Priyanka Chopra, The Media And The Bigger Picture

Priyanka Chopra Loves Big Diamonds and Yachts: ‘I Work Very Hard to Spoil Myself’

Mumbai, New York City, Toronto, London, Shanghai, all these megacities are perhaps more like each other than the rest of their own countries. And if you want a slice of India in New York there's always Little India, or full blown Jackson Heights, which is more like Sitamadhi (Bihar). Plus, after doing 50 movies in India, I doubt Priyanka Chopra did not feel prepared enough facing the camera in the US. In fact, it looks bad on Bollywood, at least the corporate aspects. Hollywood is taking the PC show all over the world and minting money. Why could not Bollywood make movies for the mainstream American audience?

A movie star acts as per the script. It is the writer who decides. The director shapes the presentation. And the 24/7 media saturation topped with social media omnipresence, and you see this constant feed. The society feeds the art feeds the society. It is an ongoing conversation. To quote PC: "Alex is nothing like me."

A few days back I blogged on the topic of the media in two countries as seen through this crossover movie star.

Seeing Priyanka Chopra On The Kapil Sharma Show

Only one episode earlier he goes full blown sexist on some TV news anchor, a new name and face to me.



I am sorry to make note, because I greatly admire Kapil Sharma, who I once called the funniest Homo Sapien on earth. He is the king of comedy globally right now. I like him much.

I actually have a news section on my Google News page for Priyanka Chopra. I also have one on Modi.

One news item today presents PC in a full Meterial Girl Madonna mode.

Priyanka Chopra Loves Big Diamonds and Yachts: ‘I Work Very Hard to Spoil Myself’

It is in sharp contrast to a news clip on YouTube from years ago where she says, I don't enjoy shopping.

The more famous you get bigger the mess the media makes of you. Take Amitabh Bachchan, a genuinely nice person. The media ran with the Amitabh Rekha non story for literally decades.

In politics I have seen this happen to Bill Clinton, or the Clintons. There is this political spectrum. And every point on that spectrum needs its own angle. And there is a media outlet to feed every such expectation.

@priyankachopra, The Media And The Bigger Picture https://t.co/yXwCeqpAw5

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 6, 2017

Priyanka Chopra

Hello @priyankachopra Cool interview @InStyleMag. Have not seen Quantico though. No TV. Welcome to NYC. https://t.co/02owhoRkSA

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) July 30, 2016

Salt in the air, sand in my hair 🐚 @instylemagazine @fendi #CoverGirl pic.twitter.com/hatPfQo63j

— PRIYANKA (@priyankachopra) July 22, 2016

Silicon Dhanush, Silicon Crescent

Silicon Crescent: Delhi - Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Bengaluru

Janakpur to Patna: 180 KM
Patna to Kolkata: 580 KM
Kolkata to Dhaka: 250 KM
Dhaka to Mandalay: 1100 KM
Mandalay to Kunming: 760 KM

2870 KM = 1780 miles

That's two and a half hours on a hyperloop.

The Janakpur to Dhaka stretch is barely 1000 km. That's an hour and a half on a hyperloop. That entire stretch could be one big city.

Silicon Boomerang? Silicon Crescent?

How Startup India will transform the country

The US and Israel have successfully played the role of catalyst to do this and the Rs 10,000 crore fund-offunds will do the same. It would not invest in ventures itself but contribute to, say, a fifth of the corpus of India-focused and professionally-managed venture funds. They will have to raise five times that amount from non-government sources, making Rs 50,000 crore available for startups and early-stage companies. As these companies grow, they will typically raise at least 10 times that amount from later-stage global investors before going public. Hence the government’s Rs 10,000 crore may result in attracting almost

Rs 500,000 crore

for innovative Indian companies, helping create possibly the next Google or Facebook. ..... Our information technology industry, driven predominantly by startups and first generation entrepreneurs was backed by the STPI scheme and tax-breaks that helped reinvest earnings for growth. The industry has grown from $50 million to $150 billion in 25 years, becoming the largest employer in the organised private sector and accounting for over a fifth of our forex earning!!

Silicon Boomerang: Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bangalore
Connected by Hyperloop 900 KM + 500 KM + 900 KM = 1400 miles. That is two hours on a hyperloop. That would make for just one big city. From Delhi to Bangalore. Call it the Silicon Boomerang, or the Silicon Crescent. ...... Crescent bol do Pakistan se dosti bhi ho jayegi.

