Tag: lunch

Categories
Business Work

Success

sunset-people-sun-men_blog
Just last week 13 Llama Studio went on a team lunch to Jughead’s at Marol. Much eating, drinking, and merrymaking ensued. The team talked, bonded, took selfies, groups selfies, chugged whatever liquids each one pleased, and ravaged through plates and plates of delicious food. In short, we had fun.

But there had to be some serious discussions as well along with the fun.

I have been thinking for the past few days about how I would define success for 13 Llama Studio. And I have finally settled on five metrics that will define if we are doing well.

  1. Volumes: the most obvious metric. Quantum of business. Amount of sales. Top line. Revenues. How much money we were able to extract from all our clients combined within a said period of time.
  2. Community: being known and appreciated in a product/developer community. With Prasad and I speaking at the Mumbai WordCamp, 13 Llama hosting quite a few WordPress meetups at our office, and sponsoring the Pune WordCamp, I think we have made a good beginning here.
  3. Clientelle: by design or by happenstance, we are strong in three verticals: Education, Healthcare, and Media. In September, we were able to say that we are working for a marquee name in each of these three verticals. We’ll expose these relationships later on when the time is right. 🙂
  4. Product Success: our key point of introduction when meeting someone new is that we are a product development studio, or more accurately a product development team for hire. We have tried our hands at projects which had the potential to be great products. Some of these were launched, and some of these could not be, for various reasons. Right now the team is working on three new product ideas, and we are gung-ho about making each of these a success.
  5. A Kick-Ass Team: And finally, the key ingredient that will make each of the above four a possibility. A team which is competent, dedicated, dynamic, always learning, always improving, and always ready for a challenge. I can confidently say that each of our team members has the potential to be a superhero that such teams comprise of, but there is still a journey ahead of each one of us before we can with full honesty say that we are superheroes. Also, the team isn’t complete yet. We are looking for superheroes, or potential superheroes who can take 13 Llama Studio to the heights we have dreamt of. So if you think you are someone who fits the bill and would love to work with us, 13 Llama Studio’s Careers Page.

Here’s to a bright and exciting future!

Categories
Food Photography Photo Essay Photography Portraits & People Pune Food

Bloggers, alias Hoggers

A very dear friend of mine had once described a good span of time as one where at the end of it you don’t remember the exact details and what-happened-after-what, but just experience a mellow happy feeling. And several days later also when you look back at that time, the first thing that hits you is the same happy feeling.

The afternoon of the eighth of September is almost in that happy place in my mind. Thanks to an impromptu blogger meet, which comprised of a few bloggers from Pune like Purnendu, Ekta, Maansi, Nilanshu and yours truly, joined by Biswajit from Mumbai. It was Biswajit’s brainchild, to get us all together, to have a relaxing conversation over lunch where we’d get acquainted and have an exchange of ideas, stories and whatever we felt like exchanging. And few places in the East of Pune are better suited for such a huddle as The Cafe at the Hyatt Regency.

The Cafe is Hyatt Regency Pune’s multi-cuisine restaurant, with a really soothing ambiance, with cuisines from the world over, right from salads to the Mughlai to the Oriental to the Continental to yummy desserts and enticing mocktails, and it’s all served in style.

I’m not really qualified to pen a review of a Hyatt restaurant. I barely tried more than 2 dishes, so engrossed was I in trying to take pictures of whatever I saw around me. After what I think was 3 rounds of taking pictures around the restaurant & the kitchen, and 2 rounds of serving myself some of the food, I started catching the drifts of conversations that were going on around me and tried to join in wherever I could – about blogging in general, about each other’s blogs in particular, about Maansi and Purnendu having read Fifty Shades of Grey and not having liked it, about Minoti having a blog which she doesn’t maintain religiously, about Maansi having decided never to read Harry Potter (shocking!), about Hindi literature, about contemporary literature and the latest films.

I’m sure there were various other topics we discussed, but I don’t remember all of them now.

All that I remember from that afternoon is that same mellow feeling that one gets after having spent a relaxed afternoon indulging in discussions over what excites them with really cool, dynamic people.