YMII

From Your Man In India (YMII) to GetFriday: A.J. Jacobs’ journey from ‘then’ to ‘now’ of outsourcing

When A.J. Jacobs wrote about Your Man In India in his article My Outsourced Life almost twelve years ago, he said, “I REALLY SHOULDN’T HAVE to write this article myself,” playfully flaunting his newly-found solace with outsourcing. Starting a valuable relationship with YMII’s (Your Man in India) virtual assistance back then, A.J. Jacobs found peace of mind by outsourcing his personal life. YMII, before handing over its virtual assistant services to GetFriday, offered remote executive assistants to handle personal tasks as per the requirement of clients. In this case, the client was A.J. Jacobs, a proficient writer for Esquire Magazine, who wanted an extra helping hand to tackle his everyday personal tasks.   Working or rather living with a virtual assistant for more than a decade helped him  acknowledge his good decision. In fact, this was what he asked for when he first approached YMII. “I would like to hire a talented person or people in India to take care of as many of my life tasks as possible. I would be interested in having someone to answer my calls or emails. Nothing would benefit me unlike a remote executive assistant”. The virtual assistance providing organization tried to plan out how to fulfill Jacobs’ requirements, as he was literally trying to outsource his personal life to a company in India. The year was 2005, and it was tricky to implement the process as nobody had tried anything like that before. However, the team decided to go forward with the experiment and soon it proved to be a huge success. At first, one YMII(Now called as GetFriday)virtual assistant was assigned to help Jacobs over a couple of months and a few slips here and there did happen. The cultural differences sometimes proved a bit difficult to sort out, but as days progressed, both the parties got along well. Wondering how to choose a virtual assistant? All you need to do is look for 8 soft skills. In the first mail regarding work, Jacobs had mentioned that if everything went well, he would do the publicity for the company through his magazine, Esquire. Soon enough, as a couple of months passed by, Jacobs was truly pleased with YMII. His article, featuring YMII, was published in September 2005 on Good Morning America, the American morning television show. It was on this note that GetFriday surfaced as a new separate brand and started to provide impeccable virtual assistance to anyone who needed it. Moreover, as Jacobs saw the creative and extreme functional capabilities of the virtual assistants at handling tasks from overseas, he bonded more with the company. Asha and Naveen were his VAs who helped him perform his everyday tasks like answering morning mails, effectively handling unwanted invitations, even ordering birthday gifts for his wife. Here are six things even you MUST outsource to a virtual assistant. Jacobs felt he was living with his family who understood him really well. They were also like a constant support system, giving him positive feedback on every task he did. He found solace as he outsourced his personal life as he had ample time to reflect upon his career, goals and passion. For more on A.J. Jacobs’ life and his nine extraordinary experiments on himself, please check out his brilliant book, My Experimental Life “It’s very strange to have people working for you while you are asleep. But it’s great. It’s not a time waste while I am drooling on my pillow; everything is getting done,” he said. In fact, in a video shot almost 11 years later, Jacobs congratulates GetFriday for their well deserved success, and playfully points out that if he would have asked one of his assistants at GetFriday to make the video, it would have been done sooner and much better.  

From Your Man In India (YMII) to GetFriday: A.J. Jacobs’ journey from ‘then’ to ‘now’ of outsourcing Read More »

When A.J. Jacobs wrote about Your Man In India in his article My Outsourced Life almost twelve years ago, he said, “I REALLY SHOULDN’T HAVE to write this article myself,” playfully flaunting his newly-found solace with outsourcing. Starting a valuable relationship with YMII’s (Your Man in India) virtual assistance back then, A.J. Jacobs found peace of mind by outsourcing his personal life. YMII, before handing over its virtual assistant services to GetFriday, offered remote executive assistants to handle personal tasks as per the requirement of clients. In this case, the client was A.J. Jacobs, a proficient writer for Esquire Magazine, who wanted an extra helping hand to tackle his everyday personal tasks.   Working or rather living with a virtual assistant for more than a decade helped him  acknowledge his good decision. In fact, this was what he asked for when he first approached YMII. “I would like to hire a talented person or people in India to take care of as many of my life tasks as possible. I would be interested in having someone to answer my calls or emails. Nothing would benefit me unlike a remote executive assistant”. The virtual assistance providing organization tried to plan out how to fulfill Jacobs’ requirements, as he was literally trying to outsource his personal life to a company in India. The year was 2005, and it was tricky to implement the process as nobody had tried anything like that before. However, the team decided to go forward with the experiment and soon it proved to be a huge success. At first, one YMII(Now called as GetFriday)virtual assistant was assigned to help Jacobs over a couple of months and a few slips here and there did happen. The cultural differences sometimes proved a bit difficult to sort out, but as days progressed, both the parties got along well. Wondering how to choose a virtual assistant? All you need to do is look for 8 soft skills. In the first mail regarding work, Jacobs had mentioned that if everything went well, he would do the publicity for the company through his magazine, Esquire. Soon enough, as a couple of months passed by, Jacobs was truly pleased with YMII. His article, featuring YMII, was published in September 2005 on Good Morning America, the American morning television show. It was on this note that GetFriday surfaced as a new separate brand and started to provide impeccable virtual assistance to anyone who needed it. Moreover, as Jacobs saw the creative and extreme functional capabilities of the virtual assistants at handling tasks from overseas, he bonded more with the company. Asha and Naveen were his VAs who helped him perform his everyday tasks like answering morning mails, effectively handling unwanted invitations, even ordering birthday gifts for his wife. Here are six things even you MUST outsource to a virtual assistant. Jacobs felt he was living with his family who understood him really well. They were also like a constant support system, giving him positive feedback on every task he did. He found solace as he outsourced his personal life as he had ample time to reflect upon his career, goals and passion. For more on A.J. Jacobs’ life and his nine extraordinary experiments on himself, please check out his brilliant book, My Experimental Life “It’s very strange to have people working for you while you are asleep. But it’s great. It’s not a time waste while I am drooling on my pillow; everything is getting done,” he said. In fact, in a video shot almost 11 years later, Jacobs congratulates GetFriday for their well deserved success, and playfully points out that if he would have asked one of his assistants at GetFriday to make the video, it would have been done sooner and much better.  