Solar State: Rajasthan (10,000 GW of electricity, phase 1)



Waise main Bihari hoon. To bias to rahega hi. Jaise ki 2014 mein main Nitish ke liye rooting kar raha tha. Soncha, chalo koi Bihari bhai aa jayega to acchha hi rahega. To Modi ne Nitish ko Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bana ke rakh diya. Khair bit gayi so baat gayi.

Ek aur Crescent hai. Boomerang. Janakpur - Patna - Kolkata - Dhaka - Kunming. Industrial potential vast hai uska.

Janakpur Patna Kolkata Industrial Corridor
Patna Kolkata Industrial Corridor (PKIC)



The idea behind something like a Silicon Crescent is, this is where nanotechnology happens. The industries of tomorrow seem to want a geography.

1,050 Indian Islamic Scholars And Clerics Against ISIS

Ban Ki-moon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Indian clerics issue fatwa againt ISIS, declare it un-Islamic

Over 1,050 Indian Islamic scholars and clerics have issued fatwa against the Islamic State terror group and described its acts and actions as against the basic tenets of Islam ..... "Islam shuns violence while Daesh perpetuates it," the edict said. ..... Abdul Rehman Anjari, president of the Mumbai's Islamic defence cyber cell, collected the edicts from Muslims scholars and leaders over the past few months. ....... These fatwas are in 15 volumes, and copies were sent to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and other leaders to convey Indian Muslims' views on IS activities....... It urged the international community to take immediate steps to eliminate this terror group that has caused mayhem in the region and is spreading its tentacles in the South Asian region. ..... The signatories to the fatwa include the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari, head priests of Dargah Ajmer Sharief and Nizamuddin Aulia, functionaries of Mumbai's Raza Academy, Mumbai's Jamait Ulema and the Ulema Council. Hundreds of imams and various religious leaders have also endorsed it. ...... Anjari said muftis and imams of all sections and sects of Islam have condemned the activities of Daesh and acknowledged it has tarnished Islam's image. ..... The fatwa was issued at a time when reports say that Daesh mercenaries are trying to lure Indian youth to join them.

Related articles

• Indian clerics issue fatwa against IS, declare it un-Islamic
• Muslim clerics issue fatwa against IS
• UN chief Ban Ki-moon appalled by Islamic State's 'barbaric' attacks in Palmyra in Syria
• Yuli Edelstein and Ban Ki-moon Discuss Iran Deal And Achieving Peace
• UN Chief Ban Ki-moon appalled by Islamic State militants demolishing ancient Syrian temple
• Un Chief Calls for Egypt to Keep Rafah Crossing Opened
• UN say ISIS guilty of war crimes
• Ahead of NSA Talks, Pakistan Raises Kashmir Issue at UNSC

The Real Rahul Yadav Story

I have been reading up on it. The real story here is not that one young tech entrepreneur was impolite. The sample email I read does not even begin to be impolite. Since when were tech entrepreneurs expected to be polite?

The real story here is Rahul Yadav owned too little of his company by the time he got fired. He was no longer in the driving seat. And that is a very bad idea. You can not replace a Founder CEO with some Fortune 500 old hack CEO. It is a DNA thing.

The VCs made two big mistakes. The VCs made their first big mistake way before Rahul Yadav sent out any bad tasting emails. The mistake was they took away too much equity. Power is like money. People want it regardless of if it is good for them, or they know what to do with it. Rahul should have been at 30% not 3% which is where he was when he got fired.

The second mistake was the VCs think they can replace a Founder CEO. Good luck with that. A lot of people will lose a lot of money when Housing goes down.

