Lake Villa Home, IL,USA Dt: Thursday 24th Dec 2009

Sorry, I missed writing the blog on 22nd and 23rd, partly because there's nothing very specific and partly because I was lazy.

 

Last two days and today I spoke at length with

A. Vijayawada center in-charge

B. Marketing head

C. MD

D. Chief bio-chemist  and reviewed the pending work and various issues.

 

With VJA in-charge:  He is my relative and a B.Tech (Comp science ) graduate with no prior experience joined in June while I was in India. He's sincere and hard-working hopefully will be of great help once he learns and understands the nuances of this business as we move along in this business,

 

While I was in India, the VJA server hard disk failed in September and the data was lost....and we had only backup upto April. The data couldn't be recovered....we needed to key in all the data (fortunately we've manual records also ) which was finished...but the data needs to be massaged. This work was given to the center-in-charge and it's still not finished. Stressed the need to finish this task asap...

We're about to start doing all the Microbiology related tests at VJA center and all the machinery and material is now available and there looks a part-time Microbiologist available and hopefully will start in a day or two.

 

A small issue between a senior Marketing executive and the new Marketing in-charge was discussed with a conference call with them and hopefully it's been resolved now...the new Mkt in-charge don't have faith on this fellow but as I know this marketing fellow seems to be genuine...but let's see how this goes.

 

Discussed about the manpower requirement and various jobs which needs to be streamlined in all the labs with the Lab's chief. The important one being to streamline all processes inside VJA lab with the new Sr. Bio-chemist joining next month after our earlier sr. bio-chemist left....

 

We got to have sufficient well trained man-power to run the show at all the labs even when one or two sr.people leave....we always (as the number of centers have grown now ..we're clearly seeing the need to keep a std.by )  have been struggling with this ...not keeping a buffer but with thie new Sr. Bio-chemist joining and with our Chief being in std.by we should be able to resolve this issue to most part. And all these manpower should be well trained and experienced..

 

At each lab we always should have one Sr.Chemist and one Sr.Tech and among all 5 labs there should be one Sr.Bio-chemist stad.by and 2 Sr. Tech std.by 

 

Explained to the marketing in-charge to send me the list of each PROs responsibilities and their areas and targets.Sales and marketing also should be much streamlined starting from Jan so I can make each marketing person accountable to their work....now I don't have much handle on each of these 25/30 people what they're doing....

 

Also I've created a new excel for the Nellore coordinaor to fill in daily, which will give us a complete daily picture of the business. Once this is implemented at Nellore, will move to other centers also.

 

It all looks to me, running a business is also a mind-game....the success to the most part (apart from being all the external factors are favourable ) depend on how focused the in-charge (CEO) is and how much familiarity he has with the day-to-day operations and work activities....otherwise, there looks a very good danger the ship may run aimless without clear focus...as he's chief anchor and his energy is utmost important for the team and to keep the business active and with energy...

 

Today is Sunita's off and we watched Telugu movie 'Anjaneyulu'...our passtime and orderd a pizza and went for shopping at Khols and OldNavy to get some bargain rates...

 

Good night !

 

Mohan Raju

 

 

Lake Villa Home, IL,USA Monday Dec 21st,2009 : 11:55 pm

Posted 20 New Year greeting cards, personally signed to India to RM.

 

Was watching news about the seperate Telenga and Samaikya Andhra agitations and worried where these will end-up as obviosuly our business in Vijayawada and other places have been decreased more than 20-30% for the last week or so. This may hamper businesses like us who has plans to expand to places in Telengana and other parts of A.P...not sure how the future is going to turn-out.

These incidents  makes one like me to think twice to setup a head-office in a place like Hyderabad (as I was very much interested to setup our Head office in Hyderabad all the time...),

 

It looks a long way to settle down all these separation issues and bring back the normalcy and speed

 

Obviously the location of a business plays a very important role in it's success or failure and these kind of events may some times give a fatal blow to a startup businesses like ours.... hopefully with a 20-30% business decline, we will survive....provided nothing more severe will happen...

 

Spoke with NLR coodinator about the followup of Pharmacy license at NLR center. Registered  all the 5 centers in google business maps and also sent 5 press releases about the NLR center opening to our earlier registered PR web sites (which was missed because I didn't find time while I was in India ..). And logged into VJA powerlab to study/note the business progress at VJA .Will need to discuss with VJA team tomorrow

 

We seem to have a very good presense on the web , which is because of all these efforts that was put by me in this direction. I believe this is an excellent marketing tool (atleast in the near coming future in India ), when everybody will log onto the web to get the services and know about a business.

 

This web activity and diagnostics blog (http://www.diagnosticsblog.com )  is now getting my attention after 6 months

 

Sunita is at work and I'm at home with Ria and Abhishek (half day )

 

 

Good night !

