antopatrex-blog - Tumblr blog

[antopatrex-blog]

A B.tech Proposal!

anto patrex

This is no ordinary love story. You are about to read the most crazy yet blissful experience in my college life. Love is a roller coaster of emotions but wait until you get rejected, it feels like you hit on a solid block of concrete travelling at 200 km/hr.

The spice up stage!

“I don’t usually fall for girls but when i do i mean it!” well i am just sarcastic, the law of attraction pulls a man to a women when he sees one no matter how tough he is, or else he has to be gay. Hopefully for me once i saw this young beautiful girl walking down the stair of my department, They say that a 6th sense develops when you are in love and how true that is, i could feel her presence every time she entered my premises without even looking at he. Her flawless wavy hair, silky smooth skin tone and the eyes of an angel took my breath away every single time i looked at her. When ever i used to hear her name my heart used to pound louder than the steam engine!

The mystery stage!

Well like any other guy i felt horribly embarrassed to even speak up to the girl of my dreams. Therefore i asked for signs! from GOD himself to speak up. Though stupid i will list them out to you.

1. Firstly I imagined that on a particular (awesome) day if it would rain in the last period and if the professor would give a surprise test and she must be walking with her particular friend of hers down the right stair of our floor, i promised myself that i would stop the test in the middle and run out to her. Fucking impossible to be honest but it did happen and i was a coward not to speak to her that day.

2. This time it was even worse, i said to myself that if i was called out of the class alone, and the rain stopped as i sighted her and if she walked with a specific set of friends towards the canteen on that particular hour i will definitely propose her. But what could be the odds right? it did happen and i didn’t utter a word to her.

3. This was my final sign! I messaged her on face book to wait for me near the canteen and promised myself that if she had done that and unfortunately had to wait for me at least 20 minutes just to see me i would definitely propose her!

The Moment!

The final sign happened exactly the same and she waited for me around 20 min as her lab hours had finished early that day. Well she made the first move to be honest “Anto i waited for 20 mins but that’s alright, now what did you have to say?” I couldn’t hear a word she said as i was blinded by her beauty, she looked even more stunning when she came closer and her voice was that of an Angel’s.

Somehow i struggled back to my senses and proposed her! It felt like a 1 ton stone taken away from my head. She smiled, she freaking smiled at me and for your info that’s when i was taken up to heaven among the angels of love. Still smiling she said that she had expected this from me and asked me to walk with her down the road, after a series of long conversation she said “Anto i haven’t developed any feeling for you yet and i don’t know if i will, but if i do i will definitely say it to you within this 4 years” The cheesiest way to reject someone right? (even that pain was cute like hell) But if you ask me, well at least i gave it a shot! and honestly at some point i still miss her.

Behind the scenes!I have no clue about this still, but just after our conversation the whole college came to know about it and every single senior and junior that i knew came and asked me ‘how did it go?’ and surprisingly later that day i had to punch one of my classmate on the face for spreading some rumors about us. It was confessed between us later that brothers don’t fight for girls. Now when i turn back its all just awesome memories.

[antopatrex-blog]

How 4 crore INR! slipped through my hand on a single month in B.Tech

This is not just another fantasy that went across my mind, rather its a story of how me and my friend Thomas caught the big fishes in the business world with our simple Idea!

It all began in a Movie theater!

It all started with the Avengers Infinity war movie . I was rushing through the crowd absorbing all the sweat to my cloths and breathing the cigarette air. That’s when i felt the vibration in my jeans pocket, i didn’t pick the phone at the moment not knowing that i could have missed a golden opportunity. Pushing my way through and getting the 2 tickets was like a miracle! As the movie was about to start my phone started ringing again, with not much interest i attended and to my surprise it was a call from the sales executive of Federal Bank,Cochin asking me the details of our product i-Bo (a portable water purifying bottle). At that moment i realized that i had caught the golden rabbit but still i was doubtful. I mean who can possible discuss such a huge deal with some college student right?

Several days after talking on the phone we were invited to the Federal bank head quarters in Cochin to meet the bank’s depute director. I took my royal en-field and rode over to Cochin early morning along with Thomas. The morning breeze had made the day even better and thankfully it didn’t rain much. We had arrived before time and waited nervously and patiently ready to convince the director that we are the right people they had chosen. On the other hand as it was our first business consultation we had a lot of grooming problems, my hair was all untidy and i was feeling crazy.

That day we demonstrated them our product and luckily were able to convince everyone in the office. But one fucking problem that we had is that we had to make 100,000 i-Bo’s in a MONTH!! imagine how crazy that was, i mean we are just 3rd year students with no production experience, the fun fact is that even aqua guard had not sold that many filter bottles in years.

