Golden Square - Joy at Work

“It needs nerves of steel to follow your dreams,” says Meenakshi Shenoy, Founder of Corporate Database Recruitment Consultants, a senior level search firm.  While she may be talking about the start-up boom in Bangalore, the statement could well apply to her journey as an entrepreneur. “The timing was right,” she says, recalling those early days of entrepreneurship.  “IT was booming and there were plenty of opportunities.”  Of course, there were challenges too. You have to be in the driver’s seat and never lose focus says Meenakshi.  She started small, with just 4-5 clients. Initially, clients would seek her services to recruit Project Managers or Programmers, but gradually as they saw her passion for recruitment and her professional services, the requirements and the clients grew bigger. Today, she takes great pride in being a boutique consulting firm catering to a very niche market. We caught up with Meenakshi Shenoy for a free-wheeling chat to understa...

Cash is King. Very important to remember especially when you are a bootstrapping startup. One big expense for any business is the office space. There are various ways to cut costs on office infrastructure, work from a garage, work from home, share an office. One of our members, however, demonstrated how to have the best of both worlds, save office costs and at the same time have an excellent space for collaboration. This team let's call them “S Team” for Smart Team. Did the following. All 5 Team members worked from their own homes. Used online collaboration tools like Google Docs, Notion, Zoom, Trello, Bitrix. Booked Golden Square's Conference Room once a week for 3 hours for brainstorming and reviews. These are best-done face to face. And the air-conditioned conference room has a projector and WiFi. Booked the meeting room, 2-3 times a week for meeting with clients, partners, vendors. To have a professional and productive meeting. (Cafes can be...

At no other time in history is ‘trust’ more important for business than today. Trust fuels businesses, helps them not just survive the many onslaughts of a competitive global economy, but sustain and thrive. And I speak from experience. The fifth branch of Golden Square that is getting ready to welcome customers at Bangalore CBD South is a direct result of Trust built over the years and I am both proud and humbled to share this story with you. First, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Narendra Bhatta for referring me to the owners of the building. Narendra Bhatta is the Founder Partner and CEO of Intellocopia a leading consulting firm in the area of Intellectual Property, which helps small and medium businesses realize value through effective protection, management and enforcement of various IPRs, namely, Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and Design. Now let me share how the referral came to be. Speed of Trust: I was at a networking meeting at BNI Inspi...

Yesterday I had to empty my lovely office room in Golden Square Vittal Mallya Road Branch . I do not have a dedicated office room for myself anymore. I have been using this room for the last 10 years, and a couple of days back I was politely asked by my colleagues in Golden Square to hand it over because an important client needed office space and we did not have any available in this Branch. I had mixed feelings yesterday while I was clearing out the room. I felt liberated while I also felt a sense of loss. Working from Home Liberated because though I often work from home, and use any of the Golden Square branches for meetings, there is always this feeling that I am not in “my office”. Now by giving that away I felt liberated, I do not have to go to the office, I can be wherever I need to be, whichever place is most convenient for me and people I am meeting.  My favorite place for "thinking type" of work: ...

Citrya means “Brilliant” and that’s how they aspire to be – the people at Citrya believe that the marketplace is crowded with solutions and products each solving a specific or a particular class of problems. Not all of them help “Make life easier” and their endeavor is to find those gaps and create dramatic value that will enhance the utility of the ecosystem of existing products exponentially.  Okay, yes, that sounds intense and confusing possibly, but to crystallize it, they are in search of solving and innovating in small, but dramatic ways and are humble enough to acknowledge that they don’t aspire to create the next path breaking invention in human history, although they would love it if they could actually, prove their humility wrong! Below is a short excerpt from the interaction we had with Mr. Krishna Mitter CEO of Citrya Innovations.   How long you've been in this business?? After over 17+ years in a multi-national, we started a business to live...

They have set out to bring in a change in the way Industries and Commercial establishments meet their energy requirements. While generating revenue with the business model, the endeavor is to reduce India’s crude oil bill to the most possible extent. Persept Solar is an Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore / NSRCEL incubated Independent Power Producing [IPP] company offering  ”Solar PV Power as a Service”. The green power from renewable energy source offered by Persept Solar aims to reduce the dependence on the expensive captive diesel power plants used by Indian Industries, Commercial Establishments due to the ever-increasing power requirements. Persept Solar has been in business for almost 2 and a half years. It was founded by two IIMB Alumni, with the firm belief that Solar Power can address a significant part of the existing demand-supply gap in the country. We recently had a brief interactive session with the core team comprising Mr. Srinivas ...