Diary 60: Sad Day

Yesterday I slept at around 4:30 am. I finished the season 9th of CSI:Miami, so now I don't have any episodes to watch. Today I woke up at around 10:00 am. I was feeling sleepy, but I didn't want to sleep. I brushed my teeth, had some breakfast, and then moved on to checking mails etc. I got a mail from Gil, saying that we have an all team call at 8:30 pm, where everyone would be there. Then, I moved on to look for MBA colleges. Well, this is when the day turned the other side. I got very depressed and felt sad that I couldn't convert the IIM calls or ISB call. I realized that I have to start all over again, and that I missed out a golden opportunity. I stopped looking out for more options, and slept for a while. Then, I had some general chat with my sister. I even wrote a new post on the blog, to calm my inner feelings. It helped. I finally returned to the normal state and accepted my situation. Then, I just browsed generally through the web, searching through random things. Then, I had my lunch. After that, I watched the discovery channel for a while before moving to my room. My sister followed me there and started working on some holiday homework. I also started with JAVA. In between, I was helping my sister with her project work too. Then, I got a call from the Webprint guy, and I asked him few questions and doubts I had regarding the project. I felt bad that I had to keep him waiting for so long. I called up Akshay and Dallas immediately but they didn't seem interested and were busy in their office work. Anyways, I continued with the JAVA thing late into the evening. Then, I had some Tea, and there I even discussed the problem of MBA thing with my mom. She asked me to keep trying and not give up. I was relieved that I discussed all this. After that, I moved back to my room for the 8:30 call. It started a bit late, also Ankit and Sushma were missing because they were also sick supposedly. Anyways, the call went on till around 9:30 pm. After that call, I continued with JAVA for a while, and then started writing this diary. Meanwhile, I was also watching some random Youtube videos. Next, I plan to just watch more random videos, continue with JAVA, and then sleep by 2:00 am.

Scribbling 5: The Return of Fear

Yesterday before sleeping, I finished with the 9th season of CSI:Miami. Well, I was relieved in a way that now I am focus on more important things in life or 'seemingly' more important things such as MBA. This one degree has caused a lot of havoc in my life. Constant pestering from my parents has led me to believe that MBA is the sole purpose of my life. In my opinion, that is completely untrue. I like to follow knowledge and innovation. I like to follow my heart and do what I do best. I don't like jumping on to things just because everyone feels it is the right path for me. People in my life look down upon me just because they feel that I am not there where I can be. I feel agitated and frustrated. Fear develops and creeps in within me.

Today morning, when I woke up, I realized that there is no CSI:Miami episode to look out for. I had nothing else to do as there was no new project on the job front. There was JAVA, and I will continue that no matter what - mainly because I am gaining a new form of knowledge and capability there. I can see the things which I am building. I can think from the scratch, and also it is helping me at my job front also, because the tools that I am using are all JAVA based. But, I started my day by looking out for my MBA options. It was a bad choice. It revived the fear that I was so successfully avoiding.

The past one and the half months have been an amazing journey. I followed my heart during this time. There was no fear or doubt of failure. I was very proud of my achievements, howsoever small they might be. I stopped making comparisons. I felt the same old confidence that I felt when I was in Jodhpur - the golden period of my life. I was at my innovative best, which can be seen from my efforts towards FeastHunt. In reality, I learned more about business this time than any other time when I was fighting for MBA options. I felt the difference between practical and theory. Moreover, I was finally able to enjoy the time spent with my family, the thing that was missing for quite a while now. I laughed along with my sister, and my mom. I could talk without any guilt about anything. I didn't bully my sister. In fact, I realized that my sister was a mirror of my actions. It was me who was responsible for many of her shortcomings. But, now instead of feeling guilty and depressed about it, I acted towards it. I enjoyed time with her. I encouraged her. I managed to make her understand things in a peaceful and productive way.

I don't know how long will this phase of Euphoria last. The events of the morning didn't help my cause. I was dragged back to that same old fear. Inside my heart, I am not ready for this. I will find it tough to convince any B school to take me in. I don't have a reason for doing MBA. But yes, if I am given such an opportunity I am sure I will generate great returns from it. My recent past may not reflect the perfect profile for an MBA candidate, and that is what causes me to back out. I don't have fancy leadership points or entrepreneurial ventures at the college level. I always have the guilt of not doing anything during my college years. Just going through the courses, and aiming to be a musician didn't lead me anywhere. I had already realized it during my final year. I often feel the lack of a mentor or a guide in my life, who would understand me and hone my strengths. 

But anyways, I have to start again. It doesn't matter how low it makes me feel, I need to overcome it. The sooner I do it, the better it is. 

