Joony Moon

Along the same vein as my post just now about entrepreneurship coming in all shapes, forms, and age —

This kid has his own business at age 5! What a stud 😀

There’s that saying that “age is just a number,” but it’s really got me thinking the past week or so as I look around me. On one hand, there are all of these entrepreneurs in their 20’s who have decided that the path of starting a company is the one for them. On the other hand, I’ve had discussions with young coworkers and colleagues about graduate school and the application process. And while this may not actually be true, the overall sentiment that I’m receiving is that this decade of our lives is meant to a time where you keep proving yourself on some level (e.g. working at a reputable firm, getting into the top business schools) and that to be entrepreneurial is to be counter-cultural and eschew what that “typical path” represents.

One of the perks of my job is just getting to be around some of the eager young minds that are shaping Indian entrepreneurship. What constantly strikes me is that the majority of the entrepreneurs in the programs CIIE runs are not really much (if at all) older than me. It’s quite impressive that someone with probably a similar skill set to mine have decided to take on the task of starting their own company with that limited experience. 

It makes sense to me that entrepreneurs should come in all shapes, sizes, and thus, ages as well. I ran across one company in California while I was doing some due diligence on other support organizations that focuses specifically on senior citizens being entrepreneurs. A pretty cool concept if you ask me. I think about my own grandfather, who since retiring has taken up computers and now goes around the local elderly Korean community in my hometown teaching others how to use them. While he does this mainly because he’d otherwise be bored and the sense of purpose it gives him, he too is being entrepreneurial in pretty much running his own little non-profit service. Of course there are limitations to scale and profitability that accompany old age — try telling a 70 year-old to put together a financial model in Excel — but this is an example of how anyone can be an entrepreneur.

So how does this relate back to us? I think that too often those who have been successful are used to following the tried and true path to supposed “greatness.” There’s a lot that smart people can accomplish, and while I’m not saying everyone should go and start their own company, I do think that everyone should challenge themselves to think more creatively and challenge the current assumptions. Entrepreneurship can come at any age, and honestly, the more experience you have (so long as it doesn’t keep you from still thinking innovatively), can only help in my mind! Thus, I see entrepreneurship as a way of thinking more so than a specific career path, which I think is lost sometimes in our rush to measure number of venture deals and companies founded. 

On a completely unrelated note, Ahmedabad celebrating the Ganesh festival!

Weekend road trip to Zanzri!

I’ve noticed more and more during my time here what an advantage it has been in my life that I was raised in a multicultural environment, where I was exposed to people from all sorts of backgrounds. In my time here, I feel like I’ve really been able to draw a lot from my personal experiences as an Asian-American as well as those from having close Indian-American friends. I guess it’s only natural that people here would compare me to other foreigners (particularly Americans) that they’ve met, and apparently I’m relatively more Indian compared to them! From being used to a completely different set of pronunciations, to understanding the respect given to elders, to my willingness to try new foods (so long as they destroy my lactose-intolerant bowels), I’m feeling strangely at ease.

One of my favorite forms of cultural immersion and exchange comes in the form of food. My most recent exciting food experience has been eating a true Gujurati thali. 

A thali means a “plate” in general, and the way they do it in Gujarat is to put out a spread of several different dishes on everyone’s plate and continuously serve you until you wanna roll over and just lie down on the restaurant’s floor from a combination of satisfaction and exhaustion. I like to think I eat pretty quickly, but it’s at a whole new level here. The joke is that Indians will “snatch” your food if you’re slow, and I occasionally find myself snatched from. At the thali restaurant, the food came at such an incredible pace that I felt somewhat overwhelmed by the rate at which I had to shovel food into my mouth and try to fend off the servers who didn’t seem to want to take “no” for an answer. 

Now an exchange isn’t complete without a transfer of value from both sides, so I tried to do what I could to introduce my office to a little bit of Korean flavor at a potluck this week. Freshly stocked with my mom’s care package, which included boatloads of ramen, I made my version of rabokki, but without any dduk (which I guess it makes it just ramen in ddukbokki sauce…). I had my fingers crossed that I didn’t botch the experience for everyone, but it was pretty well received!

I realize I talk very little about actual work, so here’s a little something about one of the companies we work with. Aakar Innovations is a social enterprise that works to find grassroots innovations and use them to create an improved, sustainable lifestyle for people in rural India. While that official description allows them much room for growth later on, for now, their flagship product is a pack of cheap, sanitary pads for women. It is created with biodegradable material and sells at a price point far below that of leading brands. The government produces a cheaper option that is made of materials with much lower quality. Aakar has positioned itself as an affordable, comfortable option for pads in rural communities where healthcare information is not always as well understood and distributed. It’s just one of many examples of some cool work going on here that I’m glad to be a part of, even if I’m not directly involved. 

It’s crazy to think that I’m already closing in on having been here for a month now…and I still haven’t seen all that much of Ahmedabad. This must be rectified at once, but the past week or so has been a bit of a start. I had three main episodes of exploring different parts of the city that were all exciting in their own ways.

