Odyssey360-The Making

Good Evening To all fellow Indians-Day 2
Dear Friends,

By the time you have actually accessed this blog I hope you all have enjoyed the last one where I reported about Chetan Bhagat launching the Odyssey 360 website.

A lot of effort has gone into building this website,brick after brick,layer after layer has been laid very painstakingly. the first few months have been very tough. It took a few months for the new team members to adjust to each other. Starting a online Book store is no joke, not a easy job by any means. Lot of tasks are involved, accumulation of metadata,coordinating with each and every publishers/Vendors.

We did get some time together after the launch yesterday to sit and reflect on the activities of the last few weeks and as Harsh did point out, all has been possible only through close coordination of each of the team members. I thought I must put down my thoughts at the end of each day, who knows some day the entire collection of logs might be named as Odyssey360-the building of an empire.

Harsh once again stressed the need of maintaining a task sheet, which over a period of time shall be our bible for any unfinished jobs. As the human clock ticks on , memory faculties decreases, however it is this task sheet that shall keep the daily routhine chugging along very smoothly.

last week was very hectic, Work reached a feverish pace and each one of us put in full efforts. I wish I had put in the same effort a little earlier, we could have completed the task much earlier-however better late than never. Here i would like to introduce my family members to all of you, Srikkanth-the tech geek-a simple man at heart and our ayurvedic doctor, who belives that nature is the best doctor and that human body is built to fight any disease on its own accord without medical intervention. I can actually write a Book on Sri titled as “Sri and His Honey bottle”. Maybe that would be the next assignment.

Next comes Rupesh-Our young MBA Engineering graduate from Vijayawada-young immature-young at body, mind and spirit, so full of zeal and enthusiasm, with a typical Telugu accent. He is full of energy and always ready to lend a helping hand.

Rajakumaran our inhouse design specialist whose love includes twitter, Chetan Bhagat, A R Rahman, and above all food. he cant stand one thing and thats hunger, Well built strong,handsome yet very soft at heart,thats Raj for you.

Saravanan is our Glen Mcgrath-the famous Australian fast bowler-for his uncanny resemblance to the Australian. tall and skinny yet powerful when it comes to analysing and sorting data with his proficient software skills.

Then there is Chandru, I would call him -No problem Chandru, ever ready to jump into areas which is not his area of specialization. If you meet Chandru, you would feel that each and every job is so simple and easy, actually he makes it look very simple though in reality it might indeed be a tough job. Chandru and his team of Anitha,Grace-two physically small built ladies yet powerful ladies in the scheme of things especially when it comes to completing jobs within prescribed deadlines. Jeevetha has joined us recently to take care of Customer care and then there are the ever so reliable Sathya and Narayan who take care of Order Processing.

There is also the Creative gentleman-Viju who supports us as a indepenedent consultant,ever supporting us with his imagination and God given gift of creative ideas.

Last but not the least there is Harsh who is my Boss. I wanted to talk about Harsh in conclusion because he needs a description which is rare yet so proffessional. harsh is extremely analytical,thinking of each step logically. If you were to give Harsh a problem-however complicated it might be he would come out with hundred different solutions for the same problems and he would also want each of his team memebers to think in the same fashion. A person who I quite misunderstood in the initial stages,but a wonderful human being-always thinking about work and nothing else. I sometimes wonder what he would be doing lying down in bed. Having sat across the table so many times for lunch and drinks, I always think that here is a man who is so passionate about his job, who will not rest till thejob gets completed and who expects that each of his colleagues should compete with him.WOW what a man!!!

With that i would like to conclude todays session, i still do not know how many people would actually go through this piece but i guess that the aim of this writing is to pass on my learnings to others who belive that going forward Online business would grow leaps and bounds.

So till we meet next time Good Night,Sweet Dreams.