Dating in Delhi Update Part 3

Just for good measure, I think I should add this “incident” to my post on our event. 

I was happy with the turnout of the event in terms of quality.  The people were cool.  The conversation was flowing.  It was fun.  I was, though, disappointed by the numbers.  Even when people tell me this is good, it’s only the first event, I still find myself disappointed.  Anywho, to the point I was going to make:

As we finished dinner and dessert, I requested the check.  I was going to pay for two people (the dude gave me his 1000).  I gave the server my credit card and asked him to bring the check.  When he came back, he has this weird look on his face.  I didn’t have to wait long to know why.  He proceeds to tell me that they are going to charge me for additional people to come to the minimum guarantee.

I calmly yet firmly told the server that I had not discussed a minimum guarantee with the manager, at least not in terms where I would have to pay to make up the balance.  The manager had informed me of his minimum.  I had informed him this is our first event, it could be 10 people, it could be 40.  We had agreed that was okay!  Further “proof” of that is that we agreed on two different packages, depending on the number of people who attended.  However, no where was there a condition that I would pay for the balance.  It hadn’t come up at all.

This is something you have to get used to getting from people in India.  If you have agreed to something, it should be maintained in that manner.  Instead, people will not necessarily abide by the agreement.  A lack of integrity exists and it surfaces so often you don’t even think of it as something out of the ordinary.

To me, it was quite simple.  If he was not able to offer me a package that worked with our situation as I had explained it in full transparency and detail, I would have simply gone somewhere else.  Even if you don’t consider that it was a mutually beneficial situation (i.e., I had brought them business on their slow day), the negotiation process was clear.  I told the manager our status on the group (i.e., it is our first event and we don’t know what to expect).  We struck a deal as a result with the manager understanding the range of people that could show up.  Asking me to pay for more people was out of line.

Is Anyone Reading This?

My last post got me wondering and curious – is anyone reading this?  If so, write a comment to this post so I at least know someone’s out there….

Dating in Delhi Update Part 2

To continue from my last post, let me now explain the implementation level issues I had to deal with.  Some of these fall into strategic rather than tactical, but here they are anyway:

Minimum Guarantees
The restaurants I spoke with required a minimum guarantee to give a package rate.  I had settled on an upscale restaurant that I had visited before.  General consensus among the people I talked to was that it was a good place that met most of our criteria.  This restaurant required a 25 person minimum.  I explained to the manager that this was our first event.  I had no idea how many would show up.  I had to convince him over a few conversation that it could be 10 or it could be 40, I really did not know, and he had to be flexible.

Upscale Restaurants
There are many upscale restaurants in Delhi but not many middle of the road.  Most of the places I’ve seen in Delhi so far will end up costing you 3000 for a three course meal.  If you go out for drinks only with friends, you end up paying 2000 to 2500 also.  This is a problem because unless we get a packaged deal, we cannot get the better rates.  We cannot get the packaged deals unless we can guarantee participants.  We cannot guarantee the number of people at this point because a) we are starting out, b) it’s a relatively new concept so time will be required, c) will people pay these amounts?

Pricing
A key issue we ran into was pricing.  What is the highest people would pay?  We started with 2500.  We then lowered it to 2000.  I also started out wanting to charge a cover between 500 and 700 so we could hire people.  I threw that out the door also when I felt some resistance.

Then, a big issue came up.  Should there be a different rate for women as for men?  My partner suggested women will not pay or they will not pay a large amount.  You can charge them 500 but not 2500.  She said she goes out all the time and has not yet ever paid.  All her guy friends divide the cost.  She didn’t know on average how much her friends paid when they went out but estimated each shelling out 2000 to 3000 per night.  I went to the restaurant manager with this and he declined, saying it’s not fair and they wouldn’t do it.

Alcohol Type
The package deals had unlimited alcohol included.  The question was if the alcohol should be imported or IMFL, a term I had never heard before but understood the meaning in context.  IMFL is Indian Made Foreign Liquor.  I am not quite sure what the difference is, as many brands that I consider imported seem to fall into the IMFL category.  For example, Smirnoff is considered IMFL. 

Anyhow, the point is that the cost differs by 800 to 1000 per person for the unlimited alcohol package.  So if we went with IMFL, it would have been far less.  Based on suggestions from my advisors, we went with imported.  It turns out IMFL may have been fine also.

RSVPs.  Tickets.
I had a dilemma – how to ensure the people who RSVP actually show up?!  We all know that many people will not make it even if they RSVP since there is really no penalty for them not showing up.  This not only affects the deal that can be struck with the restaurant, for today and tomorrow, it also makes it difficult to plan out the evening’s activities and balance the ratio.  I decided to have them buy tickets ahead of time.  Since many did not RSVP, I had to drop that idea.  This did not perturb me.  I was expecting a low turnout although I was cautiously optimistic also.  So I had to switch to Plan B mid gear, extend the deadline, re-work our agreement with the restaurant, and continue on.