GetFriday

GetFriday Making its Presence Felt

We have been in the outsourcing arena since 2005 and have served 15,000+ clients spanning 30 countries. We are an outsourcing firm in India, which was thrust into the limelight when “The Four Hour Work Week” hit the New York best seller list and the client numbers jumped substantially. We offer a wide range of virtual assistance services. We have been listed on various media and news outlets in the past and here is a quick overview about it. We were featured on ABC in 2005, and there was in detail explanation of how AJ Jacobs Esquire’s editor at large was able to outsource much of his life to us in Bangalore. The tasks ranged from answering e-mails, making calls on his behalf, ordering groceries and buying movie tickets. At one point we even read bed time stories to his son. Jacobs called his experience with outsourcing as inexpensive. Our assistants went above and beyond their assignments and even thought of new projects we could perform for Jacobs like taxes. We were on Kiplinger.com in July 2006. The author mentioned us as concierge services and used our help in doing numerous things including researching his stock investments, shopping for wireless routers and much more. All this he was able to do with a monthly investment of USD 300. He was pleased with the rates which we offered. Wall Street Journal also carried a news story in 2007 and talked about the actress Michele Greene who employed one of our virtual assistants to act as her personal assistant. Ms. Greene paid USD150 a month for 20 hours of service. The article mostly talked about how Asia is becoming the outsourcing hub and catering to works ranging from graphic design, math tutoring, web development, book keeping and more. CNN the popular American news outlet had featured us on their website in 2007 and stressed on “outsourcing of life” in their article. It tells about how outsourcing was considered suited only for the upscale office worker, now has come within the reach of the ordinary person on the street. It tells of the ease with which we can arrange for your laundry to be picked up and delivered at your doorstep at the click of a mouse. With GetFriday (Sister Concern of YMII), the customer can call or email their overseas virtual assistant (VA) and can get almost anything done, from helping to draft legal documents to more everyday tasks such as paying bills. We were featured in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2008, where the experiences of Mr.Hui with GetFriday are mentioned. It has quotes from a senior manager T T Venkatesh, about how the company does not take up anything illegal or work sounding bad in taste. P Sunder, the company’ s CEO quotes about how Indian start-up companies are handling business upwards of $200 million in the personal and small business services. USA today featured us in 2008, the article mentions about Tim Ferris and his book “The Four Hour Work Week” and how someone who earns more than $30,000 in the US can afford to hire a virtual assistant. The author mentions about the pay-as-you-go plans and monthly plans from GetFriday keeping in mind the needs of the customers. The Philadelphia weekly in 2011 featured us as a story on outsourcing with exclusive attention on GetFriday. The feature talks about the experiences of Norman Wilson with his virtual assistant at GetFriday – Atul. The article goes on to talk about how such a set up between customer and company seems to blur the lines between the employer and the employee. There are comparisons of the virtual assistant being like an advanced machine or an avatar from a video game altogether. It is an elaborative piece which poetically deals with the journey of outsourcing. Thomson Reuters featured us in a video on their site in 2013. The video gave an exclusive look into our offices at GetFriday in Bangalore, talked with assistants in their working space. It went on to talk about the virtues of outsourcing. PR Newswire featured us in three consecutive years – 2014, 2015 and 2016. Another place where we got featured was Arabianbusiness.com, where Thomas Shambler, a journalist, purchased a 10-hour package and hires a VA called Pallavika. Being a journalist he outsources the task of scheduling his interviews with us. He also asks her to do basic research for an article he was writing and asked for gifting ideas for his father. Overall, the client found the service to be good and meeting his expectations and compared the service to a real person ready at his beck and call. Just like these articles GetFriday is also featured on the website timedoctor.com, where we are among the top virtual assistant companies from across the world in 2017. Various other news platforms also speak about GetFriday’s outsourcing success stories. Outsourcing companies are being used by people for quite a long time now. But, now they are being used by people for innovative tasks. As time goes by we will see the industry maturing and more people using a virtual assistant with less novelty. With the difference in the exchange rate of currencies, it will become more attractive for individuals in the western world to outsource their errands to associates in the developing world.

