HERE EVERYONE IS BUILDING UPON ONE IDEA, ONE IDEALOGY

This is our (COUNTER)CULTURE where people BUILD before they learn, earn or burn

Refer anybody who moves like us.

Join this inspired and inspiring team of talented mission oriented volunteers chasing a common goal.

We are not flawless. If you find flaws in us, please don't let that influence you more than our motivation to build this odd chaotic company into greatness.

NOROM - No Reasoning, Only Milestones. This is our mantra for you. Practice this.

REACTOR CORE
Nishchal
Nishchal Kesarwani
(Founder & Director)

linkedin link

Read about him in great detail here - nishchal.preseed.in


Nishchal's professional summary before Preseed

Below are photos from Nishchal's various talks that had moved and shaken some humans and ideas, into newer shapes and forms.


Nishchal is not a conventionally educated man. He dropped out of college. However, he is a learned and observant man, but most importantly, he is a meditative man. He learned his early entrepreneurial lessons by leading a team of extraordinary men and women while he was only 23. To know who were the people he led in his first company FloEco India Pvt. Ltd., and what they went on to become, click on their names to know these stars —  Parag Arora(YC), Siddharth Khattri(Google & Techstars), Neha Kesarwani (cofounder www.vertoe.com), Kabeer Jain, Siddharth Yadav, Vinay Yadav, Puneet Bharti, Akshay Gupta, Mustafa Shahansha, Puneet Bharti, Varun Rajput, Atul Agarwal, Radhika Kapoor and Jatin Agarwal. This was his first team, and he was their first captain. He has a knack for identifying talent before it reaches the rest of the world. It may have been painful to have lost that team, and starting from scratch, from that rock bottom. This situation must have had something to do with Nishchal's new found raised bar at Preseed.


Somewhere along the way, Nishchal got offers from companies like 91 Springboard and Embibe, by their charismatic founders to join them as a co-founder and director. He had to politely turned those offers by these game-changing men and women. Nishchal was to be on a mission of his own. Something only he may be destined to do. Today those businesses are at over 200 million dollars in valuation, while Nishchal is building a Chinese bamboo. It is deeper below the ground than above it.


To say the least, his constant advice will help you understand your business ahead from some new standpoints, perhaps, over a noticeable period of time. He will prepare you for your investment/incubation readiness. The slide deck you will make together will help you raise investment. However, that is the least of the reasons he will help you in the making of a right Slide Deck. What is the most important reason he will do this exercise for? This is the process with which he will reveal your company to you with some new standpoints. His questions to you, and your understanding thereafter can make all the difference.


Over the years his $100,000 backed startup failure with the above-mentioned star-studded team in 2010 at his ripe age of 25, to starting Preseed as a community in 2012, up to now, Jan 2014, he often finds himself and his team  advising a lot of business owners and friends, who have come to us seeking his advice on new ways to do business in the new, ever changing age of free information and free tools.
However, he has been so caught up until now in building from the ground up, upon his own ideas listed at Preseeded and that he never formally got the time to start our consulting for such businesses and startup friends out there, even though in his personal capacity, in the past, he has advised and executed for companies like —

1. Libra Mattresses (among the top 5 mattress manufacturers in India) - Nishchal aided them in 2009–10 in improving their brand and design. They give his team's designs the credit for making one of their foam product their best seller.

2. Jeet India Limited (a SME in food and beverage) — In 2009–10 Nishchal with his team (that later placed in organizations like google and O&M) worked on their brand, their packaging, their ERP, their IT infrastructure etc.

3. Invest Care — In early 2011 Nishchal and his team deployed IT infrastructure solutions for them through his other co-founded startup called BizOnTech. (Note-: He dropped out of BizOnTech soon after to split from that team, to focus on something more inspiring, that now is called Preseed).

4. Om Sai Global — In the mean while to make ends meet Nishchal started advising Om Sai Global on harnessing the internet better and graduated to training their teams. Soon after he became the CEO there for a brief period of 3 months as that allowed him more authority to attempt some overhauling in their company. He did not continue thereafter for he was not motivated to serve real estate business.

5. Many more such business consulting stints happened till 2011 December, when he finally decided to not work as a consultant to SMEs anymore, to focus back on what mattered to him the most. What mattered to him the most was building Preseeded, which of course in those days around the mid of 2011 was just a thought in his mind, without a form. For Preseeded, Preseed had to happen first. So he started building Preseed.

His main interest of work always lied in building startups from bottom-up, for that leaves more room for some soulful innovation. He liked to innovate on even the way businesses are managed, let alone the product the business is building. His appetite for technology and good design transcends by far the appetite for technology and good designs in most businesses in India. (Although, ironically, in spite of having the skills and sensibilities, he is unable to devote time to improve designs on his own website :p).

His biggest challenge in consulting SMEs was that they often lacked the creative work force needed to execute what my advise may have contained for them. Hence, it was a fair decision by all regard to stop advising others to focus back on starting up a business that fulfilled his desire to co-build important things that mattered. So, if you are building something important, that leads people to experience greater freedom in his perspective, count him in.


A hand full of action oriented, extraordinary humans that I can make great timely impacts with the help of, through the collective of their startups and our mind.