 

Rahul Yadav: The sudden decline of a brilliant entrepreneur

"Ye mote Gururaj uncle har chhoti cheez par article kyu likh dete hain." ........ The moment you saw this comment you knew a backlash was around the corner. Not so much because of what was said but because of who said it. These days to be Rahul Yadav is to cop it no matter what. ....... Ravi Gururaj, chairman of Nasscom’s Product Council, the writer of that column, will be the first to admit that he cannot be called thin. He had written a column on yourstory.com about a supposed social media spat between Snapdeal’s Rohit Bansal and Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal. ..... Rohit was perceived to be saying in a newspaper article that India did not have enough good programmers. Sachin took a dig at him, suggesting that the fault lay in Snapdeal and not in the country. ....... Rahul’s was the first comment on Gururaj’s article. Others followed quickly, saying all he wanted was cheap publicity. Publicity? By trying to make fun of Gururaj? Come on. There are other ways; Rahul knows some of them. Almost inevitably, an article appeared in ET Panache about how Gururaj was large hearted enough to ignore Rahul’s comment. What was he going to do? Sue? Equally inevitably, Alok Kejriwal, an early entrepreneur, jumped to Gururaj’s side to say how much he loved him for his “stature and presence and depth”. ......... Funny. But Kejriwal waited for his chance. Which came when Yadav resigned — the first time. People who make fun of other people’s houses can’t live in their own, he posted. He also posted a power point presentation, for Rahul, on how to write emails. ....... With the internet start-up revolution, all the world is a boys’ hostel. ..... Rahul also got into other unnecessary spats with Deepinder Goyal (he likes to call Goyal a restaurant menu scanner) and Sequoia’s Shailendra Singh (the story is too well known to recount here). ...... Fine. He is cheeky, at times irritating. He likes to troll people. But he is not just that. This columnist had a chance to talk to him in March. He was then in the middle of the spat with Sequoia......... To his credit, Rahul refused to go into any more gory details about Sequoia (confession time: he was goaded). Instead, he wanted to talk about his ideas on how to run the world. All it will take, according to him, is 50 intelligent people. People like him....... It was easy to dismiss this as hyperbole. But he made some valid points about the way the human race has messed it up in areas like oil, education, travel, and housing. Why have been just burning oil instead of looking for sustainable energy sources? Why are all houses boxes, boxes and more boxes? Why such little infrastructure? Why has no innovation happened in house construction? Why are so many people in cities like Mumbai forced to spend so much time travelling? ...... Basic questions, you say? It was responding to the basic needs that made Housing.com such a success: show what it looks like, give her a tour, verify the location, good user interface, data, data and more data. ....... The sadness of it was captured in all its delicate sensitivity by Haresh Chawla, an early investor in Housing.com........ He brought out Rahul’s personality in all its complexity: a shy, socially-awkward, brilliant soul driven to pain and distraction because he was forced to ride the tiger of investor money...... It was tempting to call this article “Boy Interrupted”. But it is not just that; it is brightness, enterprise, spirit interrupted. Until he comes back.

Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav gives away his entire stake to employees

A week after withdrawing resignation, Housing.com chief executive Rahul Yadav decided on Wednesday to allot all his personal holding in the company worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees. ...... "Rahul Yadav has decided to allot all his personal shares worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees of Housing.com who number 2,251," the housing portal said in a late evening statement....... The value of this stock is worth the employees' one-year salary, it added....... Yadav justified the surprise move, saying he is "just 26 and it's too early in life to get serious about money etc." ...... "Housing.com was started because of two reasons. The problems related to house hunting is unsolved globally. Across the globe there are over 500 players who aggregate the market data for buyers. We want to unify all those and create a global platform for real estate," he said. ...... Yadav had reportedly written a resignation letter on April 30 to the board and investors and questioning their "intellectual capability" and giving them a one-week deadline to "help in the transition". However, on May 5, he withdrew the resignation and apologised for his outbursts. ..... Housing.com, which is backed by Japan's Softbank, said its board has been reconstituted to include all main shareholder representatives....... Last December, it received $90 million funding, led by Japan's SoftBank, valuing the portal at about Rs 1,500 crore........ It would use the funds to map over 40 million houses across 300 cities........ Its other shareholders include Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Nirvana Ventures and Falcon Edge Capital.

Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav apologises, withdraws resignation

Rahul Yadav, the CEO of realty portal Housing.com, on Tuesday withdrew his resignation and apologised for reportedly calling fellow board members and investors

'intellectually incapable of any sensible discussion'

. ...... He added: "I look forward to staying on at Housing as CEO and building an even greater company, while working in full harmony with the board"......... Yadav, the 26-year-old co-founder, had reportedly written a resignation letter on April 30 to board members and investors questioning their "intellectual capability" and giving them a one-week deadline to "help in the transition"..... Founded in 2012 by a dozen IITians, the Mumbai-based company currently offers services in rent/resale, PG/hostels, new projects, land/plot projects, home loans and rental agreement among others.

