After 10 years of working for Zee TV - the first 9 in Zee Education and the last one in Zee TV - i finally quit to launch a start up - Cogito TV with three former colleagues. Cogitio TV is a production house.
It was 2003 and the worst time for the television industry. Saas bahu serials dominated. Zee did not pay on time - 6 months was the average payment terms. Star didn’t look at new production houses, Sony dithered on decision making and Sahara could only be approached if you knew someone in Lucknow. Non fiction was non existent - it still is.
The day I quit I got a call from a friend of mine who had started up in the bad old days of the dot com boom. He quit a plum job in a leading FMCG to start up. And then the market crashed around him. He had begun looking for a job, any job. He counselled me against quitting. “Atleast you get your salary cheque (a sizeable one, I may add) at the end of the month.”
He told me that 90% of all start ups, wind up within 12 months. There is a multi fold problem he said:
a) you miss the routine of regular employment, and the interaction with various minds within the organisation. i went bonkers in the first 6 months of Cogito. There were three of us - either at my place or my partners’ place looking at each other and the walls. And after a point we got on each others’ nerves.
b) getting work from the market is not as easy as it looks. It can take a long time before your first project. it took us 6 months with combined effort to land our first project - since then we have been on a relative roll .
c) If you get the assignments, funding them will be an issue.- My partners and I cleared our providend funds, consumed our gratuity and reduced ourselves to near “kangaaldom” to get the projects going
d) If you manage financing the first few projects , then you will face a cash flow problem. True. with work increasing and clients taking upto 90 days to clear our payments - it has been a nightmare. But we have managed to survive. It has been difficult but all of us have wonderful families. My father took up a job after retirement, to see me achieve my dreams. One of the other partners Shirish’s father - has lent us money from his providend fund. And Shishir - the third partner - cleared the money he and his wife have been saving to buy a flat. Despite this cash flow is still an issue from time to time. It is very hand to mouth.
e) Once you manage the cash flow, then you would want to expand - and you find your selves lacking management bandwidth - and with not enough money to hire. Again true. we have just stabilised with one client and need to expand - and since all of us are doing everything to sustain this client - it means 22 hour days for us. I can’t remember the last weekend i had to myself.
But if i had to relive the last 2 years would i do anything different. I have often pondered over this question - especially on days when it seems hopeless. I got the answer today. I had met someone who wanted some advice on a new channel. It turned out to be a recruiter for a rather large multi national. And the meeting on the channel turned into an interview. He asked me if I was interested in heading the India ops. And pat came the reply: I am not in the job market - i run my own business.
And i guessed the answer is simple - this is who I am, this is what i do for a living - and i know we are going to make it. The three of us are good friends - we have slanging matches but we make up rapidly. We have survived and sustained for 18 months, and we will stick it out. I wouldn’t give up this experience for all the safety of a job.
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