Thes are some of the projects Nishchal advised or connected, often for no benefits. Just out of his love for entrepreneurs:

1. GameXS.in — Helped them raise their seed investment in 2014–15.
2. Ebikego — Nishchal advised them and made way to have them get a consultant who eventually was hired into their management team.
3. Zipgo — Nishchal connected two entrepreneurs Jitendra and Pritesh for he felt they were headed for a common goal. After a few years, they cofounded ZipGo and ended up raising $55 million together.
4. 91springboard — Connected the cofounder of 91 Springboard, Varun Chawala with someone whose company Varun acquired for his father’s travel business.
5. Co-living and homestays — Spent ample time exploring accommodation industry with a friend Minakshi as a potential partner. Nishchal and Ritesh Agarwal, founder, OYO once lectured together about the entrepreneurship and the accommodation industry in India.
6. LawClik — A firm we are looking to lay our mind and connection to, to make a dent in the legal industry with. The founder is a friend who often collaborates with Nishchal over their legal industry tech thought.
7. eduSquare — I am involved with them as a friend over matters of their growth. Soon we will translate this friendship into a business handshake.
8. www.IVAT.Com — I have been offered to join them as a co-founder. This deal is under negotiation
9. Delhi Furniture Company
10. DIY Guru — An education company that can lead Indian students into contemporary education about mobility. Nishchal is looking to find an investor for them.
11. Potbelly — Its an award-wining restaurant chain of regional food, and it is winning. Nishchal helped them hands on during the first few months of Potbell’s start.

Nishchal's few other attributes we love



Nishchal is here to sincerely help change your status quo, to ensure that you get at least one shot to do something impactfully different. His attributes are as different as the result he wants to create, even culturally. Some of those attributes of his we love while some others find amusing:

1) He rides bicycles and shows up for most ings(and parties) in shorts and t-shirts, needless to say, sweaty and muddy. He doesn’t care about what he is wearing and he also doesn’t care about what you are wearing.

2) He has huge concerns over effective visual communications, especially if you are designing to communicate with your customers for customers won't get into long verbose conversations with you. He feels if you invest on communications right, it would really facilitate his task of ‘GROWING THE COMPANY’. If you are an alive company with some real on the ground traction, sometimes, the first job he may want to get done for you is getting this aspect of your business right. We hope we will find you prepared to invest time and money on this.

Note -: Good designs seek good payments. If you are not willing to pay the graphic designers well, we won’t take the responsibility of your visual communications. Actually this stands true for any vendor services.

3) He may get really really profound and verbose at times, almost on a whim, but that's because he has a very liberated sense of possibilities, passion backed with logics that may take you time to comprehend just like most groundbreaking logics in physics may take time to comprehend.

4) He is even further north of the optimistic side, from other people’s perspectives (especially those who are still found conducting business in traditional ways*). HE IS REALLY REALLY DREAMY, YET SIMPLE.

5) He never thinks not backed by an investor is a problem or a big deal, so you also please stop assuming that it is. It definitely is a means to an end, no doubt, but not having it should not mean you stop the hustle. Be creative in even how you make your ends meet. Where there is a will there is a way. Look carefully at how he is trying to do the same for himself.

Traditional ways :-

A) Poor visual communication.
B) Without harnessing the internet.
C) Unclearly defined roles and responsibilities of the staff.
D) Uninspired management apart from the co-owners.
E) No Business plan.
F) Ineffective or delegation of tasks.
G) Unoptimized resource including the available human resource.
H) Little or no funding.
I) Disbelief and bad payments against exceptional quality.

At PRESEED YOGA these are also some of the aspects we work on.

5) He never thinks money is a problem or a big deal, so you also please stop assuming that it is. It definitely is a means to an end, no doubt, but not having it should not mean you stop the hustle.

6) He will say a point once and in most cases, it would be communicated to you in written words. We already assume that you are inspired enough to take action on the point he has stated. So, don’t expect us to send reminders or follow up till you yourself write to us telling us the status of whatever the point of concern was. He hates to repeat. It's not an ego thing. It's the ‘duplication of the same effort’ that he is against. It is the same as inefficiency.

7) Twitter is one of the best ways to get in touch with him. He prefer it over emails and phone calls.

8) We hate to see his time getting wasted with you. You are not the only business/idea/goal/dream he is dealing with. So, please value his time. Value your time too. If you save him time, he will most certainly make this world a better place.

9) He is critical(but not over critical) and brutally honest. In fact so much that sometimes we lose people for they get offended. But, that helps us in filtering bozos. We just hope you are not one of them who we lose.

10) If you are not being creative and liberal, we are not interested in you.


At PRESEED YOGA these are also some of the aspects we work on.





Nirbhay Pherwani
Nirbhay Pherwani
(CTO)


Nirbhay leads technology at our product, Chattodo



Shantanu Sharma
Shantanu Sharma
Developer


Shantanu leads technology at our product, Todoed



Meet our A team of volunteers on Angellist.


Nishchal is further managed here by his EA(executive assistance) team from Gencosys Foundation and tech team from BlueWitcher.


Nishchal’s further teams are spread over the teams of his respective startups. Those teams can’t be found here on this page for this page is strictly dedicated to the team of CHATTODO, but you can likely find them on the team pages of his other startups.





V
The investor we need must be altruistic. No investor who is not interested in something slow, but absolutely grand, will fit the bill.


  1. Dig him on Google search or/and on his twitter, @naval. He is among the wisest tech investors in the world. Most importantly, he has his heart and mind in the same place as our founder, Nishchal. Exactly the same place. Nishchal is hell bent on getting to Naval Ravikant, for Preseed. Especially given that Nishchal's app, and our first portfolio startup, www.Chattodo.co will be very useful to Naval's portfolio companies, Angellist and ProductHunt. .






Investor
It could be you
(Investor)

We need money now to get to the launch ready version. The app has not been publically launched and hence, has traction in only double figures. Therefore, there has been no need for us yet to have dabbled in cost or revenue projections.