NDTV Exclusive: Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav Gets Candid (Video)



Rahul Yadav says he will be back with new venture in a month

This announcement from Yadav comes a day after he was trolling on newly formed social networking site Bluegape.com, where it was mentioned that cricketer-turned-investor Yuvraj Singh has invested in Yadav's next venture called ‘NextHousing.com’ through YouWeCan. YouWeCan, a media-focused start-up fund, is planning to take legal action against Bluegape.com. .... A few days after that Yadav was asked to leave the company. However, it didn't end there. A week after Yadav left, Housing was in the news again as the company's website was hacked and Yadav was alleged to be behind the act. However, Yadav announced on his Facebook page that he was not involved in the act.

Timeline: The highs and lows of Rahul Yadav at Housing.com

Yadav spent Rs 100 crore on an advertisement blitzkrieg 'Look Up' that was seen by the investors as throwing away millions. He is also said to have been pushing for acquiring online subscription based real estate data and analytics platform PropEquity, which the investors were not confident of. The investors are said to have been looking for a professional CEO to replace Yadav. .......... Later in May, Yadav gave away his entire stake in the company - Rs 150-200 crore worth of shares - to the 2,251 employees as a gift, saying he is only 26 and "it's too early in life to get serious about money etc.".... Soon after, he challenged Ola Head Bhavish Aggarwal and Zomato's Deepinder Goyal to also give away half of their shares to employees...... Most recently, Yadav had taken a pot shot at Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka by posting a picture of him sleeping at an airport lounge. ........ Housing.com was started in June 2013 by 12 IITians, including Yadav. Currently, nine of the founding members remain involved with the company, holding a combined stake of 8-9 per cent in the company. ..... Yadav holds a 4.5 per cent stake in the company, which was started with the aim of providing housing solutions and unifying all the other real estate players functioning in the country. "We want to unify all those and create a global platform for real estate", Yadav has said in the past. ..... Japan's SoftBank is the major investor in the company giving Housing.com $90 million of funding. It holds 32 per cent stake in the housing company. Besides, Nexus Venture Partners (19 per cent stake), Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Falcon Edge are the other investors in it.

Now, Housing.com's Rahul Yadav takes a dig at Infosys CEO Sikka

After taking digs at Zomato and Ola, Housing.com head Rahul Yadav has now taken pot shots at Vishal Sikka by posting a picture of the Infosys CEO sleeping at an airport lounge on social networking site, Facebook...... Along with the picture, Yadav wrote: "Infosys CEO Sikka...... When I asked something he replied 'I just want to sleep' without listening to the question grin :D"........ When asked about his opinion on Deepinder Goyal and Zomato during a Reddit AMA (ask-me-anything) session, he said, "A company scanning menus from last 7 years and doing no innovation. And the CEO says 'Aww. So cute'."

Rahul Yadav Has A Bright Future

You need a certain lack of deference to authority to do well as a tech entrepreneur. I have not read much about Rahul Yadav, but I liked what I did read. And I hope to do read up on it some. He should start another company, and another.



'Isn’t Femina a girls magazine?' Check out Rahul Yadav's first interview after Housing ouster

After promising a '100x' return in a matter of 30 days, the infamous Housing.com's former CEO Rahul Yadav has given his fist interview to none other than Femina while turning away a bunch of other news organisations because 'the oldest and one of the most widely read ‘women's magazine has one purposes — to give readers content they want to know about. ..... Yadav now is planning something even bigger than Housing. But he's working alone, so he's working 24/7. .... He thinks Indians do not know how to work. "Yahan sab dhanda karte hain" ..... Apparently, in the last Housing board meeting which lasted barely five minutes, Yadav was just called and and fired. "Within two minutes my email id was deactivated and I can’t access it since," he tells Femina. Yadav, it appears, is unhappiest about losing access to his email which contained all his contacts and more importantly his diet plan! ......Despite Housing co-founders not supporting Yadav, they are still his friends. No hard feelings, boss. ..... Apart from working on three to four different things, Yadav is busy eating, sleeping and surfing the internet. Even the interview to Femina was given from under the covers.

