Insights for the day - V. S. S. Mani from JustDial

I just came back from attending a very insightful personal session with V. S. S. Mani the founder of Just Dial, which was organized by TIE.

JustDial was started somewhere in 1995 after a lot of false starts by Mani, who was earlier director at Ask Me services. Started with a capital of Rs. 50,000 it is now a Rs. 100 crore company with a valuation of over Rs. 500 crore. From days when they were selling wedding planners to generate revenue to today where PE's and venture capitalists are being rejected because they simply don't want any more funding. Here were some key takeaways:

1. When the whole world and its aunt was harping on about the dotcom boom, Mani decided to continue his information services business through the telephone model, and not chuck it all away for an online model. He profited at that stage by selling part of his stake to a US investor, but didn't spend truckloads of cash on building a dotcom and promoting it. He says the Internet infrastructure was so pathetic in 2000-2001, that there was no way that a dotcom business would possibly work well.
2. The key to a successful business is scalability. If you can tell a story to your employees, your partners, and your investors about how you're going to be scaling up the company, how you're going to grow and expand, then you've got a winner on your hands. If your business doesn't scale, do it differently, or do something different.
3. If possible do a short course on financial accounting, and learn the basics about accounting, balance sheets, profit and loss, and cashflow. That is essential, because if you take financially bad decisions your business will crumble. It is like a baby that needs proper care and nurturing.
4. He doesn't stick to any office hours, but does not believe in delegate and forget. He is not operational, but when he delegates, he follows up - every day! He says, in India, your managers and employees will start nodding their heads about how they've understood what needs to be done, but won't do it, or won't do it right, until you follow up and oversee them.
5. When you are growing your business, don't be pretentious. Don't try and show off that you're doing great. Investors don't necessarily want to see great infrastructure, they want to see the virtual reality world you are going to build and that you are asking them to invest in that world. Not the world you live in today. He started off with a small cubicle in Nariman Point, before moving to a 300 sq. ft. shop in the suburbs, and then adding two more shops of 300 sq. ft. each. And that was his situation even in 2000 when the US investor decided to pump cash into his business.
6. When asked about the importance of branding, he said the most important branding is excellent executions. Happy customers will build your brand much better and much bigger than anyone amount of advertising or PR will. Word of mouth is the best publicity you'll ever generate.