GetFriday Making its Presence Felt Read More »

We have been in the outsourcing arena since 2005 and have served 15,000+ clients spanning 30 countries. We are an outsourcing firm in India, which was thrust into the limelight when “The Four Hour Work Week” hit the New York best seller list and the client numbers jumped substantially. We offer a wide range of virtual assistance services. We have been listed on various media and news outlets in the past and here is a quick overview about it. We were featured on ABC in 2005, and there was in detail explanation of how AJ Jacobs Esquire’s editor at large was able to outsource much of his life to us in Bangalore. The tasks ranged from answering e-mails, making calls on his behalf, ordering groceries and buying movie tickets. At one point we even read bed time stories to his son. Jacobs called his experience with outsourcing as inexpensive. Our assistants went above and beyond their assignments and even thought of new projects we could perform for Jacobs like taxes. We were on Kiplinger.com in July 2006. The author mentioned us as concierge services and used our help in doing numerous things including researching his stock investments, shopping for wireless routers and much more. All this he was able to do with a monthly investment of USD 300. He was pleased with the rates which we offered. Wall Street Journal also carried a news story in 2007 and talked about the actress Michele Greene who employed one of our virtual assistants to act as her personal assistant. Ms. Greene paid USD150 a month for 20 hours of service. The article mostly talked about how Asia is becoming the outsourcing hub and catering to works ranging from graphic design, math tutoring, web development, book keeping and more. CNN the popular American news outlet had featured us on their website in 2007 and stressed on “outsourcing of life” in their article. It tells about how outsourcing was considered suited only for the upscale office worker, now has come within the reach of the ordinary person on the street. It tells of the ease with which we can arrange for your laundry to be picked up and delivered at your doorstep at the click of a mouse. With GetFriday (Sister Concern of YMII), the customer can call or email their overseas virtual assistant (VA) and can get almost anything done, from helping to draft legal documents to more everyday tasks such as paying bills. We were featured in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2008, where the experiences of Mr.Hui with GetFriday are mentioned. It has quotes from a senior manager T T Venkatesh, about how the company does not take up anything illegal or work sounding bad in taste. P Sunder, the company’ s CEO quotes about how Indian start-up companies are handling business upwards of $200 million in the personal and small business services. USA today featured us in 2008, the article mentions about Tim Ferris and his book “The Four Hour Work Week” and how someone who earns more than $30,000 in the US can afford to hire a virtual assistant. The author mentions about the pay-as-you-go plans and monthly plans from GetFriday keeping in mind the needs of the customers. The Philadelphia weekly in 2011 featured us as a story on outsourcing with exclusive attention on GetFriday. The feature talks about the experiences of Norman Wilson with his virtual assistant at GetFriday – Atul. The article goes on to talk about how such a set up between customer and company seems to blur the lines between the employer and the employee. There are comparisons of the virtual assistant being like an advanced machine or an avatar from a video game altogether. It is an elaborative piece which poetically deals with the journey of outsourcing. Thomson Reuters featured us in a video on their site in 2013. The video gave an exclusive look into our offices at GetFriday in Bangalore, talked with assistants in their working space. It went on to talk about the virtues of outsourcing. PR Newswire featured us in three consecutive years – 2014, 2015 and 2016. Another place where we got featured was Arabianbusiness.com, where Thomas Shambler, a journalist, purchased a 10-hour package and hires a VA called Pallavika. Being a journalist he outsources the task of scheduling his interviews with us. He also asks her to do basic research for an article he was writing and asked for gifting ideas for his father. Overall, the client found the service to be good and meeting his expectations and compared the service to a real person ready at his beck and call. Just like these articles GetFriday is also featured on the website timedoctor.com, where we are among the top virtual assistant companies from across the world in 2017. Various other news platforms also speak about GetFriday’s outsourcing success stories. Outsourcing companies are being used by people for quite a long time now. But, now they are being used by people for innovative tasks. As time goes by we will see the industry maturing and more people using a virtual assistant with less novelty. With the difference in the exchange rate of currencies, it will become more attractive for individuals in the western world to outsource their errands to associates in the developing world.

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday Turns 10!

GetFriday completed it 10 years of existence in the Virtual Assistance Industry in August 2015. This is a huge milestone to achieve for us and on this joyful occasion of turning 10; Team Get Friday would like to thank you all. You are the clients believing in our abilities and supporting us for very long time; we owe it all to our clients and the strong bonds we have fostered through time. Through the course of these 10 years, GetFriday has seen its share of ups and downs, but thankfully, we have had more ups than downs. For 10 years, GetFriday has helped offload tasks for more than 13,000 clients around 60 countries with its personal virtual assistance services. A lot has changed and we are now slowly evolving to be a business support service from virtual assistance support. The competition has been tough. Many of our competitors have disappeared and others are stuck in middle age blues. Our steadfast focus on learning from our customers has enabled us to survive and flourish for a decade now. We believe, GetFriday has gone on to bring about a positive change in the lives of all its clients, no matter how small or big the task outsourced. During a time when personal virtual assistance services were literally unheard of, GetFriday sprang up in 2005 as the sister concern of YMII (Your Man In India) and began offering personal, administrative, secretarial and specialized services to clients, virtually. The success of our venture, which began way back in 2005, was featured and documented in the best-selling book, “4 Hour Work Week” authored by Tim Ferris, in 2007. Within just a span of 2 years, GetFriday achieved so success and acclaim and carved its place as an indomitable player in the market of virtual assistance services. As a celebration of our successful 10-year run and for having been associated with us during our incredible journey, we are going to run a year-long campaign with oodles of benefits and exciting offers for our wide client-base.