I bring to YOU our need for a minimum of $200,000 to build a 'launch worthy' productivity tool as a chat first application for android as our first step towards this vision expressed as step 0 to step 2. At modest estimates, I envision 1 million users in one year with just that much money.

Chattodo Valuation




$2.5 million, by Berkus method of valuation. Follow this link to know why. Non-negotiable, for if you are investing in us you already feel there is a potential of billions of dollars in value creation. $2.5 million today is 1/1000th of that value creation potential.

I know there are a lot of Sunny Kesarwani's out there, just like, we are all the same, but only in our absolute silence. The moment we start surfacing after our long silence, as individuals, we realize there is just one Sunny Kesarwani, who decided to say no to all opportunities where traction and team were a far easier find. I decided to chase a chat app instead, in spite of the world of potential colleagues that thought this won't work, because the world doesn't need another chat app. Let's understand that one of us out of millions of us can be allowed to break the rule of getting to an investor before traction, because he is building a product that cannot come out as a MVP. Give me a minimum of $200,000 absolutely now and let me have my team full time. In three months we will build the most beautiful chat app in the world. Then give us the rest of money to launch it to the world.

There is no criteria for minimum value we may agree to, for, to have a good man as an investor, a man whose vibe I like, we may be willing to lower the monetary value of Chattodo.

In the short term:

1. 1 year - The next round of investment our value, and hence your investment’s value, will be doubled with just 1000 active users.
2. We can bring back to life the dying billion dollar products like Evernote, wunderlist (microsoft), alive if they acquire us.
3. We have our eyes set on exploring a multi-million dollar part buy-out by Angelist.

Exit in the long-term for the investor - Whats App was acquired for $20 billion in 6 years. This will be too. By who? Facebook. Why? Facebook wants to be number 1 in work collaboration space too, which we will win. Who doesn’t want to own an effective communication tool? Microsoft, Google, LInkedIn to Indian - Airtel, Directi, zoho? However, we desire to go the IPO way


Chattodo needs money.


Be my guide in building the next generation Facebook in the next 5 years.


Do read the description of this video in YouTube.


We have developed the prototype, not the launch version of the app. Why? Like we said above - just imagine, will you use a chatting app in 2017 which looks and feels worse than Whatsapp, Slack, Snapchat or Fb messenger? We won't. So for us to make the presence of our app felt, we must spend at least 100 thousand dollars to actually build a finger licking beautiful product to launch it with the optimism that it will eat up some of the market share of communication away from Whatsapp, FB messenger and Slack. This implies that every waking hour of ours must go into the broad understanding of the market, vision and team camaraderie first; then the development of the app, then the launch of the app, and then following of metrics and somewhere along the way, dabbling in projections will happen. No traction yet for the main mobile app. Why? Why am I still pursuing investment when there is not even a launch? Because this product is about a chatapp. Chatting apps cannot be made and launched as half baked MVPs for the world We need investment to support the team so that our great team can continue to build a great product with some confidence in the captain, that is I, that I will take care of their bread and butter. Not everyone required in this team will have the same appetite for risk as I. Traction we have achieved so far: None. So far we were not chasing traction. We were fighting personal odds and chasing a vision & design that required years of sacrifices away from the norms of chasing traction common to apps with lesser time to chase vision, because they are too busy chasing the incremental changes in the status quo.

Peter Thiel became a billionaire by investing half a million dollars in Facebook before anyone else. Today he runs a fund which has invested in some of the world’s best startups.

Chattodo has a similar potential. You can be an investor in it by investing a half of what Peter Thiel did. This is a matter of a new kind of a social network.



Standard traction and founder coding question?

Why the standard question of traction may not be the most appropriate question for a moonshot innovation in its nascent stage when founders are seeking support from investors to continue their R&D towards launch?

For now, let's turn the lens on another kind of traction- which we have already created- meaningful moments and activities noticed by users, media and the tech community.

I often wonder if my life would be the same inspired life if I was chasing traction instead of a chasing a world changing vision which did not fit the bill for the rule of - build MVP - followed by traction, before I could raise money. Please tell me how I would then change the world for the better?

Start-up land is littered with failure.

Every hack on smart investing will preach that before approaching an investor you must have dragged your feet over the thorns littered over that holiest of grails- TRACTION. For after all what good is a business that does not yield profits? Yet, if that critical question on TRACTION is duly asked and answered before any investment, why the high rates of failure and a subsequent celebration of failure as the norm in start-up land? Could it be that the holy grail itself is flawed in a period where most of our problems have been solved or are perceived to have been solved to an acceptable degree beyond which improvements are not possible in a human, hence imperfect world?

I say YES.

Most start-ups offer incremental changes, but what if you had a moon- shot innovation for a problem the world has ceased to consider as one. Or a problem considered solved?

Moonshots, by their very definition, need to be hurtled until something big is identified. The innovation after that identification might take time, in some cases, a very long time. (Would you not say that the problem you are addressing is a blind spot- that the best in chatting-productivity has been achieved and that is just the start of the moon shot you must make to disrupt existing models of education?)

Read step 4 on www.preseed.in.

Imagine, if you were the only person with the vision that there was scope for yet another chat app for people who were looking to be productive over chats and the rest of the world did not agree with you.

Imagine if you did not know how to code, nor did you have the time to learn how to code. No big deal there. Watch what Sam Altman has to say about this:

Yes, you can’t code, don’t have the time to learn so you hire the best to code for you. It must not surprise you that great people come at a cost. Those great people may have had a life of their own before they met a vision that I imparted to them and wished to be consumed by it but for the mundane but real considerations of everyday living.

