My friend Kamal wanted me to put up his requirement, if this excites you, please write to him - kamal DOT raghav AT gmail DOT com Start up Venture - Sports has broken the barrier of being a pure entertainment channel to being an attractive business opportunity. Currently, this space is dominated by traditional players with an traditional value chain. The venture plans to carve out a niche in this space using innovative methods of reaching out to customers. Role - Co founder apart from taking full ownership of the technology backbone, would be involved in all operational decision making. Must be a highly motivated individual with lots of enthusiasm, should be comfortable with start-up environment and be able to play different roles. Should have simple and elegant design sensibilities. And most importantly be a fun individual to work with and must like sports! Status - Legal registration is underway. Future - plans can be discussed on a one-to-one basis. Location : Bangalore. The person can expect an unstructured but fun environment (of course its a start-up!). Complete freedom to innovate, share and execute his ideas in this space. Also, uncomplicated work life balance. Of course, equity ownership is part of the deal.

Saturday evening, we watched a movie @ fun cinemas. Movie was quite nice and we enjoyed it. Its called sex and the city, its a story of four girl friends in new York, the movie is extension of the popular HBO serial by the same name. After the movie we ate dinner in a very good restaurant called Infintea. Its one of our favorite places to go and their service as well the good, is quite amazing. Specialty is the amazing variety of teas they serve (yeah they have a separate tea menu), along with nice European food. We ordered ordered one rice dish (yummy) , one hot nimbu chai and one chilled chilli chai ( it really has chills and tasted bitter and chilled - I luv it ). They also sell gourmet teas here, worth checking out.. A very nice and relaxed Saturday evening and followed by another relaxed evening on Sunday by  visiting our favorite saloon spratt studio on Sunday evening. I did a cut and a head message....wow it is really relaxing. G Go check them out (they are on the Magrath road on left side, before garuda mall on the right side)

Yesterday I was at the sets of the first episode of the new show on CNBC TV18 - Young turks tutorial. It was shot at in the Royal ballroom at The Leela, Bangalore. The show brings young turks and power turks on a common platform, where the Power Turks share there experience with the young guns. The format is completely interactive, all of it is questions and anwers, which is really good. The host of the show was Shereen Bhan and power turk for the show was Nandan nilekani , he was very good with his answers which were both candid and insightful. He stayed around after the show to talk to people, I chatted him for a little bit as well. One dampener for me was that the crowd was slightly different than what I expected, I was expecting more "real startup" crowd, you know young guys and girls dressed casually, high energy entrepreneurs. In reality the startup crowd was in minority (I met folks from chakpak, picsquare and storzz) and majority people were from fairly set and matured businesses, well dressed in formals and stuff. Show started slightly late, but went on well, people asked a lot of good questions and answers were equally good. There was a jazz band along with drinks and dinner after the show. The drinks session was supposed to help people network, but for some reason I saw people sticking in groups of already known people and not really looking to meet/know new people, which was kind of sad. I only managed to catch with about 3 new people, where normally in a event like this one could easily meet 10-15 new people. I have a few suggestions for the CNBC team (assuming that show is actually to help out entrepreneurs and startups)

• Ensure equal participation from young startups from upcoming fields like mobile, web 2.0, social networking etc
• Get people to ask questions which are more and more relevant to companies in the younger days (when they need the most help)
• Encourage people to mingle with new and unknown people

Overall the concept is very good and will be very interesting to see it unfold over next few months...

Hi all... wanted to point every one to the pictures from "Ethnic day" at seventymm bangalore office, it was good fun see people dressed up ... we also cut a cake to celebrate.... Check the photos.. on the right hand side...or click here

I will be at "Open Coffee Club @ Bangalore" this Sunday (17 feb), you can read more about the OCC event here. Would love to catch up, in case your planning to be there. about OCC (From OCC Blog) OCC is just the forum you were looking for, if you want to know the A-Z of entrepreneurship, more so , if you wish to hear it from people who made it. read more...

