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Category: Startup

  • Entrepreneur’s Interview – OnUs Payments

    Sachi: Good evening everybody, today our guest for this entrepreneur’s interview is G.G. Shrinivas. G.G. Srinivas along with Hari have founder this startup called ‘Onus payment’. 
    Without further delay I would request G.G to give us brief background about himself, his co-founder and founding of the company.
    Shrinivas: Thank you. I am a 97 graduate of IIM Bangalore. Hari and I were colleagues in Standard Charted Bank – we were working in card sales at that point of time. We occasionally kept in touch with each other and saying some day we want to start off. Everything kind of fell in place thanks to the circumstances and the opportunity that was there at that time. Both of us were in Bombay fairly dissatisfied with what was going on – that is when we began working on taking this off the ground.
    So there was sense of comfort with each other because, we had worked as colleagues. We were just ordinary colleagues, there was bit of respect, but I wouldn’t call it as deep friendship. I can talk about respect for Hari, I think he is the one of the best sales man that I have ever seen in my Professional stint. He gets across to the table something very fundamental. So even if we are not friends at that point of that time, the fact that we respected each other, we said let’s try it out.
    We went about the classical way, I mean like you know, normally whatever anyone would do, when he starts a company. Get the idea it’s like one of our boss used to say take a deep drag of band substance or is their market at hand. So, we did a lot of validation in that point of time. We went to lot of seniors who were in this fields, I mean to a couple of heads of MNC Banks in India, A couple assets heads in India of MNC Banks. And said this is the opportunity at hand, are we dreaming this or is this opportunity that is there to be exploited. The unequivocal response that we had from everybody was, this makes a lot of sense provided you scale it up. This is going to be pretty big opportunity. I think to the extent that we spent little too much time on the validation, but we went about validating the complete idea. We went customers and we said if we give this product how much would pay? It was never about would you like this product – it was always about would you pay money for this product? We had gone to some of the high end schools in Bombay, which is where we were located at that point of the time and asked them about this.
    We had industry experts who said this possible. We had customers who said they are willing to pay. The funny thing was Hari being Hari, went out and actually closed to sales and came back and didn’t had product, money, technology nothing. I mean we had not even incorporated our company!
    The next phase of it was we had to go back to our families and say that this is what we starting. For first time entrepreneurs like us, it was very important to have a backing of the family. So we went up to senior people in Hari’s family and said, ‘this is what idea is’ should we be going ahead – one of  them actually ended up being on our advisory board. So, that’s the great thing for us. They actually liked the idea, after we had checked, cross-checked, verified and re-verified and we had wasted sixth month of time, is when we said OK fine now we have to form a company now. That’s when we started a company.
    Sachi: Could you explain what your company does so that the readers of the blog have an idea? 
    Shrinivas: Without going into great details about what the structure of payment industries is like in India; Think about any transaction less than 200 Rupees these are the transactions like buying coffee, buying an idly, buying a tea, buying a cholle buthur kind of thing and you are doing a lot of these transactions day in and day out. There are lot of transaction we do in less than 200 bracket – the only transaction tool that is available to us is cash. We can go by our personal experience or whatever we transact on a daily basis which is less than 200 Rs. Irrespective of which category of customer class it belong to the only transaction tool that is available to us is cash and cash is increasingly becoming difficult to use as a transaction tool because some of the changes we are seeing to. As you know, right in front of our eyes the 50 paisa is going out fashion. People neither give 50 paisa nor accept 50 paisa. As late as 2 year back some people were accepting it and without knowing it’s not getting accepted.
    So what happens is the bulk of the transaction that we are doing is less Rs. 200. And this transaction cannot be done on cash. So we looked at this and said – is there an opportunity for us to tap into these segments. These transactions come into the ‘C’ category of transaction – This is large volume low value.
    If we keep focus right and if we cherry pick within this transaction, this is substantial value of transaction that can be done on this. Provided you get across the right technology, keep your cost low everything else goes with to run a company. So if you keep everything else constant you should make money!
    Sachi: Both Hari and you are from the sales background of and to scale up the back end operations will be IT. We have seen that many firms begin with creating the software themselves. I understand that you have not taken that approach. How have you managed all that?
    Shrinivas: Hari and I are yes from sales background, Hari is one  of the superlative sales guy that I  have seen. There is fundamental understanding that when you are up to start up a company, to start off a new product, new concept it will take heck a lot of selling to push the product across. May be a little naively, but we believed that everything else can be made. Once customer exist and once he is willing to pay, the rest of the stuff can be put in place – as in raising the money to start the operations, getting the technology to run the operations, actually running the – operations everything can be put in place provided you have customer first. Obviously two of us are forced to think like this because we are not technology persons.
    I am a jack of all, whereas Hari is primarily into sales. The advantage this gives us is that when the operations are still not scaled up I am pretty much capable of handling operations, technology and marketing. Having said that jack of all trades never works out when things going to specialization. When the company is starting off somebody like me, would be able to handle, all the other things that Hari is not handling. There is an understanding between Hari and me what he is handling at this point of time is one of the important things of business. Getting to run a company is almost like pushing a vegan once it is running even I can go and give it a push, but when it is standing to make it move  is what is very difficult. Hari provides the traction I ensure that I take care of everything else. So, we don’t increase our cost base in the interim. Now once the whole thing starts of we need to obviously get in people who handle the technology, operation – at that point of time there would be fair bit of specialization.I think we are approaching that time because what we have done.
    Because of this approach, have we made mistakes? – Yes we have made mistakes. I mean there was a wrong choice of one of the product we had taken which kind of set us back by about four months. Would trained technology have helped? Obviously, I mean like you know Grade A technologist would have helped. Have we suffered from other fronts because of this? No, technology is one of the issues that we had. But it was not unmanageable. Thankfully it didn’t sink the company.
    We put the paying customer in front of us and align the rest of us behind the paying customer. With one and half year of this, I can say it works.
    Sachi: Putting the customer front and aligning all other things behind it definitely has some advantages, would you also highlight some of the challenges yuo faced in this approach and how you handled it? 
    Shrinivas: Between Hari and me we have 21 -22 years of payment card experience. Either in sales, marketing, operations, a little bit of service and collections. What you try to do is you end up a duplicating a whole bunch of things which are there on a payment card.
    The biggest example I can quote is – the credit card allows you to do paisa transactions. When you go and buy something in a super market you can buy for 1063.15. In real life I have not done a 0.15 transaction ever. Now over the last 15 odd months we have done over 17 lakh transactions. Within this transaction everyone of the paisa transaction that has come to us, is actually an error by the customer on the data entry front. What essentially has happened is something where I can go and probably pump my chest and say you do a one paisa transaction, is nothing but a boast .Which doesn’t hold any value for the customer because the customer is entering into round figure transaction of one rupee. And here I have build up a utility which can take paisa transaction. Now look at this and ask – why did this you stupid mistake happen? Don’t I go out and purchase? To put it simply, if I am drinking chai every day, and this were to be taken on a card how many times paid in a paisa. And answer is ‘NO’, so why did I put it on payment card? – Because I was aping credit card.