More so, one requires neat sums of money for the world will not accept a MVP that challenges its collective blind spot.

So, my challenge is to manifest a never-before vision into a finger-licking good looking product that elicits a collective gasp of “why did we not see that earlier”, from the world.

(To those who repeat the trite Form Follows Function rule, let me quote just one example- Snapchat, that turned that norm on its head. It was a beautiful but tedious product to begin with. It bettered itself over time)

Money, of course- now.

Traction, not just yet.

So, let's let Preseed run in the nomadic boundless 'hippie, no excel sheet, no slide deck, no running after investors, no giving or taking unnecessary repetitive gyan. Let Preseed speak to partners and other vested interests after you, only through substantial results weighed only in millions of clear dollars and millions of users of our products. Until we reach there, we need your understanding.


over next months

I want to learn revenue building with my advisors while working on :

1. Getting my current remotely distributed team under one roof, towards a
greater team efficiency through the motivation of consistent payment of salaries. Most of the money required is to go into hiring the team full time under one creativity inducing roof. Currently our team is not full time, they have a job, and all they ask is some investment in our company immediately so there is some job security they have in terms of salary and infrastructure to do good work.

2. Promotion of our app towards a strong proof of concept or market validation.

3. UI improvements such that the app becomes self-explanatory.

4. Social media feed system development on our app. (It already works on the
current version but not to a point yet, that it can break the compulsive feed
need habit of Facebook/LinkedIn etc. for productive people, however in 4 months
we will be able to achieve this for our active users).

5. iOS will be done to near perfection in these 4 months. Then we will be ready
for growth.

6. Investment from aligned investors with a track record in consumer internet,
such that money be no bar from there on.

7. Product manager and marketing head from a similar successful global company.
(I have been able to hire by inspiring so far. If I have money, I can inspire
and manage the best talent in the world to join me. I can do this job better
than any other job).

8. Equity transfers - 20% to tech team, 5% to design team , 10% to our incubator
www.preseed.in , 3% to advisory team mentioned here, rest to I. Then 20% as ESOP
and 10% to investor.


Marketing after an improved product post invesment

Once this is done my first step of marketing will be to go and pitch it to the best companies in Silicon Valley. Preseeded.preseed.in is being planned and built for the future more than the present status quo.

Reading it will keep your awareness about us, all the way, to the future. We will soo pitch Chattodo to employees of companies like Twitter, Google etc.

For this I will be speaking directly with two of my good friends - YC Almunus, Sachin, who had also serveed as a Product manager Twitter. When that time comes. That is our core focused marketing which I will do myself. Through them I will try to get it into the hands of the employees of those companies. I will focus on that. That is the kind of start I want from my own marketing time spent.

So I build the product and pitch it to employees of top companies. That will be the highest use case of Chattodo I want to focus on that. And just that. It entails, building a great product, and then talking to great people about it.

Also writing to best media blogs in the world about it. I want the start of my personal marketing effort to happen from there. I will stick to what I am good at, writing, I will write a thorough article about productivity and the future of roofless offices and distributed teams. All the way to how ideas can be built without capital and with Todoed and some faith in one another. This article would have the potential to be read by 1000s of impactful early stage entrepreneurs.



WANTED. REAL PEOPLE.



Who is it for?
Definitely not for the faint-hearted. Apply here,
if you have it in you to one day co build a profound product, because that is what is
in it for you. Any short of extraordinaire, and you may not fit the bill.


"Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn". This is how we
live. This is how we work. You could either continue to be where you are,doing what you do,
however stupid and uninspiring it may be, or you could come and help us in
shaking the perception of 'How things are done'.

Before you are onboarded, we would like you to know that we don't compensate you
or us by paying salaries yet? We compensate you and us through equity instead.


A broke man’s leadership.



Testimonials, from the demonstrations of the first version of fb page in its first year, 2013-14.




9/25/2013 0:06:51 Shubham Arora

Absolutely Great shit! More than anything, I got to benefit from what Nishchal had to tell about the Counter-Culture." "I would love to see Preseed getting involved in workshops of scale far larger than this.Also, Akshay was talking to me about a Preseed workshop at BITS Pilani. Lets take it forward!"





REACTOR CORE (Further Hiring)






It will be a bonus if you are a good photographer.

V
Preseed Marketing Head

For the past 2 years we have been putting Preseed together - Now, is the time to look for the final piece of the Reactor Core puzzle - The Marketing Head. If you fancy yourself to be good enough to lead the marketing efforts of a start up for a world good like no other, we would be interested in hearing from you. Maximize the reach, of our products among customers and also, for finding talent to work with - if you are good at marketing and hr then you are exactly what we are looking for. It would be a bonus if you know how to code too.



On internet things can flow. On internet things can grow.

Dear distribution artists,
I understand what goes into putting marketing strategies for viral distribution of the web products. It is more of an art than app designing is.
Lets first discuss that part of the marketing that is about acquiring users only:

We need 1 extra ordinary marketer who could -:
1. 100% organic marketing. We mean it. There will be no money for promotions (even if money is not a problem for us) for marketing at this stage of startups at Preseed Projects. So you got to know the hacks of the web marketing and distribution world.
2. Have faith that this job is the key to helping some really inspired founders and developers in changing the world.
You need to be well networked in the global tech media community and should be active on Hacker News, redditt, Twitter, Product Hunt, relevant media and other popular platforms that can be mighty useful to create an initial buzz. You need to be our exact definition of a new age web hustler. This guy should communicate like a bullet.
If you are this guy, write to me at nishchal@preseed.in with the subject 'Preseed Project marketer'. If I like you, I would offer you a fair stake in Preseed itself for you are important to my scheme of things. 



