Sanchit's Blog

Booking your international flight is a big deal, especially if you are doing it for the first time. Booking process is still simple and straight: go to any of the booking engine, my favorite being expedia.com . Give in your search criterion for flights, choose the best option and book it there itself. However you need to optimize your bookings for various factors such as: Duration of Flight /  Number of hops  - You can sort out your flight choices on expedia.com and other booking engines. Needless to say flights are boring and it is best to keep your duration short. Your flight duration goes up as the number of hops. Expect each hop to delay you by at least 2 hours. Ideally you reach any remote location in at max 3 hops. International flights connect major cities only and expect more hops as your final destination go to tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Expedia gives you all the possible combinations and all you have to do is to choose the ones which are the shortest and satisfy o...

Why this article? My wife requested, asked, warned and then threatened me to write this. Why this article? One year back I was with my school friends in a cafe at Jaipur when I announced my marriage. Folks knew that it was a love marriage but there weren't clear about what's happening. One of them asked me, What is love and why are you even marrying? I told him instantly that I want to spend my life with her and that is why I am marrying her. Yes, to enjoy each other's company is a very important part but then there is also a special feeling which takes it beyond companionship. This feeling has different meaning for different people but I will write here what it means for me :) I will try to put my feelings objectively in following points: Nothing is better than spending time together Selflessness - You get a feeling that it doesn't matter whether you get benefited or your partner in course of action. You start thinking in terms of how it benefits to both ...

During last 2 centuries world has moved towards industrialization and factory institutions. The financial models are more and more based on scale rather than anything else. Globalization has further pumped the industrialization model and products made by industries are targeting wider audiences and are not restricted by geographical locations. In developing economies such as that of India, where industrialization is still penetrating the market, we see that conventional producers are slowly eloping in the shadows of centralized production units. Today customer no more buys goods produced in his locality, but buys what any other guy would have bought in a remote location who may be of a different age, religion, or taste. I am not only talking about good produced but also for services provided. Education, for e.g., has become a factory system where schools as industries are catering a similar product to all its students. 500 students of same class come to school, absorb same curriculu...

I learnt some amazing things on my journey of Traveltriangle.com. Soft skills is also a pie which I learnt from experience and realized how important they are. Following is the summary: I am not always right - It is Ok to put forward your opinion but you need not vouch or defend your opinion against other alternatives. It is very easy to get biased towards your opinion when you put it forward as an alternative. It is important to think from a neutral point of view. Let facts and statistics speak more than your heart. It is fine if you 'let go' of your opinion if you feel other alternatives are as good as yours Play the game - Usually you go all senti about your startup. I learnt that you need to take it more in a sportsmanship way. Strategize, evaluate and plan your company and I am sure there is all the passion and energy that flows in to keep it running. But at the same time do not forget that this is just a game of hits and misses so do not get carried away with result...

This blog tries to explain my thoughts on why should one jump into entrepreneurship. When I jumped out of my former company to start my own venture, I was more of a wannabe who wanted to 'experience' being an entrepreneur. I was talking to Mr. Sanjukt Saha, founder of  http://www.onebillionminds.com/ , and he asked me why I wanted to be an entrepreneur. ( Details about our discussion ) I replied that my company Yahoo! makes 10x from me and only pays x to me. So why shouldn't I open my open company and keep that 10x. Funny, huh? Well it is, because companies do not make money just by its employees but also by its brand, idea and the fact that employees work as a team in an efficient way. But this was the stage when I just started. But then again, that time I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur but wasn't sure about the precise reasons. Here are a few which fascinated me at that time: Quality of Life  - If I make a hit, I am rich. That ensures a quality life for me ...

Some sample questions a mentor / adviser / VC can ask: If I give you 1 crore how will you invest that in a day Best ans: 30 lakh for myself and my family future and comforts, rest 70 lakh for business. May be I will hire 4-5 best brains to work for me, etc etc. Or how u plan to grow your current business Mentor wants to judge how much are you concerned for your personal comfort, do u have a vision to invest money in your business Most exciting thing you did in college or life It can be academics but also something non academic. How passionate you are to achieve what you want. Something you really wanted to do and you went out of way, went crazy to do it Winning some trophy, Getting gf, some adv trek How ur friends describe you? Friends can judge you best. Some answers can be: visionary, reliable, strong temperament, enthusiastic, etc Family background Mentor wants to figure out if you have future personal commitment. Most of entrepreneurs drop because of family rea...