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday Turns 10! Read More »

GetFriday completed it 10 years of existence in the Virtual Assistance Industry in August 2015. This is a huge milestone to achieve for us and on this joyful occasion of turning 10; Team Get Friday would like to thank you all. You are the clients believing in our abilities and supporting us for very long time; we owe it all to our clients and the strong bonds we have fostered through time. Through the course of these 10 years, GetFriday has seen its share of ups and downs, but thankfully, we have had more ups than downs. For 10 years, GetFriday has helped offload tasks for more than 13,000 clients around 60 countries with its personal virtual assistance services. A lot has changed and we are now slowly evolving to be a business support service from virtual assistance support. The competition has been tough. Many of our competitors have disappeared and others are stuck in middle age blues. Our steadfast focus on learning from our customers has enabled us to survive and flourish for a decade now. We believe, GetFriday has gone on to bring about a positive change in the lives of all its clients, no matter how small or big the task outsourced. During a time when personal virtual assistance services were literally unheard of, GetFriday sprang up in 2005 as the sister concern of YMII (Your Man In India) and began offering personal, administrative, secretarial and specialized services to clients, virtually. The success of our venture, which began way back in 2005, was featured and documented in the best-selling book, “4 Hour Work Week” authored by Tim Ferris, in 2007. Within just a span of 2 years, GetFriday achieved so success and acclaim and carved its place as an indomitable player in the market of virtual assistance services. As a celebration of our successful 10-year run and for having been associated with us during our incredible journey, we are going to run a year-long campaign with oodles of benefits and exciting offers for our wide client-base.

AJ Jacobs

Serendipity; Chance favors the prepared mind

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” That was a quote from the French microbiologist, chemist and inventor, Louis Pasteur. Incidentally, he was a master of experimental research. Being not so interested in theory, he made many fundamental discoveries just by careful observation. Serendipity; A word coined by Sir Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford in the 1700s to denote ‘accidental discoveries‘. Walpole was a prolific letter writer. In one of his letters to a friend, Walpole wrote about a silly fairy tale called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’; “… as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of” (Serendip, old name for Ceylon, Sri Lanka) that had made a profound impression on his life. The tale described the fate of three princes who left their home to travel through the world. Rarely they found the treasures they were looking for but ran into other ones equally great or even greater which they were not seeking. Interesting, ‘yes’ but you may wonder what is the context here? The point am trying to make is that Get Friday(Sister Concern of YMII) was also a stroke of serendipity, something that happened by chance. But did happen because we had cultivated a mind that was prepared. A mind that was open to ideas that had never been tried before. Let me tell you the story so that you can understand what I mean: Before 2005, this company was only in the business of providing concierge services in India to Indian expats living overseas. Basically running errands for them and helping them manage their responsibilities and matters back home. That service went by the name ‘Your Man In India(YMII)’. Was a one of a kind pioneering service in those times and hence received a lot of media attention. (free publicity!!! chance was definitely helping us big time) On 17 May, 2005 quite fortuitously I must add, we (Prabhu, my colleague and me) received a mail from a gentleman in NY. His name was AJ Jacobs. Luckily I was able to retrieve the exact mail we received. Here it goes: Dear Mr. Prabhu and Mr. Sunder I heard about your company from a friend of mine who is an Indian businessman living in California. I’m a writer for an American magazine called ESQUIRE. It’s an upscale magazine targeted at businessmen, and reaches 2 million readers. It’s been around for 70 years. (If you want to know more, it’s at esquire.com). I’m writing an article for Esquire for which I’d love to hire Your Man in India(YMII). The idea is this: To hire a talented person or talented people in India to take care of as many of my life tasks as possible. Almost like a remote executive assistant. For instance, I’d love someone to help make airline reservations over the Internet. Or make restaurant reservations. Or pay my bills online. I’d even be interested in having someone answer my emails for me. Of course, I would give your company credit in the article. The publicity would, I imagine, be excellent for your business. And naturally, Esquire would pay the going rate for your services. I understand that the core of your business is doing such tasks for residents of India (e.g. buying movie tickets for Indian movie theaters). But since so much can be accomplished via the Internet, I thought that you might be able to help me with US-based tasks as well. I hope you like the idea. I think it will make an educational and entertaining article. Please let me know your thoughts. I can be reached via email here, or by cell phone. Thanks in advance, A.J. Jacobs ———— We were kind of zapped by the request and were trying to figure out if this was some kind of a practical joke. More so because we realized later that Jacobs wanted to outsource a lot more than the quite innocuous sounding things, he mentioned in his first mail. He wanted to outsource his personal life to a company in India. That was a whole lot tricky. Back in 2005, it could have been an idea that naturally gets shot down because no one had attempted it before. So why should we even try! Thankfully, we decided to pursue it. It all started with just one employee to boot and this person helped Jacobs over the next couple of months. Despite the odd slip ups here and there, largely due to cultural differences the experiment was a huge success. AJ’s Esquire article came out in September 2005. It went to capture the imagination of the American press and we were on Good Morning America, the next day. You can access this article here. http://www.esquire.com/ESQ0905OUTSOURCING_214. That is when we decided that we just couldn’t let this opportunity go. There was a potential and we were in the right place, at the right time. So we created a separate division and went out with a new brand called ‘Get Friday‘. (inspired by Man Friday from the Robinson Crusoe novel). There, of course would be a question in everyone’s mind. If the character, Man Friday inspired this name then why was it not called by the same name. Why Get Friday?. We weighed the pros and cons of gender bias in a brand name that was to go international. Especially, since we envisioned many girl fridays helping clients across the world. These things weighed in to settle the matter in favor of a gender-neutral ‘Get Friday‘. That led me to believe that a lot of things do happen by chance, but provided it encounters a prepared mind. And that pretty much has been the cornerstone of our innovation philosophy, to this day. I hope you like this little story of how it all began. Sunder P CEO

Serendipity; Chance favors the prepared mind Read More »