    So our products have our new partner, Puja.
A print-online journalist and photographer with 15 plus years of reporting experience from across North India and London.
Communication, documentation and qualitative monitoring consultant to international donor agencies, independent national/state Commissions and the Government in India and Nepal.
CAREER SUMMARY written by her :

Since April 2014: As an independent journalist, writing on politics and social justice, my work regularly appears in niche outlets such as the People’s Archives of Rural India, IndiaTogether.org, Grassroots, IANS, Women’s Feature Services, Scroll, Vidura and the Population Reference Bureau

(USA).

Sample projects undertaken as Consultant:

November 2016-October 2017: Baseline and Endline Surveys of Voters Knowledge, Attitude, Practice and Behaviour for the Election Commission of India

July 2017: Recommendations and Observations for Uttar Pradesh’s Department of Women and Child drawn from cross state trainings of DPOs by PLAN, India

May 2017: Assessment and documentation of Most Significant Stories of Change from the Oxfam, Hong Kong supported project ‘Ensuring Violence Free Lives for Women in India’ in Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha

March 2017: Documentation of stories of change from Uttar Pradesh for a WASH project supported by WaterAid, India

January-March 2017: Compilation of Uttar Pradesh’s SVEEP Plan for the Election Commission of India and management of the Chief Electoral Officer’s social media accounts.

December 2016- February 2017: Process documentation of the UP-TSU supported pilot project on ‘Generating Demand for Modern Contraceptives through Women’s Groups’ in UP.

September 2016: Situational Assessment of Nutrition services in the ICDS and Health programs in UP supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

March 2015- present: Education Consultant to Uttar Pradesh’s first State Commission for Protection of Child Rights

March 2015: Evaluation of interventions in adolescent education supported by the Sir Dorabji TataTrust in UP

July 2014: Mid-term review of the European Union supported project on “Strengthening the capacity of tribal organisations to influence policy and ensure implementation of rights-based

legislation”, Uttarakhand

May 2013: Successful development of a proposal on ensuring the right to quality education and other services for marginalised Dalit communities in rural UP through innovative provision of informal education, vocational training and by influencing local and national decision making submitted to the European Union by Find Your Feet, UK

PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT:

Associate Editor with The Sunday Indian

Senior Correspondent with Deccan Herald

Chevening Attaché with The Independent on Sunday, London

Senior Features Writer with The Pioneer

PROFESSIONAL FELLOWSHIPS AND TRAINING:

Fellow (2016-18), Population Reference Bureau (Washington DC) Women’s Edition- Asia

Programme Online certificate course on Global Education: The Human Rights Dimension from The Network University and The North South Centre, Amsterdam

Media scholarship by the International AIDS Society to attend the 19th International AIDS Conference, Washington DC

Lead Speaker on ‘Media and Minorities’ at the National Conference on Media and Human Rights, Bangalore, 2012

Summer course at the European Institute of Journalism, Prague, July 2010 as a Fellow of The Fund for American Studies.

International Seminar on Global Security, 2009: Organized by the Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism (Oxford, UK)

Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, 2009: Scholarship by the Nieman Foundation, Harvard Boston, USA

Fellow, Reuters Foundation: Writing on HIV-AIDS, Bangkok, Thailand, 2009

The Poynter School for Journalists, 2007: Sponsorship for workshop on Roy Peter Clark’s 50 Ways

to Write, held at St Petersburg, Florida, USA

Chevening Fellowship for Young Indian Print Journalists, 2007 sponsored by the British Foreign

and Commonwealth Office, for study at the University of Westminster, London.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS:

Doctor of Philosophy (Education), Ranchi University: A Study of Depression of Adolescents of Secondary Schools in Relation to Self-Efficacy, Adjustment and Academic Achievements, 2016

Bachelors in Education from National Institute of Education (Durg).

Master’s in Public Administration (M.P.A) from Lucknow University with specialization in Management of Rural Development in India and Personnel Management & Industrial Relations

Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, Anthropology and Economics from Lucknow University.

AWARDS AND HONOURS:

SCARF-PII Media for Mental Health Award, 2015-16. First Prize in the online category

Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity, 2012 by Population First, supported by UNFPA

Awarded for journalistic excellence by the state’s Association of Accredited Journalists, 2010

University topper and gold medal winner for MPA

Government of India scholarship holder for postgraduate studies

University Student Council’s Merit award for undergraduate studies

Sir George Thomas Medal for Example and Service (La Martiniere Girls’ College, Lucknow)

Gandhi Memorial Trophy for social work (La Martiniere Girls’ College, Lucknow)

College Captain (La Martiniere Girls’ College)

Head of college social service organization and leader of school literacy campaign.

https://nowhereroads.blogspot.in/ is the link to Puja’s blogs.




V
Preseed Design / UI/UX Head

We value simplicity - in our world we pride ourselves on our design aesthetics. This opening is not for anyone who feel their vibes flow strong with ours, unless you are someone with a subtle design sensibility and leadership fire to inspire a team of designers. Over the past few years we have learned that designers in themselves are a very different type of leader - one we would need to balance out the Reactor Core. There are countless projects related to design going on in Preseed and your role would require you to have hawkeyes over them along with the team of extraordinary talent built around you. If your values resonate with ours - connect with someone in the team, but before that - apply.