Diary 59: Relaxing Day

Yesterday I slept at around 4:00 am. Actually I don't remember when exactly I slept, but that should be the approximate time. Today I woke up at around 12:30 pm. I brushed my teeth, and then had my breakfast. I was very tired after yesterday, so I decided to relax a bit. So, I moved on to watch the next TV episodes. I was on the verge of completing season 9 of CSI:Miami. Anyways, the middle part of the day was spent mainly on the TV episodes. In between, I helped Dad to set up the curtains and the bed. After that I had my lunch. Then, I decided to write a post on the blog about the business models that I came to know yesterday. After that, I reverted to the TV episodes. In the evening, I played the guitar for a while, and recorded a video of a small composition with my SLR, and even uploaded it on youtube. Then, since my mom and dad were out for the bengali cultural meeting, my sister made an egg omlette for me. It was the first time that she cooked something substantial, and I liked it. Later, she even prepared Tea for all of us. As we were having Tea, mom and dad were discussing some sort of investment in the Kali Mandir construction. So, I involved myself in that discussion, and tried to figure out the pros and cons of it. It was a healthy discussion. Discussions of this type help me in gaining more and more knowledge and experience about businesses and investments. After that, I wrote this diary, and next, I plan to have dinner, watch the TV episodes, and then sleep by 1 am.

Business model of ofoodies.com / bookurtable.com

Well, first of all, this is not a professional business plan report, so if, you as a reader, find the format wrong, I am sorry, I don't follow formats. Also, this is my opinion, and the facts mentioned here are what I have found out myself and not through any inside person.

Anyways, moving on with the post, I would like to share the business model of the sites such as ofoodies.com, bookurtable.com etc from my perspective. As per my knowledge, the oldest of such sites started in India at around 2008.

First, let me tell you what these sites are for. They provide means of booking a table online in a restaurant with which they are affiliated. They cover multiple cities mainly Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore etc. Well, in our daily lives, we still don't use online table booking so profusely as we do online ticket booking for travel or movies etc. The later system consists of a Visa Payment gateway, which is basically a means by which the website can direct the customer to their banking or credit accounts for payment of the services i.e. ticket booking. Now, imagine if you would have to do the same when you book a table in restaurant. Obviously, you would back out, and instead call up the restaurant to book the table for free. So, as expected the online table booking system of the sites mentioned above doesn't comprise of the Visa Payment Gateway. So, you can book the tables for free here. 

Now, we will look at how these sites work. A customer who is looking for a table in a restaurant will search for that restaurant or the location where he wants to eat, in the site, goes to the "Book Table" option present in that restaurant page, fills in few details such as Phone number, Name, Number of guests, time, etc and then clicks the confirm or submit button. On receiving a valid phone number, a verification code is sent out to the customer, which he needs to enter to validate the booking. This is done to prevent random requests and pranks. The customer gets a unique booking code, which he needs to supply to the restaurant when he/she reaches there or the customer just needs to mention that he/she has a booking from that site. This is done to track the number of bookings through the site and hence, is the major source of revenue for the website other than Ads.The next steps that take place are at the back end of the website. There is some sort of a call center set up where the people are monitoring new requests for table booking. The person concerned receives the request and contacts the restaurant to book a table there for the customer. So, basically, instead of you calling up the restaurant, the back end persons of the website call up the restaurants. Once they know that the table is available, they let the customer know that your booking is confirmed through a SMS and also by a phone call. Some sites prefer to provide the customer phone number to the restaurant and some don't. 

Now, here is my opinion about this model. Well, first of all, the system is more of a problem than a solution. Any customer would prefer to directly call up the restaurant and book a table, rather than waiting for someone to call on his/her behalf especially when you already have the phone number of the restaurants so easily available. The site acts more like a personal secretary than a business. Another big flaw is that it is not real time. The status that you see in these sites are not showing the actual status of the time slots in the restaurant. Consider a site such as bookmyshow.com, they show a real time snap shot of the seat bookings at their site, before cutting off the access one hour prior to the show timings. So basically, even if you try to book a table at the preferred time slot, there is always a possibility that you don't get the table reserved at all. There is yet another possibility though. The restaurants might provide only few tables out of the total tables there for online table booking. If that is the case, then the website fails already because at the peak hours, the restaurant will not hold up a table just because the table is supposed to be filled up through online booking. The next problem is that the charges for the restaurants are too high. They ask for up to 30% or even 40% of the total bill that the restaurant have charged to the customer. It is a ridiculously high amount. The charges are high  because for now the number of bookings are quite less through these websites, and thus to reach a break even point quickly, they need this charge structure. So, in a nut shell, it is neither customer friendly nor restaurant oriented. This site works better as an information and advertisement site rather than a booking site. There are sites such as burrp.com, zomato.com which do a much better job in collecting the information of the restaurants and showing it to the customers. So, when you are a online booking site, you must be an "ONLINE" booking site and not a call center. 

