I ran the Mumabai Marathon 2008

It's been more than one and a half months since I last updated my blog. I tender an unconditional apology to all my readers. Please do drop by regularly from now on to read more of the stuff that interests you.

In this post I will write on my most treasured achievement in the recent times. Many of you might have known this, others you will get to know of it. I ran the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2008 on 20th of January 2008. A full "42.195 km" or "26.2 miles". For more on the experience of this run please go ahead.

[The Day Before]
It was a pleasant saturday after noon when I took a bus from Prabhadevi to Churchgate. I fell asleep in a ride of about 40minutes. It was not difficult to find the "Get Active Mumbai Marathon Expo" at the World Trade Center.I was impressed by the scale and publicity this event was I collected my bib(1615), met a few friends at Powai and headed back to Rohit's place by night. Got my running gear ready. In retrospect I believe Nike should sponsor all my Marathon runs.Draped in Nike from head to toe! (Nike shoes, Nike socks, Nike running shorts, Nike dry fit tee, Nike head band).

The most important thing the day before the marathon is food. I had a couple of aloo parathas and veg biryani and fruit custard.

[After the Run]
"13:57:**" was what the timer read when I saw the finish line. There were a group of people welcoming and congratulating me.(There was also a photographer who took some shots of mine, if your are reading this do send me those photos), I just grabbed a bottle of water and emptied it for the umpteenth time in the last 6hours. Collecting my timing certificate and the medal was a very sweet experience. Barely able to walk, I collapsed in the middle of Azad Maidan talking to my mom. Tears rolled down my cheeks while I was talking to my fiancee. I was just crying. A melodramatic scene indeed. I collected myself, limped back to the historic Victoria Terminus.

The feeling of running the full marathon was just overbearing. This was a significant moment in my life. I have never done anything in the arena of sports and running the full marathon made me speechless.

[The Run]
Mumbai is the city I love to be in. No wonder I chose to run my First Marathon (I don't consider half marathon's as Marathon) here. There was a cool breeze as I stepped out for the Azad Maidan at half past six in the morning on the run day. There were lot of people dressed in all the colors of the rainbow all way along. The crowd was just great, the crowds in Hyderabad run are pale shadow of the show here.

Once in the arena, I met Sesh another fitness enthusiast from Hyd. It was a real coincidence that he spotted me out in such a huge crowd. The run started with a huge roar and there was a sea of humanity cheering us all along.

The first 10k took about an hour, the next 5k about 40min. Then slowly the pace reduced, I was having pain in my right foot. 18k in about 2hrs+, the pain was increasing. I wanted to better my half marathon record mark, but took about 10mins more (21k in 2hrs 40min). The pain in the right foot was unbearable at this mark. It was just moving mile stones all the way since then. A few miles down the line (~25km ) I was just unable to walk. I would have collapsed.

It was here that I met Tanvir a journalist, we pepped up each other and those on the way to push ourselves. To add to the woe the traffic was opening up, which was a big de- motivator. At this stage I met George from kerala. He was officially the last man to finish the Marathon in last years edition and was determined to do better this time. We were joined by a bunch of others who were determined to reach the finish line.

To top it all there came a bus to pick up all the tired folks. This was one of the most difficult mental tests to pass. On one side the body forces you to consider the option of the comfort of the shade, on the other the mind wants to complete the marathon. It was tough but the will prevailed. It was not easy, there were no distance boards in the last 10km, the were water stops were far and few in between, the traffic was open, no body seemed to know how far we had to go, a complete chaos.

Once we reached the church gate, I pep talked another guy to run along for the final distance. We jogged to the flora fountain and from their just managed to give the final sprint to the finish line. All the while my poor foot was taking lot of pain.

[The Evening]
I could just barely walk, I had these boils in the groin area, blisters on my feet, and the worse of all my right foot hurt like hell. I could gauge the severity of the injury only when I was immobile for most of the next two days. Talking to Nalu, Mausi and good food at Mausi's place helped a lot in mental recovery.

[What Next]
I am planning to run my next full Marathon at Bangalore Mid Night Marathon in May 2008(if it happens in time), and will start my preparation from 9th February 2008. I will keep chronicling my preparation over here.

Tune in now to so-did-i, lot of exciting things coming your way.

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Founders at OCC, and a few break through Insights

December 23rd will be one of the memorable days in the history of OCC. For the first time since the inception in August, we had more folks who are founders/co founders of companies than those who are planning to. There were 7 startups and the discussions that ensued was simply of real quality. There were two key insights from this meeting. Read on for more.

We had an informal discussions for the first forty minutes then we decided to get on a round where each of the founders talk about their startups.