 

Mohan Raju

Lake Villa Home, IL ,USA Sunday Dec 20th,2009

Had a long meeting /discussion with Nellore Lab in-charge about various issues in the lab and the progress in lab activities etc.

 

This new person joined recently ( I haven't seen him ) ,having good experience in various labs, seems to be taking good interest in improving the quality of doing the tests and helping in all lab activities and spending good amount of time at the lab and helping all the people.

 

If this is true, I'm really happy....unlike earlier lab-in-charges who damaged the work culture and work environment and one person probably even committed fraud(allegation being theft of lab reagents from Nellore and Vijayawada centers ) who got terminated immediately....it's really scary to think about a lab-in-charge doing theft of reagents just after a month of joining...

 

As I mentioned before it's a big challenge whom to give responsibility in operating various business units at different locations...I believe the only possibility of running this business is to put efficient business processes and implement best IT tools and technology. But at this stage perhaps we're not in a postion to  implement state-of-art ERPs etc but should use the existing software solution as much as possible and improve the process guidelines etc.

 

The biggest challenge as in any business is MAN POWER and it looks to me if we can (somehow ) get people who're dedicated and sincere 90% of the issues are solved....

 

It looks 80% of energy is being spent on managing man-power and thinking about how genuine a person is.

 

Also had a long meeting with Nellore AM about the new online excel sheet that I prepared to keep track of all his area PROs marketing progress/activities. He seem to have understood about it, which he's been doing in a slightly different way. No big change, but this format will help me to understand better so I can keep a tab on sales/marketing.

 

And he also raised about the issues being created by the Radiologist....I need to discuss about these issues with the Radiologist tomorrow and see if he can rectify those....it looks like it's going to be a challenge to work with this Radiologist....another continuing on-going problems/issues with Radiologist....(problems never end )......

 

how Lucky I will be if everybody who works with me behave and work the way I expect them to work...:)..I guess then it's not a practical business/world..

 

Sunita was working today and I was with the kids at home.

 

Gave a call to my earlier manager about the HomeLand security visit to NABP but he also didn't have much information except that they came asked NABP about if I was working at NABP before.....wrote an email to Shaji and Fatima and cc the lawyer to let me know if they've more information.

 

That's it for Sunday !

 

Mohan Raju

 

 

Lake Villa Home, IL, USA : Saturday Dec 19th, 2009 : 11:50 PM

Today nothing much got accomplished.

 

Gave a call to Daddy yesterday and he was worried about the huge debt that we took....I said, don't worry and we will take care of it and things will improve in 2/3 months time.

 

Naturally he's very worried as our family never done anything like this before....but there's no option now,except to move forward. I still don't see this as a big risk, except we're still barrowing money to run the show.

 

I'm confident that in a month or two we should be able to run the entire show without pumping more money and we should see how we can pay off the debt load.

 

Today my earlier colleague gave me a call that US Home Land security came asking me at NABP (my earlier client ).Other friend working at NABP told him....no full details.Worried what could be the reason ? Home Land security for me ???

 

I can think about only for good reason...for enquiring about the Green card under progress....there shouldn't be any bad reasons as I've a Canadian passport and has EAD to work.  Or May be related to something about my recent travel to India.....it's scary these days...but nothing I can do now. Left a voice mail to my earlier Manager at NABP..

 

Prepared a good PRO/AM/RM daily target sheet by using I can keep a tab on the marketing activities of each PRO in a systematic way. I will call them to explain about how to use it and if they can't use online, they should use it to fill it as a hard copy.

 

Sales/Marketing staff efficient work management has been a struggle and worry that if they're just taking salaries and TA/DAs or doing any real work...it's very important for us to keep a daily tab and see how they're performing.....in a work culture like in India, you can't believe on what anybody (your employees /vendors /customers...) say...as one should always be suspecious and analyze the % of truth.....

 

 

Sunita is at work today and I'm at home with Kids..took Ria to singing class. Spoke with couple RECW friends after 20 yrs as we're currently getting in touch with each other.

 

Good night !

 

 

 

 

Lake Villa Home,, IL ,USA Friday Dec 18th, 2009 10:50 pm

Nothing much got accomplished today as Ria has only half day school and took kids to Chinmanaya Mission from 5:30 to 10:30pm.

 

It's always wonderful to attend Chinmaya Mission, which puts some pause into your routine life and makes you think realistically without any baggage....

 

Today Swamiji from Nayagara falls took some special class for Abhishek and adults and showed us a wonderful holywood movie : PEACEFUL  WARRIOR

 

It exactly reflects the teachings of Hindu vedas and about the journey of life and how to enjoy what you do.....excellent movie and should be a collection.

 

Today spent some time in mailing Chem batch folks and preparing RECW 1990 Chem batch list and  put it on web etc...