Timeline: The rise and fall of Rahul Yadav, the bad boy of Indian startups

The most gripping boardroom battle in India’s startup ecosystem is over—and the enfant terrible has been ejected...... After multiple bouts of speculation and much drama, Rahul Yadav—the 26-year-old chief executive officer and co-founder of real-estate portal Housing.com—has been fired from his job. ..... Yadav—who dropped out of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay to start Housing.com—had it coming, some would say. A polarising figure in India’s startup scene, fellow entrepreneurs viewed his brashness and arrogance as “a recipe for disaster.” Others saw a “hint of Steve Jobs” in him. ..... December 2014: Japan’s Softbank invests $90 million (Rs572 crore) in Housing.com. The funds, Housing says, would be used to map over 40 million houses across 300 cities in India. ...... March 2015: Yadav asks Shailendra Singh, managing director at private equity firm Sequoia Capital, to not “mess” with him and his company. Singh had reportedly offered a job to a Housing.com employee, which ticked off Yadav. ...... March 2015: India’s largest media house, the Times Group, sends a legal notice to Housing.com and seeks Rs100 crore ($16 million) in damages from the company. Yadav had reportedly claimed in an email to his employees that the Times Group was out to malign Housing.com. Times Group owns MagicBricks, a real estate search portal and a competitor. ...... May 2015: Yadav quits as the company’s CEO, with this scathing email to investors:
Dear board members and investors,
I don’t think you guys are intellectually capable enough to have any sensible discussion anymore. This is something which I not just believe but can prove on your faces also!
I had calculated long back (by taking avg life expectancy minus avg sleeping hrs) that I only have ~3L (hours) in my life. ~3L hrs are certainly not much to waste with you guys!
Hence resigning from the position of Directorship, Chairmanship and the CEO position of the company. I’m available for the next 7 days to help in the transition. Won’t give more time after that. So please be efficient in this duration.
Cheers,
Rahul
May 2015: Yadav announces that he is giving away his stake in Housing.com to its employees. The shares are estimated to be worth between Rs150 and Rs200 crore ($23.58-31.44 million). “I’m just 26 and it’s too early in life to get serious about money etc,” Yadav explains.

The Rahul Yadav Story You’ve Never Heard Before

Some are calling him a maniac and a loser, and some a genius and a maverick. One thing is certain though: he suffers no such dilemma - in his view he’s the latter. ..... It was the version 2.0 of how classifieds should work. .... Rahul then started talking about the business, the opportunity and what his team and he wanted to create - and I was hooked. The energy was palpable - the teenager-like awkwardness was gone. I committed, then and there, that I would back their endeavour. When we finished I was thinking "Heck! Look at these kids nowadays. I did not have even an iota of their confidence when I graduated some 20 years ago." I admit, I felt every bit my age. ........ It took a few more meetings to close the terms of the deal. He was a hard-as-nails negotiator, supremely confident of the team and himself. Eventually, I enjoyed the negotiation so much that I gave in to what he was asking for. It was clear that this guy was different. He was very sharp - intense, almost. You could sit in a meeting with him for hours and he wouldn't take a sip of water or a bite to eat or a moment to pause. He was more focused than most people one had met. And he dreamt with his eyes open and made you visualise a new future. ....... For the first six months, we would meet regularly. He would come home, usually on Sunday afternoons. He was very shy and quiet and would barely say a "Hi" to the kids who know him as Rahul uncle. We would sit on the terrace for hours and all he would accept is a cup of tea, which would often go cold as we discussed.