This blog is about my self realization on what it means to be a 'big guy'. To explain my thoughts let me start wandering into my past. In my last few months of Yahoo! I always used to wonder why the heck was Yahoo's CEO paid approx. 2200 times as me ( explained here ). I was smart enough to make all the decisions she takes. After all it is all about charting out pros and cons of each decision and then decide on the basis of which side weighs more. And then CEO has so many people under him / her to provide these figures, so ultimately her job is a piece of cake. I always failed to understand the challenges she was facing and could never match her salary with her worth in the company. I also used to wonder that my work has become monotonic and there is no excitement in what I do. Basically, I always wanted more challenges in work and I was deprived of the same. I thought that I could do much more than what I was doing (mind it, I mean in terms of quality of task and not i...

The Journey.. the journey is what brings happiness and not the destination      - " Peaceful Warrior " This is a pretty strange movie with lots of illogical twists and turns but nonetheless pretty entertaining and at least the theme is good. The quote has been explained in an interesting way. Socrates of the movie (philosopher guy) takes movie's hero on a trek telling that there is something fascinating on the peak of the hill. After climbing for 3 hours, Socrates shows him a stone and says this is all he wanted to show. After a while hero understands and says that it is not the destination you should love, rather journey.  (Above affair sounds more interesting in the context in movie) :D A few other quotes in the movie: Socrates: Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all. Socrates: Everyone wants to tell you what to do and what's good for you. They don't want you to find your own answers, they want you to believe ...

This hack is applicable under following constraints: You have a free (non premium) account on LinkedIn You have searched someone who is totally out of your network (at 3rd level or more) LinkedIn shows that the only way to contact him/her is via InMail There is no way for you to add the contact to your network Hack is pretty simple: Check it out if the guy you want to add (say Mr. XY) has any recommendations and go to the contact who has recommended this chap. You can also go to the profile who was recommended by Mr. XY Now, on this profile you will obviously find that he has (or he was) recommended by Mr. XY Click on the link of Mr. XY and go to his profile LinkedIn now understands that you have arrived on this profile via network and not directly through random search. It will show the options to add him as friend or send him messages. Tried and tested :D

Lord  Madhav  with his love -  Radha अर्ज़ किया है: भ्रमर कोई कुमुदनी पर मचल बैठा तो हंगामा, हमारे दिल में कोई ख्वाब पल बैठा तो हंगामा | अभी तक डूब कर सुनते थे सब किस्सा मुहब्बत का, मै किस्से को हकीकत मै बदल बैठा तो हंगामा ||  (कुमार विश्वास) For those who do not understand Hindi, I will translate this for you. I am sure Google translator will fail for above lines :) Please excuse me for a non rhythmic translation of beautiful lines written above. If a bumble bee goes crazy for a flower (White Lotus) then there is a chaos, If my heart starts dreaming then there is a chaos. Till now we used to watch and listen romantic stories, If I converted this story into my reality, then there is a chaos. Above lines describe Indian Society's Hypocrisy very nicely. India has so many romantic tales from history (Lord Krishna and Radha, read here ) and every Bollywood movie has a featured love story. People here are so fond of watching these movies, listening...

Economic Times has been publishing articles rampantly on entrepreneurship in India. Here are few links: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/youngsters-leave-cushy-jobs-to-take-up-farming/articleshow/8701590.cms http://www.citehr.com/341491-dalit-entrepreneurs-add-glitter-star-cast-india.html http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/india-emerging/rise-of-the-upwardly-mobile-entrepreneur/articleshow/8704054.cms and many more.. All such articles used to bring me shivers. All very inspiring, adventurous to the brink and motivating enough to make me feel to jump into entrepreneurship. But No more! I have been an entrepreneur myself for an year now and having lived the adventure I find myself on the same boat. These articles still inspire me but shivers are gone. The only difference between me and those mentioned in such articles is of success . Though success does not mean all, but rewards are always relishing. For last one year I have learnt a lot and h...

7am already! Have to rush for my swimming session and I have a busy day ahead. Reach office on time, have meetings to do and have to attend house warming of my friend tonight. And more work to do (#@$@#$ @#$@# $@#$) Who cares if I catch a fish? We are all tightly packed in our daily schedule and always have something to be taken care off. Yesterday my wife asked me a simple question: "If you are not doing your job and I am also not bound by anything, where would we be living?" Let’s say you had a blank day staring at you. You didn’t have to work. You could do anything at all (although money is still a limiting factor). What would your perfect day be like? I've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated. Don't just pass on the days to secure your present or future. At times live the moment and enjoy your life at its peak. Design your life so that you do not ...

