“You’re not a professional. You’re a just a lad. I’ve good relations with you so I gave you the work. I thought ‘Apna hi baccha hai, thoda kama denge usko’ (He’s our lad, we’ll give him some bucks). But you cannot charge this much. You’re not a professional.”
These were the words of a lady who was the owner of a fairly big and old media communications company in Ahmedabad. This incident dates back to 30th June, 2011. I was to make a website for this generous lady’s company. They first consulted a Web Solutions company on C.G. Road, Ahmedabad who like most of the Web Solutions Company was developing in .NET framework. They gave an estimate of around 18000 bucks which the lady found overtly exorbitant. She called me back; I was working with them as a content writer then. She knew that I was a freelance web designer/developer too. She asked me if I could take up the assignment. Respecting the fairly good relations I had with her and her company, I agreed to do the job in lesser amount. They needed the website up soon. Hence, I didn’t rest a single hour in my vacation after the college’s 1st year and worked on their website relentlessly for 15 days. I showed them the website and they liked it from the core. In a few hours after that, I sent them a mail with the invoice for web development charging 8000 bucks for the work that was estimated to 18000 by another company. Now, this generous lady calls me back after reading the email and says, “You’re not professional. You can’t charge too much. I thought you will get it done in 2000-3000 bucks so I gave the work to you thinking you will be obliged.” I was so fumed hearing this that I cut the line instantly and I said to myself – “What the fuck! You work your ass off for people and they take you for granted. Just because I don’t have a visiting card or a company, people under-value my work, commitment and time? I need to reward my work with what it deserves, with what it is worth of. I am not remaining a freelancer any more. I need a company. My own company…”
It was 30th June, 2011 when this incident happened. It was a good day due to other reasons and hence I left this rancorous spat in abeyance. A few months passed and this idea was still hovering over my small brain. One fine night, in high spirits after watching a video of respected Mr. Ratan Tata, the entrepreneur in me was soaring and coming out. I felt like starting my own venture at that very moment. And what more does an impulsive guy like me need? I started thinking of all possible names for my venture. I then remembered being an RJ for a day at Radio City in 10th standard. There in the sequence my friend Rebecca who was the co-RJ in the same programme asked me as to what will I do in future. As a spontaneous reply to it, I said that I wanted to open an IT company named ‘Golden Bird’ which would be one of the biggest IT COs in the world. And thus came the name ‘Golden Bird’. I never thought it would be a tangible reality someday. I immediately checked for the domain’s availability and it showed available with .com, .in and lots of other popular extensions. I unfortunately didn’t have a debit/credit card with me at that hour to register it. Due to highly relaxed schedules of DDU, it took me two more days to get back on the domain-registration jive.
Thanks to so many domain vendors who save the domain searches in their data mining database, the domain goldenbird.something with all popular extensions was already taken by domain gamblers. Such domain gamblers buy domains which are searched often even if they don’t need. Then they put it for sale at higher rates. You won’t believe some domains are sold for millions of dollars. According to bigrock.com, the domain poker.org was sold for 1 million USD. Coming back to my grievance, goldenbird.something was unavailable and hence I tried modifying the name around the words ‘golden bird’. Finally I ended up in buying thegoldenbird.org and hence the name “The Golden Bird”.
It was somewhere in December 2011 that this happened. After that I took a month to develop the website, write each and every word of the content trying that it seemed utmost ‘professional’ helping me to fetch every single penny that my work deserved. The website was ready by February 2012. After that I got busy in structuring DDU Connect and since then till date DDU Connect has kept me busy round the clock. I developed 3 more websites since then for various entities and The Golden Bird took a back seat till 26th November, 2012.
Don’t know what happened that morning, I just made some final revisions to the website, made a Facebook page for it and let the word go viral. So far, the response has been great. I’ve received quite a few enquiries about Content Writing, SEO and Website Design. It will be on time to decide the fate of my startup.
To end the blog-post, I would like to justify my motive behind starting The Golden Bird. I’ve not started it so that I can charge exorbitantly from my clients in the name of professionalism or company. No! If you follow The Golden Bird’s FB Page, my Web Design service starts from as low as INR 1999 with domain and hosting costs waived off for a year! I’ve started it to give my work its deserved worth and recognition. And also, I feel I can provide fairly better services in area of Web Design (specially WordPress), Graphics Design (I’ve experienced Graphic Designers in my team), Content Writing (I myself am into writing, plus I’ve got writers with me who’ve prepared manifestos and newsletters of MNCs) and SEO and Social Media Marketing (I’ve been into Search Engine Optimization since 4 years and have delivered seminars on the same in some computer training/coaching institutes). God willing I shall be able to extend The Golden Bird’s services to sophisticated Business Process Consulting and Outsourcing on .NET and Java platforms in the years to come.
Thanking one and all who’ve conveyed their good wishes for The Golden Bird and also have encouraged me to execute this step of courage. And let me also thank the generous lady, had she not called me “just a lad”, I might not have started The Golden Bird this early.
If you’ve not checked my Golden Bird, check it here: http://thegoldenbird.org and bless it.
Thanks & Regards,
Anish.
