Pixels Multimedia: Thrown In at the Deep End

Managing Pixels Multimedia and running the business wasn't easy, but I quite enjoyed the challenge. Every day brought new surprises, new issues to resolve...

In an earlier post, I wrote about the passing of my grandfather and travelling to Jaipur to pay my last respects to him. In the meanwhile, things were steaming ahead at work; within one week of my coming back from Jaipur to Lucknow, my small team and I launched Pixels Multimedia. After about 10 intense weeks of groundwork, we were finally open for business. Unfortunately, within a few days after this, I got a call from Mr Nautiyal, in whose house I was staying, and went to meet him. He said I’d have to vacate the house, since he needed the room that he had given to me. He said he was very sorry about this and I reassured him that vacating the house was not a problem, and that I’d find another place and move out soon. The story continues here.

After being asked to vacate the house where I’d been living for the last 10 weeks, I was slightly worried. I needed to find a room quickly – a neat, clean room that I wouldn’t have to share with anyone else. Preferably one that had a PCO and a few inexpensive eating joints in the vicinity. And a safe parking spot for my trusty old Yamaha RX100, which was now beginning to show its age. I spoke to a few of my friends about this and one of them – Shobhit – immediately offered to let me stay in one of the two houses that his family owned in Lalbagh, near Hazratganj. In the house where he offered to let me stay, his family had an office on the ground floor, while the first floor was unoccupied. I was very grateful for his offer, and one room, with an attached bathroom, was given to me. I moved out of Mr Nautiyal’s house in Indira Nagar and took my stuff to Shobhit’s house in Lalbagh. This house was around 9-10km from Pixels Multimedia, which was in Gomti Nagar. But I used to love riding my RX100 in those days and quite enjoyed commuting from home to work and back. I used to get to work early and the morning rides used to be insane, with me wringing out every last bit of performance from my bike’s two-stroke 100cc engine. Downshifting aggressively at every opportunity, accelerating hard, cornering as hard as I dared and riding as fast as possible – the 15-20 minutes of riding to work in the morning, when there was not much traffic on the roads, was pure bliss.

At work, we were beginning to get some students who were willing to pay us good money. I ensured that anyone who enrolled at Pixels was provided with a clear picture of what their chosen course would entail, the software in which they would receive instruction, course duration, number of classes and fee structure etc. There was no ambiguity, no gray areas and no attempt at upselling – people were welcome to learn only what they wanted, and nothing more. We tried to create a relaxed, pleasant vibe where there was no pressure, and if a computer was free (that is, nobody else was waiting to use it), students were welcome to practice as much as they wanted. I enjoyed spending time with the few students we had, and often pitched in with the teaching bit. I’d been spending hours and hours daily – every single day – learning Photoshop, Premiere, Corel Motion3D and 3D StudioMAX, and had become quite handy with these applications. I enjoyed discussing the intricacies of these applications with eager young students, many of whom had dreams of someday working with one of the big animation studios in either Bombay or in Hollywood.

One fact that I had to acknowledge and adapt to was our limited budgets. While the big franchisee operations advertised heavily in the local newspapers and on large billboards across the city, we simply did not have the money for that. Our advertising was restricted to small-sized units in the classifieds, and the distribution of pamphlets and brochures inserted into newspapers, for which Tabrez and I worked closely with major newspaper distributors in different parts of the city. Equipment was also limited – we only had two computers that we could actually use. The one that my friend Prasoon had given to me was a basic, low-end machine that was not suitable for running power-hungry software. We were struggling to cope, since the money we got from students was barely enough to offset the expenses – monthly rent, electricity bills, salaries and miscellaneous other overheads that kept popping up every now and then, sometimes most unexpectedly. In order to make some extra cash, I took up whatever work I could find – vector illustrations, basic design work, and some audio/video editing and post-production work, which I managed to get from some small, local studios. A minor accomplishment was tying up with NEDA (New & Renewable Energy Development Agency, a UP Government undertaking) for providing multimedia training to a select team of their staff members, for which I had to travel to their office twice a week. My father happened to mention to one of his friends, Dr Sandeep Kumar, who was a senior doctor with King George’s Medical College (KGMC), that I was looking for extra work on the side. Dr Kumar was kind enough to give me some work on behalf of KGMC – I taught basic animation skills to some trainee doctors, who used those skills to create medical-related animations for their own presentations. I also worked on creating a few medical-related animations for KGMC, which was quite challenging but exciting work, and paid well. In all of this, I was able to keep the ball rolling at Pixels Multimedia.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing though. For one, my motorcycle – a 1988-model Yamaha RX100 that I had bought used, in 1990 – was approaching the end of its useful life. For six years, in Lucknow, Bareilly, Baroda and again in Lucknow, I had used the bike hard, literally riding the wheels off it. And now, the old RX100 was ready to give up the ghost. Something or the other went wrong with it almost every other day, and I was tired of making frequent visits to the workshop, where I sometimes wasted hours in getting the bike repaired. Ultimately, it all became a bit too much and I sold the bike. Now, I had nothing to commute on and had to resort to using public transport – shared three-wheelers that were referred to as ‘tempos’ in Lucknow – to get around the city. This was not entirely convenient, since one had to sometimes wait for a long time before getting an empty seat on one of these slow, noisy contraptions. And then, once you got dropped off, you inevitably had to walk a fair distance to get to your actual destination. This was fine during the winters but could be incredibly bothersome in Lucknow’s blisteringly hot summers. I had already spent a lot of my father’s money on setting up Pixels Multimedia and did not want to ask for more, hence buying a new scooter or motorcycle was out of the question. So public transport it was, for the time being.

