Well, I guess somebody had to do this some day!
Entrepreneurship for far too long has been the glorified chapter in the dreams of most working professionals, tired of the tyranny of bosses. Often forgotten is the fact that in a regular job with a fixed mandate, the boss is perhaps the only variables out of your control. As an entrepreneur there are way too many people, bodies and circumstances that are way out of your sphere of influence.
Somebody needs to talk about all these frustrations in the everyday lives of an entrepreneur. I have decided to pick up the virtual pen to deliver on this onerous responsibility for reasons more than one. First, at a very selfish level, it helps me vent out my anger on all things which everyday spin out of my control. Second, at a very philanthropic level, it helps a lot of people contemplating on their decision to jump into the lap of the unknown, take a better informed view. Third, I hope that someday I shall have readers to this blog and further hope against hope that there might be people out there wanting to share solutions to my issues.
So here goes Angerpreneur's first journal entry!
Like most first-time entrepreneur's we were perplexed by the whole challenge of navigating through the myriad processes of getting a company registered in India. So we decided to engage the services of this other company called Companiesinn.com, which claimed to be an expert in incorporation processes, for assisting us in the process of getting our start-up registered as a Pvt Ltd company.
To begin with, we never really had high regard for businesses whose business model is based on the fact that the government has made too many processes complicated in this country and is simply inefficient. I see such companies as nothing more than glorified agents and touts. The day government processes become efficient, simple and citizen-friendly most of these companies will be out of business. I continue to hope for the sun to rise on such a day in this country.
There are after all 17-year old Nick D'Aloisio's in the developed world creating companies and selling of their Summlys for 30 million Dollars!
At every step, Companiesinn.com continued to frustrate us out of our skins by being prompt only on the action of accepting an advance payment and reneging on all other promises. Not a single deadline was stuck to, no mails and calls went answered on the first attempt, never was there one SPOC for a customer and never was there any genuine value-adding advice received from them. To make matters worse, they perhaps have managed to hire the rudest possible bunch of customer service reps, who sometimes behaved worse than the average government babu.
Our application for a name approval from the MCA has already gone through multiple iterations and re-submissions. We've been given multiple versions by each of their different customer service reps on what constitutes an acceptable list of KYC documents for a registered office address. For every delay in the process, we've been told that Companiesinn.com is helpless since the ROC in Bangalore is inefficient. And never have they been able to give us a suitable justification as to why are they charging us as much as they are, if they are as helpless as they project themselves to be.
All in all, its been an absolutely harrowing experience with outsourcing an activity we believed was best left to an expert. I wish there was some kind of tool or mechanism which could assist start-ups like us in rating/assessing vendors like companiesinn.com. Especially, because for us every penny counts and it is critical to get the best value out of every penny spent.
However, lesson learnt, it is going to be critical going forward to perform necessary due diligence at every step before jumping into the decision to outsource. A wrong vendor selected can actually cause more heartburn than business benefit!
Entrepreneurship for far too long has been the glorified chapter in the dreams of most working professionals, tired of the tyranny of bosses. Often forgotten is the fact that in a regular job with a fixed mandate, the boss is perhaps the only variables out of your control. As an entrepreneur there are way too many people, bodies and circumstances that are way out of your sphere of influence.
Somebody needs to talk about all these frustrations in the everyday lives of an entrepreneur. I have decided to pick up the virtual pen to deliver on this onerous responsibility for reasons more than one. First, at a very selfish level, it helps me vent out my anger on all things which everyday spin out of my control. Second, at a very philanthropic level, it helps a lot of people contemplating on their decision to jump into the lap of the unknown, take a better informed view. Third, I hope that someday I shall have readers to this blog and further hope against hope that there might be people out there wanting to share solutions to my issues.
So here goes Angerpreneur's first journal entry!
Like most first-time entrepreneur's we were perplexed by the whole challenge of navigating through the myriad processes of getting a company registered in India. So we decided to engage the services of this other company called Companiesinn.com, which claimed to be an expert in incorporation processes, for assisting us in the process of getting our start-up registered as a Pvt Ltd company.
To begin with, we never really had high regard for businesses whose business model is based on the fact that the government has made too many processes complicated in this country and is simply inefficient. I see such companies as nothing more than glorified agents and touts. The day government processes become efficient, simple and citizen-friendly most of these companies will be out of business. I continue to hope for the sun to rise on such a day in this country.
There are after all 17-year old Nick D'Aloisio's in the developed world creating companies and selling of their Summlys for 30 million Dollars!
At every step, Companiesinn.com continued to frustrate us out of our skins by being prompt only on the action of accepting an advance payment and reneging on all other promises. Not a single deadline was stuck to, no mails and calls went answered on the first attempt, never was there one SPOC for a customer and never was there any genuine value-adding advice received from them. To make matters worse, they perhaps have managed to hire the rudest possible bunch of customer service reps, who sometimes behaved worse than the average government babu.
Our application for a name approval from the MCA has already gone through multiple iterations and re-submissions. We've been given multiple versions by each of their different customer service reps on what constitutes an acceptable list of KYC documents for a registered office address. For every delay in the process, we've been told that Companiesinn.com is helpless since the ROC in Bangalore is inefficient. And never have they been able to give us a suitable justification as to why are they charging us as much as they are, if they are as helpless as they project themselves to be.
All in all, its been an absolutely harrowing experience with outsourcing an activity we believed was best left to an expert. I wish there was some kind of tool or mechanism which could assist start-ups like us in rating/assessing vendors like companiesinn.com. Especially, because for us every penny counts and it is critical to get the best value out of every penny spent.
However, lesson learnt, it is going to be critical going forward to perform necessary due diligence at every step before jumping into the decision to outsource. A wrong vendor selected can actually cause more heartburn than business benefit!
