Nunet Nunet is a member of:
Company Profile
My company's name is New Age Content Services (NACS) LLP. It is a partnership firm (www.newagecontentservices.com) based out of Mumbai, and became fully operational in July 2012. NACS is essentially positioned as a full digital services firm. We provide
the following services:
a.Internet Consultancy
b. Online Brand Management
c. Online Reputation Management
d. Inbound Marketing including Social Media Marketing
e. Content
f. Web-based research
g. Website design
h. email marketing services
NACS's core business is in the Internet space. We call ourselves the "Internet specialists". What we do is to hold hands of any business or individual who wants to move into that space – brick and mortar, small and medium enterprises, professionals such as lawyers, politicians, chartered accountants, journalists, cosmetologists, fashion designers, actors, almost anyone. Even those who understand the rudiments of the Web but do not know how exactly to go about conducting business online, we provide consultancy services for them, too. The basic idea is to pave the way for more and more real world businesses and professions to move on to the Web. We have Indian as well as international clients-from publishers to web hosting companies to media outfits, insurance companies, from advertisers to big data consultants to technical journals to even a politician from another country.
My Role
To begin with, I started this firm after spending over 25 years as a hard core journalist and about 27 years as a communicator. During these years, I picked up not only the essentials of communications management but also became an expert in it. In the meantime, I also acquired a diploma in business administration. My previous stints in some web portals helped me understand the potential of the Internet. When I founded my own firm, I started off by concentrating on Content provision and research, which was anyway my forte, but over time, have now started utilising my skills as an Internet specialist to the fullest. I have also used my time to acquire two diplomas – one in social media marketing and the other in cyber law. Today, in addition to my role of content provider/communication expert, I am also an online marketer.
Relationship with potential investors
Actually, my firm NACS also owns and runs two websites – What's New On The Net (www.whatsnewonthenet.com) and Always Above The Fold (www.alwaysabovethefold.com), besides providing digital world services to clients. What’s New OnThe Netstarted off in beta over three years ago. It is a 24X7 global website that reports news and developments of the Internet world only, not from the real world. Plus, it also profiles only Internet related Startups and smartphone apps. It has managed to get itself a decent global following. The idea behind this website is to give you everything that you want to know (and can use) about the Internet from a single platform.
Always Above The Fold, on the other hand, is a relatively new blog, and styles itself as a digital world lifestyle blog. I have tried to raise funds for both the sites but it has been an upward journey. In India, the investing eco-system is not as evolved as in the West;VCs either fund brick and mortar startups or only focus on technology startups. Financiers like to "play it safe". I have approached VCs, private equity funds, and a host of other financial institutions with proposals but the response has been lukewarm so far.In India, investors seem to want quick returns on their investments and hesitate in taking risks. Plus they want to bet on "safe" ideas.In the western nations, especially Silicon Valley in the US,VCs are more inclined in betting on 10 startups all at once, for they know for sure that at least 2 of these would be superbly successful, raking in the profits. Can you imagine an Indian VC funding a Google Glass or 3D Printing or an app for online banking transactions? Even e-commerce sites fail to get backing. I would also love it if like the US, the Indian authorities too made crowdfunding legal. This would give a tremendous boost to startups like mine.
company culture
My firm is still in its nascent stage but I do have a bench of freelancers across all the services we provide whom I rely on to deliver what clients want. Our take is simple – give a personal touch to every client we take on to make him/her feel like we are part of his/her organisation and not just consultants.
