The Tossed Salad

we started of as small as possible with a basic content structure, waiting to grow-in both, team and content wise. now that we have achieved this, we’re planning of re-doing the layout for now. and if time and effort permits we’ll go in for a new look too.

currently we house our articles and reviews under 4 sections. events and interviews come separately. people navigate through the sections chronologically.

now we will have only 4 broad sections with articles, reviews, event coverage and calendar and interviews under each section. each article will be categorised under the specific topic which belongs to a particular section. with this the readers are able to find information relating to their interest faster.

we also plan to add an author’s profile at the end of each piece instead of just their name. will also provide an author’s archive, so they can dig their fav author.

with limited infrastructure, we’re looking forward to achieving a lot. and to top it, i’m the only one to work on the development. i need to understand css grids in a better manner now.

fingers crossed.

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to
you..  This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the
comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your
life.

I  am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is
truly elated.  The first day in college is one of them.  When you were getting
ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be
like, what  would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates – there is so
much to  be  curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that
makes you  feel  truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the
spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the
time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old
twin boys  have  a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on
the bed.  They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy
gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party – several
months in advance – just for the day they will cut their own birthday cake.

I  see  students  like  you, and I still Read the rest of this entry »

Last week Symbiosis Institute of Business Management hosted Endeavour 2008 – The Entreprenuership Meet. It was a 2 day event (14th & 15th Nov) and I wouldn’t say that it was organised to the most.

Just the evening before the meet, I was running helter-skelter just to give one of the organisers the poster of TTS so that we get the right visibility from the beginning of the meet but what surprised me when I reached the venue late next afternoon was the fact that our banner was still not put up. And just the evening before I walked down almost a kilometer in 3 minutes sharp just to hand over the poster to them. The Tossed Salad poster was finally put up at 3 pm on the first day, time at which half the day was already over. Needless to say but people did find the name interesting and innovative. Gee! I am smiling!

All the SIBM students looked so sophisticated with the females in their neatly pinned sarees and the men in their suits  that it was difficult for my eyes to bear. Needless to say that it was only the SIBMians who got the ‘opportunity’ to ask the speakers their questions. ‘Preference’ would be the right word as it was upto the SIBM volunteers to pass on the mike to the audience, 98% of which were SIBM students itself.

The second day of the event started way beyond the decided time due to which half of the things which was mentioned on the schedule was skipped. IST – Indian Strechable Time. TTS got a 8-10 minute pitch which was supposed to be held at around 1 but suddenly just at 5 minutes to 12, we were informed that it was rescheduled at 12 due to which there was some more running around we had to do.

As soon as Sahil completed his not so prepared speech of 10 minutes promoting TTS, people came up congratualting and asking for more details. With added emphasis, the Volunteers who refused to hand over the mike to non SIBM students during the Q&A rounds, did hand over it to us as soon as we asked for it. Hmmm…so basically visibility and knowledge of certain things does give you added privileges.

What impressed me the most for the Mess Food which is free for anyone other than the SIBM, SITM amd SIMC students, who wishes to eat there. The food was yum and the dal reminded me of my MAYO days.

All in all it was a not so good-not so bad experience. As it was the first time SIBMians to host such an event, their faults can be considered but because they are considered to be one of the top 10 B-schools in India some amount of prefessionalism was definitely required in their attitude, after all it’s not only about wearing appropriate clothings for an occassion.

The Tossed Salad as we dearly know it, is Founder, Sahil Khan’s baby.

I remember when he had conceived the idea and what he went through till its birth. It was more like a woman giving birth to her first child; only that it happened in 1/3 of the time (read 3 months).

He started off with projectGRAY (before TTS got its name) with a PPT to convince people as to why they should join the concern for their own benefit. With less than 10 people to listen to what he had to say in a small classroom is a pretty rough start. You do expect many more to turn up and when they don’t, it is unnerving, discouraging and disheartening. In spite of the  turnout, Sahil stuck to his  decision to give birth to his baby.

I have been a distant on looker during the whole time – from being conceived to its birth – and the whole thing has given more labour pains and any real child would. From gathering writers, editors, designing the baby, encouraging readers and more than anything convincing them as to why they should write even if there is no pay.

Its birth took place on an eventful day in July 2008 in SCMHRD, Pune and no one would have been happy than its mother that day. Even though it doesn’t help Sahil to earn even a single penny, he has made working for TTS worthwhile because for a change in this money hungry life, one should do something which one likes, more so enjoys doing and hence learning from one’s experience as well.

hey folks…we were covered in today’s DNA pune edition.

doing a story on the 3 startups from SICSR, they featured us also with myself being qouted.

check out the link for the epaper edition. [http://tinyurl.com/6lsejb]

you may also click on the thumbnails below…

here are our regulars

rijoy bhaumik

ashwin mehendale

vedabrata basu

amanjit khanna

varsha lakhani

shohini sengupta

saiyona ghosh (keeps trying her hand at writing too…)

sahil khan (ya, dats me…i wish i was actually a taster…dipping my fingers n tongue into delicacies…)

we would also like to welcome Mohini Bishnoi, Swati Jain and Ashwini Dayal to the team. congrats.

with single digit number employees, trying to get pageviews in one day what we are currently getting in one month, seems difficult to us. especially when there is no one on strategy, marketing. we’re only writers at the moment.
looking for people who would be interested to experiment in online marketing, etc.
just asked one mba student to join us. and he is interested. let’s see what gain out from him.
people have mentioned that we have quality content. what do you guys think?
any ideas that we might have from you. do let us know. cheers.