Hemang Arun Pandeet is the MD and CEO of SiddhiVinayak Astrology Services that runs the Ganeshaspeaks portal. Chennaionline's H Ramakrishnan interacted with him recently.

Excerpts:

Ramakrishnan: You are an Engineering Graduate in Electronics. You had a stint with Hutch for five years. What prompted you to start this service provider?

Hemang Arun Pandeet: Essentially, while I was with Hutch, I had the true Gujerathi's entrepreneural desire to start something on my own. I was looking out for options. I come from a middle class family. I had a budget of about ten lakh rupees to start a venture. I was trying to figure out the best possible venture. Astrology fitted the bill.

Rama: You were interested in Astrology earlier as well?

Hemang: Not really. I was looking at it as a venture. Of course I did study astrology. I studied how it works, what are its limitations, its nitty-gritties etc, from a very objective perspective. I felt it was knowledge-based. It is in demand off line. If I can do something on line, in telecom and if I could give it a structure, it would make a lot of sense.

Rama: You are offering your services through mobile, web, telephony and off line. Which one is the most popular and why?

Hemang: The web and mobile services are equally popular. When we started, web slightly less popular than the mobile service. Mobile comes very close to what is done usually, the live astrology.Web service took some time to catch up. Many people have appreciated that Ganeshaspeaks has a huge amount of free content and free services. For all the paid services, we give out the report within seventy two hours. We have been maniacally sticking to this deadline.

Rama: Why is it that you have limited your off line services to Ahmedabad only?

Hemang: I am looking at the off line area very actively. It requires a huge amount of resources interms of money, manpower and planning. And, it is the most difficult mode to roll out. We are in a position of strength as far as the on line and telecom operations go.

Rama: If I am not mistaken, the off line astrology market in India is about 4000 crores.

Hemang:It is actually 40, 000 crores

Rama:Oh, I stand corrected. And the on line market is just ten to fifteen crores. So, you have plans of expanding it.

Hemang: Yes. The whole idea of Ganeshaspeaks is to become a platform for good astrologers to come and sell their services.And the customers get what they are promised.
Rama:You have 125 astrologers. Which system of astrology do you follow?

Hemang: The Vedic system primarily, when it comes to the call centres. Of course in the web site, we have various other methods also wherein we talk about the tarot, the western style and every other system that is in vogue.

Rama: Do you find uniformity in all the 125 astrologers?

Hemang: Actually no. When we interview them I have found that they are the most non uniform professionals I have ever seen. That is because of the lack of formal education in the field of astrology. They learn astrology from various sources. We endevour to bring in some uniformity and alignment.

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