Interview of Vikas Kedia - A Dreamer and Achiever

Today, I feel proud to publish this interview of Mr. Vikas Kedia; CEO of InterNext Technologies Inc. The one who dared to convert his dreams into reality. He runs some of the most popular communities in Finance with more than 400,000 registered members and heads a company of more than 200 employees. To know more about him, read these or follow him at Twitter.

Kamanashish: We know what you have done but what are your plans for future?

Source: Flickr

Vikas Kedia: Professionally I will be very happy if I can take our company InterNext Technologies Inc. which comprise of the communities on debt mortgage credit and insurance with close to 1/2 a million active members to NASDAQ. Now it is not about making money. But it is almost like a goal post which inspires everybody, keeps everybody focused, allows us to create a great organization, create a lot of jobs and get all the people who have worked very hard with me, over the last 5 years to feel like they achieved something awesome professionally and be successful financially and be proud of what they have achieved. In one line the goal is to take the company to NASDAQ.

This is the transcription of a telephonic interview. The podcast will be published soon. A new audio visual version of this interview is live at youtube or move to the end of this post. Thanks to Anirudh for the help.

Kamanashish: Do you plan your moves in advance or move along as new opportunities open up?
Vikas Kedia: Well, I have always differentiated between strategic decisions and tactical decisions and I believe that only tactical decisions cannot get you very far. To create a great company you need to have strategic competitive advantages over other companies. You can’t create a great company just by working extra hard. We do have a broader strategy on what we are doing and why we are doing this.We optimize it on a weekly basis. I basically got it down to three points

• Kaizen Method – Within the organization if we recognize that we can make small improvements we will do these. The idea is there is no one big thing that will get us where we want to get. There are actually a lot of small things that will help us to get us where we want to get so we keep on making the small improvements keeping in mind the broader strategy.
• Key stats management - We measure some key statistics and these act as headlights and guide as we plan ahead.
• Outcomes theory - We focus on the output and not the input.

Kamanashish: What do you call yourself – businessman, entrepreneur or a serial entrepreneur?
Vikas Kedia: I have never differentiated between these three. But if you ask me I will choose entrepreneur.

Kamanashish: What are the basics of web based business?
Vikas Kedia: The basics of a web business are like the basics of any other business. You will have to make something that consumer will actually want and you have to deliver it in a way that structurally you are better than your competitors. Because if you think that you will do well in business by working very hard, being very efficient, it does not work. You must have a competitive advantage and deliver something that will help people. Build something that people really need; don’t deliver what you think people need. You will be surprised when you see the difference between what you think they need and what they actually need. Make sure that you are structurally better than someone else. If you can do something easily, someone else can do that too. Keep looking for good people in your team. Keep listening to customers – it is very important for a web based business. Most of the times 10% of what you do will take care of the 90% of the needs. So release that 10% of what you have done and keep it simple.

Source: Flickr

Kamanashish: What is your regular schedule? Because I feel you do not sleep for more than 2 hours a day!
Vikas Kedia: No no that’s not true … I do sleep about 8-9 hours a day but yeah it’s a distributed international organization with close to hundred employees in US and more than hundred employees in India and yeah the company approximately operates 20 hours a day. I am sure my Mom and my girlfriend will love to have me on a fixed schedule but I have found that to be a problem. I usually move back and forth between 2 schedules. I do feel that it’s not possible to work more than 8 hours a day sustainably. Ideally what I do is spend four hours with my team in India and four hours with my Team in US. So for a couple of months I will start work at 3PM in California to work with my team in California and work till around midnight to get some common time with my team in India. I do this till I get bored and then move on to the alternative schedule of starting work at 3 AM in the morning and work till around noon. This allows me to spend the first four hours with my Indian Team (Its late evening that time in India) and then spend four hours with my team in US.

Kamanashish: What do you do when “Plan A” does not work?
Vikas Kedia: When plan A does not work, you learn something from plan A. Right after my MBA when I started my first company and it failed, everybody around me used to say that it’s good that your first company failed because you have learnt so much and am sure you will do much better with your second company. There is famous saying that you learn when you loose and not when you win. But at that point of time I used to hate these people, it used to hurt. I thought they only say this to make me happy, I thought they don’t realize that it’s not worked but down the line I have realized that it’s true. I think in my second company I have used a lot experience from my first company. So if my plan A fails I try to learn from it and try to make my second plan better.