Partner the geeks and hustlers and create marketable products by design. This is where extraordinary front end men and women look after those aspects of the product that the users will interact with. This is the team that finally makes Preseed products marketable by design.

This stage for Preseed typically starts when the initial idea is prototyped into a MVP and now it is time for it to start interacting with the users.

Now let me elaborate a very important remark I just made, ‘ The team that makes products marketable by design’, through the eyes of Preseed -:

Step 1 — We get the geeks to hear our ideas, get inspired, code and deliver the MVP of the idea discussed. Until this point they handle the front end as hackers not as designers. This works to speedily get prototypes ready for our testing, may be sometimes even private beta launch because ‘we like to launch fast, even if the design is rather embarrassing’.





Step 2 — The MVP is now ready for the play. Remember it is still not the best UI even though we can imagine it, for we don’t think we want to spend our resources to create the best UI for it yet, for it first needs to be launched to the real users. So once the MVP is tested privately, we open the exact same thing for the users, and then continue iterating till we see some customer traction

Step 3 — This is when you come in. At this stage we have some real customer metrics. This is really when an idea starts looking like it is ready and worthy of more resources. The MVP now has a hand full of users using it, while it had designs that were not the kinds we would like to see in products we use as users. So clearly it is a good sign that the product is making sense even though it is not well designed.

Step 4 — Marketing through design. Do you know what we mean? This is when the products are brought to the team at Ugly MVP. This is when Preseed Web Lab finds its front end artists.

Step 5 — Once we have created a UI that work, we start distributing the product, through media, popular bloggers, relevant forums, early adopters, distribution apps etc.

Step 6 — We keep trying till we either fail or we succeed.

Step 7 — We move on to our next product.

Design is more important than engineering in the consumer web space. One of the problems we see in this space in India is not of that of engineering. In fact India produces strong engineers. It’s a problem of design, for India seriously lacks consumer web ‘design’ sensibilities. The reason stands — lack of geeks here marrying some seriously cool people. We hope that someday we are able to teach that to India through our products.

For now we are looking for just 1 user interaction designer who is willing to commit themselves to Preseed and its products/startups/clients. We won’t pay these designers any salary or immediate compensation. We will instead offer the designers upto 2% ownership in Preseed soon enough perhaps immediately after 3 months of our active working relationship. If you are willing, read this note.

Note -: Preseed is going to command substantial ownerships in a lot of future startups. Even 1% ownership at Preseed may be of a huge monetary value someday.

If you think you could make our already useful MVPs into stunning functional pieces of art. Join us. Write to me right here or at nishchal@preseed.in



You are requested to share design files via www.invisionapp.com Coordinators must ensure files are stored properly. (Brand name) Design folder there should be a folder with the name (New Designs by XYZ) Team must engage in commenting on invision app of the shared files Followed by a mandatory doc report - Nishchal's feedback. Others feedback will also be a doc report in that folder where designs are kept



If you are a UI/UX guy with loads of beautiful works done in the past and are already engaged elsewhere full time. We welcome you here, regardless. You may continue to do whatever you are doing, if you could handle 1 mobile startup UI over a period of 3 months for us from the day you join in, all in your spare time. If all this sounds agreeable, come on board as a 1% partner.


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Preseed Advisors

About 3-6 hours per month of your time. At the end of every month I would send a detailed report of the current status and a set of properly structured questions to you to seek your advise on the key concerns of the Preseed’s next month. We will not bother you beyond this. So in essence please allow Nishchal to take about 36 hours of your time per year.


Dear Preseed Advisors,

Help me in changing the world through Preseed.

What do I need from you?

About 3-6 hours per month of your time. At the end of every month I would send a detailed report of the current status and a set of properly structured questions to you to seek your advise on the key concerns of the Preseed's next month. I will not bother you beyond this. So in essence please allow me to take about 36 hours of your time per year. If you are willing to lend your ears to me. I would be empowered to empower many in return. Your words to me will have a far felt impact. I am willing to share upto 0.5% of Preseed after 1 year of such working relatioship with each advisor I am seeking on this journey ahead.


To apply for above and all other openings at Preseed, click on the 'apply form' button on the menu bar.



OPERATIONS TEAM (Hiring)
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Personal assistance or Co-ordinator Team

"Here we hustle with people who keep the teams actions coordinated saving them from being too scattered. The role of my personal assitant is one of the most important roles in the team - only to find harmony in the chaos of all the labs in the process of being built. For this role, I can train any educated adult to be of assistance to me" - Nishchal.


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Our political and justice related page admins

We need someone who can add more variety of thought or ideology into our page so long as it questions the establishment.If you can handle this, reach Nishchal on his twitter, @nishchal.







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Evangelist Team

This is the team that talks about us, and creates content about us through audio, viideo or written blogs. No movement can cover substantial ground without such passionate word of mouth. Reach Nishchal on nishchal@preseed.in for this opening.







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Preseed Marketing Team

Marketing team at Preseed would be the hackers who maximize the reach of Preseed through their know hows of marketing solutions on the web from Google to twitter all the way to code.



Our Culture


The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.



Those who engage with us. We don't put them on contract papers first before we actually move forward with them because we trust them far more than some crap written on binding papers.

I mean you are going to be one of the stake holder either in the form of a partner, student, intern, volunteer, a potential startup co founder, a hacker, a designer, an investor, merely a fellow being
interested in newness, or a mere critique. So you might want to know us, through what we write here, share or post on our facebook page or various blogs. By now you should find yourself
slightly in tune with what we do and how we do.