    So the experience that we have some time noose around your neck. That’s when we decided that will not invent feature that are nice on credit card, unless the customer comes and ask for a feature which we should have the ability to turn it around fast. We would not implement that idea because we burnt our fingers in couple of features which we put on the card which the customer never uses. They are nice to tell on the sales pitch but all most never the customer has a utility for that kind of transaction. Sometimes like the paisa example I gave you, they actually become a point of failure for payment solution.  We went by heuristic of saying if Hari and I want to X number of features on the card. Hari will divide feature at by half and I’ll divided the features at by another half. And whatever is the number of features are left is the features that we implement. Any feature that has to be implemented after that the customer has to ask for it. The design that will have it will take into account that the features may be added later but would not make feature unless customer ask for it. So what happens is we typically go to the customer and say this is the basic product this is what it is you tell us you will use this and if there something needs to be added we can turn it off fast that’s not a problem. Thankfully we have a very good technology partner. So what happens is we can implement those things very fast. We know that we are not wasting our money in terms of spending a feature. So it actually worked out for us very well.
    A wasted feature is wasted time and wasted money. We have couple of them I mean like we talk some experience on this.
    Sachi: You said, customer feedback on features is essential, did your dependence on this feedback hold you back?
    Shrinivas:Thanks for the confluence of a couple of technology issues of that we had,  for first seventy days of operation we visited the customers every single day and at 11.00 O’clock in the night. One of us would drive, 50Kmtrs, two ways and visit the customer at 11.00 PM including December 31st of 2010. If you visit a customer 70 days continuously doesn’t matter whether the customer is a dumb guy – he will start talking. Even if you are deaf you will start listening because there will be issues on the card which would start understanding pretty fast.
    In hindsight, that was the best thing would have happened to us. Rather than the pain of going there every day at 11.00 O’clock that was the one best thing happened to us because at the end of it we understood how the customer is using. Simple thing like a 21 years young girl telling a boy with her – telling him that I will pay by my card it is much cooler! It makes your day. Obviously I am not giving you the bad news.
    70 days of visiting the customer you pretty much get it. I would honest enough say that we say that this is the not part of the design, If anything else it would be part of the bug. But it helped us a lot.
    Something that we tried now consciously to do that even when we set up installation, however small the installation is we ensure that for a  25 days we will visit the customer every alternate day. To a point the customers starts asking why are you not handling over the solution to us. There are a the couple of features on the card which we do not hand over because you want the customers to realize, otherwise he will never gets into the operation. We continue to visit – Till he says why you are coming so often, it is at that point that we complete the installation and at that time we handover.
    It is at that point of time that you understand lot of things which are going over there. First and foremost you know we need to know what the points of expansion in the business are.  It is not to understand the customer business, but it is to understand where our future points of expansion are. It’s a small installation one is I can say god has given me small installation to this place. Other is to look at it and say where can I expand his business and in the process expand myself also. So, it helps us in the 25 days to understand where we can be, where the solution has to move, what are the kind of thing. So, we added a couple of solutions, which are totally not part of payment in this process when we understood from the customer, so it helps us there, for us it is a big thing, even it is painful we will have to visit the customer first 25 days at least every alternate day. Obviously it is a big installation we will have to park as on there of 4,5,6,7 hours a day. In the process we understand good amount of thing of the customer and that tells us what are the feature sets that we need to have? what is the pain points? what is the future expansion that can happen?. You pretty much bit understand the flow of transaction, whose blocking the process, whose helping the process, who are your early adopters. So there is lot of things that you understand at this point of time. That kind of helps us to define the features set.
    Sachi: Lot of aspiring entrepreneurs have questions on funding so – could you tell us how you organize your funding? 
    Shrinivas: As a background I think we lost about 5 and half months of time on funding. Before we had gone off this entire round, there were three things that we ensured.
    The first thing we said was at all points of time have sufficient capital to run the business one mistake should not turn the game. That helps because both of us are experience professionals to that extent we had sufficient of payments so that we could spend on the company.
    That the second what we did was we said that as founders may be will not pick up money from company as in charges but as founders we also will never cross a particular limit – that is we would not get into a situation of good money of the bad money. We drew a line of what you would invest. We had friends and family money always as a backup, there are commitment from friends and family due to us. Third we were in touch with some couple of angels who were really helpful in the whole process.
    Thanks to a confluence of things we wanted to pick up our first funding from NSRCEL, that got delayed extremely and the mistake that we made and this is the second big mistake that we made  one was obviously the whole process of super validation and seeking over the customers and customers starting of everything. This is the second mistake that we made was we didn’t know when to  say no to NSRCEL money and actually go to the angle who was pretty much saying come and take the money. Because he was happy with the traction and he didn’t wanted us to die for lack of money. I think we did a mistake there. Yeah, it didn’t kill us it hurt us but all that were same mistakes, something that will carry forward from this wrong.  One was the complete validation phase we kept on validating. Second one we were also turning all the stones to figure out where we can find funding. Because we knew that some time we would be going for big amount of funding. So one of the things that we did was we started looking out for money not   asking for money but looking out for money before there was a need. We are happy that point of time because crux comes to crux we can get about 10-12 months of money almost in weeks time into our bank account but do you want that No. No we don’t want that because – like ambulance coming to you early is good thing but actually calling it is early is not a good thing.
    Sachi: In the discussion you did mentioned about first mistake waiting for a customer. Could you just tell us bit about that?
    Shrinivas: We have three first customers all three of them like the product. All three of them are saying ya let’s do it. So, we are wearing the bride’s maid dress and marriage is not happening.
    Were we doing something wrong? Actually to say we are not doing anything wrong – we are good thing, we are adding value to the customers and customer are saying we are interested in you but guess what he is interested in his business I mean he is running his primary business. And there are days when I would to get frustrated and lets pick up the phone and like you know lets pursue and Hari would stop me , and there are days he would do that and I would stop him. We were like bride’s maid for for four and half months.
    Thats heck of lot of time, I mean like you know when you have product ready, everything is ready with you and you are dying to start of the race. And dam referee is not shooting the gun!.
    So you start wondering what’s happening. I don’t know unlike the funding part of which doesn’t mentioned is the second mistake which where we clear learning in terms of to do next time when we have a situation like this. Here I don’t know what to do? Thankfully, I have never been in the state again. Its learning but I don’t know I will apply it next time.
    Sachi: What is your message for other aspiring entrepreneurs?
     
