest source of revenue was banners, but our senses and sensibilities have been numbed to these intrusive presences.

“That was our cue. We wanted to make mobile ads the way millennials would like them. Let’s create ‘storytelling ads for millennials,’” says Lavin. That’s how we began our journey. And when they decided to fill this gap in the mobile advertising space, their investors were kind enough to infuse more capital to fund this idea, saving them a lot of time in getting it up and running under the umbrella of Affinity.

A more vibrant canvas

Coining the name mCanvas for this brand new entity, the platform empowers brands to tell more effective stories. The ads appear on article pages when users are consuming content. They appear in a polite, non-intrusive manner - in two formats, 'scrollers' and 'stickers,' and prompt you to engage. As soon as the user engages, they are led into the brand story using mobile sensors (motion, touch, location, compass, etc.) and features (haptic, camera, microphone, calendar, etc.). The ads are engaging, purely initiated on user choice, and allows users to rate ads on a 5-point rating scale.

For example, for one of India's leading jewellery brands, their in-house creative studio created an augmented reality ad. Users were encouraged to take a selfie and drag and drop various nose pins on the selfie to understand how they would each look. One could even share the selfie on social media to get their friend's opinions. “Compare all of this with a static traditional banner that the brand would otherwise use and users would ignore or accidentally click on,” Lavin notes.

Now creating the ads is one thing, but where will these ads show up? For that, Mcavas partnered up with the largest names in content publishing in the country - The Times group, The Hindu, India Today, specialty websites like SanjeevKapoor, MomJunction, StyleCrazeand a few others. Mcanvas pays the publishers a revenue share of what the advertisers pay them.

“Now technically, that would make us a network. We used this business model to start and prove that the business adds value to the ecosystem. In the next six months, we aim to become an open exchange (for rich storytelling ads), facilitating transactions between advertisers and publishers with complete transparency on pricing,” says Lavin, clarifying.

Paradigm shifts all the way

Advertisers typically pay in CPM - Cost Per 1,000 impressions, or CPC - Cost Per Click. But, Lavin feels that these models are flawed. “Paying on CPM means that 73 percent of your budget is paid for banners, which are not viewable. Paying on CPC means that 60 percent of your budget is wasted on accidental clicks. To solve this problem, we created a new metric called Cost Per Engagement, where the advertiser only pays when we engage a user on mobile for over three seconds,” he explains.

They started out officially in October 2014 by building all the relevant pieces of tech – until they grappled with a crucial decision: building for mobile web or mobile apps. At that time mobile app was huge and most ad budgets were allocated to mobile app. “We knew that the best environment for our storytelling ads was on article pages. But, most article pages were on mobile web. We decided to put our bets on mobile web and built our tech around that,” he says.

In the first month, they ran dummy campaigns for brands and paid the publisher partners out of their own funds. The first few campaigns set the foundation and answered the fundamental question about its engagement power - for engage, they did! 57x higher than standard mobile banner ads, claims Lavin.

Impressions and engagements

They now sold their concept to a few brands and agencies, shipped a 'quick and dirty’ piece of code to publish a pilot with the content partners by January 2015.

By February 2015, they got their first paid campaign. There on out, it’s been a constant improvement cycle on the product - from targeting, cross device compatibility, sensor integrations into creatives, responsive ads, UX. “Big data analytics kept feeding us answers to what consumers wanted,” he explains.

“It’s an enormous task to get a Rs 1,500-crore market to take note that one of the biggest spends has some holes in it. But we’re fortunate that we have been able to speak to decision makers at various brands and sway their opinions,” he explains.

A milestone in their journey was getting telecom major Idea on board, just a year after they started. They came up with the idea of incorporating a live slot game into the ad, allowing users to win and share data packages. The campaign delivered stunning results and also helped the brand win an award.

Up and up

They now reach out to over 60 million connected, mobile content-consuming Indians. And from selling one lakh engagements in the first quarter, they are now in their eighth quarter selling over a 10 lakh. Consumers have rated their ads 4/5 on an average, and have been spending between 10 to 30 seconds on them.

By the end of this year, they will have clocked Rs 5 crore in total sales revenue.

The market size in India is Rs 1500 crore, and is expected to grow to Rs 9,500 crore by 2020. They are benchmarking themselves against international names like Celtra, Kargo and Opera MediaWorks.

Plans to scale up include enabling the programmatic buying and selling of this inventory via their own marketplace. And on the supply side, the team intends to give the publishers access to a marketplace, which allows them to control pricing and the ads that show up on their sites.

