Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 6)

Sramana: Did you keep your jobs the entire time?

Phanindra Sama: Yes, we did keep our jobs. One member of our team did the majority of the work developing the technology. Randomly he stopped going to the office because he was so obsessed with building the software. He would get a call from the office asking where he was, and he would have to come up with something. He would stay up very late at night working on it, and then get up early the next morning and work on it again.

He then applied for a long period of leave from his office, and after a bit more time he resigned. For all practical reasons, he was the first person to resign. I was very sure that we should not do anything unethical. I felt it was incredibly unethical to work on your own company while you were at the office. I went to my manager and told him what I was doing, and I offered to resign if he felt it was unethical in any way. My manager did not feel that there was any problem, and that as long as I was not building the same microchip or using the intellectual property of the company that there would be no ethical problems at all.

He then told me that he was personally concerned about me. He did not understand why I would want to start building software for bus operators when I was doing so well at my job. He felt the bus operators were rowdy and harsh. They had a reputation for being rude, not paying taxes, and not being the type of people you would want to build a business around. He kept reminding me that many of them went against the government and could get shut down on any given day and just vanish. He did not see that as a good home for sophisticated technology.

I had confidence, however, because when I met these bus operators they always spoke very good English, and their children were getting quality educations. They all had mobile phones.

Sramana: So you felt you could relate to them and communicate with them?

Phanindra Sama: Yes, exactly. I felt comfortable with them. Reality was very different than perception. My boss and I had a good conversation and I expressed my confidence in the bus operators. He told me he was still worried about what I was doing, but gave me his approval and had me talk with an HR person to make sure there was no problem with what I was doing. The HR person did not have any problems with it either as long as it did not affect my productivity at the company. The HR person also confirmed that it was completely irrelevant to the work I was doing for them.

That was a big eye opener for me. A lot of entrepreneurs have a fear that they will not be allowed to do their entrepreneurial projects while they are still employed at their company. That safety net is required. You can’t completely resign and go off on your own.

Sramana: I agree with you completely. Bootstrapping the early stages of a company is often a concern for entrepreneurs, and I constantly say that one way to bootstrap is by maintaining a paycheck from another job while you do your entrepreneurial work on the side.

Phanindra Sama: Absolutely. Tell your manager or HR what you are doing. You don’t want unethical actions. You will have more confidence. If it is a problem, then you have to find another job. You don’t want to be called a thief.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama
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