    Shrinivas: I don’t know, whether we are to pass messages and give advice we need to have bank balance – Bank balance that has come from this operation.
    When you look back at whole journey right from the stage of  validating  the idea to this point of  time where we are saying hey we are doing X number of transactions that represent a valid like high number of  transactions per month kind of thing. The sheer number people would want to help you is phenomenal and to anybody who doesn’t start off and cannot understand what I am talking about – because number of people who are likely to laugh at you, and declare as you public hazard, trying to kill you by laughter for having propounded such a silly idea is so miniscule compared  to the number of guy who would actually go on a limb and help you with the things like where find a customer, where to find the technology help you on their area expertise, giving a general bit of advice, maintain your operations.
    It is phenomenal, for example I have friend of mine sitting in UAE and writing major amount of code for me for free. Why because somehow people will always help somebody who is taking a risk. It’s something that we always discount. It is when you start off that you realize – there are some really nice people who really love to help anybody who are taking risks.
    I call it good luck that will not be a part of business plan but ones you are start off their bound to be huge amount of good luck. There are I mean like there are lot of people who would like to help you. It is very heartening thing, it’s very non-monetary payoff for the whole thing, obviously in the start of thing talk about non-monetary pay off.
    Sachi: Thank you once again for being in this interview. Thank you.