Apart from that, they have signed a partnership with IAS media in Dubai, which will take their business to the GCC market.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/12/mcanvas/

The Zoomcar storyline — highlighting entrepreneurial lessons of 2016

“You don’t have to be rich to travel well.” – Eugene Fodor

Zoomcar thoroughly pays testament to this saying. Founded in 2012 by David Back and Greg Moran, Zoomcar has come a long way, allowing you to easily hire a self drive car in India.

2016, year in review and milestones reached:

This year, Zoomcar closed $25 million in a Series B investment round. Ford Smart Mobility LLC, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, led the round, alongside existing investors Sequoia Capital, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), Venture Souq, Cyber Carrier and Empire Angels.

Zoomcar expanded its services in several cities, including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Mysore, Pune and Vizag, while adding new cars, new vehicle pickup points and home delivery options for consumer convenience.

Well into its fourth year of operations, Zoomcar has witnessed a growing demand from across India, and has doubled bookings in the past year, with a fleet of nearly 2,500 cars, over 75 percent occupancy and two million app downloads. Over 80 percent of the company’s bookings occur on the mobile app, and its users have traveled over 120 million kms to more than 50,000 destinations across the country. In the next three to six months, Zoomcar plans to expand product lines, and will expand from the current 14 Indian cities to over 25 cities countries.

Learnings from 2016:

Greg Moran, CEO and Co-Founder, Zoomcar, told YourStory, “This time round, we had a real business that was really scaling; we really understand the customers’ needs, We’re still learning, but we have our business model and direction locked down. When you’ve got to scale up a company, you’ve got idea risk, market risk and global economic risk, and then you’ve got execution risks. Car ownership can be a major drain given the initial cost of the vehicle, leasing, financing, insurance, parking, fuel, taxes, and other expenses. So, Zoomcar built ZAP to enable people to share their cars. Zoomcar is building platforms that connect people, enabling them to drive economic value from assets they own and connecting them with others that are interested in accessing, renting, or benefitting from those assets. With ZAP, a customer who buys a new car can enjoy driving it, and while they aren’t using it, can earn money from it. The car can be shared with verified Zoomcar customers: community members, office colleagues, friends and perhaps the next door neighbor who waters your plants while you are on vacation!”

He further added, “A speeding alert system enabled via an in-car ‘smart device’ helps the company monitor the speed of its vehicles in real-time and penalise over-speeding customers to promote safer driving behaviour. With the recent advent of novel Bluetooth-based hardware tied to the OBD (on board diagnostics) port, Zoomcar monitors the driver performance by assessing braking, steering, fuel efficiency, and much more. This intelligence is then pushed back to the driver in real-time to ensure the individual drives safer for the rest of his trip. Thus, penalties can be imposed on customers exhibiting certain types of rash behaviour, like inappropriate clutch riding or harsh acceleration. This system helps Zoomcar leverage objective criteria to rate drivers, thereby improving driver/passenger safety and the overall health of the vehicle. Despite these proactive technology and operations measures taken by many of these new age self-drive companies, the reality is that both the state and central governments lag greatly in doing their respective parts. This is where the next great leap forward within road safety will hopefully come from in the months and years ahead.”

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/12/zoomcar-storyline/

Where happiness hides…

“When did you decide to go from being a lawyer to a full-time writer?” I asked Gretchen Rubin. She wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller, “The Happiness Project.”

She worked for The Supreme Court. “I was surrounded by people who loved law. They were reading law on the weekends. They were talking about law at lunch time. They just loved, loved, loved law. And I knew that I didn’t.”

I felt pain in my legs.

That’s the feeling I had in my body the last time I was miserable at work. I couldn’t sit anymore. I got up mid-meeting, walked straight to the elevator and left.

“I think a lot of people want to leave what they’re doing, but they don’t know where to go,” Gretchen said.

Click here to listen to the FULL interview with Gretchen Rubin

A) How to find where to go

“I was looking up at the capitol dome,” Gretchen said, “And I thought, ‘What am I interested in that everybody in the world is interested in?’

That’s when she wrote her first book, “Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide.”

Her first step was research. That’s also what she did for fun. “That’s a big tip-off,” she said. “What do you do for fun?”

I loved talking to prostitutes at HBO. But if I stayed I wouldn’t have my own podcast. I couldn’t talk to anyone I want. I was limited to prostitutes.

I didn’t know if it was OK to want a better life. I kept waiting for people to notice the signs. I wanted them to worry about me. And encourage me. “Do what you love James!”

But each situation is different. And advice doesn’t help. Advice is what other people would do if they were you. Not what they actually do as themselves.

