The Wedding Photographer

I am a blogger and blogging has given me the tag of writer. With the help of blogging, I became the co author of six degrees - game of blogs. I have written that book with twenty three other bloggers. As the title suggests, it was a game of blogs in which bloggers of India were divided into thirty teams. We were given the characters. We had to web a story around them. It was played in three rounds. Every round lasted for one month. Every month ten blog posts were submitted by each team. After the third round my team (By Lines) won as we wrote the best story. I became an author as top three stories were published in a book called six degrees.

Now, I want to go to the next level. I want to write a book on my own. I know it is very different and difficult from writing a blog. To write well, you have to read a lot. So I read a lot. I am not an avid reader. So I complete only those stories which has the capability to hold me till the end. I prefer debut writers because I learn a lot from them. There are some top publication houses in this country which can give your debut novel a dream start. Thus I pick up the books from those publishers mostly. Next book in my reading list is The Wedding Photographer. Penguin Books India (one of the top publishers in India) is launching another fresh and talented debut author Sakshama Puri Dhariwal. 

Sakshama Puri Dhariwal was born in Delhi and brought up in the era of 1990s' Bollywood era. She has done an MBA in marketing from S.P. Jain, Mumbai and spent several years as a brand manager in industry-leading companies like Snapdeal, Hindustan Times and Tata Teleservices. Sakshama has worked on marketing campaigns that have won awards at Cannes, Effies and Goafest. She reads romance novels the way most people eat chocolate-fast, often and constantly craving more. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and their netflix subscription. Sakshama is making a fantastic debut with wedding, love, photography, scandal and cricket.

The story revolves around two characters Risha Kohli and Arjun Khanna. Risha Kohli, a journalist lands next to handsome young real estate tycoon, Arjun Khanna on a seventeen-hour-long flight. Risha has been moonlighting as a wedding photographer and her next assignment is Arjun's sister's wedding: the most talked about social event of the year! Arjun doesn't trust journalists and suspects that this smart, sexy and incredibly spunky girl is only using their mutual attraction as a ploy to invade his privacy for a newspaper scoop. And Risha, unaware of Arjun's personal demons, is worried that this irresistible boy's unnerving behaviour will jeopardize her biggest professional gig so far. What follows is a rollercoaster of snarky quips, sizzling chemistry and simmering drama amidst a big fat punjabi wedding.

The plot of the story is very interesting and I feel it will hold me till the end.

Moreover writer has included cricket in this story so it will be a perfect summer read for me. It will be available in stores from May 1 but I have pre ordered it on amazon.

IndiPR

IndiBlogger. One of the best blogging websites in India. It has taken blogging to the next level in this country. IndiBlogger is a forum which brings digital marketers of the country under one digital roof. IndiBlogger connect companies with bloggers. Companies are using blogging as a marketing tool for a long time now but they didn't had an access to these many bloggers earlier. Moreover India is going through digital revolution. Internet is a trending tool for infotainment (information + entertainment) these days. So if you want to launch a new product or start up a new business today, you need digital marketers to create a buzz about it on internet.

Normally celebrities appoint PR to promote themselves as a brand but here IndiBlogger is offering a PR to companies. It is called IndiPR. And this PR promotes business, products and services. Businesses of various sizes, including start ups, can now promote themselves via IndiPR. Actually, PR in IndiPR stands for Press Release. When any product or service is launched in the market, a press release is usually the first order of business. IndiPR is launched to make it extremely simple for business to get their Press Releases published by top bloggers. The press releases will be published by relevant influencers in less than 72 hours.

The process of IndiPR is very simple for business. Business only needs to upload their press release on IndiPR.com. Then 'Automated Influencer Targeting Engine' or 'AITE' will proceed to accept the applications from bloggers. After accepting the applications, AITE will automatically shorlist the bloggers on the basis of internal ratings and rakings. Then the shortlisted bloggers will do their research and publish their articles. And you can do this with a starting budget of just USD 150. Through IndiPR.com top influential bloggers will create a buzz about your product, service or start up on the internet. Imagine, your product or service going viral on internet in this digital era. It will be a win win situation for your business.

Identifying and targeting influencers is a cumbersome process. You as a marketer spend lot of time in trying to identify and contact influencers. With IndiPR.com, you don't have to worry about all this because the system just needs your press release. Everything else will be done by system on its own. As I said earlier it is a win win situation for your business. Not only business it is equally good for influencers. It will help influencers to generate fresh and new content everyday. In future IndiPR.com will carry more than just press releases. Influencers will be able to get creative assignments, get invitations to attend the trendiest launch events etc. In short, IndiPR is a great platform for both Businesses as well as influencers. I (as a citizen of this digital world) think it will take digital marketing to the next level.