Now you will ask Anto, how on earth did you manage such a huge order? Well there is this theory ‘what is impossible in India the Chinese will make it possible’ I tried every manufacturer in India and none of them had replied positively, at that time i had called the Chinese and they said “okay sir, we will help you please give us the order” how great was that! I had to kill my patriotism at that moment and move on with the Chinese to get things done. I am sorry to break it to you but “most of Make in India is Made in china first”

We received prototypes and various models from china with excellent designs. We had given our technology to them to make the product as unique as possible, which was a foolish idea as later we came to know that patents have no value in china and they replicate every stuff they see and that did happen!

Fun fact: Every dealer that we had connected in china had jason in their name and that was really mind twisting for us.

Several days after we signed the historical (at least for us) Lamaara-Federal deal which was for an amount of 4 CRORE Rupees (as one bottle costed 400 Rs). It was all going well until suddenly an unexpected twist took place, The banks in Kerala hit a sudden economical breakdown and the federal bank had to reduce the offer to 3 crore! After a lot of meetings and discussions we told them that if we had taken away the features like catalog and other attractive features from the bottle we could reduce 100 Rs in a bottle. The bank agreed to us and we started working on the deal. Several days later we visited the bank and in the meeting they told us to reduce the price further to 2.5 crore, We were hopeless at this moment, the fact that as it was our FIRST product we couldn’t compromise on the quality! By this time we had already shifted our production to Chennai.

It was one of the longest train journeys of our life, we had traveled all the way from Adoor to Chennai to arrange the deals with the manufacturers. It was hectic considering the heat and transportation difficulties in the city, but somehow we had managed to do what we went for. On the train back home me and Thomas ate our dinner and slept, few hours later in the middle of the night the phone vibrated again in my jeans pocket, the call was from the director of federal bank and the voice said “We are really sorry, we wanted to help you as a growing start-up but due to the critical conditions of the bank we will have to hold the deal for now”

[antopatrex-blog]

20 flights and 50+ destination in a year of B-Tech all sponsored!

You might be saying, Anto how on earth is this even possible? Though i had no clue how all this happened, one thing is for sure that it all started with a small dream. Let me take you on my humble journey on how i did this in the 3rd year of my college.

The Dreamer!

I was born in a nuclear family. If you are an Indian you might think “how unfortunate!” as most of you have lived with your entire families. I agree that such a life can offer tons of fun but my life offered me a unique path of loneliness that later helped me develop my special talent of dreaming. I was a dreamer my entire school life, there were times that i even imagined of conquering the world! I know that you didn’t come here to read my bragging so lets get to the point!

A college dreamer is always a loser,probably because they spend their entire day dreaming either in the dorm or in class rooms. specially with the huge fucking load of assignments and seminars which need to be completed on impossible dead lines. Secondly the college girls like a Do’er and not a dreamer ;)

At one point in my college life i thought to myself like any other fellow that i cant just sit on the bed and dream some stupid shit rather its time to do something in life. That’s when i met my Co-Founder Thomas cyriac who was partially a nerd but also an awesome guy. I will write about our entire startup story in another blog. We did a lot of projects together. My habit of applying in every mail that i receive got us a fund of 2 lakh Rupees with which we traveled 50% of our journeys as business tours.

One best way to get money in college is by networking to as many people as you can, i used to talk to every business person, shopkeepers and kids of business people which allowed me to establish good connections with them. Then i used to take orders for college events and programs and told them if i could get stuff done at a cheaper rate i get to keep some profit. That way the professors knowingly assigned me the purchasing tasks and i used to clear the bill with them. I collected that money for some travel.

Now you might be wondering how i got sponsored trips? well my college or other organisations used to send me for events. firstly i made sure to them that i was worth a shot or else i would kick their asses if they wouldn’t send me (jk). While my peers imagined of trips to Goa i got chance to enjoy 3 day trip to Goa completely sponsored by INK talks and guess what we got to spend our days at Grand Hyatt! and i had a good company of friends with me just to booze up ( well after all whats the point of going to Goa and not getting some alcohol in your system).

Another way is by cheesing up your relatives a bit, it can be hell of a task but in the end its worth it. I got 3 trips sponsored by my uncle in Canada all under a month just because i promised him that i will take care of my little cousins throughout the trip, Of course i got them in trouble sometimes, but i bribed the way out of it by buying them fried chicken.

I have also raised money by winning inter college competitions like during fest and stuff. But most importantly i lost several amount of money by investing in MLM(multi level marketing), so folks avoid that!

#travel #business #student