One could never persuade him to have a meal with the family

. ......... I would often go by to Housing's Powai office. There he would be a different animal - obsessed with doing more and better. His thinking was ten years ahead of the market. He wanted to do 10X better. Always. And as he raised more funding and engaged with more people, I saw his confidence soar. ...... As the business got funded and grew larger, our meetings became infrequent and were replaced by phone calls. Always late at night - at 11.30pm, just as I would be about to turn into bed, the phone would ring and I knew it was Rahul. He would usually have a new idea or mostly he would be bothered about something - like, how he did not have enough time to dedicate to the business. Or didn't have time or people to handle everything. He would say, "We are growing too fast. I don’t have anyone who can manage the growth." Or his struggles with some of his co-founders. And sometimes for just plain help - how he was running the firm hand-to-mouth because funding was delayed. ........ In June 2013, I wrote a piece in Business Standard that while Housing had a bunch of talented folks, the real test of the business would be the transition it would have to make from an "outfit" to an organisation. I said that the young team would need to induct experienced professional talent who would become the building blocks of a scalable company. ....... I recall a day when we had discussed that the company would take its first baby steps and pilot Pune city, but suddenly two weeks later, I heard that they were launching across 10 cities. With no team, no systems, no experience - the investors had asked them to go for broke. ........ First came the VC funding and then these youngsters were asked to ride a tiger - the team grew from 100-odd to over a 1,000 in a matter of a few months. There was no support system - no financial controls, no infrastructure and processes. Nothing that would normally form the chassis of a company. Just a blind race to grow - to create new categories before the older ones had stabilised. A car with an accelerator but no steering wheel - fuelled by the adrenalin of hundreds of youngsters and millions of dollars of VC money. ........ No one asked them to pause, to review, to reflect. No one asked them to measure, to monitor, to plan. One wonders what the hurry was about. It’s not as if the market was running away. The real-estate market was beginning to evolve - online players were barely 2% or less of the entire ecosystem…and Housing had a brilliant solution. They had built technology that could rival the best in the world. ..... It put him in a corner - he had no mentor in the group, no one he could reach out to. Once his funding round was stuck because he needed a little money to clear up some statutory dues - he ran from pillar to post for days - and for a few nights I had a frustrated Rahul on the phone. No one helped. Eventually I stepped in with a loan which allowed this lockjam between investors who have millions of dollars at their disposal to be cleared. It was painful to see this young boy handling so much. ....... He said, "Sir, the investors have told me not to bother with revenues for the next 10 years. They have said they will support the business and we can build a $10 billion company." ..... But that was not to be - they went on ahead and made a big splash with their campaign, adding more cities….riding a bigger tiger even harder. ...... My last conversation with him was a day before he was asked to go. He said, "I can’t relate to these people and I can’t understand why they can’t see what I see. They can’t see what we can build." That he did not know whether he wanted to stay on and do it anymore. It was the first time I saw his energy low - he was pensive and seemed downbeat. ....... If you are a lone-player with great talent - like a sportsperson or an artist or painter - you are then free to work alone, without regard to what the world thinks of you. You have no responsibility, except to hone your own talent - to become the best in the world, and to strive for excellence. It’s a lonely journey, where you learn to practice hard and live your own failures. After all, no one remembers the third seed at Wimbledon, or the second man on the moon................ But if you’ve chosen to be a manager, you’ve then got to be among people, collaborate with them, lead them or be led by them, be able to handle their frustrations, to handle their competence and their incompetence. It's an ego-crushing journey where you need to learn to allow people their space to work. It has very little to do with intelligence - it is more about developing sensitivity - finding a way to motivate people, to pull them in one direction. A journey of frustration, but equally one of triumph when you see the team working together and winning - a journey you share with your team.......... Finally, I told him that if he chose to be the leader, he would need to eat crow, sit and repair relationships and find a way to move ahead. ..... Work on your culture, people. Work on yourself. You are not here to create an app. You are here to build something that lasts. That can weather any storm and outlast the founders. Only then will you be truly successful in your endeavour. ......... It’s crazy to see over 20 start-ups getting funded to do the same thing. Everybody you meet today is an angel investor - people are spreading their bets - but no one is providing the start-ups "adult supervision", something they sorely need. Start-ups need help to become organisations with culture, with rituals, with codes of conduct and with an operating philosophy. Something that’s taken successful companies years to build. ....... He deserves a second chance. Wouldn’t you want one for yourself? ...... Going beyond Housing, I see a worrying phenomenon across the start-up ecosystem: a mis-alignment, if you will, in the relationship between founders and VCs. .. To understand what I mean, check the level of founder shareholdings across most major start-up firms. It has uniformly come down to anywhere between 15 percent to the low single-digits. ......... We need to learn from our counterparts in the West. Founders there understand passion and raw talent are not enough to build a scalable company. They have the maturity to step aside and work with experienced managers, investors and advisors.