The other thing was, Tabrez was getting increasingly restless. At the time when the two of us had been working towards setting up Pixels, he had a fair amount of work – he did a lot of running around and supervised the painters, carpenters and electricians who worked on the premises. But once Pixels was actually inaugurated, Tabrez gradually seemed to lose interest in the proceedings. He was not computer-savvy and had no interest in learning any computer-related skills. Now, that was fine. What we were doing at Pixels only catered to a niche audience, and not everyone can or should be expected to be interested in things like animation and image editing etc. But the question was, what was he going to do at Pixels? Since he did not have a background in computers and had no knowledge or understanding of the software we taught, or the services we were able to offer, he was unable to go out and speak to corporate customers and get paid work from them. Seema was doing a good job in her role as counsellor. One of our software instructors had left to join a competitor after a few months, but the other one was still there, and I used to pitch in to help with the teaching whenever required. I wanted help with business development, but Tabrez wasn’t able to handle that, so there was very little left for him to do at Pixels. Both of us, when we met back in October 1996, had been very excited at the prospect of working together. But I guess we were simply swept away in that excitement and did not carefully think about the roles that Tabrez would be able to handle once the business got going. And now, we had an embarrassing situation that needed to be dealt with – we had to address the issue of Tabrez no longer having a useful role to play at Pixels, but none of us was willing to bring it up first.

In the meanwhile, my Tau ji, who was with Jaiprakash Associates and was based in Delhi, happened to come to Lucknow for a day or two, on account of some official work. He was staying at company’s guesthouse on Sapru Marg and asked me to meet him there in the evening, after work. I reached there late in the evening, exhausted after a full day’s work and having switched between three different modes of public transport in getting from Gomti Nagar to Sapru Marg. Tau ji, who noticed that I seemed tired, asked me about work and if everything was going well at Pixels. I explained to him the challenges that we were facing but added that things were still manageable and under control. After all, that a new business venture would run into some trouble was only to be expected. He then asked me where Pixels Multimedia was situated and how I had travelled from there to the guesthouse. I told him that I’d had to sell my motorcycle a few weeks ago and that I was currently using public transport to get around. He asked me how much a new motorcycle cost, and I said a new bike would cost around Rs 40,000. My Tau ji, an incredibly large-hearted man and who had earlier helped our family on many occasions, got up without a word and went inside his own room. He returned after a minute with a fat, white envelope in his hand and handed it over to me. Buy a new motorcycle with this, was all he said. I was overwhelmed with his kindness and with his concern for my comfort and wellbeing. Quietly, I accepted the envelope. Tau ji then asked me if I’d like to stay back for dinner, but I could see that a few other people were waiting outside to meet him, and politely declined.

Getting back to my room in Lalbagh, I rustled up a quick dinner of bread and butter, a banana and a few biscuits, followed by a bar of my favourite Cadbury’s milk chocolate. Usually, I went to sleep the minute I hit the bed, but that night sleep did not come that easily – I kept tossing and turning for hours, thinking about Tau ji’s largesse and trying to decide which motorcycle I’d buy in the next few days. The next day, I decided that it was time Tabrez and I spoke openly and had a clear, transparent discussion on the future course of action in the context of his role in running Pixels. I called up the landline phone at his house but was told that he was not at home. After a quick breakfast of chai and a sweet bun slathered with generous amounts of butter, at Sharma ji tea shop nearby, I left for work, not knowing there were a few shocks for me in store on that day.

The story continues here