  • Entrepreneur Interview – Permeative Technologies – iPhone & Android Development Company

    Sachi: Thank you Basavaraj of Permeative. Thanks for accepting our invite to be on the interview of entrepreneur series that we have.
     
    It would be great if you could begin with introducing yourself and then briefly talk about the company that you are running. 
    Basavaraj: I studied engineering at BIET Davanagere and then joined Tata Elexsi as a fresher and then moved to Sling Media in the domain which I always looking for. In SlingMedia I got opportunity to work on iPhone SlingPlayer (Video player) and saw power lying underneath the iPhone (in 2007) – and just thought of opening a company around it. In March 2008 We opened the company – iAppsSoftwares (another name), and in Nov 2008 registered it as Permeative and it has been more than 3 years right now since when we began operating.
    Sachi: Could you tell us what about Permeative?
    Basavaraj: Permeative started as an iPhone application development company and now we call it as Mobile application development company as diversified our portfolio to Android and Windows Phone 7. In 2008, the only powerful platform was iPhone, so we started with that. Right now we have small team on Android and Windows 7 and we are looking to start on Samsung BADA as well.
    Sachi: Could you tell us how the journey has been in the last 3 years – March 08 to now, which is now almost four years?
    Basavaraj: Our story has been with many ups and downs. We started off well without raising money from anybody and we grew organically. We ploughed back what we had earned, purchased some machines, infrastructure, hired some people. Within 6 – 8 months we grew pretty well that we moved into a new office with a rich infrastructure. Our growth was so good that Investors themselves began approaching us – big investors. We had even moved to an advance stage with one big investor but due to some of conditions, we didn’t sign up and complete the funding. Following this we had slump primarily due to the period of transformation we were expecting.
    Then in 2010, we began the journey again. We actually wanted to grow in multiple domains, but we looked into too many domains and this affected us. The focus was lost during this phase. In 2011, we founders split. I was able to focus on this one thing and we are going well now. Our revenue has grown seven folds and we have closed most of our debts. We are getting profits and it is much better now.
    Sachi: When you started off what was it that you envision that you would be doing with Permeative. Is there any vision that you started your journey with?
    Basavaraj: When I started of Permeative, there is no vision in terms of product, but I had a good vision in terms of services. It was the first thought that came to me. Now, my strategy has changed from looking at services to products and I have a lot of ideas to purse built by my years of experience here.
    Sachi: These are more transactional in nature – when you say that you are moving from services to product. What initiated the change from services to product? 
    Basavaraj: The First is the revenue, second is growth and third is the risk factors.In 2008, we were starting off and didn’t have any source of revenue. We needed money, and we were fine with small revenue. In services the revenue generally grows linearly over the period as you add in more people. But in products its more an exponential growth – and that is what is expected from the products.

    If we look at the growth angle between services and products; the services company would grow in terms of the number of people but, in terms of revenue it wouldn’t be very attractive – the exponential growth wouldn’t be seen.

