Sudeep D'Souza

I just went through process of getting a Freelance Permit and the visa to accompany that and I had to go through a few twists and turns as I learned about the process and accomplished getting my new visa. I did my freelance permit through Sajeev ( sajeev@fmaaudit.com  contact number +971 55 694 2016) at FMA Accounting & Auditing ( https://www.fmaaudit.com/ ) and they in turn used Al Baraka Typing Center to assist with the Immigration formalities. The whole process was done through RAKEZ ( https://rakez.com/en/ ) and almost all of the process was done online without the need to visit their office. It was smooth, logical and straightforward.  One of the limitations of the freelance permit is you cannot open a corporate bank account and you do not get any office space. If these 2 are not needed for those working from home in a gig economy this type of visa is perfect.  The total cost came to about AED 19,000 for a 2 year freelance permit + one visa for 2 years (including...

Effective Managers are those that can leverage the strength of their teams and achieve their goals. But to be able to do this they need to posses and showcase some important traits  Effective Managers are not focused only on short term wins. They have a growth mindset that focuses on the goal.  They are able to work through the difficult challenges and keep their cool. The task of solving the problem or achieving the goal is never easy and they are able to weather the storms by keeping theirs and their teams focus.  An effective manager has a curious mind, they are always thinking of different possibilities on either solving problems or possible paths to achieve the goal. An effective manager is able to make tough decisions and they are ready to face the consequences. Quick informed decisions are important to be made in order to move the team forward.  A good and strong manager should be able to inspire their team. They are effective communicators that can communicat...

As a leader or manager ensuring that trust is built with the team is very important. Trust is what ensures the team works confidently and without any doubts.  Gaining the trust of the team is not easy and it takes time. It has to be gained through words and actions. The behaviors one must portray to build trust are  1. Being open and frank with your team As a leader one needs to be open with their team. Ive had managers that would give a deadline 2 days earlier than the actual deadline. The team is eventually going to find out and they will never believe in the manager again. A leader should be able to give bad news as easily as giving good news to the team. Its necessary to be open and frank with the team.  2. Showing courage in decision making A leader needs to have courage. Courage to make decisions, tell a team member when they are not performing well, tell stakeholders when things are not going to plan and so on. They should not shy away from the hard decisions and s...

Ever been in this situation, you give a task to a member of your team and every few minutes the person would come back to you and ask you for feedback or queries and then you feel you are going nowhere with the task (as many a time you do not know the answers and would have to research) and the person feels that they have put in a lot of effort.  Alternatively you have the situation where you give a task to the member of your team, they understand what is the end goal of the task, they take all the inputs from you that you have to offer, go back to their desk and do all the research needed to execute, come back with a plan, resources needed and an activity list to execute the task and on approval sets about silently executing the task and only providing you periodic updates on the progress.  Which of these two team members would you prefer to work with? The answer is quite obvious and this is task execution vs task leadership. Its easy to find people who can execute tas...

Over the last few months I have seen a lot of business ideas that base their revenue generation through advertising. In my experience this is a very dangerous strategy for a startup. Let me narrate my experience about implementing this strategy on a website that Inforica had developed called mindqjobs.com . We launched this website in the last week of december 2012 with much fanfare with the assumption that we will get the traffic to monetize through advertising. The assumption was made on the fact that the website was to be used by the students of a software training institute Mindq Systems  which number in the 1000s every month. We started off by putting Adsense and the pennies started to flow in almost immediately. Thats right, all we got were pennies which added up to a few dollars every day, an amount barely enough to pay for hosting the site on a shared server. One of the reasons is because the traffic was from India and not the west, so you end up making very l...

Was reading this small write up in the times paper about the NASSCOM initiative to create 10000 startups and over the last one month I have been part of 3 startup events in Hyderabad focused primarily towards students and encouraging them to take the entrepreneurial plunge rather than take up a campus recruitment offer. Startup Weekend University Startup Weekend University is similar to a regular startup weekend event except that the combination of students to experienced professionals is 70% students and 30% professionals. We had about 75 participants and the event was held at the beautiful BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus over 3 days with many students staying on the campus. The students were primarily from BITS, IIT, IIIT and Vignan University, Guntur with a few students from other colleges in the city.  The event was a highly successful event in showcasing that students can build products over the weekend that have a business side to them. There were 13 startups for...

Life can be challenging for an entrepreneur. The inherent risks of running the venture are high and thus each day presents their own challenges. The risks are there as the number of people that can do a job is limited, the money available on hand is limited, the number of customers you have is limited and vendors do not give you attention as you are small. Any one of these can change every day and you will notice that you have ups and downs in quick succession - just like you are going on a roller coaster. This can play with the mind of the entrepreneur in a very significant way. The important thing is to keep evaluating your position with respect to your employees, customers, suppliers and money flow as often as possible and take actions accordingly. There are days when it would seem impossible to manage all of this and you feel like throwing in the towel wondering if it is all worth it. It is at this time you have to go back to your vision and believe completely in your...

This is the certificate I got for successfully completing the Technology Entrepreneurship course on Venture Lab. The courses here are really good and I would advise all those that can do these courses to take them up.

Inforica in collaboration with Mindq Systems launced http://www.mindqjobs.com . Mindqjobs.com is a website that is going to cater to the needs of the student community. Here are 10 reasons why every graduating student that is preparing for a job or for higher studies has to join Mindqjobs.com . Browse the job board for up to date job information that is curated and posted.  Create a professional looking profile by using the Resume Builder. Once your profile is ready share it as a standalone URL to everyone and then track who has viewed the profile. Use the online material to prepare in various topics such as Quantitative, Logical, Programming languages and so on. Take tests in different topics and see how prepared you are in terms of speed of answering questions and also accuracy.  Connect with others through the discussion board and discuss common topics. Find solutions to common programming problems in different programming languages. Many technical interviews in...

Just read this very insightful quote by Oliver Emberton, Founder of Silktide - Most people spend their money to get the most utility - fun, food, whatever. Entrepreneurs spend their money to make the most money. This picture is worth a million words. As a consumer we spend money on things for personal gratification - things that give us pleasure, satisfaction, meeting a need, motivation, enlightenment, satiate our ego or whatever else that makes us feel better. They do not help us make more money unless the money is spent on buying an asset of value. An an entrepreneur one needs to spend money on creating assets that will help create more money. This goes back to an earlier post that I wrote on Building your brands and assets . It is these brands and assets that you can monetize and generate more money.  As an entrepreneur it is very important to think this way. Its important to take stock of the assets you have and evaluate if these assets are being monetized properly and at ...