 

I'm going to give a call to daddy and may be to AMs and go to sleep ....

 

Tomorrow I need to take Ria to singig classes and kids to Chinmaya Misssion.

 

Good night !

 

Mohan

Lake Villa Home,IL,USA Thursday Dec 17th, 2009

Today has been a day mixed equally with personal and business work.

 

Today is Sunita's day off and many of the personal and house work gets done only when she's at home....

 

I went to get my dental checkup/cleanup  work done at Comfort dental in Gurnee ( I really wonder if this early work does any good at all...or just helps the dental business...but anyway my wife insists that we all should get this done and the insurance anyway pays the bill, why not ?) , Sunita called to followup on a credit card loan that I applied yesterday, went to buy groceries and went for dinner at Grand e jacks along with kids (this is a Maxican restaurant in Lindenhurst,close to our home which we've been visiting frequently for quite sometime. Sunita and myself like some of the Mexican food as she's a pure vegetarian and it's also cheap with a coupon...why spend a single dollar extra ...)

 

Also I gave a call first time to one of my RECW 1990 Chem Engg batch mate, who's living in Doha, Qatar ..it's almost 20 rs since we left RECW.....I got his number from the recent emails from our batchmates.....

 

20 yrs is a long time in our life but when we think, it was just like yesterday...before you even know time passes so quickly..

 

I was also helping and coordinating to compile the list of all our 1990 batch Chem Engg students since last 2/3 days and we're almost close to tracing all of them except 3/4 people. Once we've the list we'll meet when possible and definitely for the silver jubilee of our batch in 2015..

 

My behaviour with money is: I believe, I've a reputation as a thrifty / frugal person, as I don't believe in spending.....because buying/spending never brings any happiness to me.....this mentality, probably I seem to have developed by listening to the Indian adage as a child ..."LAKSHMI (money ) always likes to stay with only those who wants to keep her ". I totally believe in this and it's very important for an entrepreneur to be very frugal, because there's no limit for spending and having luxuries in one's life in this material world...I'm personally very content and very happy and blessed with the material comforts that we've earned in these countries and been enjoying in this world. 

Doing a business to get more material comforts has never been in my mind /or the reason that I wanted to business ....I just pray that we should just be able to continue with the same comforts that we've been currently enjoying. 

 

I totlly believe in saying that,one of the important traits of a successfull entrepreneur is: getting more material comforts should never be the reason doing a business.

 

OK, coming to the work that was done today: Prepared 20 Newyear cards that I will send to our RM in India to personally distribute to our top most referral doctors.

 

Gave a call to MD (discussed on how we can focus on our marketing people and their work etc ) and also spoke with 2 of our AMs for the first time and explained them and asked them to prepare their area monthly/quarterly targets and compile the list of all the doctors/RMPs etc so I can call them daily to see the progress.

 

It looks there's huge amount of sales/marketing work that needs to be streamlined and I will be focusing in coordinating these activities.

 

Sales/Marketing is one of the areas we never focused fully and lacked our efforts from the begining and now we're seeing the negative impact of not doing in a professional way.

Hope fully with all the new AMs and RM into position we will be able to accomplish all the required sales/marketing activites in a methodical way.

 

Also, I was reading various Diagnostics news and dvelopements on the web and I post them into our blog.....this blog has been stopped since March when I was totally working on the ground. Now when I've some time, I will be doing this job as well...

 

That's it for today and see you tomorrow.

 

 

Mohan Raju 

2nd day: Getting used to streamlining my day-to-day work working remotely !

From home: Lake Villa, IL, USA   7:20pm CST

 

 

It looks to me in fact writing this daily blog will be useful in many ways as it will help to recapitulate and summarize what I've done during the day.

 

One of the main aspects of being an entrepreneur is that one should have self discipline as there's nobody to tell you what you need to do in a day...you can sleep the entire day or you can work the entire day...it's all up to you, unlike doing a job, where somebody will tell you what needs to be done.

 

I guess I should have more self discipline to manage my day effectively as I'm a bit out in managing my day effectively !! Writing this blog may bring some self management.

 

Today, gave a call to our MD (who manages the show in my absence ) and discussed on some financial issues and other strategy issues.....

 

You've to forgive me sometimes, as sometimes I may go back and forth in explaining our current situation.

 

In essence : This business and my current strategy and all it's ingredients and fundamentals are so excellent that I feel sometimes very  lucky that I got into this business......sometimes it looks scary seeing so many problems...

 

 

Feel so excellent factors:

 

1. Health care is one of the basic fundamental needs of human beings

2. India is a growing place where there's no quality diagnostic services available

3. Wonderful scalable model where there looks an opportunity to open another 1000 diagnostic centers !!

 

Scary factors:

 

1. How to operate and manage all these small units efficiently, in an Indian environment (I believe it's a challenge anywhere..)