Well, this was the case with India. When I look outside India, the models are quite innovative. There is a site named opentable.com, which started way back in 1999, during the dot com bubble stage, and has gone through many transformations to finally reach where it is now. It caters to around 20,000 restaurants across continents. It has been enrolled into NASDAQ recently. The model that opentable.com follows is completely different. It is an actual real time online table booking system and not a call center. One can easily find out the business model of opentable in the internet. It was not always successful, it had to see some very hard times, especially after the dot com bubble. 

On an ending note, I would say that people/companies in India are so busy in implementing things that they forget about innovations and synergies. Right now at this place, I can think of so many new ideas which could have made the business models of the sites mentioned much more customer friendly and restaurant oriented. Its time that India moves on from being the "CALL-CENTER" hub of the planet.
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments below. Bookurtable is indeed real-time. I don't know why I am still hesitant about using it though. It lacks something may be. So, I apologize for assuming that it is not real time.

Diary 58: FeastHunt Day

Yesterday I slept at around 4:30 am. I was mainly watching the TV episodes. Today I woke up at around 10:35 am. I knew that I need to go to Powai for the FeastHunt meeting. So, I brushed my teeth, had breakfast, and started to get ready. I also watched one of the TV episodes, and then took bath, and left home with Dad around 1:00 pm. I reached Powai at around 2:30 pm. Then, I and Akshay moved to Mantra's to have lunch. Dallas joined in. Akshay told me that he got a new job in JP Morgan. He also told us that one of his friends showed a bit of interest in the FeastHunt Idea. Anyways, after our lunch we spoke with the manager of that restaurant. Well, it was one hell of a talk. Initially he was very adamant about the whole idea, but we kept him in the conversation, and he gave us a very good idea about the whole "Friday" scenario. We learned a lot from this conversation. Anyways, next we moved to Akshay's house. There we brainstormed for a while, the result of which was more questions and scenarios. We realized that the table management system in many restaurants in not aligned with our solutions. Next, we decided to have a look at our competitors. Well, in my mind, I placed them at a very high place as I thought that they must have a very sophisticated technology to integrate so many systems at once, but very soon I realized that both the sites are nothing but call centers, where someone calls up the restaurant to book a table. It was ridiculous. It did nothing, but increased the number of steps in booking a table. It was not real time. It was just a dubious way of causing a reason to earn money. Akshay and Dallas liked their model a lot initially, but then I showed them the basic flaws, and how the system is obsolete and unnecessary. Meanwhile, I got a call from my sister that her tuition was over and Dad is not picking up his phone. I called up many times at home and at Dad's mobile, and then concluded that they must have left the mobile at home by mistake. Later I came to know that it was indeed the fact. Anyways, then we decided to talk to more restaurants. We chose Bistro Grill, as Akshay told us that it is one of the restaurants that is very new and will be very happy to find a way to increase their presence. So, we went in. Well, it was also one hell of a conversation. The manager was too straightforward, and directly asked the charges for the service. Obviously, we didn't decide any fixed cost structure, but I gave a basic idea of how it will look it. The revenue structure analysis a few nights earlier helped me in this. He even allowed us to see the back end of the system. There we realized that Bistro Grill is not in the Category I type restaurants. It has a billing system, but it is missing a basic Table management System. After that, Akshay had to buy some medicines so we moved to some shop, but I and Dallas decided to go to the P3 store. I bought new headphones finally, and Dallas bought a Lamborghini theme mouse. After that, we discussed final words on action items, and dispersed. It was around 9:30 pm, when I left Powai for Vikhroli station. Meanwhile, I decided to call up Ajeytaa, as I was supposed to meet her today evening. I called her up many times, but she didn't pick up. I don't know what has happened to her. She was become very lazy and at times mean. Anyways, I left her a message. Hopefully she will reply. I reached Kharghar by train. My dad picked me up from the station. Then, on reaching home, we all had dinner except for my sister who had Dosa earlier. Then, I moved to my room. There I and my sister chatted for a while. I taught her to use the SLR camera for a while. Then, she left for the night, and I moved to my laptop. I was enjoying the comfort of my new headphones, but I knew that the sound quality was nothing compared to Scheinheiser. But the headphones were compatible with IPod, so it was very useful. Then, I watched a few Coke Studio videos, TV episodes, and then, wrote this long Diary. Next, I plan to watch the remaining TV shows, and then sleep by 3:30 am.