We took a hard look at our company. Was it going to become a unicorn? No. Not close. Was it going to do the proverbial J curve in the near future? Not really. I could sense the VC and the Angel instantly saying ‘Shark Tank’ style. “I’m out”. I could sense the other entrepreneurs console …
Cracking a niche B2B market without funding: Valuefy’s Story
Valuefy was started in 2010 to empower fund houses to make informed decisions better and faster. Vivek Singal, a B.Tech from IIT Bombay and Sharad Singh, an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad worked together at Fractal Analytics, an analytics firm, before starting Valuefy. On choosing to build a product like this, Vivek shares, “When we chose …
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Freshdesk at #SaaSx3
The story of how Freshdesk grew 500% in revenue in 12 months, and how Girish Mathrubootham and team went about telling us how they did it at SaaSx 2016. “How many of you recognize this man on screen?” Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshdesk, asked the room. He was gesturing to a picture of a man …
Buyer’s Fault or Seller’s Fault: Who Is Responsible For Invoice-Related Late Payments?
(originally published here) 1 in Every 3 Invoices Unpaid Is Due To Seller Errors. Seriously?! “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution.” Albert Einstein That’s just a fancy way of saying unless you understand the problem, you can’t really reach a solution. Pursuit of an Objective Answer Whenever we talk …
Why I’m doing what I’m doing!
I’m forever being asked a question by the people I meet during my travels, events, etc. I usually smile and avoid it. Or let someone embarrass me by talking about how important and selfless my work has been and is being. But I’ve never really tackled that question on my own. Perhaps I needed to …
Innofest in Jaipur.
Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable. William Pollard And that is the change that we are looking driving as part of Innofest. Innofest recently held as part of Rajasthan IT Day in Jaipur saw …
Every Product Needs A Good Teardown
(originally posted here) Last Saturday in Chennai at the SaaSx3 I had the privilege of participating in my first “Product Teardown” A Product Teardown, “or simply teardown, is the act of disassembling a product, such as a television set, to identify its component parts, chip & system functionality” – Wiki In the context of the teardown of my …
Using the product roadmap to keep an organization in sync
When organizations are relatively small, it is possible to keep all parts of the company – execs, PM, sales, engineering, QA, operations, etc – in sync with the direction and with the vision of the company. Communication across the company can be seamless and everyone can remain aligned to what they are working on and …
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Scaling from $1m to $5m, lessons learned by Freshdesk
I travel to India once every quarter to catch up with our India team based out of Coimbatore. I was planning to attend SaaSx for a while now and this time, it was perfect timing the event is scheduled on 2nd April, right in the mid weekend of my India trip. This is an invitation-only …
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Hey Indian SaaS Founders, Are you dreaming big enough and aiming high enough?
I took SaaSy bus to attend SaaSx3, a fun journey networking and ice break session among SaaS founder The sessions were on common challenges from funding to hiring right resources and also instant mini FinTech RoundTable (picture below). The venue was at Chennai (Mahabalipuram) well described by above tweet and event started with afternoon session …
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Write up the Business Plan !
Most of us have read the famous story about Jeff Bezos’s cross country trip from New York to Seattle. Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994, writing up the Amazon business plan on the way. Jeff’s important advise for startup company or any company is to write up the business plan. Now if Jeff Bezos has done it, and become …
Product Teardown at the “SaaS”y Day at Chennai: Chapter 2 on SaaSx3
The sea breeze was cool. And the SaaSy people went cool as well. Kiruba unleashed some tricks for networking that had the participants engaging in banter, fun and games on the lawn. It also wore off the participants from postprandial somnolence (carb coma) after lunch. The SaaSy bus by then had arrived from Bengaluru, and …
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Aadhaar: Zero to 1-Billion in 5.5 years!
A Podcast with Nandan Nilekani, founding Chairman, UIDAI On the occasion of Aadhaar reaching the 1-Billion landmark – the fastest of any digital initiative in history – I had the privilege of recording a Podcast with the founding Chairman of this grand vision, Mr. Nandan Nilekani. Nandan shared his views on how they went about …
It Was a “SaaS”y Day at Chennai: Chapter 1#SaaSx3
The April sun wasn’t evident at the beach side locale, near the historic town of Mamallapuram, which hold relics of exceptional beauty on its rocks sculpted under the patronage of the Pallava kings. Had it been the early part of last century, in all probability, we could have reached this place in passenger boats sailing …
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Announcing the third batch of 15 companies selected for @InTech50 2016
Last week, we announced the second batch of winners of InTech50 2016. It’s been a hectic month for all the stakeholders. Happy to announce the third and final batch of 15 companies that are selected for InTech50 2016: Aujas: Security Analytics and Visualization Platform Canvazify: Canvazify is a visual collaboration tool for team brainstorming and …
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