Kamanashish: What was the most exciting and saddest moment in your life?
Vikas Kedia: Well, exciting and saddest moments in different contexts have been different but if you really ask me honestly the saddest moment was when I had to close down my first company because I gave it the best that a young man could have given to it. But it still didn’t work out.
The most exciting moment was when our company actually crossed 100 employees. I was like WOW!! At that point of time I was very excited, I was very happy. I do take a lot of pleasure in creating jobs; I feel that’s what entrepreneurs do. It may be surprising for you but when we had 95-96 employees, I used to count everyday and I was like very excited when we reached 100 employees. And today I am happy that we are not only hiring IT professionals, but our company has hired close to 80 labors for our new office building.

Kamanashish: What is your motivation pill? What do you do when you feel down and out?
Vikas Kedia: Oh! My god!! That’s such a good question. I tell you when I graduated the person speaking on our convocation ceremony was Mr. Narayan Murthy and I still remember parts of that speech he said you guys are the best young people that our country has. Most people in our generation has worked for other companies we did not have our own brands. We never touched the consumer directly. And he said that I hope that you guys sitting in front of me will create the Indian Brand names, so that we will be working with consumers directly rather than servicing some other bigger companies. I just try to remember these words when in need of some motivation

Source: Flickr

Kamanashish: What do you think about Nandan Nilekani heading the Unique Identification Authority of India?
Vikas Kedia: I met Nandan back in 2000. He was standing at a Pub. He is a very unassuming fellow and I went and spoke to him and he was very soft-spoken. We just talked for 2 Minutes. I think it takes a lot to be a CEO of Infosys and take Infosys to where it is today. And then to go ahead and take the job that he has taken up today that is to manage the Unique Identification Authority of India.
Honestly I haven’t heard a lot about what this Unique Identification will do, but whatever little I have read about it is that they will give a unique ID card for everybody. And I have matured in the web2.0 days and I hope this unique Bio-Id stuff is designed using a lot of advance technology and I am sure Nandan will use a lot of them. I don’t know him personally but I have a lot of respect for him.

Kamanashish: Tips on migration of ideas into a sustainable business model:
Vikas Kedia: You know back in my IIM-B days Prof. Rishi used to be our corporate strategy professor and he drilled the idea of competitive advantage in my head. He kept saying that a business can only be successful if it had competitive advantage over other businesses. So when you think about an idea think about why is it that you can do It better than anyone else. You can’t run a business by just being efficient. And Believe me when you have 100-200 employees, then you have systems, computers, things will break, people will rush off to other companies there will be difficulties in the organization so you have to build a business that is strong at the core and is better then other businesses structurally and hence can survive these problems.

Kamanashish: What does it take to be a CEO?
Vikas Kedia: I read it some where. Genius is 99% Perspiration and 1% inspiration. So that’s exactly what it takes to be a CEO. You have to be a hard worker because things will only reach you when there is something wrong. You need to be a people’s person. I am not a very good people’s person but I am working on it. I have problem being diplomatic and sometimes I am too straight forward. Being humble, believe me it takes a lot from someone at my position to say I don’t know, what do you think about it. And last but not the least, being a logical thinker because I feel at the end of the day logic defines everything else. And above all have the ability to delegate.

Kamanashish: Any message for your colleagues and young entrepreneur!
Vikas Kedia:
Colleagues - Guys we want to create an international brand name. Our company is 5 years old now and we have created a bit of a brand name. It’s not international but we are surely moving towards it. I just request them to put the best foot forward and reach to the bigger goal.
A lot of people who have worked with me, even after 20 years I think they will check our website and see what happened to us where did it go. Because I think a lot of people have given their best for the development of the company and are emotionally attached. We could have been may be 5 times 10 times bigger had we taken up some outsourcing jobs, but we did not take that path . We are out there to create an Indian global brand name with which end consumers associate with.
Young entrepreneur – My message to young entrepreneurs would be couple of things.
1. If you fail have the courage to stand up again.
2. And take pride in what you do.

Here is a new audio-visual version of the interview:

Interview of Vikas Kedia: Part 1



Interview of Vikas Kedia: Part 2



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