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” That was a quote from the French microbiologist, chemist and inventor, Louis Pasteur. Incidentally, he was a master of experimental research. Being not so interested in theory, he made many fundamental discoveries just by careful observation. Serendipity; A word coined by Sir Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford in the 1700s to denote ‘accidental discoveries‘. Walpole was a prolific letter writer. In one of his letters to a friend, Walpole wrote about a silly fairy tale called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’; “… as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of” (Serendip, old name for Ceylon, Sri Lanka) that had made a profound impression on his life. The tale described the fate of three princes who left their home to travel through the world. Rarely they found the treasures they were looking for but ran into other ones equally great or even greater which they were not seeking. Interesting, ‘yes’ but you may wonder what is the context here? The point am trying to make is that Get Friday(Sister Concern of YMII) was also a stroke of serendipity, something that happened by chance. But did happen because we had cultivated a mind that was prepared. A mind that was open to ideas that had never been tried before. Let me tell you the story so that you can understand what I mean: Before 2005, this company was only in the business of providing concierge services in India to Indian expats living overseas. Basically running errands for them and helping them manage their responsibilities and matters back home. That service went by the name ‘Your Man In India(YMII)’. Was a one of a kind pioneering service in those times and hence received a lot of media attention. (free publicity!!! chance was definitely helping us big time) On 17 May, 2005 quite fortuitously I must add, we (Prabhu, my colleague and me) received a mail from a gentleman in NY. His name was AJ Jacobs. Luckily I was able to retrieve the exact mail we received. Here it goes: Dear Mr. Prabhu and Mr. Sunder I heard about your company from a friend of mine who is an Indian businessman living in California. I’m a writer for an American magazine called ESQUIRE. It’s an upscale magazine targeted at businessmen, and reaches 2 million readers. It’s been around for 70 years. (If you want to know more, it’s at esquire.com). I’m writing an article for Esquire for which I’d love to hire Your Man in India(YMII). The idea is this: To hire a talented person or talented people in India to take care of as many of my life tasks as possible. Almost like a remote executive assistant. For instance, I’d love someone to help make airline reservations over the Internet. Or make restaurant reservations. Or pay my bills online. I’d even be interested in having someone answer my emails for me. Of course, I would give your company credit in the article. The publicity would, I imagine, be excellent for your business. And naturally, Esquire would pay the going rate for your services. I understand that the core of your business is doing such tasks for residents of India (e.g. buying movie tickets for Indian movie theaters). But since so much can be accomplished via the Internet, I thought that you might be able to help me with US-based tasks as well. I hope you like the idea. I think it will make an educational and entertaining article. Please let me know your thoughts. I can be reached via email here, or by cell phone. Thanks in advance, A.J. Jacobs ———— We were kind of zapped by the request and were trying to figure out if this was some kind of a practical joke. More so because we realized later that Jacobs wanted to outsource a lot more than the quite innocuous sounding things, he mentioned in his first mail. He wanted to outsource his personal life to a company in India. That was a whole lot tricky. Back in 2005, it could have been an idea that naturally gets shot down because no one had attempted it before. So why should we even try! Thankfully, we decided to pursue it. It all started with just one employee to boot and this person helped Jacobs over the next couple of months. Despite the odd slip ups here and there, largely due to cultural differences the experiment was a huge success. AJ’s Esquire article came out in September 2005. It went to capture the imagination of the American press and we were on Good Morning America, the next day. You can access this article here. http://www.esquire.com/ESQ0905OUTSOURCING_214. That is when we decided that we just couldn’t let this opportunity go. There was a potential and we were in the right place, at the right time. So we created a separate division and went out with a new brand called ‘Get Friday‘. (inspired by Man Friday from the Robinson Crusoe novel). There, of course would be a question in everyone’s mind. If the character, Man Friday inspired this name then why was it not called by the same name. Why Get Friday?. We weighed the pros and cons of gender bias in a brand name that was to go international. Especially, since we envisioned many girl fridays helping clients across the world. These things weighed in to settle the matter in favor of a gender-neutral ‘Get Friday‘. That led me to believe that a lot of things do happen by chance, but provided it encounters a prepared mind. And that pretty much has been the cornerstone of our innovation philosophy, to this day. I hope you like this little story of how it all began. Sunder P CEO

