The First Project

On May 8th 2011, we kicked off the office. With me as the CEO, Business Development Manager, Developer and Peon all in one. First Target was to setup a decent profile on online bidding systems, seeked help of colleagues and friends, talked to anyone I could think of with experience. Must say my first feeling was this would be the easy part, but as I understood later a good profile can be very helpful in conviencing people that you know the trade, I was advised to take on a small projects in the start and then gradually move to bigger ones (logical), so when bidding process started I would look for quick jobs that did not pay much but got the ball rolling, well guess what a lot of people are looking for the same.... so it ended up looking like a dog fight where people were bidding 40~50% lower than what I deemed to be a fair price, after about 100 bids on different systems I got one Nop Commerce customization project from Odesk. The client played some hard ball and also showed some carrot and got me to lower the bid by 25% but I was happy, I had My First Project. 

But the dampener to my happiness was the client requirement that kept changing every so slightly in the start and later went all together different direction. and when I raised the issue with him I was seen as playing the client, and you don't want a bad rating on portals like Elance and Odesk as lot depends on it, so you give in... something I had been hearing from my previous boss all along.... so you compromise and have that bit done. 

To be fair to the client he was right, specs always change and about 3 years as Delivery Head Experience should have tough me that. But its very different when you start a new venture there is no fallback plan, no resource shuffling or re-alignment of goals... all you have is this one thing and you dearly want to hold on to it. 

Well give or take this was a great start, I had a project some seed money, that would not suffice to buy a months groceries but better than nothing.     

One of the things I have learned from life is one step at a time does it. 

The Start...

It was on Jan 20,2011 that I while walking out to my car, told my wife "I think I am going to resign today". It was not a total shock to her as I had been thinking, discussing / Arguing about this for weeks if not months with practically everybody in the family and some really close friends, and slowly it had built to be a case of "When". The job I was to leave was a job of great authority and respect, I had been in Graycell Technologies Exports for the last 6 years and had always been the "TOP Guy" there with my current designation as Delivery Head, so you can guess I was set quite comfortably set there and I rarely had any problems, yes the job was a neck breaking one, but I enjoyed it, there where fires and there were rocky moments but over all a great ride and this would not be complete without mentioning Munish Jauhar my CEO/ Mentor/ at times Tormentor, he taught me so much that I can never thank him enough for it. well getting back to that cold day in January. When I got into the office a meeting was called to discuss come office matters and all through it I was thinking how to I tell Munish... so when every one disbursed I quietly mentioned to Munish I would like to resign, I gave my reasons and in the end I offered a 60 day notice period so that company had apt time to find someone  to take over from me. I must say I was hard leaving the Job but I was focused on setting up my own shop and I wanted it to do ethically no client pouching or any of the other hanky panky stuff. 


Jumping to the fateful day in March when I was relieved and In my mind "Anthem Works" was the name I wanted the company to be, it had a decent ring to it and was kind of open ended where I could be looking at more avenues than just software development alone, but I was not to be the MCA (Ministry of Corporate Affairs) did not allow the name as I had listed software development as my primary target and thus I switched to "Anthem Infotech" so on 26th April 2011, Anthem Infotech Private Limited was registered and for me that was the first milestone. 


I had a decent reserve of cash that would last be around 4 months if I made no money at all and then a about $4,000 to setup a office and start a small operation. first month I got all the things in place like furniture (4 tables and 4 chairs), Internet, 2 Pcs and my old trusted laptop. 


That was the start...