Entrepreneur's Interview - Edu next ventures - A Finishing School business

MandE: Good Morning, Swaroop and Vivek, Thanks for coming in for this interview. Swaroop and Vivek are founders of “edu-next ventures”, which operates in the education space. 

I would like to begin the interview with getting to know your background briefly before you could proceed with what edu-next does.

Swaroop: I am basically from Bangalore. I am a graduate of KREC Suratkal, and then I did my MBA from IIM Bangalore. I then worked with Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) as a consultant for a short while and then I moved to Dell Analytics where I worked in their marketing analytics team. We are now running this venture called Edu-Next which essentially a finishing school for business graduates. We have been working with business schools in India, to provide a careercounseling and mentorship to help students decide better as to what job they would get into and how do they mould themselves to ensure that they get the job.

Vivek: Hi, this is Vivek and I am a graduate of KREC Suratkal,batch of 2006.

MandE:How did the idea of finishing school come to you?

Vivek: During one of us when brainstorming at IIMB we decided that we would work in the space of education and for obvious reasons we landed at the idea of finishing schools – because it is right at the surface. We wanted to skim the surface first and then see how we can work in the other areas in education. 

In terms of how we came to the idea itself - India being a very competitive environment does not give enough time to people to think about what they want to do in life? or how they move forward? where they want to grow? What they want to do for the rest of their life?

They are in a hurry and experience enormous peer pressure – thisdrives most career decisions. People do not reflect and think what they done in the past, what they are doing now and what is the personality type, what are their carrier goals, what they can do, what they can’t do, what are the strengths and so on. They approach placement and interviews in a rather unprepared or underprepared fashion. We have also gone experienced similar things.

Individually for me the dilemma was - MBA or no MBA? Should I stick to my own domain or move to something else?How do I shift?What do I need to make this shift? Where do I shift to?These questions are commonplace –especially once people start working. So we want to address this first at the post graduation level and then move to even more impactful level - under graduate and then Pre-University.

In an education driven society like ours, it’s very important for people to make the right decisions about where they want to be, so that they can deliver the best and not be unhappy about where they are, or the decisions they made.

Swaroop: One of the reasons why we got into this space is that I am personally very passionate about education.

I have also seen a lot of heart burn with my own batch mates in MBA who honestly felt very lost!We took the job we got out of campus. But somehow the ability to say this is what is important for me, this is the kind of person I am and this is what I want to choose is lacking even in the best Institutes - We want to reduce that heart burn.May be say after 5 years of working post MBA, how do you ensure that you are doing the right thing? How do you ensure you are happy?

Thesearenot easy questions to answer! And each one has his own questions and must find his own answers. We are trying to use different ways to get students to think and make them ask themselves these questions - we provide a platform for them to make the right choice. This was the primary reason we started this venture. 

We alsorealize that sometime it’s too late at the MBA level to take these decisions - Probably they are better off beingmusicians. But that is the question we will answer later. Given that fact that you are doing a MBA, how do we help them to make better choice?

MandE: It was pretty clear about how you went about starting it. 

You are targeting the PG section of the education system, and you also realize that most of the career choices are made at the +2 levels.How are you addressing that at the movement?

Swaroop: We are not addressing that at the moment, because we need to learn a lot in that space. 

The approach would be slightly different because we still are in a society that promotes engineering because it give a job that pays Rs. 25,000/- or promotes being a doctor. What about being a physicist or mathematician or an artist or a star. While there is increase consciousness that people can have different kinds of career choices, we still are not mature enough to accept some of these things. We have to still figure out a way to address this problem. 

There is a sufficient heart burn in MBA world itself for us to address the problem and establish ourselves as a provider of quality career services or career guidance and then we will work at scaling it to other sections of education. 

Vivek: Primarily post graduation is one venuewhere you are not left with many choices– a PhD or a job. So there are very few things that you can have to choose from after post graduation,and that is where we are saying what choices they have made; learnmore about these people and then probably move to under graduation and others.

MandE: What is your vision for Edu-next?

Swaroop: The first,I really want Edu-next to be a respected name in the space as - providers of quality career servicesand career guidance/ counseling. We have some challenges I would like to address. 

Firstly there is always a distribution in terms of quality of students. Our challenge is to understand this difference in inputs and be able to cater to the difference needs that different kinds of student have. If you take a tier one B-school and comparing with a tier four B-school, the expectations from the course, what is available after the course are so different. We cannot apply the same logic everywhere. So for us able to figure out how to suggest the correct thing for a person is one challenge that I would like to address, and that would go a long way in building our reputation.