Got work, Get Friday – Hiccups and more…

Work at GetFriday can’t get any more hectic. Sign ups happening by the minute and everyone working round the clock and against it to assign assistants to clients on or before the announced deadline of 3 weeks. That has pretty much been the scenario everyday over the last month. On American Independance Day, our staffers on the US shift are taking a welcome break from work and hopefully should come back refreshed. Lot of reviews / blog posts about GetFriday have appeared on the web recently! Most of them nice and a few brickbats too, especially about our slow sign up process. We fixed a part of the problem by allowing people to download the sign up form, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of not having enough capacity. We are working on it. The other issue was that people got confused with our YourManInIndia (YMII) service and posted random tasks and even paid in advance there. Tim Ferriss for some reason continued to think of YMII for virtual assistance when he wrote the book, though GetFriday(Sister Concern of YMII) has been in existence for the last 22 months. The people in that division (YMII) handle a different set of things and aren’t equipped to handle virtual assistance and that caused a lot of confusion and delay in response to prospective client queries. We actually zeroed in on the particular task in YMII where people were ordering and put a clear sign saying ‘For virtual assistance, please go to GetFriday, kindly don’t post your requirement here’. That seemed to have worked. To put the record straight, YMII is a concierge service in India which is capable of handling any kind of tasks (that require physical presence) in India. Typically clients are NRIs (Non Resident Indians) and sometimes could be people of any nationality wanting to get something done in India. GetFriday, on the other hand is the sister service of YMII that provides virtual assistant service to global clients. Any thing that can be handled by a graduate VA and does not require our physical presence in the place where task is executed is game for GetFriday. At present we offer only a English language service, but there are many inquiries for German and French services. We may look at providing those in the future. Our web tracking team found these perspectives about Outsourcing or GetFriday, interesting or useful. 1) 50 ways to increase your productivity – Kim Roach at LifeHack.org 2) 10 Ways of overcoming Outsourcing objections – Jon Symons at ArtofMoney.org (Incidentally, Jon posted 10 reasons why he won’t outsource a few days earlier before he become a convert to outsourcing) 3) Case study on outsourcing – Ryan Norbauer at NotRocketSurgery.com 4) Hired an assistant – Tony Rush on WAHM.com 5) Hiring a virtual PA – Ryan Carson on Carsonified.com 6) The Optimized Life – ‘Sparky looking young woman’ at TheOptimizedLife.com. 7) Four Hour Workweek for Parents – Amy Tiemann at CNET Blogs. 8 ) How to more efficiently make money online – MonetizeTraffic.com 9) Outsource or die – HarryBrelsford/SMB Nation on CAworld.com. (pdf file) 10) GetFriday : The Online Assistant – Adam at OutsideTheValley.com 11) Killer Startups – KillerStartups.com With the wave of interest in this service, there are bound to be cases where we can’t or don’t possibly meet the expectation of clients despite best efforts. You can be sure that GetFriday will analyze all such occurances and work towards rectifying them, sooner than later. Happy Independance Day to all our American clients and folks. -GetFriday Team

Got work, Get Friday – Hiccups and more… Read More »

Work at GetFriday can’t get any more hectic. Sign ups happening by the minute and everyone working round the clock and against it to assign assistants to clients on or before the announced deadline of 3 weeks. That has pretty much been the scenario everyday over the last month. On American Independance Day, our staffers on the US shift are taking a welcome break from work and hopefully should come back refreshed. Lot of reviews / blog posts about GetFriday have appeared on the web recently! Most of them nice and a few brickbats too, especially about our slow sign up process. We fixed a part of the problem by allowing people to download the sign up form, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of not having enough capacity. We are working on it. The other issue was that people got confused with our YourManInIndia (YMII) service and posted random tasks and even paid in advance there. Tim Ferriss for some reason continued to think of YMII for virtual assistance when he wrote the book, though GetFriday(Sister Concern of YMII) has been in existence for the last 22 months. The people in that division (YMII) handle a different set of things and aren’t equipped to handle virtual assistance and that caused a lot of confusion and delay in response to prospective client queries. We actually zeroed in on the particular task in YMII where people were ordering and put a clear sign saying ‘For virtual assistance, please go to GetFriday, kindly don’t post your requirement here’. That seemed to have worked. To put the record straight, YMII is a concierge service in India which is capable of handling any kind of tasks (that require physical presence) in India. Typically clients are NRIs (Non Resident Indians) and sometimes could be people of any nationality wanting to get something done in India. GetFriday, on the other hand is the sister service of YMII that provides virtual assistant service to global clients. Any thing that can be handled by a graduate VA and does not require our physical presence in the place where task is executed is game for GetFriday. At present we offer only a English language service, but there are many inquiries for German and French services. We may look at providing those in the future. Our web tracking team found these perspectives about Outsourcing or GetFriday, interesting or useful. 1) 50 ways to increase your productivity – Kim Roach at LifeHack.org 2) 10 Ways of overcoming Outsourcing objections – Jon Symons at ArtofMoney.org (Incidentally, Jon posted 10 reasons why he won’t outsource a few days earlier before he become a convert to outsourcing) 3) Case study on outsourcing – Ryan Norbauer at NotRocketSurgery.com 4) Hired an assistant – Tony Rush on WAHM.com 5) Hiring a virtual PA – Ryan Carson on Carsonified.com 6) The Optimized Life – ‘Sparky looking young woman’ at TheOptimizedLife.com. 7) Four Hour Workweek for Parents – Amy Tiemann at CNET Blogs. 8 ) How to more efficiently make money online – MonetizeTraffic.com 9) Outsource or die – HarryBrelsford/SMB Nation on CAworld.com. (pdf file) 10) GetFriday : The Online Assistant – Adam at OutsideTheValley.com 11) Killer Startups – KillerStartups.com With the wave of interest in this service, there are bound to be cases where we can’t or don’t possibly meet the expectation of clients despite best efforts. You can be sure that GetFriday will analyze all such occurances and work towards rectifying them, sooner than later. Happy Independance Day to all our American clients and folks. -GetFriday Team

