The Validation

I chose Mr. B.R Patel to do my validation and the one that i thought that I could do best on my part was to make posters on the main road that would lead to his shop which was not on the main road. Mr. Patel was alread quite hostile to us and that was probably because he could not understand our "faayeda" by doing this and he suspectrd that we were from a company to try to persuade him to join. When i went to talk to him he was asleep and when he woke up he just shrugged me off by waving his hand, so I left but I thought that I would come back the enxt day.
The next time I went he was awake but he totally refused to co-operate. He said that he didn't want to put any posters because then he would get into trouble for it and after a lot of trying to persuade him he still refused so I thought that there is no point trying to convince someone who has already made up his mind.
Then I went to B.K Glass, plywood and hardware store, another store that we had interviewed. But the reason that I hadn't chosen Mr. Masi was because whatever enhancements we had thought of he was already planning to do or were already done like expansion of space, business, clients. One thing that he had not done was put himself on the internet so I made a blog www.carpentars.blogspot.com and I also put him on the Google map directory.

Scenario

This is just another day in the life of “ not so ordinary” pampha from Assam. She gets up in her red nighty and runs to the door to get the newspaper. There her daily planner, her horoscope on page number six awaits her arrival. Her horoscope reads “ Your marital status might change for you by the end of this week. Jesus himself couldn’t have done a better job than what you will do today. Today might see a need for you to call attention to yourself. You will injure yourself mysteriously while you are asleep. Prepare yourself because your life is set for a change that you have never seen. Lucky color: green”. After reading her daily bible starts the ritual of getting ready as she prepares herself for not just another day after all.
It starts with her picking up the greenest sari she owns and goes on to actually preparing herself for all that is going to come her way today. She proudly opens her priced collection of lingerie to find the finest and the most perfect one saved for such a day. From color to the cut everything had to be thought about in minutest of details. The next is to decide how to enhance her beauty so that she is all ready to meet her perfect guy today. All set to leave home she looks at her self in the mirror for one last time bright and confident knowing that she will beat Jesus for sure.

Personas

To come up with persona we first listed down all the characteristics of all the five people we interviewed.The things we included were:

-skill
-behavior towards customers
-intelligence
-age
-reaction to what we were doing
-characteristics
-quirk
-physical appearance
-experience
-attitude
-where does he stay
-weakness

The first step

IFTI RASSAQ KHAN
- he is 42 yrs old
-binds books
-thin and tall
-has a mehandi colored beard
-wears long loose kurta
-neat freak
-wants everything to be in his control
-has five kids
-he keeps yawning
-has lot of mirrors around him
-intelligent but doesn't share much of his wisdom
-he is a leader





PAMPHA
-from Assam
-she is 37 yrs old
-sales woman selling cosmetics
-loud makeup
-insecure and conscious about herself
- obsessed wit her lingerie
-begins her day wt horoscope
-heavy built
-Uses "by God!"
-good communication skills






FEEDBACK: persona can be more imaginative. they don't have to be taken out from something very structured. what we did was very structured. though our personas did not really come out of those five people alone still probably the way of starting to make a persona is different. also we should not try working on a lot of personas together. look at the minutest of details to give life to your character.

Data Visualization

The visualization is for a shop called Mahalakshmi Metal House that deals with gas stove sale and repair. The clouds show where Mr. Patel gets his money from like his high level of skill and his regular customers. The heirarchy is showed by the size of the clouds. This visualization shows where the business gets its income from and where the money goes. The water levels show the heirarchy of where the money goes like electricity, rent, maintenance, etc.

I came up with a few solutions for Mr. B.R Patel who is the owner of a shop that sells and repairs appliances that use gas.

1) 1)The name of the shop is Mahalakshmi Metal House while the shop actually deals with Gas Stoves and gas geysers. This name is misleading to what the shop actually stands for. The name of the shop should be something like Mahalakshmi Gas works.

2) 2)The stock in the shop looked dirty and old and people would not like to buy old looking products. The stock need to be cleaned for it to look in good condition for people to buy it.

3) 3)Some of the stock looked old and probably outdated so it needs to be replaced with latest products that the market needs.

4) 4)The shop doesn’t only sell gas products it also deals with servicing of the products. The owner of the shop Mr. Patel specializes in servicing of these items but he cannot step out of his shop to go to peoples’ houses to service them and people don’t really get their products to the shop to be serviced. If Mr. Patel gets a helper that can really boost his business because then his skill will be fully utilised and the helper can also deliver goods to houses. I think that this is one of the main problems that Mr. Patel faces and if he gets a helper it will really do wonders to his business.

