Wasted 2 years in research
Eager to grow export of my products. I started doing my research, visited export Promotion councils, ITPO, Embassies, Ports, custom house agents, purchased multiple directories and what not.. wasted almost 2 years in this nonsense.My First lesson
To grow, you need Professional and strategic information. Free and cheap information only leads to wastage of time and opportunities.
Fly by night operators
I desperately needed a Professional Agency, Companies I came across just vanished or provided unreliable information.Founded Infodrive in 1996
Overpowered by need and inspired by Power of Internet, I myself started Infodriveindia.com, an online Data download platform and Eximguru.com, an Free exim encyclopedia.It was a super success..
I had clients all over the world with more than 2 lakh visitors every month. InfodriveIndia was a global brand.Only 8 ports released Information..
That too after a time lag of 3 months. stale information did not really helped, So there were huge problems still.Lobbied Govt..
I then began a long struggle for data reforms, formed an association and Lobbied and petitioned Govt and filed court cases for release of information from all ports and on realtime basis.110 Ports with 3 days time lag
Finally after 18 years of struggle by Jan 2014 ...succeeded in getting 110 ports in India releasing information with a time lag of just 3 days.Did I do a good job..?
I interviewed 2000 clients and discovered it was not enough.. only 10% clients were able to increase their profits. Most of the users did not had team, time, tools and conviction to use the information methodically and consistently.Infodrive Profitable Direction not just data.
I learnt my next lesson. Data is useless, Took me two years to create the solution, which works 100% everytime for everybody.
