Escape - Paperback

by Neeraj Bhatia (Author)

It's a story about ordinary people who get together and do something extraordinary, Life hadn't treated them well, but they decide to take life in their own hands and not only do they manage to change their own lives, they take every common person in the world with them. They create a business model, which changed life of millions and in process they are offered billions, the big question in front of them was what was important? Billions of pounds or billions of people!! Veer Ajmera, a sales manager for an Insurance broking firm in one square mile, London meets Heidi Truman, an American freelance research journalist, who is part of the panel which independently adjudges the awardees for Insurance industry, where he is one of the nominees. She finds Veer the man she always had looked for and thought didn't exist. He finds her much more than what he had imagined his dream woman to be. After couple of meetings with him, she decides to back out of her wedding with a senior journalist Dirk, who she lives with in USA. While he is waiting one day at a station for Heidi, he comes across a homeless person Pukhraj Thapar, who was his biggest client in the past but had lost everything and had disappeared. Dirk is enraged because he loves Heidi even though she never did, and had helped her financially and somehow convinced her to marry him, but when she walks out of the relation, he makes it difficult to even go back and work in USA. Veer, while looking at news of Egypt, London riots, and Arab unrest combined with what Cheryl said. comes up with a unique business idea around creating a social networking site around the issues in the world which could connect people, where a local issue could have global audience, where people could express their opinion on things that matter. A platform where world could come together for a reason, unrest could be taken from streets and pressure could be increased by a global support to a cause. Unique point in his model was that unlike other sites, he had thought about immediate revenue stream for the site. He shared the idea with Pukhraj and Heidi, who got very excited by it, they also decide to get Jonathan, Cheryl and Pukhraj's ex Secretary Jackie, who had worked in city for 15 years in similar roles and was looking for a change as she was bored to death. All 6 of them meet up, discuss the idea and agree to work together on the project. Pukhraj comes up with a unique idea of raising the initial capital through micro financing unit model. The idea is to get it to a stage where it becomes attractive enough for big player to buy them off in 3 years' time. They decide to call the site GSM - Global Social Mission. They are able to raise some money and partner with an Indian IT company to get the site live and also partner with a small, but capable marketing company, which helps them to launch the site with very successful events in Goa, London, and New york. The site starts becoming very popular and in a year, they manage to make it a concept, which even governments can't ignore. Two major super powers decide to use this platform to reach out to people worldwide by helping them, instead of just aiding governments of developing countries in order to use their influence worldwide. Pukhraj also adds another dimension to the site. He realised that most of the issues are due to unemployment, lack of opportunity and corporate monopoly. He launches a global co-operative model, using micro finance model for initial capital, to set small units of unemployed literates coming together to start their own enterprise and also includes support of corporate world and government to it The site gains ground and crosses 200 million users. And finally the day comes when they are offered 6 billion for their exit. Would they exit?