About Me

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Mumbai, India
I run an IT Security consulting firm based out of India. We started off from scratch in 2001 when I was 21, and have offices in Mumbai, Bahrain, and UAE. The idea behind the blog is to share the stories of how we run the business, the deals we make, the deals that break, the heartburn, and the sheer joy.

The Ultimate Startup Guide

The Ultimate Startup Guide is an e-book that provides answers to all your questions related to starting and growing a business in India. Everything you wanted to know about entrepreneurship in India from ideation to registration to marketing to hiring. The book contains a large number of practical examples, anecdotes, interviews, and motivational material to help you get started, and to grow rapidly in a booming Indian economy. If you've got the idea, this book will help you through with the execution and realize your dreams. Here are some of the key questions you will find answered in this book:
  • When starting a business, what are the legal issues involved?
  • What form of incorporation is better suited to which type of business?
  • What tax issues are involved?
  • How do I start a business and what are the pitfalls?
  • How do I market my business in the absence of significant funding?
  • How do I get funded?
  • What are the basic accounting concepts I should be aware of?
  • What is a business plan and how should I build one?
The brief table of contents of the book is as follows:
  1. Getting started
  2. Ideation
  3. Forms of Enterprises
  4. Funding
  5. Basic Accounting and Taxation
  6. Import and Export Licensing
  7. Trademark and Patenting
  8. Rules for NRIs and Foreigners
  9. Building a Business Plan
  10. Marketing on a Shoestring
  11. Website and Branding
  12. Women Entrepreneurs
  13. Templates
To order the Ultimate Startup Guide - email me at kkmookhey@gmail.com.

Details of the book are:
Title: The Ultimate Startup Guide
Author: Kanwal Mookhey
Pages: 150
Additional: Companion CD contains numerous templates for building your business plan, calculating cashflow, preparing profit and loss, and balance sheets, preparing invoices, your resume and profile, marketing material, websites, contracts, and many other useful and motivational material.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Promises and Lies: Restoring Violated Trust

Via an article in the Economic Times, I came across this interesting study called "Promises, Lies and Restoring Trust" done by Schweitzer, Hershey and Bradlow of the Wharton School at UPenn.

One would assume that once trust has been broken it would take a really long time for that trust to be rebuilt, the study shows that this is not really the case. Broken trust can be rebuilt by assurances that the violator then sticks by. This is not only by actions, but "words do matter" as well. However, if the violation of trust has been accompanied by deception, then rebuilding takes much longer, and must be accompanied by actions and not just words. Even so, in this case, trust may never fully be restored. As Bradlow says, "It’s okay to screw me over, but don’t deceive me as well. If you screw me over and lie about it, it’s going to take even longer to recover from it.”

Often I have a golden rule when signing contracts: would I be doing business with this person or company even in the absence of this written contract? If yes, then the contract is simply to cover our respective asses in case things go horribly wrong, but it's not something that will really prevent one party from screwing over the other party if they really want to. Which is why, beyond a simple non-disclosure agreement, we do not have employees sign any binding contracts or agreements. If we don't trust them enough to have them on board, then we probably shouldn't be having them on board in any case. This might change however with more senior management positions, where contracts would explicitly state their responsibilities towards profits and results.

1 comment:

Kanwal K Mookhey said...

Except that in personal relationships we tend to be more forgiving than in business. Also, friendships and such-like can hardly be enforced through contracts, unless one is talking about pre-nuptials! :)