Farm House Party – A couple coworkers and I were invited to attend a party at a farm house a little bit away from the city. Riding a car for the first time in weeks (I was kind of getting used to the auto rickshaws!), we drove away from the city to find this farm house. In India, since almost everyone lives in a city, some of the more wealthier families will also have a “farm house” where they can go and spend the weekend to get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. It’s difficult to have a large house downtown given the sheer numbers of people in each city, so it makes a lot of sense to me that you would have a separate little getaway that’s close enough to get to pretty easily. I met a lot of interesting people at the party, a good number of whom were foreigners like myself. I found that I was expecting that everyone would be there for a short term gig like myself, but a good number of the people I met were there for real work. Probably shouldn’t have really blown my mind, but it did! I just wasn’t used to the idea of people following jobs to a different country, even though that’s exactly what countless immigrants do in the US. Much respect to immigrants! Of course there are some other exciting details from that night that will go unmentioned here (there may or may not have been a run in with the law…) that you can ask me about later haha

The Statue Slum –

While exploring the city a bit more over the weekend, we ended up driving through a particular slum where the streets were LINED with makeshift stalls, packed with statues of Ganesh, one of the Hindu gods that is in the form of an elephant. Next week is Ganesh Chaturthi, a festival where these statues will be thrown into bodies of water and will dissolve, symbolizing his return from the earth after removing the obstacles and unhappiness of his devotees. It was kind of amazing to see these huge statues that I would normally associate with being wealthy being mass produced by generational craftsmen in a rundown part of the city. It’s hard for me to capture the full effect with just this picture, but try to imagine blocks and blocks of dingy, narrow streets where there are nothing but huge Ganesh statues on either side of you.

Manek Chowk –

Manek chowk is huge outdoor late night street food spot located in old city (every major city in India has an “old city” and a “new city” built around it) that essentially is a conglomerate of various vendors working together to provide people with the full compliment of unhealthy, yet delicious food options. It was quite bustling last night, and I could understand why! The food was pretty amazing and is exactly what you would want in your late night food options. We ended up ordering a couple pav bhaji (which seems like Indian chilli served with spiced garlic bread); a crazy looking pizza; a dosa; and double decker sandwiches made of buttered bread filled with chocolate, cheese, and pineapple (pictured below). Dude….dude. Yeah, I’m totally going back.

So it’s been over a week since my last written post, and I’m attributing that mainly to several medical maladies that sprung up over the last week. First, it was a nasty abscess right at the intersection of my hip and butt, followed by getting sick in a more traditional sense, and ending with my current heat rashed state. None of these are all that harmful to me, but the first two things took me to the hospital to make sure they didn’t become issues than they were. Luckily my blood test came out negative for malaria (celebration!) and was determined to be another instance of what they just simply call “viral.” Yeah, I don’t think anyone knows what “viral” really means. My current state is that the parts of my body that are exposed the most — my arms and face — are turning pink/red with this slightly prickly rash. Sigh, one of these days I’ll be able to have a normal, healthy day again.

The word “firangi” means “foreigner,” and my coworkers taught it to me so that I would know if someone on the street was calling me that. The closest comparison in terms of connotation appears to be “gringo” as used in Latin America. As a firangi myself, I tend to pick out others of my kind whenever I walk around. Sometimes in the back of mind I exclaim “white people!” in a gleeful manner because just having some racial diversity around makes me feel more at home. There aren’t a ton of East Asians around, but there are actually some very Asian-looking Indian populations, mostly located on the eastern part of the country. Because of this, my coworkers said I could probably get confused for being just another Indian if I don’t show that I’m out of place. I decided to test this out at a cafe where we were meeting some new folk. One guy began asking everyone their names and where they were from, so when it got around to me, I introduced myself as Joony from Pune. Without flinching, he just moved on until my coworkers did a double take to see if they had heard me correctly. They knew I was from the US, but I had completely fooled the new guy. Success!

Sometimes it gets lonely as a firangi, so I met up with the Ahmedabad expat group this past weekend, and we all exchanged stories of adjusting to life in India. It was an eclectic mix of people from different parts of the world from different walks of life, but there was something about the solidarity from our firangi-ness that was refreshing for me and helped put my experience thus far into better focus. It was a fun time and I’ll be looking forward to our next hangout.

I’m going to go take care of my heat rash now, so until next time!

Handsets for cell phones? Here’s hoping this trend doesn’t catch on

Mmm dosas…

So streets are shared by all living beings, including dogs, camels, cows, and goats. I tried to take a picture of an elephant on the road the other day but had to settle for the cow next to our auto

A couple coworkers showing off their Brazillian pride (no, they’re not actually Brazilian)

Idli – appetizer/breakfast cakes made of lentils and rice

I’m not Muslim, but that’s no reason to not celebrate the end of Ramadan. Eid Mubarak!

Getting used to my surroundings a bit

During the two-week VilCap training that our cohort took, we went through an abbreviated version of the peer-review process that their accelerator companies undergo. Six students from the class gave pitches of their “dream companies” for which everyone in the class gave a score, and the top two scorers would have won a prize of a fake $50,000 round of seed funding. This process was intriguing because it helped the other students in the room relate their own company ideas to the merits of the ones being presented and it allowed students to earn respect among their peers. However, for such a system, what happens if people do not vote honestly? What happens if there is corruption within the ranks and the best companies do not end up getting funded?