DyAnsys is a medical instrumentation company. Gunasekaran a co founder is an active participant of both OCC Chennai and OCC Bangalore was present. DyAnsys is mainly into manufacturing and marketing low cost medical instruments.

udrool is to launch it's products in first quarter next year. The co founder Vaasu had some great insights into Marketing and why all startups should have a marketing guy in the founding team. Later on in the discussion he provided some great insights. udrool is the company which has a few products in pipeline and has technological offerings from a consumer perspective in the domain of sales, content aggregation etc.

adventure advertising solutions is a web design, graphic design, marketing, brand building company. Harsha one of the co founders is a very passionate guy. These folks have done some good work and are on an expansion path.

Steadfast has a product called Pactus is "an application aimed at SMBs handling product sales, service and contracts. It is an “easy to install and simple to use” CRM Software".We had Anand, one of the co founders with us. An organically built company, now on the way to move to the next level.

flipkart is an online book store. It boasts of pretty huge collection of books and decent UI for the site. The founders Binny, Sachin launched this a few months back and have done a good job so far.

maxheap is a technology company and they are launching a product in the sphere of social networking. They launched a networking site for residents of an apartment by the name Common Floor. An interesting concept of building a site for an existing community of apartment owners. Sumit and Lalit the cofounders have done a good job and with the vision they have for the product let's keep our fingers crossed and watch them.

muziboo the original music sharing site which promises to get you an audience. Prateek and Nithya who recently got featured in Economic Times for their startup promis to provide an audience for your latent musical talents.

Take Aways:
i) Include a Marketing person in your founding team. Most of us being techies ignore this fundamental requirement that we need good marketing folks on the floor. Vaasu has rightly pointed out that there is a huge gap in Indian startups in the founders abilities in technology and marketing.

ii) This is one of the favorite topics around. What social networking models will work out. maxHeap with their CommonFloor is doing something that I haven't seen any of the Indian social networking startups do. Provide a platform for already existing apartment communities. This and ensuing discussion let me to the following key point on what kind of social networks will succeed in India.

Traditionally we in India have a a large number of communities. My family network, my work network, and a lot of other networks. We are different from the western society in that, we are a community based society than an individual based society. However, what we see in the social networking space is companies trying to push the US specific individual social networking platforms in our community based society. What we need is products which identify the problems which existing communities face and address those issues. CommonFloor is one step in this direction. I am sure companies which figure this out will be the ones which will make a mark.

iii) The other hot discussion topic is the gap between the VC's and the angel's in India. We all agree that their needs to be more and more angel's than VC's. But, most of the discussions stop at discussing this point than offering a solution. Vaasu has a very good idea which I feel is very practical and will take the entrepreneurial activity in this country to a different level. For now read on how Vaasu addresses the issue.

"India needs not USD 40 billion VC funds, but 40 million angel funds. There is an imbalance that needs to be addressed in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem.

google had a Ram Shriram much before they had a VC. What India needs are many more such Ram(s). Where are they ? There are just a handful of angels or angel firms to to the dozens of VCs. A clear imbalance in the ecosystem.

A proposal should be made to the Govt of India to give a tax break for anyone or any company that makes a seed investment with a ceiling of USD 1 million. Or be even bolder and pardon black money that gets invested as seed capital The administrative mechanism can work on similar lines of giving money to charity.

This will inspire the many hidden Rams, who want a little incentive to make the leap. Bodies like TIE and NEN can channel these seed funds, as individual angels might not know the process.

We need the support of the press to champion this cause along with Entrepreneurs. Imagine an India bustling with entrepreneurs ! Isn't that what built America ?

Vaasu
"
Brood over it. A simple but very practical stuff according to me.

I will write about this in more detail in a later post.

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Redesign the Marker

For a very long time since I decided upon UX as the theme for this blog (apart from things happening in my life), I vied for some original content. I tried to put some reviews and my interpretations. I also borrowed heavily from existing blog posts. I wanted to start a series of posts where I discuss some of the existing products and put open questions to you all on how to improve these products.

Once I have some clarity on what product design I want to work on, I will take up one at a time and start executing the concept.Towards that end this is my first post, where I will discuss some of the short comings of the present day white board marker.


All of us are familiar with a white board marker. How many of you had issues using it? You might say what issues in using a white board marker? Let me list it down for you and I request you to observe the next time you come across one.

i) I would never know if the marker has ink in it or not.
ii) The writing tip is invariably flattened after a few uses.
iii) It is difficult to find out why the marker is not functional. The ink is over or the writing tip is bad.
iv) The cap that is used to cover the tip does not fit properly at the back. Most of the times it falls down.
v) The shape of the marker is round. It rolls on most surfaces.
vi) Almost all the markers I used have a plastic cover around it. It peels of and distracts/interferes with the free flow of writing.

Now, I don't see any reason why the design cannot be improved. What do you think? What are your suggestions.


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One in a Million!

An amazing shot. I envy and appreciate the photographer who took this shot.

I just can't stop appreciating it.

Thanks to Leo for the source. If any one knows the original source do let me know.

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