    Coming to the Risk factors; in 2008, we weren’t in a stage to take risks. Product development and launch is more risky than a services launch. We didn’t know much about creating the right product, analyzing, and marketing strategies. Today we understand the complete game about the product development – how to bring it into the market, what the user expects; so we are expecting an exponential growth by focusing on products.

    Sachi: In 2008, you would be an early entrant into I-phone app, or mobile app development space on I-phone.   How did you spot this opportunity?
    Basavaraj: It was the passion of opening a company, which is what I would attribute it to. Since college days, I was always intending to start my own shop.
    I wanted to start my own company – I had no clue how I had to go about doing this. My family also doesn’t have a background in business; I had no idea how to neither do business nor start one, how to make it successful, or even where to start.When I moved to Bangalore and began working, I didn’t find an opportunity where I could start something,In 2007, when iPhone was launched and I was working at Sling Media – I got the chance to work on iPhone. We cracked it, and using hacking methods we developed SlingPlayer application. I saw the power underneath, I thought that in future, the whole system would move on to such devices. This thought struck me in 2007, the power of the iPhone at that point was equivalent to the power of my home PC processor. I was amazed and also grew confident that this would be the future, and this is where I could start something. I could sense that huge number of projects would start on this platform and most of the things would move from desktops to mobiles.

    With this thought, I began speaking with a lot of friends who would be willing to start and finally started the company.

    Sachi: Once you began your journey, in terms of the services itself, how was the first reaction from the market who were the first customers? How did you acquire them?
    Basavaraj: We began with freelancing which was the primary source of the services projects for us at that time. There were many freelancing projects to begin with – there were very few developers around the world who used to take up some of the most challenging and complex tasks on the iPhone app development. This created good credibility in the freelancing market and slowly we moved to direct company related services and develop some enterprise applications, music etc. We expanded our portfolio across many categories.In this year 2011 we don’t have any freelancing projects. We deal directly with the projects which companies offer, and many of these are on enterprise applications.

    Sachi: When you say enterprise application you are contacting the company directly and working on the project that they have. How do you work in such domains, Is it the outsourcing model or….?
    Basavaraj: We work on two models the first one is one in which we send some of our people to their office and they could take care of all the management, architecting etc. The other model is they outsource the complete project. We completely consider the end product as the deliverable and deliver it to the product.
    Sachi: So, that was the services wing of what you are doing now right? In the Products wing, what kind of the products or domains are they generally in? How were your products classified?
    Basavaraj:  Our product are mainly into productivity, education ,music and games. These are four main categories which we have been successful, we have product in categories like navigation, health care and other things, but they are not as successful.
    Sachi: If somebody is to start a company today, what would you say is essential? In the domain of mobile market itself? What would you say is an important factor they should remember?
    Basavaraj: For anybody want to start accompany, any domain is the good. Any domain you can begin the journey, as if now  the market is very attractive – in the whole Indian history ,this is the first time there is a very positive mood in terms of starting company by entrepreneurs. First thing, look for good partners with good understanding and complementing partners. That is the first most important thing. People are more important than what domain or what technology you would be getting into or what product you are going to build. People are the most important.
    Sachi: You got to the subject of people; so, let me ask you, how you select your people now? Or the journey in selection of peoples itself, from the point you started to now?
    Basavaraj: Instead of the journey I feel its better to talk about how I intend to do it in the future.While starting off, I didn’t find a good person who could give me a company; it was not too sought after at that time.  The environment for entrepreneurship is changing in India, and now it’s easy to find people. Straight from the college too, there are a lot of people who are interested in going ahead and starting off companies. This is good news!

    While choosing particular person as a partner, you should look at complementing characteristics in the person.  Suppose you are a technical person   doesn’t look at another person also to be a technical person.  I mean, when you have option to choose or when we have an option to find a guy find somebody and complementing you people as a partner – if you already have a team of two-three guys all technical and have already started then don’t worry about it. Like suppose you are a technical guy find somebody who is good in marketing, who understand that or if you go into services, go for operational guy, who can take care of operations.

    Complimenting characteristics is better than similar characteristics. If we have similar characteristics then ego problem will start at early stages of company – this leads to breaking up. Better you go with one of complimenting characteristics.

