Another issues with making “plans” is that we get lost in formats and data instead of thoughts and innovation. Don’t plan with excels and MS Project but think hard, really hard.

Your explanation is amazing. I agree with you, Ram & Khushnood Naqvi’s comments. This article is just to provoke people and get inputs about ‘Practical Business Plan’. Thanks a lot.

I agree with you by and large. To use my own terminology, Any plan is based on assumptions and dynamic sets of variables( e.g. target traffic, target no. of clients, tying up with the needed biz partners and so on). And assumptions often are wrong also (dynamic variables) change.

So I guess, if everything else changes, so should the plan. I would say, that ‘plan’ also will take various meanings here. I think a “TO-DO” list for a give day (or a week) is also a plan.

Basically the ‘plan’ should be increasingly loose & flexible, the longer the duration it is for.

We can think of it as a continuum:
At one end, is the plan for a day/week, which is highly specific. In the middle you have, plan for a quarter, which is more likely to not change unless, there is some event (it can be a +ve or -ve event).

6 monthly or yearly plan in a Startup, I guess only serves as a communication between employees as to which direction the company will be moving. Its more of a guideline, for all to align their current-short-specific plans with the long term plan (which is more of a set of goals & vision where we want to see ourselves).

Also, if you see all the small grocery shops, they sell everything for Rs.1 to Rs.10 (e.g. Re.1 shampoo, Re.1 soap powder, Rs.10 Kellogs, and so on). All those which were available only for Rs.20 or more are now available for Re. 1 or Rs.10 – which means that “Bottom of the Pyramid” can buy in smaller quantities of high quality materials. This is what CK Prahalad told and is working today. So, Packaging also does matter in “Bottom of the Pyramid” concept.

Good start to analyzing the need for a biz plan. I sincerely believe you need to have a goal to “succeed” because success is defined reaching your goal! If you don’t have one, either you are a Gnani deriving complete satisfaction from just the effort or you need urgent help! Unless you even have a faint idea of where you want your business to be in 1/3/5 years, you can as well forget about success. Even a goal of staying in business for a reasonable time period is a biz plan

Based on my complete lack of entrepreneurial experience (!), i’ll say that people who understand their business will have the following in mind as part of their biz plan, apart from the three things you mention:
1. Risks and Assumptions

An alternative way to approach biz plan is to iteratively follow these steps:
start with your goals -> design the actions -> estimate Inputs -> Factor in Risks and Assumptions -> Assess output -> Re-assess goals …

The iteration period will depend on your business. The detail of the planning will depend on the amount of clarity you have. Obviously, there is diminishing returns beyond a point and you will realize where that point is as you increase your planning effort.

I still believe – If you fail to plan, you plan to …

Before you start your business you need to understand a few things:

1. Who is your customer and how are you going to approach them? – identifying the target customer(s)
2. How many of them are there? How will they know you exist? What are they doing today without your product/service to help them? Why should they change to use your product service? – marketing/message
3. How much effort will you spend identifying, convincing these prospects and turning them into customers? Sales funnel and cost of sales
4. How much will you charge them? How will you justify, if needed their ROI?
5. How long will it take you to get the first set of customers to make you break even?
6. What help do you need to do 1-5? How much will it cost?
7. How are you going to find that money? Yours? Investors? How will you justify spending that money (lost salary, opportunity cost if it is your own and return on investment and risk if you take money from others)

So you need to think about all these things. 1-4 is a Marketing/Sales Plan. 5-7 is the operations plan. I left out development (if any) plan.

You need to note this down some where. You need to think about it. You need to constantly validate it. You need to change it based on your conversations. Some of your initially assumptions may be different than your observations.

So this is your business plan. A guidepost. It is not one of those things that is full of spreadsheets and projections (even though they may help). It could a one page note. It could be a presentation that you may want to show a few people.

Whatever it is, it is not a straight jacket. It is no different than the design diagrams you draw or high level psuedocode that you write before developing a piece of software. It is a thinking tool.

I never really wrote a business plan. In fact, in most of the cases, I never even thought about all these things. I built a product, gave it away free and when I got enough interested people, started charging. But I would do it different now. In fact, that is what I am doing with my current product. Built a concept prototype, showing it to people and asking questions.

What you have done is dynamic packaging. How is this related to “Bottom of pyramid”? Or to put it other way, what is “bottom of pyramid” concept?

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Dilip: “Reservation should be implemented at lower levels of education like primary & secondary school”

Viru: Do you mean that 69% reservation in PSBP and similar ‘private’ Schools? Already those who can’t afford such schools go to Government school (FYI I studied in Govt school from 6th to 12th).
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Dilip: “Higher education should purely be on merit basis”

Viru: Poor and discriminated students don’t have money to go for higher education. It is where they need this reservation. If it is purely based on merit basis then 10% of the population which is doing well in the society will get 90% of the seats in all Government and Govt aided colleges where the education is highly subsidized. Then ‘rich will become richer and poor will become poorer’ analogy will happen here also.
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Dilip: “..so much less investment in terms of R & D in most arena’s in India, we compromise on merit.”

Viru: In any country, R&D happens mainly in private sector. The investment is less because there is not enough people who can do R&D here. Even if they are capable, they fly to US and other developed countries to earn high salary.

It is not because of reservation but because of Education System in India the R&D is poor.

You bring me the so called ‘Intelligent and deserving’ students whom you think are ‘R&D materials’ and I can prove that they are not even good in ‘basics’ of the education. I can tell this with confidence because I’m a member of The Physics Society (www.PhysicsSociety.com) and I know very well how we produce such ‘intelligent students’. (Please read this: http://www.physicssociety.com/?page_id=2 )

Like you, many people mix ‘reservation system’ and ‘education system’ in India for the cause of ‘poor quality students’.

Can i have an example of Reservations being ‘withdrawn’ after the said duration of its effects being proved in the society. We all know once reservation is dished out, regardless of the time and effectiveness of it, taking it back is a problem.

Also i have not seen any data on how effective reservation has been in uplifting the ‘economically backward’ section of the society instead of helping the ‘creamy layer’ that abuse the facility. What we need is not reservation but affirmative action. Reservation should be implemented at lower levels of education like primary & secondary school. Higher education should purely be on merit basis.

The current caste based reservation in higher education is a mere excuse to a prehistoric education system we tag on to despite its blaring problems. Its self explanatory why we have so much less investment in terms of R & D in most arena’s in India, we compromise on merit.

No matter how much reservation you give a cobblers son will not get to be a doctor as a norm, it may happen as an exception. This is because the state of public education is so bad this person from the deprived section of the society cannot even complete school.