There is a saying that says a good company will always get funded. The above scenario may not be the end of the line for the top companies, but it does pose a hazard to the investor who has pledged funding for the “winner” and ends up putting its money in something that might not truly be the top of its class and has dishonest founders at its core.

One of the most striking differences about business in India is the level of corruption and deception on so many levels. We are lucky in the US to know that we don’t have to worry about getting charged double for a cab ride or about an order of General Tso’s ending up being Beef with Broccoli when it shows up at your door. (I’ve had my fair share of these types of situations already in just my first week.) I’d be oversimplifying to imply that nothing in India is what it seems, but I have learned that there is a significant level of additional due diligence and attention to detail that is absolutely necessary when handling business here. From inconsistent financials to collusion between competitors, even the social impact space is at risk.

You would think that people who are trying to “do good” would be honest people, but when any Indian company marketing to the poor (a segment of the population that in itself is over twice the size of the entire US population) is labeled a social enterprise, you can see how things can get dicey. USAID, the World Bank, and other organizations have always dealt with this issue when dealing with governments, but I fear that a few rotten apples may leave a bad taste for foreign impact investing, which has thus far received a huge wave of idealistic support from all of us “change the world” types (myself included). There’s a lot of amazing work being done here in India, don’t get me wrong, but a discerning eye and perhaps a little tough love are in store for the industry. As it says in the quote above, as soon as you lose your phone connection, you start playing games.

At a cafe called Blue Spot. As you can tell, the theme is blue and its essentially a lounge/bar, minus the alcohol (there are restrictions in Gujarat) — the term is “mocktail.”

Vada pav is the vegetarian burger of India and is made mostly of potato. It was pretty good! Potato has been pretty common in a lot of more substantial dishes here.

Rambhai. When taking a little unofficial campus tour, my coworkers spoke of this hole in the wall place where they serve amazing chai (tea). Little did I know, it’s literally a hole in the wall!

Eating out my first weekend. Click for captions!

Wow, what a whirlwind introduction to life in India! I can’t believe it’s only been less than 3 days since I got here…there’s just been so much going on. I’ll save some material to make sure I have things to talk about in the future, so for now just a few quick bits about my first few days in India and at CIIE.

First of all, the flight — so long…major props to all my Indian friends who make the pilgrimage back to the motherland every few years. This is me at the beginning of the flight, bright eyed and excited:

And now by the end of the 30-something hour trip:

I still haven’t gotten over the jetlag, but that hasn’t kept me from exploring my new surroundings. Everything from near death experiences I have every time I take an auto-rickshaw (more about this in a future post), to dealing with the ever-looming threats of monsoon season, to learning about the social culture of India (particularly the state of Gujarat, where Ahmedabad is located) has been an eye-opening experience for me. 

The very first thing that hits you is just how lucky we are in the US for the all of the little things we take for granted. Even at a priveliged place like IIM-A, I have a limited supply of drinking water, issues balancing the level of A/C used, and pretty unreliable wifi. This will definitely take some adjusting to, but it’s really incredible to see with my eyes what a developing country looks like. Now that I’m a bit over the anxiety of living here, I think I’m learning to focus less on what I don’t have compared to life in the US, but rather what things India has and where it’s going.

First things first, I have to give a shout out to the food and the general eating culture here. Unlike the US, the dining experience is at a more relaxed pace and is more of a group experience. I was coming back home yesterday from some cafes around midnight last night and saw a group of a dozen or so middle-aged women just hanging out in front of the restaurant where they appear to have been until closing. Tell me, how often do you see our parents stay out until midnight on a Sunday night with their friends? So far my eating experience has been mostly at the mess hall on campus (which I am extremely grateful for) and going out to cafes. It’s not unusual to go cafe hopping, especially since food is cheap in general. I get breakfast and lunch for the equivalent of $1 and a night of cafe hopping will probably get me into the $8 range. Pictures in the following post!

Hey everyone, welcome to my blog where I’ll be cataloging and updating on my time in India!

I will be in India for the next six months as a part of an internship through Village Capital, which partners with various organizations around the world to make investments in some of the best up-and-coming companies that also have a positive social impact. VilCap is a part of a larger movement called impact investing, that operates under the idea that more traditional business approaches can be used to make the world a better place and especially help the “bottom of the pyramid.” Based on that description, it’s not hard to imagine why I found it to be so intriguing considering my background in consulting and my interest in the social sector! The organization I’ll be working with will be the Center for Innovation Incubation and Excellence (CIIE), located on the campus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM). 

I’ve never been abroad for any extended length of time, so I’m super excited to be living in Ahmedabad. The whole process to get prepared was a bit of a hassle, but it’s almost done now (just need to finish packing). I fly out tomorrow — people, wish me luck!

I’ll be updating the blog at least weekly, so stay tuned for JoonDawg’s adventures!