Virtual Assistant

Getting snowed in

Tim Ferriss’s book has done wonders for the popularity of this service. The number of people who want to sign up has increased dramatically and the credit goes to Tim for opening people’s eyes to the potential of outsourcing. We have been keeping an active eye on blogs about comments on the GetFriday service. Quoting from Tim’s own blog he says “Even GetFriday, which has done great work for me, is getting snowed under with work since their mentions in the book. The price of success! Be careful what you ask for ;)”. This is very much true. Though we had prepared well for this, you aren’t ever completely prepared for the reality. So it is a fact that we are struggling to keep pace with the enquiries. However our processes have evolved so well over the last year that we have been able to cope with the influx amazingly well. We also found some blogs where prospective clients had posted that our sign up process was not online and that our service was good post the sign up. Let me explain this. The sign up process is intentionally not online. While the sign up and payment for our other sister service “YourManInIndia(YMII)” – the Indian concierge service is completely online, we kept it offline for GetFriday. It is nice to think of a factory situation where you sign up online, pay for a plan and get alloted a human robot automatically as an assistant. It may work well in a highly automated supply chain and manufacturing system where parts are sourced as you place your order for let’s say a computer (like Dell), or even in the world of digital downloads, software etc. But here we are dealing with providing human assistants and it requires a great deal of resource planning and fitment before we can assign an assistant to a client. Hence the sign up process is kept intentionally offline wherein we study the requirement, send an appropriate form, get a secure fax sign up from client before commencing service. In our opinion it is better to have a slightly longer process of understanding client requirements and sign up than have a prolonged process of waiting to get an assistant assigned after an instant sign up. This isn’t instant coffee or Nirvana. Again this may change in the near future if we are able to automate resource fitment and allocation. Another article that has brought quite a buzz for us in Canada is this one by Patrick White for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Thanks to Patrick we are now known in Canada as well. On a closing note, we are getting snowed in but we aren’t finished yet with taking on new clients. We remain as keen as ever to serve more and more people globally and make their lives better. If there has been a prolonged wait with our service, kindly bear with us we should be having you on board soon. -GetFriday Management

Getting snowed in Read More »

Tim Ferriss’s book has done wonders for the popularity of this service. The number of people who want to sign up has increased dramatically and the credit goes to Tim for opening people’s eyes to the potential of outsourcing. We have been keeping an active eye on blogs about comments on the GetFriday service. Quoting from Tim’s own blog he says “Even GetFriday, which has done great work for me, is getting snowed under with work since their mentions in the book. The price of success! Be careful what you ask for ;)”. This is very much true. Though we had prepared well for this, you aren’t ever completely prepared for the reality. So it is a fact that we are struggling to keep pace with the enquiries. However our processes have evolved so well over the last year that we have been able to cope with the influx amazingly well. We also found some blogs where prospective clients had posted that our sign up process was not online and that our service was good post the sign up. Let me explain this. The sign up process is intentionally not online. While the sign up and payment for our other sister service “YourManInIndia(YMII)” – the Indian concierge service is completely online, we kept it offline for GetFriday. It is nice to think of a factory situation where you sign up online, pay for a plan and get alloted a human robot automatically as an assistant. It may work well in a highly automated supply chain and manufacturing system where parts are sourced as you place your order for let’s say a computer (like Dell), or even in the world of digital downloads, software etc. But here we are dealing with providing human assistants and it requires a great deal of resource planning and fitment before we can assign an assistant to a client. Hence the sign up process is kept intentionally offline wherein we study the requirement, send an appropriate form, get a secure fax sign up from client before commencing service. In our opinion it is better to have a slightly longer process of understanding client requirements and sign up than have a prolonged process of waiting to get an assistant assigned after an instant sign up. This isn’t instant coffee or Nirvana. Again this may change in the near future if we are able to automate resource fitment and allocation. Another article that has brought quite a buzz for us in Canada is this one by Patrick White for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Thanks to Patrick we are now known in Canada as well. On a closing note, we are getting snowed in but we aren’t finished yet with taking on new clients. We remain as keen as ever to serve more and more people globally and make their lives better. If there has been a prolonged wait with our service, kindly bear with us we should be having you on board soon. -GetFriday Management

Work life balance

The Four Hour Work Week

It was towards mid May of 2006, that Timothy (Tim) Ferriss got in touch with GetFriday(Sister Concern of YMII) requesting for virtual assistance. He was writing this book for Random House and wanted to test out different outsourcers offering virtual assistance to experience and test the limits of outsourcing. Now that the book “The Four Hour Work Week” is out, debuting on the Amazon top 10 and going strong at #7 at the time of writing this blog, we quite know what he set out to do. Here is a very young man who at age 29 has done an amazing variety of things in his life. Much more than what most people can’t imagine doing in a whole lifetime. There are a lot more young millionaires who probably have earned more than him at his age. But doing what he set out to do, why? Was it to write a book about it and make tons of money. Apparently no, the money is incidental. According to Tim, he was succumbing to the more you work, the better you are – culture that is all prevalent in today’s workaholic world. He wanted to make a change in the pursuit of happiness ;) and set out to really pursue what he wanted out of life without having to be a monk. Making more money doesn’t necessarily mean you get to do what you want in life. He calls his 4 steps to achieving his goal as D-E-A-L. Definition Define the kind of lifestyle you want to pursue. Most of the time, that can be achieved without having to make huge sacrifices and waiting till you actually retire. His book takes a very practical approach and tells you how to do that through his life experiences. Elimination Once the definition is made, then you come up with the biggest obstacle to this pursuit, which is TIME. Making time and time management have been oft-repeated topics with many authors and books offering cliched advice, Tim actually gets around to showing numerous practical examples that can really work for anyone. Eliminate all unproductive (that which does not make your life better) usage of time. Automation A large part of what you do can actually be outsourced (locally or across the globe) without the world coming to an end. In fact, the whole concept of GetFriday revolves around being able to handle anything that can be outsourced either to save you time, or for more efficiency or to give you the advantage of pooled expertise. Outsourcing ensures that you spend your precious time on the things that are really important. If you don’t have the time today, to take your son to the football game or to read bedtime stories to your little daughter, remember the day is not far when you would have all the time in the world after giving up on the rat race, while your children won’t have any. It is a different story that AJ Jacobs, Esquire Editor most funnily tried to get us to read bedtime stories for his kid son just to push and test the limits of personal outsourcing. It obviously doesn’t make good sense to outsource fatherhood to a remote organization in the long run. Liberation Don’t tie yourself up to a routine or an office setup. Embrace a mobile lifestyle without getting hooked onto gadgets that turn you into slaves. And it is about adding life to fill the void created by subtracting work (unproductive). It’s rather funny that 99% of people in this world would not know what to do to pursue their ideal lifestyle if they were suddenly thrown into a situation where time is not the constraint. As an aftermath to most such books and articles, a question being raised very frequently is whether outsourcing is all about cheap labor. We would say ‘no’ to that. Yes, cost arbitrage is the basic factor on which world commerce happened (from the days of the spice trade) and still happens across the globe but to be able to sustain it, one (companies, nations, cities) needs to develop what you would call as competitive advantage in a global world. The competitive advantage apart from cost in services like GetFriday being: 1) Ability to provide flexible work plans according to your need. 2) Ability to be available during your business hours and outside it. 3) Ability to provide a pool of expertise and knowledge that you may not get with a single assistant in your office or even by doing it yourself. 4) Ability to work on a faster learning curve as against an assistant hired locally by virtue of specialized training and being exposed to multiple work cultures and clients. The obvious dis-advantages with services like these being: 1) Not being able to be physically present to fix you a coffee. 2) Not being able to help in the absence of clear directions and rules from the client. The assistant while being trained to handle things independently will still be rendered rudderless if the client does not spend some quality time sharing expectations and guidelines for work in the beginning. If you want to make more time in your life for the more important things, then get yourself a copy of the “Four Hour Work Week“. To get updates on some great ongoing thoughts from Tim, check out his personal blog.