Communication
I did a good job, if I say so myself, of keeping the restaurant manager and my partners and advisors included throughout the process.  I kept them updated on RSVP count, strategy, and what was happening next.  I asked them for input and did much as they suggested.

There were other implementation issues as well, but these are all that come to mind right now. 

Dating in Delhi Update Part 1

As I shared with you, my unknown number of readers, in two previous posts, dating in Delhi is not that easy.  The city doesn’t easily lend itself to meeting new people.  Networking meetups, professional or social, do not exist.  In the US, you had many avenues of meeting people on a weekly basis.  In fact, on many evenings, you had a tough time deciding which one to attend.

We used Orkut to help set up an event where singles could meet over dinner.  I walked a fine line in many decisions that needed to be made.  There was a lot of selling that was required.  At the idea level, there were multiple issues to deal with, some of which I have mentioned already.

Profiling
Getting the right “profile” of people to attend, which has been suggested as the socially active upper middle class, if not the upper class.  It’s not just them, but then they have to be from the right part of town.  One guy I was chatting with said he wouldn’t want the West Delhi people showing up.  Now that’s too complicated for me to understand but I went with what he said.  It’s not that simple to implement of course.

By the way, the term “right profile” seems to be used in social and professional circles as I found out the other day at a professional conference.  I would fall into the “right” profile in most if not all scenarios but I don’t know if I like this whole profiling thing.  It may be a reality in such a financially diverse India, but I’m not used to thinking in this manner.  In fact, one of the restaurants I was considering for the first event was taken off the list.  Just a week before, profiling had become a major issue there.  Recently, the restaurant was even being boycotted.

Lack of Early Adopters
Nothing catches quickly in India (with maybe the exception of cricket and Bollywood – IPL became very popular in its first season!).  Everything takes time, i.e., you have to be out there for six months to a year before people even start considering you.  Even if something makes absolute sense and the need is definite, it takes time to catch on.  This may not be all that different from the US except it just feels like it is.  Everyone talks about that being the case and it is a generally accepted idea.

Foreign Concept (Literally and Figuratively)
The meetup concept is new to India, at least at the social level.  These structured mechanisms do not exist and if they do, they don’t work too well.  People are not used to meeting in this way.  Professional networking organizations do exist and some are probably fairly good.  Yet, the level of acceptance and use of meetups is very limited, if it exists at all.

Old-Fashioned Marketing
Word-of-mouth is key.  Most everything in India is through this mechanism.  This is natural, of course, and should not surprise me.  The reason it does has to do with the degree to which this is true here.  In the US, if something new comes up, many will jump on it right away.  There are many early adopters, at least in raw numbers.  They are the ones really passionate about or highly interested in the new idea or technology.  In India, the early adopters are a very small number.  I’ve seen this with technology, I’ve seen it with social justice issues, I’m now seeing it here.  India still moves slowly!

There were implementation level issues also, some of it basic event management kinds of things.  I will discuss these in my next post (really, I’m writing it right now, so it will be my next post!).

Mussoorie Mall and Driving

When you think of malls in India today, you are justified in thinking of large, indoors, air-conditioned, international caliber stores.  The Mall in Mussoorie is outdoors with stores lined on one side of a road, which is appropriately called the Mall Road, for a portion and then on both sides towards the end.

As with many places in the great motherland, the space is small.  It is also very crowded in the evening.  I made the decision to drive through on the Mall Road since I was on my way to Dhanaulti and I needed to get there at a decent hour.  I knew it would take longer but I wanted to see The Mall since I hadn’t stopped yet.

Well, it wasn’t too bad for more than 2 kms of the 3 to 3.5 kms total.  Yes, there were a lot of people but you go slow, you honk (because people cannot see your car until they hear your car, and this is true everywhere in India), and you get through.  Then came the fun part.  The road turns very narrow towards the end, narrow enough to barely have one Honda City pass through.  For my American friends, the Honda City is equivalent in width to the Accord in the US with length being in between the Accord and the Civic.

Of course, there is no such thing as a one-way road!  Cars can and do go on both sides.  So we ran into small, medium sized and large vehicles.  When I say medium, I mean cars like mine.  When I say large, I mean SUVs and…………..mini buses!!!  Yes, that’s right – not only were SUVs going through but also mini buses!

We were lucky because we were at the very front of the whole jam that happened.  A gentleman from the car behind me was kind enough to get out and act as the traffic cop (since there weren’t any).  It took manuevering by us, by the SUV, and the mini bus back and forth, within two inches of the stores on the left and the cars on the right, before we passed.  The whole affair took about 15 minutes to go about 50 to 75 feet.  How the rest of them managed, with the SUVs and buses, I have no idea!

It was good that I didn’t get stuck on the Mall Road for too long.  I had managed to get half way to Dhanaulti when the fog started coming in quite thick.  More on that in my next post.