#WT20 collection

First quarter of my online business has ended. If I evaluate it, then It has been a pretty slow start to my business. I am designing and selling products on the websites like freecultr & postergully. And these websites (Freecultr & PosterGully) are already competing with the shopping websites like flipkart, snapdeal, myntra, jabong & amazon. Moreover freecultr and postergully are brands and as brands, they are competing with the brands like Puma, Nike, adidas, UCB, Reebok, USPA etc. This is the competition on bigger level. If I talk about internal competition, then there are more than 13000 designers on freecultr and some 4000 designers on postergully. Considering the competition and my qualification in designing and art, I should be grateful that atleast I have got a start but there are lot of fellow designers whose qualification in art and design is similar to me. Most of them are performing much better than me. If they can do it then why can't I?

I am a Marketing gradute and considering my earnings of first quarter, I must say that I have failed as a marketer and I accept this brutal defeat gracefully. I begin my second quarter this month and hopefully I will grow my business in this quarter. Along with the second quarter, the season of cricket has also begun. So this month, I have designed the products keeping #WT20 in mind. Big brands and designers come out with winter collection or summer collection but here I present The #WT20 collection.

Freecultr

I have put five designs on freecultr this month and only one of them is on cricket. Three out of five designs are in blue shade because two of them are the older ones. I have made changes in them. Remember the two tictactoe tees in my collection? I have made changes in them. Earlier X and Os were spreaded on 75% of the tee but now they are spreaded all over the tee. Third tee in blue is an illustration which shows that a spaceship has just landed on the planet. Apart from them there is one pink tee on which I have applied texture. From the first time I have played with texture. I hope it has come out well. Fifth one is designed keeping t20 cricket in mind. T20 cricket is all about aggression and the aggression ends with agony. Thus fifth tee is expressing agony in grey shade. Now the important notice. You can buy these designer tees for children as well. Earlier tees on freecultr were only for men & women but now they have started producing same for children ageing 5 to 14.

PosterGully

On postergully, I have played with #WT20's logo, have made my own logo and have picked some players who are going to make an impact in #WT20. I have designed many products around these three things. Actually it is the variety of products which completes my #WT20 collection.

Clothing

In clothing there are Men's tees Women's tees and unisex tank tops. You would have seen lot of tees with variety of players on it but I bet you these tops are different. This collection is more vibrant amd colourful. I have made two variants of most of the designs in this collection and it just adds few more colours to the collection. You want to know which players I have chosen? Well, see them in the pic below.

Tech Stuff

In tech stuff, there are mobile cases, mousepads & laptop skins. In this there are no two variants or something but they will make your gadget look awesome. And it is not like that it is made only for #WT20. Most of them is designed in such a way that it will look good on your gadget even after #WT20.

Wall Arts & other products

In this there are posters, premium glass frames, wall clocks, cushion covers, coffee mugs, accessory boxes, coasters, notebooks etc. and these products completes my collection. If you are a cricketmaniac then you can decor your whole house or your room from this collection.

I am working on this collection since february. I had lot of ideas but either they were not clicking or they were not coming out the way I wanted. As it is a collection made on the theme of cricket, I needed players names, logos, flags, sketches etc but there were lot of copyright issues around them. Thus it was the most challenging collection for me as a designer. I was about to launch it in the first week of March but I was not satisfied with it. So I worked on it for few more days and finally it came out the way I wanted. It is not that this collection is only made for #WT20. I have named it #WT20 collection only because I am launching it at the time of #WT20. Most of the designs in this collection will look classy always. Whether it is mugs, t-shirts, laptop skins or anything. You can freely express your adulation for the players or the game with this collection. So explore it and start flaunting your love for the game.

The Fantastico Journey

I signed up on twitter in 2010. I made my account on twitter only because of Yuvraj Singh. I adulate Yuvraj and in 2010, I watched on one of the news channels that Yuvraj tweeted so and so thing. I remember, I had Nokia 3110 classic mobile phone at that time and I signed up on twitter from that phone. At that time twitter was new in the market and most of celebrities had an account on it. It was an alien land for me. It was very different from facebook. Facebook was in trend at that time. Every social media platform was compared with facebook during that period. I had an account on facebook and I was pretty much active on it.

