Pratik Poddar

Depression is real! Deal with it! Not many people talk about it. May be people should. I see so many depressed entrepreneurs around me. We need to have a structure to help them out. There is shame and stigma attached to talking about depression. In fact, one in every four people suffer from anxiety and depression. Being sad and being depressed are two different things. Also, people going through depression don’t look so, while someone sad will look sad. The most common reaction is, ‘How can you be depressed? You have everything going for you.’ It’s not about what you have or don’t have. People talk about physical fitness, but mental health is equally important. Some articles related to the topic: Entrepreneurial Life Shouldn't Be This Way--Should It? The psychological price of entrepreneurship The dark side of entrepreneurship 4 tips for dealing with founder depression Deepika Padukone on depression and anxiety Some tips which might help you out: 1) Look for s...

Thanks to Abhishek Katiyar, I was invited to TEDx IIMC to share my experiences around entrepreneurship. Given that my story has been a bit hazy and incomplete yet, I did not want to share the story, instead I wanted to just talk about the key learning from the short experience I have had till now. It was great meeting super passionate speakers - Fahim and Tousheef, Krutika and Sumit. I had a great afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity and hospitality. I hope it was useful for some people at least. My notes: How many of you here want to be entrepreneurs? Why? Money/ No boss/ Impact/ Hip thing to do? I my last 2.5 yrs experience with failed startups, I have not got any of these, but still I am happy with the journey so far. Why am I happy? A mentor of mine once said to me that life is nothing but sum of all experiences. I think that because of the start-up experience, I now see life from a different lens altogether. So this is what I will tal...

Prepared jointly by Arnav (IIT KGP + DB + UrbanTouch + Sokratik + Carcredible ) and Pratik (IITB + Morgan Stanley + Blackstone + Clipr + Tomonotomo  + ZippedNews  + Spiral Media) Stopping for a second to look back at my startup journey - some points in no order. 1) Marketing and sales are important - even for tech startups. Nothing sells itself. The movie Social Network did not talk about it. Its not only about the product. "Bijnessman wahi hai jise bechna aata ho" 2) Accept failure quickly, learn from your mistakes and iterate fast. "Subah ka bhoola shaam ki jagah agar din mein hi ghar aa jaye to behtar" 3) Do not fuss about equity. Be equal partners and go ahead. "Ye dosti hum nahin todenge" 4) Listen to VCs with a pinch of salt - They have all the time in the world to talk. You don't. They would want that you either succeed quickly so that they can invest, or fail quickly so that they can hire you for one of their portfolio com...

Thanks to Yograj Patel ( @YograjCS ) for bringing it to my notice :) Thanks to Kunal Talgeri for the interview piece and his interesting perspective on entrepreneurship. Good article, Sir :) My name appears somewhere in Page 5 (with a typo - Prateek Poddar instead of Pratik Poddar, but its fine :))

A book on one of the best teachers I have ever known, Mr. V.K. Bansal (Bansal Classes, Kota) Description of the book: A remarkable tale of the rise of small towns India as the new centres of business and money Will be of great interest to IIT-JEE aspirants and students in general Also narrates the journey of Bansal Classes, the branchild of V.K.Bansal, today a premier tutoring institute for the IIT-JEE A tutor transforms the way students take the IIT-JEE. Most students of science in Indian high schools aspire to join one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). Thus competition for admission is fierce and staying one step ahead, the IITs make their Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) more difficult each year. Each year Bansal Classes, the premier tutoring institute for the IIT-JEE, puts more students into the IITs than any other. Bansal Classes is the brainchild of V.K. Bansal who began his career as a tutor teaching a single student on his dining table. He had ju...

  Disclaimer: I am not claiming that it will be big. Just that it has some interesting features. Summarizing by this image: Google Plus has taken the commenting, uploading,  liking feature of facebook. Except the groups thing, it has everything facebook has. It has taken following feature from twitter. You do not have to accept if I am following you. This is plain awesome. Its actually more powerful that twitter as you can point whether this post is for everyone or for a select group. Notice the orange and green coloured balls the in the image related to google plus. It brings out a very important characteristic. Me and a lot of my friends were discussing since last 2 years that facebook had made my friend structure really flat. I have lots of friends. Even the friend whom I would not have called even once in 5 years knows everything about me if I am posting regularly. My best friend does not feel special as I am not calling him to tell him what happened to me toda...