    Sachi: While you are discussing about people to form your team with, I did mention about marketing. The domain you are operating is almost a flooded market. So how important is marketing in the mobile space as such? Not just I-phone space and mobile space – there are tons of applications who do you make yourself visible there?
    Basavaraj: We look at the market as 2 types – services and products, the strategy we adopt is pretty similar.
    Say for example, in mobile technology take a specific usage domain and master it. Work so well that, when people look at the work you have done, they realize you are a master of that technology and you would be their automatic choice. You need to stand out of the crowd through the work you do.
    Go to great depth in the domain of your choice – Ex If you don’t know games, leave it, if you don’t know music, leave it. If you understand productivity apps well, just go to the depths and get perfect in that.
    Then people definitely, who are in productivity, who wants some applications in productivity, they will come to you. As you begin refining your domain, the expertise will improve and you could definitely showcase better apps to the world.  Go to the depths in a domain in some category and rather than spreading yourself everywhere.
    Sachi: Ok, coming back to the other factors that we probably began with – some of the mistakes you have done. From your experience, what are the three most glaring mistakes you that you have done  in the journey?
    Basavaraj: First thing is a choosing a partners. Don’t compromise while choosing partners, if you don’t get a good partner you don’t look at something compromising and start with, we should really get one who is really interested in it. This is first one and very important.The second thing is when you want to scale it up, after some time definitely you would look to scale it up. If you are not able to do it yourself, definitely go for funding. Funding should be encouraged and then only company can really begin to grow – you could then scale up in terms of services and in terms of products and services for both – funding is very important. We rejected this.

    Sachi: If you are going to highlight what are the three biggest achievement of with the journey of entrepreneurship what would say?
    Basavaraj: The first biggest achievement is starting a company  when nobody was there in the space absolutely the first starting a company  in India in iPhone at a time when everybody was thinking that mobile applications was a business with 5% margin and the 95% carriers would take. Apple changed the complete game. Before apple announced all these things, we identified and started this is the first and great achievement. Of course we didn’t leverage this start which we got by preempting the trend.Second is big investors identified us amongst thousands of companies across the globe and came forward to invest.

    And the third one is in spite of having lots of ups and lows and after splitting the company, we came back very well. Now our revenues have increased much higher. Our current revenue is much higher than last year when number of people was more than double of what we have today.

    Sachi: What is the vision from Permeative for the next one year?
    Basavaraj: I still look at Permeative as a service based company itself. For services firm the challenge is mainly in scaling rather than technology. I want to scale into different domains like windows phone 7, and most scaling in iPhone and of course getting the bigger clients with some in the Fortune 500 companies list – atleast 5-6 companies if I am able to. That would be a big achievement for us.
    Sachi: What is your message for aspiring entrepreneurs?
    Basavaraj: Don’t look at the business opportunity cost – will you earn money or not?  What happens in the future? If you can’t do it will you get a job?. If you open the company and you failed in sustaining the  company, even then you have better experience than your counterpart who only worked in companies. You will be 10 years ahead of other guys working in the company. Don’t need worry, go ahead, do something, achieve something. Put in your whole hearted effort – day and night, and achieve something. And choose some good partner and try to make it larger with every attempt. That’s it.
    Sachi: Thank you Basavaraj, for taking time out to this interview, thank you once again.