Twitter was going over my head in the beginning. What is tweet, re-tweet, favourite?  I had no idea. First thing I understood about twitter was following and followers. And Yuvraj Singh was the first person whom I followed on twitter. I started spending more time on it as it was an interesting concept. After following and followers, the next thing I learnt on twitter was how to reply. Along with Yuvraj, I am a huge fan of Gaurav Kapur as well and he is also on twitter. In 2010, Fifa world cup was about to begin and the football in that world cup was designed by a sindhi guy. Gaurav Kapur gave a complement to that sindhi guy in sindhi on twitter. Gaurav Kapur's sindhi was not correct in that tweet. I corrected him by replying to that tweet. In this way I learnt to reply on twitter. That tweet was re-tweeted by Gaurav Kapur but at that time I was searching the mean of re-tweet in dictionary.

I was comparing twitter with facebook but soon I realised that it is very different from it. Slowly, I got the idea about tweet, re-tweet and favourite. Once I understood the concept of it, I started spending most of the time on it. I forgot sharing on facebook and started tweeting everything. It was difficult to adjust to 140 characters thing but I got used to it as well. It was a beginning of a great journey then. I started expressing myself on twitter. I started sharing everything on twitter. I was expressing myself on twitter freely because I was not judged by anyone on that platform. People on it were completely new to me.bI was like a free bird on it. Slowly, I learnt to use hashtags and I started using them.

Over the period of time twitter has grown a lot and along with twitter, I have grown as well. I have won contests on it. My tweets were on air during the live matches. It has provided the much needed expousre to me. I have posted more than 14,400 tweets so far. I am soon going to complete six years on twitter. Through out this journey, I have expressed myself freely. I haven't made too many followers in these six years (only 276 followers) but I have enjoyed every moment on twitter. Now, I am emotionally attached to twitter as I express all of my emotions on it. I am not worried about the number of followers as I am enjoying being on twitter. It has been fantastic journey so far and hopefully it is going to be fantastico ahead.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

**Image credits: https://twitter.com/

The Fantastico Collection

There is a pattern in which I work on my collection. Like to present the designs of February, I work on my collection in January. To make my collection awesome, every month I am working on some product or theme. In december, I concentrated on hoodies. In January, I worked on wall decor products basically wall arts & wall clocks. While making wall arts and wall clocks, I got the designs for byproducts like coasters, accessory boxes, laptop skins etc. Apart from that I have worked on some tees as well on freecultr. While designing the products I think like a normal middle class guy and keep his buying preferences in mind. Now let me talk about the designs which I have made for February.

Freecultr

On freecultr, I have made three designs for February. All three of them are pretty different from each other. I haven't worked on any theme or type this month. First one is in dark blue shade and it is featuring an alien. In that tee, an alien is coming out of the spaceship thinking there would be cameras. It is a sarcastic tee. There is a message in it which is presented in a fun manner. Second one is simple dotted tee. There are dotted shirts in the market and people love to wear it. So I thought I should try the dots on a tee. After checks this is the second thing I have tried on a tee which people normally find in shirts only.

Third one is in green shade with 'back to school' written on it. We all miss our school days and we crave to go back to school. So third tee is designed to express that how badly you miss your school days. Freecultr is all about expressing yourself. So wear what you want to express with freecultr.

PosterGully

As I mentioned above on postergully, I concentrated on wall arts and wall clocks mainly. In January, I was able to create and upload 21 different wall arts & 17 wall clocks. Most of them were made with words. There are phrases, motivational qoutes & messages to choose from. Among these wall arts, there are few wall arts specially made for valentines this month.

There are few abstracts as well which I found on internet. I didn't change anything in them but just made wall arts & clocks out of them. All the abstracts are those which we love to keep as wallpapers on our gadgets. I thought If they can look good on the walls of our desktops, laptops and tablets then they will definitely look good on the walls of our home. While making these wall arts I got few byproducts. I mean to say that I made products like laptops skins, accessory boxes, serving trays, coasters etc from the same designs which I made for frames and wall clocks. I think now my collection looks pretty good and it has some fantastic designs.

Best Selling products of the collection

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

**Images used in this blogpost are taken from collection on PosterGully and my tee store on freecultr. 
http://www.freecultr.com/store/rmgapparels
http://www.postergully.com/collections/paresh-godhwani

Impact Of The Journey (God's best gift to me)

On 28th January 1990, two individuals tied themselves in a relationship called marriage. It was an arranged marriage. It was a beginning of a new journey for them. At that time there was no Facebook so there was no announcement on it. That Guy and girl neither changed their relationship status nor they uploaded the pics of their honeymoon trip. It was a quiet start to their relationship. The guy was a banker and he lived in a small house in the colony near airport with his mother and a younger brother. While the girl was from a big family of four brothers and a sister.