Today we induct the famous "Bharati Airtel" into the "horror service hall of fame" I am right now in the middle of experiencing "customer service horror" at the hands of airtel, and here goes the horror story. I got to know my bill amount and last date via SMS/e-mail etc which also said goto airtel.in and pay online. Well before the due date I made 5-10 unsuccessful attempts to pay online. Guess what! I can not even login to my account. The website's user section is down for days together. And because of other engagements I am unable to pay the bill across the table and the last date pasts by. Airtel promptly deactivates all my services; No outgoing calls/No outgoing SMS /No GPRS Services (this is the part I use the most). Anyways, my mistake did not make the payment on time. Day 1: 10:00, I try again on the website, make the payment after trying for 3-4 times (full of user bugs). Payment confirmed, I expected the services to be activated soon after that. Day 1: 1700 hrs: Nothing happens, I still can not use my phone for anything. I call 121 (anytime anywhere customer service???). First I am promised that within 4 hrs services will be activated, but when I ask why so long and demand faster action, I am told just reboot your phone in few minutes..it will be done.. Day 1: 2000 hrs: Nothing still words. I get an SMS "hope you are happy with resolution provided". I am thinking "WHERE THE F*** IS THE RESOLUTION" Day 2: 0800 hrs: 15 hrs and 20 reboots later. Nothing still works, I call 121 again and ask what happened to my "activation". No proper answer or explanation. Just another promise I have taken your request, it will get done in 4 hrs. I hit the roof, got very angry and screamed at the guy, suddenly he tells he has activated it right away, I can hold his call and try it out. Wow it works!. I hangup the call, thinking "FINALLY THE HORROR IS OVER" Day 2: 0830 hrs: I open the browser on my Nokia E61i, to access my mails. HORROR again, data services didnt work. They never bothered to see what all services on my account and only activated the calls. Day 2: 0835 hrs: I dial 121 again, speak to one more joker, waste 10 more minutes of my time, I am told it will get done within 1500hrs (7 hrs more hrs). At this point I just gave up and dropped the call. The truth is these guys think they have all the power. They don't give a damn about you, you are just one of the 50 million customers of airtel (or any other company). But I believe these guys will be in for a big surprise. Things are changing fast and customers continue to hold the real power. I decided to do my bit and share my experience. After this I will also consider switching to vodafone and the options will only get better post number portability... What do you guys think..let us know via comments... UPDATE: My data connection did not start working untill 2030 hrs on Day2. I had to call 5 more times before it finally got working. Well now i am writting this update from my nokia E61i.

I am right now watching "halla bol" at fun republic, bangalore. Movie seems to be fine but before coming in i experinced torture at the hands of employees of the multiplex. We decided around 1130 to watch a movie at Fun Republic bangalore, went online booked the tickets, paid 660 - 600 ticket price end 60 convience charges. Now what exactly is this convenience? You dont have to stand in the queue at the multiplex. But when we reached the mutliplex we were in for rude surprises. The guys at the ticket counter told us to stand in the regular queue!!! Now what was that? i told him that we have booked the ticked online and hence you just give us the ticket, if i a have to stand in the queue what is point of buying online. He told me that online you can choose ur own seats thats it but when u come to multiplex u have to stand in the queue. I told him i always book online and there should be no need to stand into the queue. But despite of this we and few other customers who had also booked online were made to wait and treated rudely. When we asked to speak to the manager the same guy who asked us to get into queue is the manager and he told us he is too busy right now to even to talk to us. what do these guys think? Customers are fools and deserve to be treated in such an insensitive manner. What do you think?

Akhila writes a very touching and though provoking post An ode to the trees of Bengaluru It provoked me to write about Bangalore and its unlimited limitations when it comes to roads and other infrastructure. Its sad the people in the govt/administration who have the responsibility, power and money to maintain and develop the city 's infrastructure dont add any value what so ever. In fact in most cases they are busy derailing the projects and initiatives in progress, popular example is Bangalore-Mysore NICE project, which has been attacked to no end by the Gowda family. But when I think about the same subject in context of Delhi NCR, I feel extremely proud of what has been achieved during the last decade and what is being achieved even now day after day. The most inspirational part of Delhi's story is the Delhi Metro , the team has build a world class Metro infrastructure and at an amazing pace. Delhi has shown way to the country that yes it is possible to achieve big infrastructure wins in India and it can be done in an economically viable , ecofriendly, people friendly way. We have all the capability, the knowledge and the money for it - it take political will and a committed and capable leader like E Sridharan (the Metro man) and we can move mountains. As we all know there is no dearth of "capable leaders" in our country, what we dearly lack is the political will? Now its upto us "the citizens of India" to do what ever it takes to create this political will and pressurize our political and administrative people, so write a blog, send a letter to editor, visit your councilor, MLA, MP, sign a petition and make it possible in your city/state/country. It hurts and frustrates me to see "Namma Metro" project on MG road in a virtual stand still, where as the great Delhi Metro is moving leaps and bounds, every time I go to delhi I see amazing amount of progress done...