Ten negotiation tips that will never fail you!

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Rodinhood

No matter what you may be doing in life, you are always negotiating. It may be with a cab driver to drive you to your destination or with the restaurant hostess to get you your favorite table. Negotiating is unpleasant, but can be learnt quickly.

Ten simple ideas:

1. Use Silence as a weapon

One of the toughest things to handle is ‘silence’. If you notice, most people begin to ramble immediately if you remain silent.  Silence is very uncomfortable in between active conversations and that disarms many people. I remember a very tense conversation in 2001 when I was negotiating a small VC round for Contests2win.  I proposed my valuation and expected the VC to reply. She didn’t. I kept quiet too.

The silence was deafening.

I almost cracked and was about to say, ‘so why don’t you suggest what’s on your mind’, but I just held back. I heard breathing at the other end and then she said

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My driver plays obscene songs as his caller tune and I pay the bill

Posted on May 19, 2011 by rodinhood

My long standing driver – Yadav aka ‘Maharaj’ is a rather decent bloke. He is demure, soft spoken and usually never has an opinion. All he loves to do is drive and polish the car. Yet, when I call him on his mobile phone (provided by me) for logistical coordination and other errands, the caller tune he forces me to hear makes me go insane. He has chosen the choicest of bawdy, vulgar and obscene bollywood songs available as his caller ring back tunes. If Hugh Hefner called Maharaj, he would probably never kiss a Playboy bunny again. Maharaj has taken mobile embarrassment to a nuclear level.

 

Hearing is believing!

Hearing is believing!

 

The least gratifying part of this story is that I pay his mobile bills and hence I am actually funding this spectacular entertainment strategy of his.

So what makes me do something so stupid?

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Posted in Internet, Media, Mobile and Tech | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Why service at India Retail stores is so bad…

Posted on May 17, 2011 by rodinhood

A few weeks back I invested a princely sum of money to buy my Airmax 2010 Nike shoes from the flagship store in San Francisco. Last week, just before traveling again, I washed my shoes and was aghast to see a big hole on the inside lining of my brand new shoes. I photographed it and sent the complaint to the marketing folks at Nike India – got ‘Shunya’ (zero) response. This made me madder. Armed with the receipt and with war in mind, I stormed into the New York store determined to make a fuss and noise. This was the ‘Indian’ consumer psyche kicking in – ready to fight and draw blood to set right what should not have gone wrong!

The ‘returns’ counter had a very pleasant girl who greeted me and asked me my problem. When I snarlingly showed her the hole, she shrugged, said ‘oops’, and asked if I wanted my money back? Her reaction took less than 7 seconds. I melted. Yet the Indian consumer was still kicking. ‘Yeah- gimme my money back’ I grumbled. She did and then pulled out her trump card – she gave me a 20% discount on any purchase bought within the hour in that store. Well, you guessed it – I bought the same pair of shoes (new color), pocketed enough dollars for a great dinner, walked out feeling like a prince and started doing social marketing for Nike!

 

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Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Rodinhood

In early 2008, at games2win.com, we had created a huge hit game called ‘Bombay Taxi’. It was a really funny flash game that challenged you to park a Black and Yellow taxi in the crowded streets of Mumbai while overcoming obstacles like beggars, kite fliers, local trains and elephants. And in a typical Internet style, we began receiving massive traffic to our portal via viral traffic – especially from USA and EU since Bombay Taxi was a classic parking game blended in a new exotic theme.

Just after the huge spurt of traffic, I was shocked to notice that visitors suddenly disappeared – almost like they had fallen off a cliff. This was not typical – traffic always tapers down and then plateaus out, so I decided to investigate. When I typed ‘Bombay Taxi Online Game’ on Google, I was shocked to find that overnight almost 400 websites had stolen our game and embedded it on their portals. These thieves had sniffed out a good game and now were enjoying traffic on their own sites thanks to our hard work!

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The Al Dente Moment – What Pasta can teach Entrepreneurs!

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Rodinhood

I am obsessed with Pasta. Ever since I traveled to Italy to get trained in the factories there (I used to work in my father’s socks factory), I cannot get Pasta, its permutations, shapes and sizes and of course how it is cooked – out of my mind.

In the context of Pasta, Al Dente in Italian literally means ‘To the tooth’. This refers to that ‘perfect’ moment when the Pasta is firm, strong, crisp and cooked – but not soft and supple. It’s just the way it should be. The best way to get your Pasta to be Al Dente is to keep nibbling on a piece of Penne or the Fettuccini while it is boiling. The very moment you can bite into the pasta and yet feel its firmness, it’s ‘Al Dente’. Immediately drain, add whatever you have to into your Pasta and enjoy (I like it with very little garlic and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil with mixed Italian herbs and top it with grated parmesan cheese). Buona Appetito!

Pasta a la 'Rodinhood'

Pasta a la ‘Rodinhood’ (Image and recipe courtesy – Chhavi Kejriwal)

Now, observing the ‘Al Dente’ method has inspired me to think of ‘perfect moments’ as they appear in an Entrepreneur’s life. As they say, you can never time anything to perfection, but just like Pasta, if you know when your best time is near, you can leverage it well.

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The Handshake, Cheek Kiss, Deep Bow and everything in between..

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Rodinhood

So, I’ve been kissed, shaken, stirred, pecked and God knows what… a million times. This is what I think about global greeting habits and how they make me feel:

The Handshake

It’s the least sensitive of greetings. Handshakes are doled out like free fliers at the mall. They are inexpensive & cheap. It’s the safest when you are in a country whose customs are unknown and the easiest way of contracting a nice virus.

Handshakes are limp, soft, hard, knuckle breaking and slippery. The slippery one is the one in which you extend your full hand but the monkey on the other side just sticks out 4 fingers – that quickly slither away. The handshake that irritates me the most is what I call the ‘infatuation’ handshake – in which my newfound lover (always a man I’ve never met before) just doesn’t want to let go of my hand!! It takes a solid wrenching to escape!

I don’t like handshakes. They are ‘personality less’ and definitely not memorable.

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Posted in Just for fun | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Are you happily married?

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Rodinhood

They say that happily married couples begin to look like each other as they age and grow older. I don’t know how far that is true, but I do know for sure that getting the right co-founder(s) for your business can be as rewarding as the soul mate you may have found or may still be searching for.

It takes two to tango

 

Hewlett Packard, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Larsen and Toubro – look around and will be stunned by the number of legendary firms that have been built by two or more partners. There is a magic that comes alive when like-minded people come together to create an enterprise. Sure, there are businesses like Facebook or Apple that are one man armies, but if you speak to Marc Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs, I am sure they would agree to some of these concepts:

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