To z or not to z

2. Contd..
• After 14 years in the corpo rate world, Amit Mishra wanted to go it alone
and build an app to gamify sto ries for toddlers. When he finally decided to
take the risk and quit SAP Labs, where he'd been working for nine years, in
2010, the company gave him an open offer to rejoin them at any time.The
app he built -which was briefly among the most popular on the app store
in the US and the Netherlands -struggled to make money, and after two
years, Mishra and his wife Srividya Vaidyanathan decided to shut shop.
Mishra took a job as software development manager at Amazon India. “I
always had the option of a soft landing with my previous employer,“ says
Mishra, 40.
• Going back to the corporate world was Mishra's Plan Z, as a strategy to
address the worst-case scenario is known. And increasingly, entrepreneurs
are being advised to have not just a Plan A and a Plan B (when they make
changes to accommodate a more promising idea) but also a Plan Z. It
involves charting out an exit strategy and deciding when to call it a day if
the venture does not take off or progress as the entrepreneur envisioned
it.

3. Contd..
• In a recent article in Financial Times, Murad Ahmed quotes LinkedIn
co-founder Reid Hoffman as saying “before launching a startup, a
founder should place a limit on their credit card debt, after which
point they should pledge to quit and get a job at Starbucks“. A Plan
Z could be liberating. “The certainty of a Plan Z backstop is what
allows you to take on uncertainty and risk in your career,“ Hoffman
tells FT.
• Many entrepreneurs do set themselves deadlines when they set
out to build a startup, but there are others who give it all or
nothing.
• Vikas Malpani, Sumit Jain and Lalit Mangal, founders of real estate
portal Commonfloor, decided to give their venture at least one year
without thinking of anything else when they set it up in 2007.
“Once we crossed the one-year mark and got traction, we were
sure of what we wanted to do and a corporate job held no
attraction,“ says Malpani.

4. Contd..
• Manjunath Talwar and Abhijit Khasnis, former Yahoo employees
who cofounded recruitment startup myNoticePeriod.com that re-
branded itself as Hiree.com recently, share a similar story.“We gave
ourselves nine months to develop the product and a business
model.If things didn't work out, we thought we would get back to
the corporate world,“ says Khasnis. But, he's quick to add that VCs
will not have conversations with entrepreneurs who have a Plan Z.
“You can't be a part-time entrepreneur preempting failure.“
• Some say a Plan Z is just good business sense, not an escape route.
Even serial entrepreneurs with a track record like BigBasket co-
founders V S Sudhakar, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, V S Ramesh and
Abhinay Choudhari had a Plan Z.They were no greenhorns -they'd
started India's first e-commerce venture, Fabmall, in 1999, turned it
into chain of supermarkets in south India and sold it to Aditya Birla
Group in 2006 (which rebranded it More) -but didn't ride on legacy.

5. Contd..
• “Grocery is not an easy business because of its sheer
complexity. We gave ourselves three to six months, else we
would explore other opportunities in the consumer space.
Thankfully, we didn't have to,“ said Menon. The team raised
$10 million in Series A funding from Ascent Capital in 2012,
less than three months after they started BigBasket.
• “In India, we equate emotional certainty with intellectual
certainty. While entrepreneurs need to be confident of
their idea, they should also be intellectually sceptical and
open-minded in order to keep learning,“ says Sharad
Sharma, co-founder of iSpirt, an association of software
product companies, which runs Artha Siddhi, a boot camp
for aspiring entrepreneurs.

6. Contd..
• Richa Kar didn't have a Plan Z when she founded online lingerie
store Zivame.“I had a good corporate stint and had saved enough
money to sustain me for eight months. I managed to raise Series A
funding after that,“ she says. Kar says she wasn't a seasoned
entrepreneur to factor in a Plan Z when she started out, but
believes young entrepreneurs should consider having one. “One has
to pursue one's entrepreneurial dream, but also be prudent and
weigh the options,“ Kar said.
• Entrepreneurs are aware that there are options they can take up,
which would lead to immediate profits, but are not necessarily on
track with their original plan and larger vision. While some take the
detour to immediate profitability (since cash is always tight), others
stay the course.

7. Contd..
• “We had targets for every six months for number of customers as
well as revenue. While offers from e-commerce companies to run
their payments were at the back of my mind, it would not be right
to say that was a Plan Z,“ says Upasana Taku, co-founder of mobile
wallet firm MobiKwik. She adds that a clear alterna tive plan might
result in the entrepreneur giving up easily.
• Many entrepreneurs are confident in their vision and ability and do
not think of a worst-case scenario. After all, staying power to ride
the ups and downs is the mark of a good entrepreneur. Pankaj
Chhaparwal worked with Infosys before taking the plunge and co-
founding Cricbuzz at the age of 27 in 2004. “Everybody has a Plan B
but we were young and did not bother about worst case scenarios.
For us, it was the ad-tech field which looked attractive as a second
option. All of us had enough savings to last for two years,“ he says.

8. Contd..
• Ravi Gururaj, chairman of Nasscom product council, feels a
Plan Z is counterproductive. “It's a distraction. It will take
away the positive energy,“ he says.
• Sandeep Aggarwal, cofounder of Shopclues, agrees and
says it is detrimental to even imagine a Plan B, C or Z when
one embarks upon an entrepreneurial journey. “Plan Z is
like an insurance policy, a costly one at that. You should
adapt according to market demands as you see another
opportunity. Entrepreneurship is not rational,“ he says.
• NewsHunt founder Virendra Gupta started the firm when
his wife was pregnant with their second child. Gupta was 36
then and had no savings. “You lose the fun if you plan too
much,“ he says.“When I started the company, I was too
possessed to think of Plan B or Plan Z.“

9. Parveen Kumar Chadha… THINK TANK
(Founder and C.E.O of Saxbee Consultants & Other-Mother
marketingandcommunicationconsultants.com)
Email :-saxbeeconsultants@gmail.com
Mobile No. +91-9818308353
Address:-First Floor G-20(A), Kirti Nagar, New Delhi India Postal Code-110015