We try guiding each other with good intentions… but it’s not the same as choosing yourself.

B) Be you

Gretchen has 12 commandments of happiness. And the first one is “Be Gretchen” so for me it’d be, ‘‘Be James.” But sometimes I feel really disconnected to myself.

Gretchen’s suggestions involve knowing a lot about yourself. So I asked her, “What if I don’t know anything about myself?”

“That is the great question of our lives. ‘What does it mean to be you? Who are you?’”

“It seems so easy because you hang out with yourself all day,” she said. “But it’s so easy to get distracted by who you feel you should be… or who you wish you were. Or who other people expect you to be.”

It’s almost like we outsource our personality to everybody around us.

But it’s OK to stop doing things that should make you feel good, but don’t.

“I had this weird experience recently,” Gretchen said. “I was at a cocktail party. And some woman, very nice person, was saying ‘Oh I love going skiing with the whole family. It’s a great vacation.’”

Gretchen said it seemed great. But skiing doesn’t appeal to her. At all. “I love the fact that my husband has a knee injury so I never feel like we have to go skiing.”

The woman tried convincing her. She said it’s a beautiful adventure, great for the whole family and everything else.

“Twenty minutes later she came back to me with this absolutely stricken expression on her face. And she said, ‘I just realized I don’t like skiing either…’”

Here’s an easy, two-step formula for being happier:

Step 1: Do less of what you don’t like doing

Make a list: 10 things you do but don’t like doing. (Unless you don’t like lists…)

Step 2: Do more of what you like doing

Come up with all the things you daydream about. What have you always wanted to try but never had time for?

BAM!

Now you have time. And you’re you.

C) Use envy

Gretchen was looking through a magazine from her college. She read about the other lawyers. And felt mildly interested.

Then she saw people with writing jobs.

“I felt sick with envy,” she said.

“Envy is painful, but it’s a very helpful emotion for a happy life. It’s a giant red arrow sign standing over someone’s head saying, ‘They’ve got something you want.’”

I’ve learned there are three types of self-help books. One is you’re telling people what to do. The other is scientists are telling people what to do and the third is you’re telling people what you did.

I’ve interviewed hundreds of people. I always ask how they knew what to do next.

And how they knew where to find joy…

But that’s the myth of happiness. It’s not knowable.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/12/happiness-hides/

3 highlights about Shyam Sunder Bedekar’s Rs 2.5 sanitary pad and incinerator social enterprise

Rural innovations have something beautiful about them. Solutions made by innovators who are in sync with the surroundings and serving the need of the hour. Shyam Sunder Bedekar’s Sakhi pads and the low-cost incinerator make one such example that have been written about widely. YourStory also covered the story in November and it has been very well received by readers.

The story began when Swati Bedekar realised the issue of taboos around menstruation while working in an educational programme near Dahod in Gujarat. Discussing the issues with her husband, Shyam, the duo then came up with the idea of making low-cost sanitary pads. And after the success of these Sakhi pads, Shyam then went on to build a low-cost incinerator that could take care of the issue of disposal. As a part of our Slow Tech magazine, we decided to pay a visit to this innovator and find out more.

Here are some pictures from the visit and some of the key highlights from this innovation

Shyam Sunder Bedekar with the low-cost incinerator 

Is this a foolproof solution?

Menstrual hygiene management has been a topic of discussion in many circles and even the government has given a directive to provide free or subsidised sanitary napkins to schoolgirls across India. All this has led to the problem of disposal as well. This is what had led to the use of incinerators, and the innovation in question also promotes that school of thought that is a step nonetheless but on deeper inspection, it seems to fall apart. Although it is made of 85 percent wood, cellulose, and other biodegradable components, the remaining portion on burning release asphyxiant and irritant gases into the atmosphere.

The WHO recommends incinerating all health-related waste only at temperatures over 800 degrees, and decentralised incinerators with improper supervision might not help the situation. EcoFemme, another social enterprise, recommends reusable menstrual products as a sustainable solution. We found it prudent to highlight this side of the story before talking about more good things about Sakhi pads and the innovation.

The economics

The motive behind the initiative is clear - a sustainable enterprise that creates a visible social impact.

The duo started a unit in Dahod and employed a few local women who made the sanitary napkins. The aim was to make them cheap but without compromise on quality. And since the women were involved in the making, the taboo around napkins started fading away.

Initial setup cost was kept low by buying smaller machines and raw material that was available in Gujarat itself. The napkins were initially for Rs 2; now they sell it for Rs 2.5 of which Rs 1.5 is for raw material, and the woman who makes them gets 50 paise, while the women who markets get 50 paise as well. The tie-ups with schools and recognition from the government allowed them to reach a scale where the women were earning Rs 2,000-3,000 per month.

