Tipsy turvy

Some amazing stuff happened today. We had gone off to finalise the deal at malad that sushant mentioned in the last post. And we ran into this owner who was apparently a simpleton. He started off about wanting cash as the deposit.

I had all of these hindi movie types scenes in my head ... two young turks come to mumbai to start bijness ... all their freakin money is taken by some guy who promises them a place to stay ... and voila ... the guy is not to be found any more.

So we gave some crap about not being able to give cash.

Apparently the guy refused to work on a cheque. And so the deal fell through.

So then we asked for our token money back. Aur ye estate agent generally bitha ke rakhaa hai!! Waiting for the client to return the money.

In this situation we used our new secret weopen. Oops! Sorry guys ... as I mentioned the weopen is a secret ... so no talks about that here ... but maybe i could drop a hint ...

jo hai wo nahi hai, aur jo nahin hai wo ho bhi sakta hai

:) ... go figure ...

Of vadapavs and tired legs....

Vada Pav in Mumbai now costs INR 6!! What happened in the last 6 months? Apparently, the entry of the Jumbo Vava Pav guy has instigated the rest of them to hike their prices. Kashyap and myself had to find this out the unfortunate way when we made our way to a vadapav wala the other day calculating we could have close to 10 vadapavs with INR 30 (at the old price of INR 3). It was 2 in the afternoon and we were bloody hungry. Imagine our happiness when the guy says each costs INR 6! That means we will be able to have only 5 and not 10! Very bad, very bad. What happened to the Shiv Sena's control of vadapav prices in the city?

Last 5 days have been a loaded with a variety of things. From finding and finalizing an office space to finalizing points-of-sale to identifying prospective collaborators for the online platform to trying to get in touch students from the Industrial Design Centre (IIT Bombay) to 2 glasses of beer each. :-) Its been very tiring (what with walking an average of 4-5 kms everyday) and exhilarating at the same time. And looks like its going to get better as we move ahead.

The Delhi trip again was exhausting not so much because of the walking as because of the damn freezing cold!! For someone comfortable with the Mumbai clime, Delhi at this time can be very unpleasant. Had awesome fun the four of us. Got loads of work done. Finalized almost all elements of the final product. Made a call to a guy in the US who owns the www.gnome.com domain name. Looked like a squatter. Guess what price he quoted? USD 1.5 million!!! Thats about INR 7 crore for a domain name! Thanks but no thanks.

We have been giving a lot of thought on ways to involve consumers and interested people like you in the entire brand building exercise. Having said that, a lot more work is still to be done and we would love your comments/feedback on what we are doing as we continue to unravel our entire business model to you.

Chalo, I am hungry again. Vadapav and ganne-ka-juice!!

-Sushant

The Times of Gnome

I came on this title in my last blog. I like the sound of it. So there.

Its almost like a brand relaunch. Gnome Land becomes The Times of Gnome. Is there any change in the content? No. I guess not. But I'm just feeling happy on changing the name like the zillion brand managers on the planet!

-Kashyap

126 km and counting

Just got off the call with Navneet. Navneet and Kaku were on the bike for 126 km today.

They chose the right day to do this. There wasn't anything to write about on my end in Bombay today. Its nice of them to come up with something to blog about!

Anyway, they drove for 126km from morning 11 to evening 8. And then guess what. They went off for a movie at 11.30 in the night. Eklavya dekhne gaye hein. Whether they manage to see the movie at all or just end up being insanely aware of what they are sitting on is another story.

Keep coming back to The Times of Gnome to know that.

chobis ghanta paani ...

For the last two days Sushant and myself have been roaming around Bombay in search of a jhopdi where we can fit in 2-3 computers and start our kaam dhaam. Man! ... It has been one wierd experience.

On Friday morning I land up at Malad and go over to some place called Evershine apartments. On my way Sushant calls me up and tells me "ek ghar dekha hai. achaa hai. lekin abhi kuch final nahin karna. tu aake kaam mein taang adaa denaa". I land up there, see Sushant and get introduced to the estate agent.