The Four Hour Work Week Read More »

It was towards mid May of 2006, that Timothy (Tim) Ferriss got in touch with GetFriday(Sister Concern of YMII) requesting for virtual assistance. He was writing this book for Random House and wanted to test out different outsourcers offering virtual assistance to experience and test the limits of outsourcing. Now that the book “The Four Hour Work Week” is out, debuting on the Amazon top 10 and going strong at #7 at the time of writing this blog, we quite know what he set out to do. Here is a very young man who at age 29 has done an amazing variety of things in his life. Much more than what most people can’t imagine doing in a whole lifetime. There are a lot more young millionaires who probably have earned more than him at his age. But doing what he set out to do, why? Was it to write a book about it and make tons of money. Apparently no, the money is incidental. According to Tim, he was succumbing to the more you work, the better you are – culture that is all prevalent in today’s workaholic world. He wanted to make a change in the pursuit of happiness ;) and set out to really pursue what he wanted out of life without having to be a monk. Making more money doesn’t necessarily mean you get to do what you want in life. He calls his 4 steps to achieving his goal as D-E-A-L. Definition Define the kind of lifestyle you want to pursue. Most of the time, that can be achieved without having to make huge sacrifices and waiting till you actually retire. His book takes a very practical approach and tells you how to do that through his life experiences. Elimination Once the definition is made, then you come up with the biggest obstacle to this pursuit, which is TIME. Making time and time management have been oft-repeated topics with many authors and books offering cliched advice, Tim actually gets around to showing numerous practical examples that can really work for anyone. Eliminate all unproductive (that which does not make your life better) usage of time. Automation A large part of what you do can actually be outsourced (locally or across the globe) without the world coming to an end. In fact, the whole concept of GetFriday revolves around being able to handle anything that can be outsourced either to save you time, or for more efficiency or to give you the advantage of pooled expertise. Outsourcing ensures that you spend your precious time on the things that are really important. If you don’t have the time today, to take your son to the football game or to read bedtime stories to your little daughter, remember the day is not far when you would have all the time in the world after giving up on the rat race, while your children won’t have any. It is a different story that AJ Jacobs, Esquire Editor most funnily tried to get us to read bedtime stories for his kid son just to push and test the limits of personal outsourcing. It obviously doesn’t make good sense to outsource fatherhood to a remote organization in the long run. Liberation Don’t tie yourself up to a routine or an office setup. Embrace a mobile lifestyle without getting hooked onto gadgets that turn you into slaves. And it is about adding life to fill the void created by subtracting work (unproductive). It’s rather funny that 99% of people in this world would not know what to do to pursue their ideal lifestyle if they were suddenly thrown into a situation where time is not the constraint. As an aftermath to most such books and articles, a question being raised very frequently is whether outsourcing is all about cheap labor. We would say ‘no’ to that. Yes, cost arbitrage is the basic factor on which world commerce happened (from the days of the spice trade) and still happens across the globe but to be able to sustain it, one (companies, nations, cities) needs to develop what you would call as competitive advantage in a global world. The competitive advantage apart from cost in services like GetFriday being: 1) Ability to provide flexible work plans according to your need. 2) Ability to be available during your business hours and outside it. 3) Ability to provide a pool of expertise and knowledge that you may not get with a single assistant in your office or even by doing it yourself. 4) Ability to work on a faster learning curve as against an assistant hired locally by virtue of specialized training and being exposed to multiple work cultures and clients. The obvious dis-advantages with services like these being: 1) Not being able to be physically present to fix you a coffee. 2) Not being able to help in the absence of clear directions and rules from the client. The assistant while being trained to handle things independently will still be rendered rudderless if the client does not spend some quality time sharing expectations and guidelines for work in the beginning. If you want to make more time in your life for the more important things, then get yourself a copy of the “Four Hour Work Week“. To get updates on some great ongoing thoughts from Tim, check out his personal blog.

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