  • Interview – Plan my health – A student run venture @ NSRCEL IIMB

    Sachi: Good evening Sandeep and Abhay, thanks for coming on to this interview. This is the first in the series of entrepreneur interview that I intent to take. To begin with, I would like you to tell us a brief background about yourself and then follow it with giving us an update about your company.
    Abhay: Basically I completed my graduation from NITK Suratkal in 2008, then after that I have worked for a startup which is a start up funded by Accel partners. They are a team from IITs and IIM. One of the reasons I was working with them was to understand how businesses run and started from scratch. Basically my interest in working was my interest in entrepreneurship. I worked there for around three years and then I’ll started this, co-founded this venture called planmyhealth.com along with my colleague. This much is my background.
    Sandeep: Hi all, My name is Sandeep Raj, I am a Mechanical Engineer from  PSG Tech. and post which I worked in a company called Ashok Leyland – one of  Premier automobile manufacturers in India and then after that I am doing my post graduate programme in management now. I am in the second year right now. This is my resume background, and then to tell about more about me, so I have more passion about a lot of things. One of course is the organizing things that I did right from college. Post that after my engineering group of friends started an education start up, We went to some second tier engineering colleges, and taught some people there, and this motivated me that yes even we have a capacity to do something my own and entrepreneurship is not really an unknown region where no one can really enter into – I got such a feeling post that. And post that in IIM Bangalore, I was fortunate enough to be in one of the key organizing members of the Business Festival here, I mean it gave me a wide opportunity to interact with a lot of corporate people and new entrepreneurs, based on which I decided ki, if this is not the time, I wouldn’t get a better time to start up a company.  So I came across my friend and started up company together, and it’s been doing pretty well for the past 6 months. So this is a short background about me
    Sachi: Could you tell what your company does?
    Sandeep: Basically, we are into the online healthcare space. We started the company to provide full information on diagnostic to whoever accesses our website, but then slowly move on into a kind of home diagnostic delivery model. So what we basically do is, anyone in Bangalore can give us a call or book online, any kind of diagnostic test they want. What we do is, we send the phlebotomist to collect the blood samples to the person who has booked the service, when we offer a wide range of options to the customer as well.  Like, the customer can choose which lab he wants to give his blood samples to, and then once the blood samples is delivered to particular lab; we get back the report and give it to the particular patient whoever has asked for the service. There are two modes of operation right now, one is the corporate model and the other one is the apartment model. In the apartment model what we do is, we go there not on a week day but weekend or any public holiday so that many people are available, and then we do sufficient promotion for over a period spanning one week or two week and whoever wants to a preventive health care or regular diagnostic test can contact us. We then, we enable the diagnostic test to be done right at their doorsteps. This is the one of the core value in the offerings. In the corporate model we haven’t tried it out fully, what we plan to do is – offer a host of wellness packages to the corporate employees there.  What we want to do is not just to be the diagnostic provider there, we want to be on the lines of someone who can really take care of issue like employee wellness, the employee motivation, kind of have some target for them – health targets. We will be focusing more on the health goals of the companies, which is currently lacking, in the short survey by us in and around Bangalore. What we found out is that people give least importance to health. We would like to one of their health partner not just diagnostic partners and take up the entire health and well being of their employees – which we feel that taking care of health is the prime most importance and health comes before anything else. So we want to motivate employees through that route.
    Sachi: Something that I found interesting is that you both are Engineering background, why did you choose health care as your space?
    Abhay: Well with my past experience care, when I was working in the last start up, I got a chance to work in the diagnostic space especially, and we figures that is a space which is a little unstructured with respect to customer needs. The way the current services is delivered by diagnostic labs and the convenience that is provided to them, it is not very promising. That is one gap we observed, we studied in fact, did a survey, met people in hospitals, diagnostic labs and we figured. And we figured after doing this study that there is lot of issues which could be addresses, and diagonostic services could be made really smooth and structured. And ya we have definitely been able to achieve it to an extent. We are looking to make it better.
    Sachi: Another interesting thing is, You are from Surathkal and he is from PGS Tech which is more South right! How do you people get to meet people each other?
    Sandeep: Basically we got a chance to meet during our CAT coaching classes which was in Coimbatore. So, post that he moved on to Bangalore, and I also came to IIM Bangalore. We were constantly in touch and discussing few ideas about what could work out and what not? and then like basically the idea of starting a company as such and we never thought that we were going to be partners. Just wanted to tryout, just experiment something and then decide what to do later. I was always of the mentality that nothing be decided in the first step. It is always like dancing, In a dance, you take the first step; your partner takes the second step – that’s how you carry it forward. So we thought anything is a good learning experience, and it was evident from whatever has been my experience from under-graduation and post graduation. So trying out new is definitely going to be a new experience, which not most people would have an opportunity to try out. So then we thought based on our time commitments, like I had to manage my studies as well but Abhay was ready to work on it full time. Then we thought, if we are starting a company we have to be really serious about it, We are operating in a space which is very critical – health care. So not many would consider this – like if its pizza delivery if it’s half an hour late or one hour late, people are just going to do away with it. It needs kind of a permanent commitment from someone so I thought; Abhay would be a good match. Knowing him since past 2-3 years, I know he is quite sincere in whatever he does, so I thought this would be a good combination.