We respect people who genuienly seek and care about something. A seeker who questions is always better than a blind follower.




Preseed HR Board

Who we are:

We are a group of new age humans who want (LOVE) to have fun and spread the happiness and love while we work together to make cool products.
All in all, looking at entrepreneurship the new age way. 


What we are:

We help people discover what their driving force is.

We help people dream, and “do the dream”.

Since long, people have been working for money and not for happiness. We want to change that. We want to let people work for and/or on a cause that they believe. 

 

We also make cool (DISRUPTIVE) products that make the world a better and easier place to live in.

 

What we want to be:

A cult that thrives on a counter culture and the belief that money should not be the “driving force” for anything we do. We want to make life changing products and,
in the process, let people discover their “true calling”.

 

Who we want to work with:

People who are passionate, curious and most importantly resonate with our culture.

We take our culture seriously and believe that it is the most important thing and most difficult to change. (meaning)

 

What you can expect from us:

A chance to work and/or lead a potentially world class project.

Understand what it means to be an entrepreneur, discover the driving force that can make you go above and beyond your comfort zone and equity for the project that you lead.

 

What we expect from you:

Trust.

We trust you and let you be the founder of a project that has the potential to change the world.

We want you to return that trust by being authentic in your actions and have absolute faith in our system's design for it to work for you.




Our Mission for our team


We aim to improve the lives of people by providing them the means and resources to become their greater and healthier selves.



Our Core Values



  1. Embrace change
  2. Purpose over profit
  3. Be humble and passionate
  4. Be open-minded and curious


Competitive Advantage


  1. Quality over everything
  2. Intuitive UI and delightful UX
  3. Network effect
  4. Make, break, iterate, and innovate


Manifesto


  1. We are constantly learning, unlearning, and relearning
  2. We respect complexity and strive for elegant simplicity
  3. We are incredibly passionate people determined to make a positive change
  4. What keeps us humble is our childlike curiosity and our willingness to accept the failures. What makes us confident is our audacity to adapt and evolve

Customer Focus
Put customer interests first and make users happy.
Entrepreneurial Attitudeˀ
Be proactive, focus on impact and deliver results.
Continuous Innovation
Always challenge the status quo in order to create a better future.
Quick Progress
Move fast (without breaking things) and keep a competitive edge.
Personal Growth
Be willing to constantly learn and improve as a person.
Team Play
Contribute to common goals first, and put egos and hierarchies last.
Enduring Relationships
Build strong relationships based on openness, reliability and trust.
Enjoyable Workplace
Create a fun, positive and creative environment that doesn’t feel like work.
Social Contribution
Act for the common good and help others where you can.


INTRODUCTION TO DAILY UPDATES PROCESS/protocol AT PRESEED STARTUPS

Welcome to Preseed, where

WE INSPIRE

IDEAS I FAITH I ACTION

Your decision to join Preseed is very inspirational and it clearly indicates your faith in Preseed culture. Here you not only get to perform at the highest level as an individual but you also have a strong team support. Apart from the tasks assigned to you, one of the most important protocols to act upon is the #daily-updates. Every morning, you have to update about your day to be, meaning the tasks you will perform during the day.

At the end of the day you will need to update again on the tasks completed or worked upon and the status of it. this flow of communication will happen via #daily-updates channel on your startup's slack community.

Length of your updates can be as small as you like. Daily update should not be looked as a botheration to anyone. It should be seen as a macro implication.

The daily updates become a reference point of work for the next day.

Imagine Preseed to be operating in a physical work space. Every morning you come to the office. The day begins with a 10 am meeting ritual with the captain. You discuss your daily activities and your day to be. Daily updates help Nishchal keep one individual's work well co ordinated with the 20 others , that collectively impact Preseed. Directly or indirectly. It also gives him a sense of daily activities in our organization. So update daily, regardless. The captain has to know at all times what his team is working on every single day. Daily update is just an unbiased update about whatever one did that day / the previous day, in brief. Planning is definitely important and worthy of an update. The daily update just needs to be a brief update strictly for a layman; when looking at the daily updates day by day, that lay man should feel there is progress. Hurry up. Join Slack. Start Updating!


Minutes Protocol

  • Name of members
  • Subject of meeting
  • Skype/hangouts/facetime/etc or in person?
  • Date must be recorded and in the title of the doc
  • Make and share a google doc with your relevant coordinators
  • Minutes should be written down in bullets and no point is to be missed.


Minutes document would contain the agenda(s) of the meeting as bullets and the discussion which took place for each agenda should be written down in sub bullets.

For example Extract of one of the one of the call MyIdeaList team meeting ,
  • Daily Updates (one of our agenda agenda)
  • A asked team why were they not giving daily updates but B and C had no answer. A asked them to ensure they give daily updates.
  • Even if you guys do nothing please, do not mind posting that you have done nothing.
  • Also what we can share what all we did today? something exciting?
    • (all three are the brief of the discussion which took place regarding the agenda)

The Minutes of Meeting that is done among two or more team members need to be recorded and shared within 24 hours so that there is speed with transparency to fuel our progress. I think the idea of the Minutes are pretty clear but the following are some guidelines.

Minutes will be shared in relevant fb workgroups, not emails unless specified. If you remember my last post about minutes here. I clearly specified its got to be in the workgroup.

However, the conclusion from the minutes would go into relevant spreadsheets.

For Example; So when Aman Thind shares the minute here the coordinators will take the relevant elements the right folder.

Nishchal and coordinators, keep themselves tuned with activities across Preseed through following them on slack channels, through the cc: coordinator@preseed.in , and through minutes on google doc of your significant interactions on other mediums of communication. So sharing minutes doc is so important.