Rahul Yadav: The early years at Housing.com Meet the real Rahul Yadav: I found him ‘rocking it’ in his Mumbai office

Yadav appears casual in his navy blue T-shirt and beige cargos but his office doesn’t look like a “startup office.” It is done up in a sleek white with tinges of bright color in the form of red chairs and green furniture. ...... He pushes all his employees out of his cabin as soon as I enter to greet in the most soft spoken tone. In true Housing style, he picked up his marker to explain the smallest of details and fumbled to find alternative words to IIT Bombay lingo macha rahe hai (meaning “rocking it” in “cool” Hindi). ...... “Players worldwide think that real estate is a local problem and so they haven’t launched overseas operations. We want to change that perception,” said Yadav. “We have set up a dedicated Data Science Lab which sieves through mountains of data to develop indices and metrics that help identify consumer needs. Nobody else has verified photographs of houses on their platform,” he said. ....... “With tools like heat maps, lifestyle rating, locality insights, child friendliness index, demand-supply tool, and so on, we have made the search for homes more fun than a burden,” he explained. “Families can sit together and discuss while taking a peek at the internal and external amenities of a home with a few clicks.” ...... Another step to complete the loop was a housing loans service. ..... This was a day before Housing unveiled its new logo – an arrowhead pointed upward. “It’s a symbol of optimism,” he said. “The sharp outer edges direct towards the future. We are aggressive on growth and aim to be 10 times better in terms of customer experience. However, the curvy edges show that we are soft from the inside.” ...... Housing also revamped its website and app with more colors as it is “a young company with immense vibrancy.” ..... Last year, the company reported a US$8 million loss on revenue of just US$300,000 for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014. “The online real estate industry is at a nascent stage. We are focusing on building a product right now,” explained Yadav, dismissing concerns over the high cash burn rate. ...... In December last year, Housing said that it aims to map over 40 million houses across 300 cities in India. ....... Yet the founder, who is said to own less than 5 percent of Housing, is now reportedly on his way out, even as the company is in talks to be acquired by Quikr for US$120 million at a valuation of US$172 million. That’s a decline from a US$235 million valuation during its last round of funding...... Housing.com is one of the world’s fastest-growing online real estate platforms.

Young, brash, and confident: YourStory’s interview with Rahul Yadav of Housing

In Mumbai for a three day visit, a friend pointed me to Rahul Yadav’s residence in Powai. “Everyone in the startup ecosystem knows this man,” this friend who works at a tech startup tells me. ..... has since managed to raise more than $130 million in capital and has been constantly making news for a variety of reasons- from pissing off investors to brute force advertising to law suits with competitors. Curious about knowing the man behind the company, I wrote an email to him asking for an interview and he agreed for a meeting within 12 hours. ...... This interview was conducted a day before the news of Rahul’s resignation .... Housing ads are everywhere. Everywhere. Billboards, TV, Radio, internet, Housing is pumping every channel with ads. Social media has been abuzz with bewilderment at the amount of money Housing has been spending on advertising. “This is normal. You have to build a brand, people have to know about Housing to see what we’ve built! And this is the second phase. We first built the product and didn’t do any marketing! Now, it’s time for showing the world what we’ve built,” says Rahul with an air of confidence. ...... He’s still peering into his laptop and grimaces at an email he received. He excuses himself to reply and looks a bit disturbed. “Some not so nice things are happening,” he dismisses my probing. ..... There are crores of properties in Mumbai alone and Housing has only about 10% of the available properties online as of now. “People need to stop hating us. We are building a brand and are working very hard to solve a problem which no one has tackled head on. We don’t guarantee that we’ll get you a house. Finding a house is a problem and we’re trying all our best to solve this,” Rahul adds. ........ Fund raising hasn’t been a problem for Housing. “There are so many investors willing to put in money, that has never been a problem,” Rahul tells me the obvious........... Most of it boils down to the entrepreneur’s ability to present a case in which the investors believe. ..... “The private markets are huge and I see this continuing for a few years to come. When people can raise $200 million in private markets, why go for an IPO?” he asks. ...... Rahul agrees that he has a brash attitude. “I’ve always been like this. It was the deans during college and now it is the VCs. It’s just an attitude I have,” he says after some reflection. Indifferent to most of the things, Rahul looks everything from a mathematical lens. Talking of Housing, he pens down a function and says it is all about managing variables. ....... Rahul has a general disregard for humankind. Yes. “While growing up, I observed things and always kept thinking. Why are the trains so dirty? Why is this thing like this? Why are people not working hard? Why are hostels so dirty? Why is everything so broken? Why are people so dumb?” he asks rhetorically. ......... You have to be in the best of the places with best of the people ........ Housing is a 2500 people company at the moment and will soon grow to over 4000..... “It’s all mathematics, look at the bigger picture. I assign everything certain weightage and change it to see the changes,” he says and also confirms that it works. Housing gets more than 11 million visitors on the website per month and has crossed a million app downloads. “We’re clearly ahead of all the competitors on all metrics now,” he talks about competition. MagicBricks recently filed a law suit against Housing but Rahul doesn’t really take it seriously. ........ Rahul is very excited about the scale of the housing problem. He believes that Housing.com can be a much larger company than AirBnB, just looking at the market size. And Housing is just getting started, the team believes they’re just starting to scratch the surface. “We’ve been tackling this problem for a few years and we’ve reached midway. We have gained a lot of insights and have figured out some very basic dynamics on the basis of which we’d be changing the model in the future,” he says. ........ In the relatively short period of its existence, Housing has revolutionized the real estate market in India and it continues to lead and disrupt with world class product innovations.