Difficulties faced
Educating the client is a major pain point. In India, where PC penetration is good but not so Internet penetration, explaining the positives of the web to potential clients is a major hurdle we have to cross. While a major part of the world is moving towards conducting almost all day-to-day business on the Internet, domestic clients are still wary. There is a degree of suspicion in their minds, still. Many think by going on to the web, the chances of security lapses or intrusion in private life increases. I had a client once who refused to pay our fees using the online banking system, saying he would rather send the cheque home by courier. When asked why, his response was he did not want to feed in his bank account number online because someone could hack his account later. Ignorance is the biggest problem but everybody has to realize that the Internet is not going away. Not only that, very soon, they will have no choice but to transact online. Just look around you. Already, you are banking, paying bills,reading news, expressing opinions, buying and selling shares, getting medical opinions, making friends, ordering food, cinema and airline tickets, watching movies, listening to music, all on the web. The PC or your mobile computing device has almost become the focal point of your real world life. There’s hardly any real world activity that has not moved on to the Internet so people need to wake up and smell the coffee. Even for a small business, a startup or a budding professional, the Internet opens up the doors to the world. Plus it’s extremely cost-effective, be it content, marketing of advertising. Geography no longer holds any meaning. If you want to, you can sell your product or service to anyone in any part of the world at a fraction of real world costs, taking advantage of the tools, services and aids that the Internet provides.Plus the web provides a wonderful opportunity wherein the customer or client comes to you, and not the other way around.
Advice to young entrepreneurs
I started off late as an entrepreneur, when I was 45 years old, but I feel that people should get into the entrepreneur game much earlier. My take is once you have passed out of college and decided on your career choice, you should hold full time employment in a company for some years, understand how the business works, and then make out on your own. If you want to start as an entrepreneur even before that, you should then have a partner with some experience to join you. Experience is everything, and starting any business without a modicum of experience may turn out to be a bit too expensive, even if you have a workable idea. You see merely setting up a business based on an idea is not the end of it. It is in fact the start of a journey. You need to know so many things – your market, selling, pitching, technology, keeping books, raising invoices, identifying new markets, and so on.Not everyone can hire at the very start.
The other advice I have is that being an entrepreneur is no doubt a risky proposition, and you must only get into it if you have the passion and the energy levels to see it through. And when I say see it through, it means playing the idea to the fullest even if it means the business ultimately making a loss and folding up. Ideas are a dime a dozen, almost everybody gets a business idea once in a while. The trick is not only to act on your business idea but to take it from concept stage to implementation, and to keep at it afterwards. Which means working 24X7 with no guarantee of any income at the end of the month.It needs a tenacity of sorts. If you are not ready for the grind and the uncertainty, I would suggest strongly to stick to a 9-5 job. Entrepreneurship is not for the weak-kneed. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur you need to believe in your idea, do basic market research to see whether there’s a need for the service or product, and get going. What is even more important is to know when to let go of it. Cutting your risks is equally important. It’s like that adage – a good soldier knows when to flee a battlefield in order to live to fight another day. If your idea is not bringing in the desired results in the time you have given yourself, let go of it and try your hand at something else. An entrepreneur who has failed is even better an entrepreneur who has succeeded since the first has learnt some lessons which the latter may have not. Failure is no embarrassment. Know when to cut short your losses and move on.
Key thoughts about Entrepreneurship
I do have some thoughts for VCs. They must understand that mostwannabe entrepreneurs are not businessmen nor do they hail from business families. They do not have formal business training to start off with; many have no clue about what a balance sheet or profit and loss statement is. Most VCs expect budding entrepreneurs to submit a detailed business plan even before discussing the idea, which must include details like business projections,break-even year, estimated profits, number of team members and stuff like that.Startups are exactly that - they are tiny operations needing the oxygen of money to survive. If the questions that sometimes VCs ask could be answered and put in a formal plan the way they want, the wannabe entrepreneur would already be a successful businessman and would not need any money, because his business would have already started fetching revenue. I agree for VCs or seed funders, there needs to be a starting point to separate the chaff from the wheat given the fact that thousands approach them every day. But most VCs are pass-outs from some well-known business college or have worked in leading financial institutions and think everybody around them also has the same kind of formal business training. Well, they have not. They forget that a business idea can come to anyone- a waiter, a chef, a junior marketing professional, a pilot, a journalist, just about anyone. So if you start expecting all of them to articulate their ideas by way of a formal business plan, I feel it is asking for too much. You are in fact discouraging potential entrepreneurs. These are guys who have taken the first step but are starved of money and experience, that’s why they are coming to you. They do not even have enough money most of the times to hire someone to write out a business plan for them. So VCs need to be sympathetic. The other thing VCs also need to do is to respond, one way or the other, to requests for funds, which many don’t. Even when they do, they must learn how to let someone down gently, and not in a brusque manner, which can be quite off-putting.
