Ready for the next leap?
Ready for the next leap?
Ready for the next leap?
A new generation of technology entrepreneurs is trying to build the software product ecosystem. Will they succeed where bigwigs have failed?
When Umakant Soni decided to end his successful career in Wipro in 2008 to pursue his dream, his father, a retired professor, was suffering from Parkinson's disease and he just had a baby girl to take care of. But those were not enough to stop him from taking this decision to pursue something which was haunting him day and night with a group of like-minded people from the India Institute of Technology Kanpur, their alma mater.
A little over two years later, Soni's vision has taken shape as Vimagino, a software product company set to revolutionise online shopping experience with its intelligent software tool, Vhelp Angels. The Angel, an interactive software tool, can understand emotions of visitors to any website and enhance their buying experience by getting their emotional feedback. The product is now under trial with 19 companies, including two of the biggest online media companies in the world as well as companies in the travel, retail and high-tech space. There are two patents the company has filed for in the US and India for the uniqueness of its product.
It's not Soni alone; the core team that incorporated the company in February 2009 is aware of the risks in incubating a software product company which requires long time to break even and substantial funding. But that did not stop Gaurav Vaish from Adobe, Sandeep Dey from Google and Sandeep Singh, a hardcore techie with Yahoo! earlier, to join Soni to realise their dream. "I was enjoying my work at Wipro where I was instrumental in incubating three companies. When I quit Wipro, I knew that creating a product company from scratch requires a hell of a lot of time, energy and even money. Many people told me I was committing professional suicide as failure rate in the software product space is more than any other. But I was never in two minds," says Soni who at 32 is the oldest member in his team.
As part of his M Tech project at IIT Kanpur in 2001, Soni developed a pollution-free helmet. Such was his inclination for entrepreneurship that he even visited Bangalore to meet Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy to pitch to him the business plan.
Soni's is just one example of the new-generation technology entrepreneurs who are quietly trying to build the software product ecosystem which is expected to be the future of the Indian IT industry. Most of them are brimming with innovative ideas and they are not averse to taking any risk in the process. The high failure rate in the software product space (industry also calls it infant mortality) is no more a deterrent to the growing risk-taking appetite of these entrepreneurs.
Emerging opportunities
Industry insiders believe that India is at the cusp of the domestic consumer market opening up which has the capacity to pay either on the mobile or on the web which did not exit earlier. Some of the recent developments including the unique identification (UID) programme have thrown up opportunities for technology firms in the payment solutions area. Since the UID number is understood to be connected to one's bank account at the back-end, this is expected to help people who do not have credit card to do online money transfer and shopping. The example of Kenya where about 7 million out of the 34 million-odd population are hooked on to a mobile-based money transfer service N-Peas is an eye opener in this regard. Experts say that UID is expected to enable over 200 million people to use the mobile and internet money transfer service in India, while this option is now available to only 11 million people who have credit cards. Most emerging software companies see this as an opportunity and are trying to cater to this space.
Manav Garg, the founder of Eka Software Solution, spent about three years with G Premjee Group, a Singapore-based commodity trading company, to identify the pain points of the customers and later converted this into an opportunity. Garg, who joined the GP Group in 1998 after his MBA from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, realised that despite the fact that commodities trading is a high risk sector, most of the trading companies were using spreadsheets in the absence of IT systems. Garg quit his job in 2001 and, after a break of a couple of years, started his own company, Eka Software Solution, in 2004 first with his own saving and subsequently with seed funding from his previous employer, GP Group. The company which develops commodity trading and risk management software product today has absolutely no competition in India, while globally it competes with companies like OpenLink Software (a Carlyle group company), Tripple Point Technology and SunGard Energy and Commodities. The company, even though quite small in size compared to its competitors, today has over 17 clients including three Fortune 500 clients. "I think people have to focus a lot on trying to understand the market that they are trying to address. What is the basic value they are trying to bring to the customer? Once they identify that, they have to go and talk to the market early on," says Garg.
The biggest concern for any aspiring entrepreneur used to be how to access funds. Owing to the risk in starting a software product business and the long period it requires to hit the market with the product, Indian technology entrepreneurs are now realising the importance of keeping their cost structures low. Many of them feel that funding is certainly one of the concerns, but certainly not the biggest one. "We never went in for any funding and tried to live as cheap as possible. In the initial days, it was a home office where our parents were living upstairs in the same building. Even today, we are self-funded, profitable and self-sustainable," says Vembu of Zoho.
Agrees Garg of Eka Software: "We have seen people who spend 80 per cent of their time for funding before they start the company. The initial focus should be on understanding the customers' problem to develop the business ideas. Once they understand the problems and customers validate that then funding will automatically follow."
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