Rahul Yadav, ex-CEO of Housing.com says, “I will be back”

Being the cynosure of all eyes and touted as India’s answer to Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, Rahul Yadav is rather blasé about the latest developments in the start-up that was his brainchild. Yadav set up Housing.com, which was making waves before a dramatic turn on events after a board meeting got the young former IIT-an fired. ....... a half-asleep Yadav stated how start-ups are far difficult to set up in India than a country like USA. Yadav also chats about how annoying his new-found fame is and that it has played havock with his reticent personality. ...... Known as a media shy person, Yadav shunned interviewers for the last couple of years before the latest turn of events. He quipped that they ask the same questions. Despite being fired from Housing, he remains friends with most of them and remains in contact with them. He revealed that all the content that he was working on was wiped out completely from his system, five minutes after his expulsion. He signed off by stating that he was working on a big project, all alone.

2001, 2002, 2008: Cycle Of Violence

September 2001: 3,000 dead.



February 2002: Gujrat Riots



2008 Mumbai Attacks

मोदी और नीतिश को एक दुसरे की जरुरत है

Português: O primeiro-ministro da Índia Atal Bihari Vajpayee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Modi wants to talk all development all the time. उसका एक कारण ये है कि he is a very mainstream, center of the road kind of guy on social issues. He is where you want him to be. But he is aware of the fringe elements in his own party, the extreme right wing types who are out and out bizarre, but if America is any lesson, those fringe elements have a right to free speech as much as anyone else, and they are here to stay. You can not shut them up, but you can try and drown them out. And that is why he tries to talk all development all the time. He wants the development talk to drown out the talk of the fringe elements.

Nitish actually has the luxury of talking back to those fringe elements. Modi does not have that luxury. So on social issues Nitish can help Modi. मोदी और नीतिश को एक दुसरे की जरुरत है। Modi and Nitish are not in the same party, but they are on the same side on social issues. That is also true about the political issues of democracy. Modi campaigned hard against Kejriwal as he should have, but once Kejriwal won, he reached out and wants to work with him. But there are elements within the BJP who want to harass Kejriwal. That is not Modi. Modi wants to respect the people. If the people want Kejriwal in Delhi and Mamata in Kolkata, Modi is going to respect the people. दल से बड़ा देश।

When FDR was in the White House, he would gather the labor leaders and say, build pressure on me so I can do the right thing. People like Nitish can build that right kind of social pressure so the fringe elements on the right end of the political spectrum don't get in the way of India seeing its best days ahead.

Both Nitish and Modi are disciples of Atal.

Related articles

• Advani ji is correct in saying Emergency can't be ruled out, is Delhi BJP's first experiment: Kejriwal
• Battle of brooms: AAP, BJP lock horns while cleaning Delhi's garbage
• Kejriwal used 'the language of C-grade Bollywood' to attack PM, says Delhi BJP
• 'White supremacy courses through veins of America'
• Gallup: Republican Conservative Base Shrinking
• GOP Conservative Base Is Shrinking
• It's becoming cooler to call yourself 'liberal' (thanks to marijuana and gay marriage)
• Long Live The Culture Wars: Could Social Issues Dominate In 2016?