Design for scale

Electrical incinerators are expensive. Shyam thought if they didn’t find any solution for the disposal then their project would remain incomplete. First, they experimented with flower pots of terra cotta and moving on from there, they designed the whole thing. Shyam Bedekar believes, “The air pollution is there but it is equivalent to the pollution created by wooden stove (chulha) used by the women in village for one meal for her family and the benefits are way more than the loss. It won’t be cost efficient if filters were used.”

The demand has increased and the duo are getting orders from all over the country. Hence, the concrete incinerator was made. The design was kept the same but whereever it could break, steel rods were laid (reinforced concrete). Hence they were transported without any damage most of the time.

A few people have taken interest and Shyam is open to collaborate with groups who want to set up sister organisations under the Sakhi umbrella. There is a lot of hope in this innovator’s story but the key is not to get carried away and see how we can cover as many angles as possible. The question is to ponder over a step further and investigate an alternative to incinerators or can there be a better way of disposing? A push towards reusable pads and awareness about possibilities like menstrual cups seem like the way forward.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/12/shyam-sunder-bedekar-sakhi-pads/

The Freedom and Process culture – are they at crossroads?

The attractiveness of startups as a career option continues to be strong for fresh graduates and experienced professionals too. In the many conversations I have had with startup job aspirants, the common thread that binds them is their aversion to large, rumbling, bureaucratic organisation structures that corporations have come to signify. Individually, their stated motivations to join a startup range from : You can have impact with what you do

Learn a lot, and learn it quickly

Merit/talent counts most

Will be close to the decision making

You work with your peers, not with different generations

All of the above enable startups to be agile competitors and disruptive market movers. They create a positive culture, harnessing the energies of the team and enabling success.

Freedom – the double-edged sword

A deeper enquiry reveals a buried driver that forms the bedrock of all the above motivations – freedom. A startup signifies freedom to most job aspirants and, I think, the above list actually is

Freedom, which enhances your impact

Freedom to learn as you go

Freedom to apply your talents

Freedom to approach all

Freedom to work in your way

So, how does the founder/leadership leverage this deep desire of talent, productively, with a win-win for all. How do we fulfill this drive for freedom and yet scale operations, meet business goals, collaborate and draw on synergies from all around to build a winning company?

Freedom in the corporate context

The dictionary defines 'freedom' as “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.” Freedom is good – people flourish with it. Does that mean the company will flourish too? Not necessarily, because if freedom creates chaos and confusion it's probably not good for the company. Take the example of road traffic in India – everyone exercises their freedom while driving and we have traffic snarls all the way. If we followed traffic rules more stringently, our roads will have definitely have a smoother flow of traffic. On the road, freedom is not good – following rules, i.e., the process is best.

So let's get back to the workplace. At the workplace, if each team member understands 'freedom' to be “do what I want, when I want”, the company is not likely to grow far. On the other hand, if the team understands, freedom to be “free of mundane, repetitive, tasks” the answer emerges –that processes give you more freedom. Yes 'Process', seen to be an antithesis of 'Freedom' is actually what gives you more freedom. A strong process culture means more time for thinking/improvements and less time on repetitive tasks.

Each job, even at the CEO level, has elements that are administrative, repetitive, transaction based – right for process management. If the time spent on these activities is reduced, we generate bandwidth to invest on other impact areas. The quality of your work will improve, the company will also benefit.

Call to action

So freedom and process – are they contradictory? On the face of it – yes. Dig a little deeper and you will see that they can be complementary - processes give you more freedom. If the talent we on-board into our company see freedom and process as supporting acts, the journey to scaling up and growing is sorted.

In your company, bring alive freedom, as the opportunity to do meaningful work, create impact, and have a free rein to contribute. And processes as means to release time to invest in these efforts. Help team members understand this dependency of freedom and process culture right from day 1 – with posters, stories, induction, practices. Don't miss any opportunity to underline this complementary relationship in your everyday interactions too.

Weave into your philosophy and culture the theme that processes multiply our ability to exercise freedom

Reward behaviours that create organisational bandwidth by process deployment

Individual goal sheets to include 'X hours of new bandwidth created by process deployment'.

Startups stumble when there is too much freedom. Bright talent values freedom. Take your startup to its full potential, create a freedom-centred process culture. Use processes, gain freedom to invest time and energies on contributing more, learning more.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/12/freedom-process-culture/