Have someone in mind you want to refer to join the team? Communicate with us and ensure he takes it forward

How are teams built? - Other team members' contribution to finding new talents for their team is paramount. Each one should take upon themselves in growing their teams.
So I am clearly saying if you talent around you with counter culture beliefs that resonate with Preseed values, create introductions of such people with us,
along with your views on what agenda could we build upon with the fellow being you have found for us.
Delegation of work - MOST IMPORTANT Everyone must learn over a period of time of course, 'the art of building their own team'.
The biggest attribute we see in our people is 'how well can they inspire others to work with them' if you need money to build your team then you need to see how Nishchal is building his team.



Communication protocol

The purpose of this protocol, is to ensure that every Preseed Team members’ communication is effective and uniform so that we all follow certain protocols that define our communications well with each other. Key here is to be fast and mindful. Empathise with other team members who you are communicating with. Any questions or suggestions please feel free to share with the Coordinators.

  • Team communication happens on Whatsapp, Slack and Telegram. These are our our work spaces.
  • Communication be instant please. Have the above apps, Gdrive, Gmail and Trello on all your devices so as to avoid delay in replies.
  • People already get a lot of actionable emails to deal with on a daily basis so cut it out with the repetitive formalities
  • For example “ Hi! How are you”, unless you are really concerned. How is the weather etc.“ I mean just get straight to the point.
  • Communication of Preseed team on Slack (even between 2 individuals) is encouraged to happen on relevant ​*team channels / groups*​ and ​*not DM’s*​ so that the rest of the team can be included as well as learn from the conversation that takes place. Another reason is to be able to amplify the reach of messages (when needed) and protocols from Preseed team to reach other teams in Preseed — which in turn maximizes the impact of the talk. Following this will also reduce redundancy on similar matters of discussion. For ex. check this screenshot






  • Voice notes : Every word should be considered, if the sender didn't have more sizeable responsibilities they would have drafted those same words.
  • Usually, voice notes are sent through Whatsapp (Soon we will use Chattodo)

Don’t waste people’s time. Be sharp, get prepared for the meeting. If you’re not gonna make it, let the other person know with enough time (about 4 hours before)


  • First choose between Zoom call or Google meet or anything you guys prefer. Whichever is more convenient.
  • Send a calendar invite.
  • Use your headset for better sound quality.
  • Make sure one of you is taking minutes i.e. Simultaneously typing or taking notes somehow.
  • Be mindful | respectful | punctual



Hack team protocols, generally applicable on everyone working at Preseed.

1. First and most important protocol no excuse would be accepted for any low quality work. Maintain standards. 2. Communication at Light Speed. Team members must acknowledge and respond due diligently. Absolutely no failure in work will be tolerated due communication lag. 3. All hackers working on pages should setup repositories in their own github account. ie. they should host the pages while in development stage on their github account for exchanging opinions in the workgroup as screen shots don’t work. 4. All exchange of opinions on any design while the page is being worked upon should take place on the work group. 5. If any page has been finalized, same should be mentioned and the live page to be shared in the workgroup. ie. the page that is hosted on the person’s github account (the person who was assigned the task) to be shared here before calling it done. After the page has been approved only then it can be hosted on the preseed account. 6. When tasks are complete either on producteev of facebook workgroup update as done. 7. Any Documents made for better direction of tasks should be shared with Yatharth or the Coordinator; Also wait for their inputs. This is a failsafe in case of early corrections. 8. Check out the documents for coding guidelines. 9. all new pages must be implemented/coded in the latest available framework versions. ie. for every new design, implementation should start by downloading the fresh version from getbootstrap.com or the framework being used for laying out the design. 10. Makes pull requests with relevant descriptions. 11. Structure. Structure. This includes updating the commit text on Github Please have a proper structure to the codes. Folder structure: Directory structure to be- 1. assets/css/ — for css 2. assets/img/- for images 3. assets/js/ — for javascript 4. bootstrap/css- for css files which come along with bootstrap 5. bootstrap/js/ — for js files of bootstrap 6. index.html- home page 7. assets/fonts- for fonts 8. Index.html should be the default page.



Feedback response poliy

The purpose of the Feedback Response Policy is important for shaping our product. Instead of reaching out to new users it is important for us to first know our existing users through feedback and serve them really well. We need to know how they're using our product and how we can make the product better suit their needs. Every new feature should have a strong feedback system. Tech team members must know what platform is the feedback coming from, to who, and from who, in the team (for ex. Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Gmail, Freshdesk etc.). Also, keep a close track on- what percentage of feedbacks are coming from which platform. Keeping a track of the platforms will somewhere help while formulating marketing strategies because we'll know what platforms our users mostly use. We would know the unique user the feedback is coming from but for analysis purpose we will have to club the feedbacks together that are similar in nature to see the ones that are common. While some feedbacks may look similar but in reality they might be very different from each other. So clubbing of feedbacks need to be done intelligently. The bottom line is we have to know what the users are trying to tell us, and try to ensure that it's taken care of. This will lead to a healthy business and formation of a company with a strong foundation that has the customer's best interest in its heart. Nishchal’s further teams are spread over the teams of his respective startups. Those teams can’t be found here on this page for this page is strictly dedicated to the team of CHATTODO, but you can likely find them on the team pages of his other startups..



Coming soon



When you follow the crowd you lose yourself, but when you follow your soul you will loose the crowd. Eventually your soul tribe will appear, do not fear the process of solitude.



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