The guy had lost his father at very young age so he was very mature and responsible. While the girl had enjoyed her childhood but she was trained well in all the household works. After the marriage, girl started to make a connection with guy's family. She accepted guy's family like her own family. Thus in few months time, girl mixed herself into guy's family like salt into the water. On 24th May 1991, the girl gave birth to a boy and became a mother. After that the couple's bond got stronger. The couple was leading a perfect life but with the passage of time their family was expanding.

In few years banker's younger brother got married and in couple of years of that marriage he too was blessed with baby boy. Then on 12th August 1996, banker was blessed with another baby boy. As the family was getting bigger it was getting difficult for them to live together in that small house. So in the year 2000, banker decided to buy a new house but he only had only Rs. 25K for that. He decided to take a loan from his bank to buy a new house. He bought a small house in the same colony worth Rs. 3.5 lacs but that deal got cancelled. The owner of that house changed his mind after taking the token amount. Search for new house began again after that. It ended in the society 3 kms away from that colony. The house in that society was worth Rs. 8 lacs. It was way out of his budget.

He took the loan of Rs. 7.5 lacs not from his bank but from other sources. It was the unanimous decision of the couple to buy that house. They bought it and in july 2000, they shifted in that house. It was the biggest test of their relationship. There was huge mountain in front of them which they had to climb. The guy was earning only Rs. 10K per month and he had to pay off Rs. 7.5 lacs. It was a huge amount at that time. The lady had never seen such financial crisis in her whole life. The banker became tensed. He had no idea how long will it take to pay off such a huge amount. Moreover He had responsibility of two children who were in their growing age.

The banker lost sleep from his eyes. The only support he had was his wife. The lady stood by him in that crisis and together they started climbing that mountain. They started saving more money by cutting their extra expenses. They made their lifestyle very simple. Banker started doing part time jobs. They saved every penny they could have during that period. With all the hard work and discipline they paid off that money in 6 years. Financial crisis taught them a lot in life and their bond got strongest by the time they came out of it. After that their journey became merrier. In 2013, banker gifted a car to her wife on their 23rd anniversary. Recently they renovated and decorated that house in a way they dreamt of it to be during the crisis.

There were other ups and downs as well in their life but those were nothing in front of that crisis. Today they have completed 26 years of togetherness and they are going stronger than ever. Now how I know about this story? Well, I am their elder son. They are the god's best gift to me and there is huge impact of their journey on me and my brother.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Designs - January 2016

This month I finally feel that I am growing as a designer. I have added two new platforms in my designing portfolio. In total now I am designing on four platforms. Two new platforms on which I have started designing have tees and hoodies. December was dedicated to designing. In December lot of stuff was designed for this month and I received positive response on that. Every month I am trying to bring something new in my designs. In this month's designs as well I have played with few things to bring in the novelty. Let's have a look.

Freecultr

On freecultr I tried new bases last month. This month I have further added in those bases. There are five designs this month on freecultr and none of them are on plain bases. There is a sailor's tee in off white with sailor's sign all over and a boat showing the act of sailing. Second tee is on the game of chess. It is made on the black and white checks which I added last month. It has the message which chess teaches us with couple of characters of the game. Third one is floral tee with flowers all over it. Fourth tee has 3D boxes in white on it. While in fifth tee I have added sun on the cloudy base.

PosterGully

Since last month I am saying that I have the most varied collection on PosterGully. I am saying that on the basis of variety of designs in my collection. Cartoons, geometric designs, planets, quotes, logos, aliens, bikes, cars, animals, monuments, famous characters like joker and simpson everything I have in my collection on PosterGully. As the temperature was touching new lows, number of hoodies was touching new highs in my collection. There are as many as 35 hoodies in my collection at the moment & there is different design on each one of them. Apart from hoodies I worked on wall arts, mobile cases, tees, tops, laptop skins, cushion covers, wall clocks, coasters, accessoriy boxes etc. I told you December was dedicated to designing.

Freshmonk

I came to know about it on facebook. It has different concept all together. On freshmonk tees and hoodies are available for limited period. In other words there are limited edition t-shirts and hoodies of one design. I have made three designs on freshmonk so far and those three designs are related to batman, cycling & blogging. We all love batman & we all know he is a dark knight so one of the tees related to batman is displaying that. Among other two one is for bloggers and other is for fitness freaks showing the importance of cycling. Again all these t-shirts and hoodies are limited edition so it won't be available for long. So if you want buy them then grab them quickly.

Dream Store

Dream store has the same concept as of freshmonk but the only reason I started designing on dream store is because of cricket clip arts it has on its platform. The only design on dream store is related to cricket. Cricket is all about agony so here is a t-shirt and a hoodie showing agony in cricket.

Products of the month

As months are passing number of products making it to the products of the month are increasing. In december following products got thumbs up from you.