2. Highly capital intensive and requires lots of money.....

 

The current situation at Vijayawada and coastal A.P is a scary situation for any business operating from there places....since we're in health care atleast we're able to open our centers and the business is minimal...

 

 

Our current business situation:

 

We took a financial risk of opening Nellore center without any bank loans (because our banker  stopped lending medical loans...) .....and we should be repaying this at the earliest possible, is putting us under lot of financial burden......and since I'm nolonger working in USA, my own perosnal dollar revenue is totally stopped..,which otherwise has been a breather before........but the good thing is we're doing a good business at Nellore and we quickly established oursleves at Nellore without lot of issues, when compared to all our previous centers....This is perhaps of not repeating many of our earlier mistakes...

 

We should be quickly improving our revenue from Vijayawada and Nellore centers, which will give us some financial breathing space and also the revenue at Ongole should improve because of some changes we did recently.

 

And another big challenge is opening almost 30 collection points across all the places....each of these centers to get break-even takes 3/4 months or more (provided running them with success ) and we're incurring lot of monthly expenditure to run all these collection points....paying the salaries for each employee at these centers ....and it's only 1/2 months we opened many of these centers....

 

And we streamlined and increased our marketing strength significently to create a true marketing department ( for every 5 sales reps one Area manager and for 4 area managers one Regional manager etc ) and other manpower ...all their high salaries and TA/DA etc has increased our monthly expenditure and which is putting us under lot of financial burden....

 

Our immediate goal is to run all these centers without pumping in more money everymonth...and so we stopped the rapid expansion until we're out of this fcurrent financial burden..

 

I believe we've invested in everything that required to capture all the locations....no it's time to work everyday with the people to increase the revenue...which I guess will not happen in a month with all the new changes in manpower into place but will take atleast 3/4 months...but will push to the maximum extent possible to quicken the process...

 

 

I'm now planning to talk and coordinate daily not only with the RM of marketing but with all the AMs also from today...

 

Our RM joined after I left India (Nov 25 th I guess..) and he's the first person having good sales experience dealing with Doctors..I'm really hoping he's going to streamline all the sales/marketing activities in all the 4 districts where we're operating and coordinate and manage all his team members (which is close to 25)...so he one the most crucial person that I'm going to depend on and so has been calling him daily discussing sometimes hours to-gether.....as I can't afford to make this person fail in what he needs to done.

 

My daily job working remotely is to keep a tab on the marketing team and other business activities as much as possible....

 

On a personal note: today volunteered at my daughter's school for the holiday christmas party for the kids for an hour and my daughter seems to like it as until now only my wife used to do all these things....and since now I'm at home I guess it's appropriate for me to do all these things...

 

 

I guess this should be enough today !!

 

 

Wishing for a  mre fruitfull day tomorrow !

 

Bye for now,

 

Mohan

 

 

 

 

 

My first blog posting

From home : Lake Villa, IL, USA     : 4:00 pm CST

I've been thinking to create my own blog to express my ideas and thoughts and struggles and experiences and lessons of my every day life as an entrepreneur...but didn't know what I should be writing in that.

 

One of my friend in Chicago Mr. Ram once asked me to convey my entrepreneurial experiences of doing business in India which may be useful for those who want to go back to India and start their own business etc but I didn't know how and where to start at that time

 

When I decided to start writing my personal blog , many things came to my mind.....as usual, what other people might be thinking to see my English (as I never been very good at writing in English ) and what they may think  about me when they read my silly day-to-day work issues and life that I will be going through.......but I got inspired to see Amitabh Bachchan's every day  blog, whose day-to-day life seems to be so ordinary inspite of being such a high profile person....as it's very true that by the end of the day every human being's life is more or less the same.....be it, you're the worlds richest or an ordinary folk.

 

And I definitely think I really have a story to tell you not only 'About me' but also about the life being an entrepreneur

 

I'm very confident that this day-to-day personal blog should serve as a live, unfolding and evolving true story of an entrepreneur and also as a guide to  those who has big dreams in life and those who attempt to plunge themselves into the big risks of doing big things in life...

 

Let me be very clear about my goal and ambition in life : to create one of the worlds best and biggest truley admired enterprise which will be run successfully for generations to come.

 

You'll be the judge whether I'll be a success or failure in reaching my dream in life ....but I will be equally happy even if I fail in achieving my dream, because I know in my heart that I did everything that I believe one should be doing with 100% dedication and passion to make this dream come true.....and the final result is not in my hands....

 

It will be really interesting to see my own thoughts after 5 years or 10 years .....this is more like my personal work dairy made public.

 

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

 

Happy reading,

 

Mohan Raju