On August 15, as India celebrates 62 years of political freedom, I will turn 42. Continuing a thread that began a couple of years ago, I write about the past year and look ahead to the next. (Here are the two previous installments: On turning 40 and 40 to 41.)
The past year was primarily about three things: NetCore, Friends of BJP and Abhishek.
NetCore
NetCore is the company I run with the help of an able professional team. We work in two main areas: enterprise tech services in mailing and mobility, and mobile media and marketing. (A third area will be added soon, and I will discuss that in a more detailed series on NetCore in the coming weeks.) August 2008 to October 2008 saw good growth, and then things slowed down dramatically from November onwards, especially in the mobile ads space.
We had a high burn rate and had to work hard in the next few months to put a brake on costs, and start to get the revenues growing. November 2008 to February 2009 was a challenging period for us, and especially for me. I always like to try out new ideas, but since we had to make difficult choices I had to put some new ideas on the back burner as we set out to the path to profitability.
Those were difficult months. But our efforts paid off, and things started turning around from March 2009. The past few months have seen only a small gap between billings and expenses, and so we expect to be profitable on a monthly basis soon. This has perhaps been the highlight on the business front for me in the past year. Now, we can get back in a small way to imagining new ideas and working to make those happen.
Tomorrow: Friends of BJP
