Here’s an interesting story about a young entrepreneur who put his personal life ahead of cool, calculated business decisions and went on to create a very successful IT Products Business.
Going back in time – background
Archit graduated in Computer Science, from IIT Guwahati and a doctoral level programme in the same subject thereafter, from Wisconsin University. The inherent brilliance and appreciation of things technical, was always there. This story is about taking all this, harnessing it and shaping a model which has all the trappings of a sound product.
A chanced paper publication and presentation thereafter – on network storage and efficiency – earned him many laurels, the least among them being offered a job in a start up, the brainchild of an equally brilliant professor from Princeton. Archit became part of a Core Engineering Team, which positioned the company in its own niche space. A solid reputation built on strong execution capabilities, was what this team epitomised. He put in a two-and-a-half year stint, and later on the company was later taken over by another Fortune 500 Company, EMC. By this time, the spirit of entrepreneurship had germinated inside and was beginning to take shape.
It was in late 2010 that he was faced with a peculiar dilemma – whether to stay back in the Valley or return to India and start off on his own. Personal reasons outweighed business instincts, which necessitated a move back to India. By then, the decision of going the entrepreneur-way was already taken. It was now only about that – what, and when. Having a father, who was a partner in a large CA Firm, helped in sharpening Archit’s laser-like focus and identify addressable gaps in a market dominated by the Chartered Accountants.
The Idea
The existing products (filing of returns) in the Compliance Space (Taxation) weren’t very good and there was a huge potential to design a better product by introducing an Americanised approach to solving bandwidth issues – offer a cloud-based solution. The CA profession has often been cited to be traditional in its approach, and this product which was conceptualised, was doing just the opposite. Break the traditional way of thinking. It offered a platform based product, leveraging future technologies, like SaaS based models on cloud or even build mobile applications in the times to come by. These were the early days of Clear Tax – simple to use and largely influenced by a product called Turbo Tax, from US. A major game-changer was about to enter the market.
The Product – ClearTax
It is not just a rudimentary e-return filing software, but designed to also educate the user and help him / her make informed decisions. Today, the bulk of users are in the Consumer segment but a drive is on to gain larger share of the pie, in Enterprise space too. The company has tied up with Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and leveraging this to build strong networks in the user community. Initially there were teething problems of migrating from desktop based applications to a cloud-based one but surprisingly the adoption has been very quick. Presently, the penetration has been in the top 8 -10 cities in India, which means there is a huge potential for growth, in untapped markets.
An Excel sheet based tool provided by Income Tax Department has captured about 40% of the market share and the balance is fragmented, which is where ClearTax operates. In terms of usability and many other critical functionalities, ClearTax is way ahead of even the market leader. On-line filing has been made free for women, which in a way is giving back to the community.
The enterprise segment is what will bring in margins and needs to be penetrated with precision. Reaching out to SMBs is a daunting task. Considering their size and nature of operation, the focus of entrepreneurs is really running their day-to-day show. They are too busy in doing what is their core activity – trading or manufacturing. Not being tech-savvy either, puts an additional pressure on marketing such products which are Internet-driven. The earlier adopters of ClearTax were Chartered Accountants, who in turn promoted it aggressively within their own community. It was also recommended by CAs to the SMB business. Otherwise through traditional advertising route, it is a very costly proposition.
The Product Eco-System and what it takes to succeed
A good product is something which users want. Of course, not all user desires are desirable (say recreational drugs for instance), so when we talk about a good product, it has to be consistent with the founders’ value system.
For success in the market, there are other factors at play :
- The size of the market has to be sufficiently large for the startup to be able to deploy sufficient engineering, sales and marketing resources, for its success. Software Products interestingly can attack large adjacent markets, so this is something a startup doesn’t necessarily have to worry about when they start creating a product.
- A great product ends up creating its own market by typically disrupting an industry or creating a new one.
- Marketing: There is a lot of noise in the market place. Users have to be convinced to invest time/money/effort into this new thing. This requires very good marketing.
- A good product comes with incentives for its own growth in the marketplace.
- Good Engineering: Less important in the beginning, but becomes very crucial as the product gains traction.
Incumbents and competitors have to be out-executed.
We signed off with Archit Gupta, Founder of ClearTax, a very successful IT Product in its domain. The spirit of entrepreneurship is oh-so-intoxicating. Entrepreneurs are essentially dreamers who have the ability to make others believe in their dreams.
Here’s wishing the team at ClearTax a great year ahead.