Digital Family Issue 89 November 2013 November 2013 | Page 3

6

1 to 30th November 2013

In Focus

Live Free with Ahoy!

E

ntrepreneurship was never
looked upon as a preferred
choice by Goan youth all
these years. But offlate one can see
a pleasant change in this attitude
with many Goan youth starting
up innovative ventures of their
own. Ahoy! is one such venture
set up by a Goan IT professional ,
Vinayak Burye. Instead of treading
the commonly followed path of
working for a fat pay packet in
the IT Industry this IT Engineer
preferred to start up an enterprise of
his own by leveraging IT to deploy
his service oriented business. In
a chat with Digital Family Burye
talks about his new venture and
the way IT helps him further it.
What’s the Live Free concept
all about? And specially the name
Ahoy!
- The concept is to make life
easier and more comfortable by
providing people with efficient
service.
We recognize
and
understand the daily hassles and
hence we promise to take care of
the problems while our customers
can only sit back and relax. The
words "live free!" have been used
with that context. And the word
'Ahoy!' means 'hello', so we use it
to kind of introduce our venture
to the people by saying 'Ahoy!
Home convenience'. So it basically
introduces the home convenience
system to people.
List the Way and means by
which a customer can approach
you.
- The customers can call our
service number 8975606119 and
request the desired service by
providing their information like

Goan Youth Brings Essential Services at Your Finger Tips!

name, phone number and their address.
Customers can also send an SMS, with
breif
description about the job they want
to get done and we get back to them
within no time. They can also reach us
by visiting the official website, ‘www.
ahoyhc.com’ and they can get all the
information about
the services we provide at their
fingertips.
How is Information Technology
helping you further a service
oriented business like Ahoy!
- Being from the IT sector,
has helped me the most to utilize
the knowledge needed, to create a
system which handles a business like
a huge number of people would be
working together to create one.
Working in the IT for 6 years
made it the biggest advantage for me
to put in everything I learnt there, to
create something huge. Making a
system that can handle several tasks

like keeping records, evaluating the
money transactions, Tracking the
customer preferences, keeping track
of each and every progress made in
the business, is definitely not easy. It
was a great effort for me, but having a
good experience from the Information
Technology made it easy.
How do you leverage social
media for your business?
- In the initial few days of ahoy!
home convenience, I had put up an
advertisement on Facebook to make my
friends aware and soon people knew of
my home convenience. Later, I made
visiting cards and pamphlets which I
slowly started circulating in the local
newspapers, which spread awareness
about the service
I provide, rapidly. Once I was
sure people had started recognizing
the brand, I further went and made a
website, 'www.ahoyhc.com' which
exhibits all the services the system
provides. The website makes it easier

for the customers to contact us and
also place their orders.
Despite
being
from
the
lucrative
IT
engineering field what made
you plunge into business of this
type?
- Doing a business like this
was not pre-planned. It was only
when I started noticing the daily
hassles and realized it was quite
a task to find reliable workmen
to get home based work, like
carpentry, plumbing, etc, done.
It was only then that I thought of
starting a convenience system that
can provide all the services that we
need regularly at reasonable prices
and with efficient workers. I hope
to achieve my goal and give the
best service to all my customers.
What’s your advice for those
who want to start their own
ventures?
I can say money, is like the
cheese which Jerry, the mouse
(from Tom and Jerry, the famous
cartoon) keeps running after. We
all are like him. We all want to be
successful, we all toil and want to
be able to live respectfully in the
society. But doing a business is like
the mouse trap, which we see in the
cartoon.
Every time that a mouse trap is
planted in Jerry's way, we see him
dodge the trap easily and manage
to get the cheese ??M??????????)?????????????????????????)????????????????????=??)???????????????????????????)?????????????????????????)???????????????????????????)??????()
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