5) 5)Since the shop is not located on the main road posters can be placed on the main road that point and lead to him as his shop is not far from the main road.

6) 6)The poster over his shop is faded and old, if it was cleaned up and also written in kannada with the new name would make a difference as well.

Task two : 5 different lives

This assignment required us to observe five people all who were owners of small businesses and the sole breadwinners of the house. I was part of a group of three people : Me, Varshita and Gauri .Initially we decided to talk to people frankly and if that did'nt work out we would think of new strategies, but since this strategy worked we did not give it up.

Mr. B.R Patel
Mr. Patel, a middle aged man from Rajasthan is the owner of a small shop in Yelahanka New Town called Mahalaxmi Metal House. He repairs gas stoves, gas lamps and almost everything related to gas. Also, he sells products like cutlery, steel containers and other household items. A man of his own opinions and principles, he started to work at the age of ten and travelled through the country until he reached Bangalore to get a job in a company where he used to sell and repair home appliances. He pursued this job for fifteen years after which he gained inspiration from his boss to start his own business.
This two year old shop is not centrally located due to lack of funds. In spite of this Mr. Patel doesn’t seem to get bothered and believes in taking life as it comes. He has a son who is doing second year B. Com and he doesn’t want his son to live the same life that he has lived. He doesn’t seem to have a planned strategy for his business, but his skill and years of experience make up for lack of strategy. Being so good at what he does has earned him a lot of regular customers which is what is keeping the business alive. He thinks that his journey from Rajasthan to Bangalore was his biggest “project” in life which taught him whatever it takes to make a living.
Looking at his shop it looked as if the sales were not very high because his stock looked old and untouched. Mr. Patel’s tools were not outdated but since he could not afford latest ones he works with cheaper tools. Initially, Mr. Patel was very hostile to the fact that we as students wanted to know how he established himself, but as the conversation progressed we he became more comfortable and it was clear that he enjoyed the attention.
Before we left he said, “If I wanted I could have spoken in kannada to avoid you.” This sentence clearly showed that he wanted us to learn about from him. His tip to us was that we should learn Kannada and he agreed that talking to people about their life experiences helps to gain a wider perspective.

Raj Shree Sweets halwai

Mr. Raj, a man of many talents has owned this shop for six years. Before this he was in the clothing line for twelve years, before which he dealt with electronics. He claims to have learnt everything himself by purely observing others. Raj Shree Sweets is a shop which sells Rajasthani sweets and chats and is known for its jalebis. He gets his staff from Rajasthan so that he can have authentic Rajasthani taste which ensures that his shop is different. He is so adamant on having authentic Rajasthani food that he even makes living arrangements for his Rajasthani staff. When the staff is away his business runs mainly on chats.
After getting into so many fields he finally thinks that he has come into a line where he wants to spend rest of his life. You can always see a smile on his face and you can say that he gets immense pleasure in feeding people.
Besides his shop he is also into catering business and provides his catering services in parties as well as weddings. Due to the nature of his work his business has its own highs and lows. In the wedding season and festival season like Diwali his business does very well and on the other hand there are times when he can just meet his costs.
He has two sons out of whom the elder one works in the city and the younger one still studies. He doesn’t plan to get his children into the same business probably because he has better future plans for them.
On asking him about his income consumption we came to know that around 50% of his income goes into buying all the material for the shop. Some 20-30% he spends on maintenance and staff. And remaining is his profit which includes school fees of one of his children as well.
On the whole he looked quite content with what he had and his life.