2am on 13th Feb, 11 : Half awake standing in a long queue of Delhi international airport to check in for my flight to Mauritius. Flight was supposed to depart at 4 am and my night was all ruined due to travel to airport and then taking care of the rest of the check-in formalities. An announcement comes by and I got to know that my Air Mauritius flight from New Delhi to Mauritius was delayed by 12 hours. Whoa.. what's next! Passengers who were standing in the queue started making fuss but no point. We were shifted to a hotel nearby and were asked to spend the night there. Frustrated we went there, spent the night and woke up next morning to know that flight was delayed by 24 hours. Air Mauritius was courteous enough to extend my return flight by 1 day so that my honeymoon still remained of 7 days. Yeah! I got married 2 days back on 9th of Feb, 11 . My friends call the date as 9 2 11 (in hindi, that is a proverb which indicates you run away after completing the task). My engagem...

Late night, 11.40 pm we were waiting for our metro at Connaught Place, New Delhi. Wondering about all that happened during past few hours that gave me a glimpse of the unity and strong voice of public of India. This time it wasn't for a world cup win, but for a more meaningful cause: "Introduction of  Lokpal Bill in India". We walked down from Jantar Mantar to CP Metro station and in the way caught so many young and old folks, all carrying a smile on their faces. Two hours ago, we heard an announcement that Indian Govt. has agreed to all the demands and is ready to pass Lokpal Bill ( News ). News came with a sudden celebration and we could see activists shouting slogans, dancing on dhol beats (you always have a Punjabi dhol ready in Delhi, if you anticipate a glory moment) and waving the national flag. It seemed that they rightly deserved the celebration for they pushed the cause against corruption and supported their leader Anna Hazare . It was great to see that citiz...

With India storming into World Cup 2011 finals, everybody is bleeding blue. All the news headlines, facebook comments, tweets, SMS they all have the same matter. I am sure all these wins would have brought smiles to millions of people in India and have definitely made us all proud. While Indian players are riding horse of victory, their fan clubs are increasing in count and size. True, they have played professionally and deserve their credit of appreciation. They are really getting treated like heroes of nation, and probably the best among them, Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar, is even considered to be the god. Now that tickles my funny bone and also seriously surprises me for following good reasons: Aren't we just hyping it? Or aren't we playing in the matrix created by media to commercialize cricket? Isn't he just a guy who is good at his job?  Aren't there people who have worked harder and achieved better results in their respective jobs? Are we being fair to t...

मंगल आशीर्वाद, जुही सी नाजनी को पाकर,            संचित भैया ने मेर्रीज की जो ठाणी, चढ घोडी पर तोरण को चल दिये तो,            स्वर्ग से भी परिया निहार रही और, मंगल गीत गा गा कर न्रत्य कर रही है            आमोद प्रमोद कह रही कैसी बनी है जोडी | बहु रानी आप हमारे इस उपवन मे महकती हुई,            चिडिया बन कर आई हो, चाहकती रहो, महकती रहो,            इसमे हमे भी आनंद की अनुभूती होती रहेगी | अपनी मोहनी महाक से आप दोनो ही अपने           पाप मम्मी, अर्थात सास ससुर, को अपने व्यवहार से सदा खुश रखो           यही मेरा मंगल आशीर्वाद है, आप दोनो को | अन्तः मे: ये आंखो मे पानी ख़ुशी के है, दुख के नही          इनमे प्रेम व पुनीत भावना छिपी है |                                   ...

Orkut! Some interesting snapshots of our scrapbook that I arranged. Basically I sent her lame friend request, she accepted imagining that I am some Computer Science freak and can help her out. It soon turned out that she was saving herself from the humiliation of being a nerd. Some snapshots: My friends tried to promote me and wrote all kind of stuff to show me off. It worked or not, but I can still laugh at the crazy time I had. Thanks folks for your wonderful efforts and support, as I am getting married to this very sweet girl on 9th Feb, 11 (9-2-11). Here is the online marriage invitation: More details about our wedding: myshaadi.in/sanchit_weds_juhi Cheers!!