    To put in Sunil Hande’s words – who has been one of my biggest inspirers, What he said was – Whenever you are forming a team, the ideal size of the team should be two. Make sure that your functionalities or specialties don’t overlap with each other.  You choose a field in which, you choose a partner in who exactly complements whatever you have. In the sense that if you are good at marketing your other partner should be good at finance, or If you are good in the sales part, the delivery part the other one should be good in operations part and knowing the local flavor and things like that. So we thought we are a good combination and we have the potential to pull it through. So this was one of the main motivations.
    Sachi: The last part of its saying one complementing another, so let me ask you how you complement each other?
    Abhay:  With time we have been able to figure out as to what roles we would take going forward going forward. Right now, with respect to operations, I am taking care of the operations and Sandeep is taking care of marketing part of it. And in fact there has been lot of inputs with respect to, Sandeep’s acads and there has been guidance from IIM Bangalore also. The kind of academic inputs he has got from there and the kind of intellectual inputs from our side, our own studies, our own observations and execution of operational issues We together have been working on it, It has been going great.
    Sandeep: Just to add to what Abhay has told Initially we were totally clueless about what is our role what is our part – I would come back to the point again – if you don’t know something just try it. Initially we started off our pilot operations in August, we were running around, I was missing classes so, but then I find it totally worthwhile an experience. I completely know my strengths right now. In the sense – it might be an over statement but I am pretty sure that compared to around six months back, I now know my strengths far better.
    Sachi: Could you tell us why to choose health care as a sector? 
    Sandeep: To tell about why did chose health care as a sector, basically I wanted to be a doctor but then I had to forego it due to academic reasons. I also realized that one of my main motivations was to offer convenience to the customer in which ever segment we operate. We were also closely evaluating some of the segment that were not tapped – examining things like education, retail and these had sufficient innovation there. But then, in the healthcare space we surprisingly found that in-spite of there being such a huge need, not much of innovations has happened or, service delivery improvement has been done.  We then thought this is a good segment for us to operate on, and considering the fact that India is a huge country and lot of people need health services – especially elderly people and others in real need. Right now, it might be fascinating to order something from flipkart, but when you realize it, it’s not really an important need. You can always go to the book shop and buy books that you are ordering interest of ordering it on flipkart. Whereas in health care, there are people who can’t even walk or, they don’t have caretakers. So for them we wanted to offer some service offering. May be it started off with a social mindset – let’s start with a service and then take it forward. And then we decided, since we were offering a service, let’s put a service charge and we were giving good businesses to labs and hospitals, then we said, we will get some commission from them and then it evolved as a business. So it is basically a stage from ground zero to level one I would say, And then based on continuous search for business opportunities as well as realizing the fact that there is a good need in this segment, Then we decided to get into healthcare.
    Sachi: What other sectors did u evaluate?
    Sandeep: Other businesses, ya like I was saying, one of important things for startup company is that you are making sure that you are not observed in the bigger picture. For example, If we are go and operate in a retail space of something there is always a possibility that some bigger retail payer is going to come to market or he is going to observe me. We don’t have cash also. But then, evaluating this business model what we found was we were not getting into any other person’s shoes, We are pretty much on our own. In the entire value chain of the entire health segment, you are just another value provider. None of the others saw us as a competitor or something. That way we thought, compared to other segment, where we could potentially cut the value chain and be a primary value chain provided, we now we operate as a secondary value chain provider, pretty much complementing all our stakeholders – that is the doctors, the clinics, patients
    Sachi: What is your message that you want to give to anybody who is aspiring to be entrepreneur?
    Abhay: The first thing I would like to suggest is to become an entrepreneur, you need a vision. That is the biggest motivation. If you have some dream to make it big, If you are really passionate about doing something of your own, It might not only be a financial dream but it might be a passion of doing things for yourself, and making a mark in life. Apart from that Once you are into the game, once you have started something and we are working on it, we need to be focused. And definitely you need good guidance, you need people around, whom able to guide you, mentor you well. Fortunately we have got support from NSRCEL mentors and we have been doing well on that front. Apart from that, commitment – where, you know what exact actually you are doing, and you are actually executing it.
    Sandeep: Yea, my message on lines of entrepreneur would be, one of my Professor quotes I would say. What Professor Want says is “If you want to start a something don’t just wait for the right idea, the right idea is never going to strike, at 3AM in the morning or at whatever time. So it’s always about trying out something, and then experimenting with it and improvising it. So I would say always go for it, even if you have 1% motivation to be an entrepreneur, just go for it. To be little contrary to what my partner said, you really need a vision or you really need a big dream – even if you have 1% inclination, even if some part of your body says, – “why am I not the right guy to try it out?” Just go on – hit the road.  It might even be the smallest of things, so you would have heard the story of Mr. Sharath from IIMA. He was a student of IIMA but then he still used to sell tea to his own classmates. How many of us have the motivation to do it? We would think there is an ego issue and all that, what he would have had in his mind are – he wants to try out things. It is the same message I want to say as well. Start off something small; never really say it is small. Whatever you might start of you never really know if it is a big idea that is coming off? So once you hit the field, you might be in a better position to judge if this is the right path for you? Or whether you can take it forward?
    Sachi: Thanks Sandeep, Thanks Abhay for your time.