This is where the wierd stuff starts ... (haan bhai, whatever Sushant told me on the phone wasn't wierd enough) ... this estate agent apparently can never stand still. He either rubbs his nose, or sways from one leg to the other, or hikes his left shoulder almost as though its disjointed, or does something even wierder. I was torn apart between whether he reminded me of the movie Nagina (Sreedevi's thumkas) or the Mister Bean show (his swaying elegance).

So we walked behing Pankaj bhai and went off to the place. Decent place. We see it and come back. And then I do my 'thing'. That is taang adaana and no, I dont try to outdo Pankaj bhai at his moves.

We move on from there. We go to some Mhada place. Lousy buildings, and another estate agent who looks as though he is half asleep. He asks us how much deposit we would give. When we say 25000, he is surprised that we would give so much! That speaks loads of how god-forsaken that location is. Before this we have gone through 10 other deals with no success only cause no one wants to give it for less than 50000 as deposit!

Anyway, leaving that Aiel waste, we go on to this house that we finally liked a bit. We liked it a lot actually. It was decently spacious. There was a water tank right in front of the building in front of a huge temple. The area was quite. At the same time the station was walkable. Rent was affordable too.

Now, I ask the estate agent .. "bhai, idhar paani kitna time aata hai" .. the response .. "24 ghantaa sahab" .. so i walk in and open the taps .. no water .. not even a trickle ..

Ashok bhai the estate agent here refuses to believe that anything is wrong and starts giving me anologies of how there were 80 families and how could 80 families live without water?!! .. the poor chap was scandalized that I could even suggest that there might not be 24 hours water!! .. oh, ofcourse he refused to consider the minor issue of there being no water in the house at that points in time. Ironically after a while, we had to console him and apologise that we doubted the water being there.

Nice fun ... I would love to do this more often!

-Kashyap

IT mein gol ...

If you have been coming here regularly, you will be surprised to find two blogs on our contact details and the business.

Yaar, the funda is this. I suddenly thought that the blog should be formatted a bit better. That would mean four links on the right saying, The Business, The Team, Careers with us and Contact Details. Now, once these links were there, they had to be routed to the relevant text. The only way to do that which I could think off was to write blogs on the same and link that address to the icons.

So there. That is how these blogs have suddenly come up. Very soon we will have a graphic designer working with us and then, I will finally be able to free myself of my crack brain ideas to do something on the web. :)

Careers with us

We are currently looking for -

1. Graphics Designer

Should have a good aesthetic sense and no dearth of funky ideas. Should have some experience of web designing. Skills at photography would be a plus, but not strictly required.

Salary in the range of 15000 to 20000 depending on the candidate. Stock options can be explored over time.

2. Fashion Designer

Should be experienced in designing of knitwear as well as woven garments. Should have a broadbased aesthetic sense without being confined to niches. Should be proficient in the use of any one of Photoshop, Illustrator or Corel.

Salary in the range of 15000 to 20000 depending on the candidate. Stock options can be explored over time.

Anyone who applies must come in knowing that this is a startup. Renumeration will be lower than the market rates. On the positive side, becoming a part of the bunch this early, you can be assured that if we do well, you will make a mint as well!

The Business

One day the three of us were having cutting chai as usual, and we thought it would be fun to start making some arbit T-shirts that 'punters' like us would like to wear.

So we started thinking of how we could ensure that we keep making really arbit stuff without eventually becoming boring. This is something that happens to almost all funky products that get made. Tantra was like a revolution when it started off, with really kool stuff. But now if you look at it, most of the designs are all ghisaa pitaa old stuff.

I will just leave it at that. Very soon you will see what we finally got down to doing. And that a good cutting chai can change the world!

Contact Details

Kashyap Dalal
+91-9223249084
kashyap.dalal@gmail.com

Navneet Rai
+91-9891448828
navneet.roy@gmail.com

Sushant Sreeram
+91-9980163952
sushant.sreeram@gmail.com

Our Den @ Delhi (33DJ)
33 D, J Block, Sheik Sarai Phase II,
Near Bhagat Singh College, New Delhi.
Delhi - 110017

Our Den @ Bombay (Cutting Chai)
Work in Progress ... give one of us a call if you have any ideas ... we are still looking for a good place to set up our den here ...

Our Den @ the world wide web
www.gnome.in ... You won't find anything there as yet ... Work in progress here as well ...