Mrs. Pampha (Manisha Beauty Parlour)
After staying a housewife for most of her life Mrs. Pampha now owns a tiny beauty parlour in Yelahanka New Town. Being a wife of someone who worked in the Air Force, she has travelled a lot and finally did a beauty course at Delhi and then opened her own parlour after her husband’s retirement in Bangalore.
She had problems for the first two years after which she found regular customers to stabilise her business. What started as a hobby course is now a means of livelihood. She has a diploma and probably would have studied more if her husband wouldn’t have transferred. Her life is a perfect balance of professional life and personal life. She is originally from Assam and is a mother of two children who are presently studying in Yelahanka.
She runs the parlour herself and occasionally is helped by her sister. Recently she has also started selling readymade clothes as she has also done a course on tailoring.But talking to her we realised that she is not very ambitious. She has no further plans of expanding her business because she is quite satisfied with the way her business is going. She firmly believes that patience is the key to run any successful business.
Mau pasha (fruit seller)
Doddabellapur
When we began conversing with maupasha, initially all he said was mangoes, Bangalore for everything we asked. We thought he was probably trying to ignore us but later we realised that he could not understand us. We had to buy a few mangoes at a bargained price to instigate a conversation. He did not want to be photographed either.Coming from Andhra Pradesh, maupasha has two children and 3 brothers. Two of them sell fruits and the third one works in a factory.
His strategy is to buy fruits from Andhra Pradesh since it’s not very far from Karnataka and also to sell fruits where there are no other fruit sellers. Banana’s and papaya’s were the other fruits that he sold during mango off season, which also he gets from Andhra Pradesh. Earning enough for his family made him quite happy. Selling mangoes for 25 bucks got him a satisfactory number of customers.
B.K. Glass and Wood
The owner of an established garment shop took the courage of stepping into a completely new business of raw wood and glass. 10 years ago he felt the need to change his business because he thought that a garment shop demanded too much labor and gave less returns.
He sent his brothers to work with a furniture company for 15 days to see if they could successfully handle that business. Getting a positive response from them he wrapped up his garment shop and came to Bangalore. His reason for choosing yelahanka for setting up his business was that it was not a very developed area, so that they get time to establish their business. But within six months their business picked up and they decided to have branches in all four corners of Bangalore-Banergetta, Banaswadi, Yashwantpur and Yelahanka.
His strategy is honesty, variety, choice and quality.
His products come from different suppliers from Gujarat, Bombay and Bangalore. Also his keen interest in customers feedbacks and his will to help them made him very popular amongst all customers. His understanding of the technicalities of every product that he has ensures that the customer’s needs our met. He personally chooses the range of products that he keeps in the shop.
We realised a lot of thinking goes into whatever goes around in the shop, because he said that whenever a car leaves for anywhere they make sure that everything needed for the shop is bought.
“RESEARCH IS THE FIRST STEP TO BUSINESS”
“BUSINESS TEACHES YOU BUSINESS”

Task One: Earning Money

The first assignment given was to earn Rs. 100 in a day in a different way. I was a part of a group of seven people ( Me, Rajasee, Varshita, Shubhangi, Shivantika, Gauri and Mehr). After getting the assignment we spent approximately 2-3 hours ideating.
What we thought of doing :
1) Challenging people to games such as trying to make us laugh.
2) Making people laugh
3) Giving people an oil head massage or shoulder massages. Also, playing some music along with the massage.
4) babysitting children.
5) selling paper bags.
6) Going around with lighters to offer people lights for their cigerettes.
7) braiding hair.
8) Doing nail art.
9) getting ourselves slapped.
10) selling clips and other accessories.
11) selling greeting cards.
12) Applying henna tattoes or mehandi or bengali alta.
13) selling bay leaves with something written in hindi to tourists.
14) sketching people.
What we actually did :
We divided ourselves into groups of 1 and 2. We made greeting cards, hair clips, slipper accessories, block printed wrapping paper. Four of us went outside Mount Carmel college to sell these things. Two of us went to Cubbon Park to sketch portraits of people and one of us found two clients to give a massage to.
The experience :
Me and Shivantika went to sell out products together. Our strategy was simple. Since we had made products keeping in mind teenage girls as our target buyers we headed to Mount Carmel college. There we approached people as and when they walked out of the college gate and told them that we were street artists and if they would like to look at the things that we had made and it did not take us long to see all our greeting cards except one and most of our hair clips, but since the slipper art was something the people would have had to stick themselves they did not buy it but looked interested enough. A lot of people just walked off and didn't listen but more often than not they stopped and heard what we had to say. After the college we decided to go to Brigade Road because that is a place that caters to a lot of tourists and tourits who are interested in our culture. Because of time constraints we thought of applying the bengali alta instead of henna on hands but just as we reached it started raining and we were unlucky to not find many tourists and whoever we found was too busy. So we went back to the college t his time joined by Varshita and Gauri with their wrapping paper. We managed to sell most of our things by 3 'o' clock and even Shubhangi and Rajasee were done by that time with sketches and so was Mehr and we managed to almost reach our target of 700 by falling short of Rs. 10.
The experience was truly something because I've never done this before but it was an enriching experience because of the amount of ideas that we had and our ideas were such that they worked theoretically but when it came to practicality they failed to do as well.