Perseverance or persistence are the 2 most important characteristics for an entrepreneur, says Vijay Bhaskar Reddy Dinnepu, the Chairman and CEO of KisanRaja. In an exclusive interview with Ashutosh Ranjan and Ragavendra Prasath of iSPIRT, Vijay shares how he came out of the monthly salary mania and started working to solve the problem of farmers. Here is the edited excerpts from the interview.
Our first question to you is, how did you come out of the monthly salary mania?
- Starting Vinfinet Technologies (KisanRaja) was not a sudden decision. In fact, I was doing research for quite some years during my weekends and evenings after work hours on how do we solve the problem of farmers. Before starting KisanRaja, I took an excel and jotted down how much will be my family expense with out my salary for the next 2 or 3 years. How to manage it. I wanted to keep my expenses very minimal.
How many iterations and months have gone into developing KisanRaja?
- It took 8 iterations to reach our current version of KisanRaja which is very compact. The very first prototype was 8 Kg. We used 2 wheeler battery to power it. Many months have gone into each iteration. One iteration took 2 months and some others took more time.
You get lot of ideas when you start developing products? How did you prioritize Must have and Good to have features in KisanRaja.
- We use the term Co-Creation. We collaborate, ideate, explore and experiment with farmers who are our customers. We understand what is actually required to them. We note down the conversations with them and work based on those inputs. We learnt that our first version had too many features which are actually not required by the farmers and as I mentioned it was 8 Kg. Even in our IVR to assist farmers, we use local slang. For example, slang used by people who speak Tamil in Chennai is not the same as people speak in Madurai. So took a blend of slang using it in our IVR.
Currently, the world is moving towards smart phones mania. We are a GSM based controller. Do you have any plans to upgrade to App based monitoring?
- We have an Android App. Farmers can control the motor from their smart phone. So far 100 downloads done. We are working on the UI part to provide better experience.
How currently, how big is your team? (employees)
- Currently, we are 20 member organization.
Are you a still a bootstrapped or funded startup?
- We are looking for funding. So far, we have taken bank loans and support from family members. We want to expand in other regions in India. Currently, we have 16000+ installations in more than 10 states through our dealer network.
Any other new products that we expect from Vinfinet Technologies?
- KisanRaja is our current focus. We are working on similar products lines with some enhanced features.