The second thing is we are inherently a very people driven business. The biggest problem is how do you scale something like this? Can you build enough tools and bring in enough technology so that sitting out of one city in India we are able to reach a large population. How do you start adapting to different contexts - I don’t even want to restrict it to India, how do you address somebody in US or Brazil or NewZealand?We want to make it a very large forum for people to come and get this service. That is what I am really looking at from the ‘B’ school angle.As far as rest is concerned it is still work in progress, we will keep you posted. 

MandE: This question is not directly related to edu-next but would love to ask you – What motivated you to be entrepreneurs?

Vivek: I will be very candid about this. Soon after Engineering, it is a lot of multi pronged peer pressure that you see. Friends went on to do M.S, went on to do MBA and other things – some studied Mathematics, some stuck to their own domain and completed their masters and somebody else doing PhD and othersstuck to their own job. The people in the job would slog it out from 9 to 5 and go out on weekends - Even I went through the same things straight of college. We worked hard and but still like everybody else who has hungry to do more, especially from a college like ours. We had to do something more to satisfy - Probably do much more than what we are doing at present. 

MBA? M.S? I asked all these questions to myself and I could not answer most of them well - after a post graduation what next?And given the personal choices that I have made such as where I want to stay, what I want to do and amongst other things, it was not an easy decision to make. Entrepreneurship was also a buzz word during an early 2000, and is even now. We just dabbled with few things - trying to do that, trying to do this. It was more experimental, not knowing where the journey will go. 

Being a first generation entrepreneur, it is not very easy to push yourselfto quit your job or do something of your own. Soon I started enjoying the process and not knowing where I to go, itself was fun. You can push yourself that much harder in not in terms of effort but in terms of how much we can take? How many things you can give up?

You generally compare yourself with peers who after MBA buying cars left right and center, Going to the Dalal Street and getting their pay packages. You are still stuck between a Volvo bus and a BMTC normal bus or even an auto rickshaw because you cannot afford to.So this is a hard decision to make. But that is what probably is the right choice! You know once you have made the right choice.I think you will have to experiment a little, not everyone is sure what they want to do unless they try different things. So I started doing whatever I have to do being my own. 

Swaroop: I am a crazy control freak!  I cannot work for any one. Money is an obvious issue, we will all make money eventually. A very close friend of mine says “we will all die rich”. I have immense faith in his statement. So money is a motivator, as is the immense wealth to be created as part of running your own business but I think the greatest kick is that “I decide what happens to my company, my fortunes”. That is the primary reason why I started off on my own. Opportunity wiseI didn’t have any problem; I could have gotten any job I wanted but that wasn’t what I was looking for. 

MandE: In your journey of entrepreneurship, what are the learning that you havethis far?

Vivek: I would like to keep it extremely crisp– In terms of the learning, know what you are trying to do, have the right people with you, stay in touch with all your friends especially entrepreneurs who have taken the off-beat route, because they are the one who can talk with and probably you can relate to. It is extremely important to prioritize as an entrepreneur.

Swaroop: It is ok to not know really where you are headed to and you will figure out along the way. The most important thing is to ensure that working with people who are right for you. There are certain kind of people whom you can work with and certain kind of people you cannot!From personal experience I can tell you that it is very important to choose your team right. It is a good team that can pull off anything. 

The other thing is you have to build good will along the way. It is very difficult especially when you have graduated from a top tier Institute.You tend to come with this baggage of entitlement, I am from here, and I have to be given this. Very quickly I have learnt that unless you have something of value and you can prove it, nobody is going to give a damn that you are from certain Institute, or you have gotten a certain degree. It’s humbling in that sense and I am better off now. I am very happy I got rid of my excess baggage that all good institutes put on to you when you graduate and that’s been the best learning so far.

MandE: What is your message for aspiring entrepreneur?

Swaroop: Like they say, the fastest way to solve a problem is right through it.Unless you get in, you are never going to solve the problem.I know lot of people who sit at the dinner table and say, I have got this brilliant idea, I have got the excel sheets, I have got the ppt, I know the VC and all that - but you just frustrate yourself out! Sitting with all the plans and complaining about how corporate life is not or you. 

But If you are not goingto jump in and do it, it’s not going to happen. You have to have reasonable plans etc all that jazz would be there,but the tipping point is to say, I am going to get out tomorrow, I am going do this for a while and make sure it works. 

We have tried this part time and it doesn’t really work.We have to do it full time and give it what is due. And at least I realize, the faster you get in, the easier it is - because, as you get older, fatter and slower and richer, entrepreneurship becomes more and more difficult. It is like trek to Manasa sorovar. It is best done when you are fifteen. We could possibly do it only by 30. Anything later you might succumb to heart attack, so do it quickly. 

 Vivek: I have two things, 

One - If you have worked in a corporate set up before, and learnt to de-jargonize. Big organizations jargonize to prove their worth! Keep it simple.

Second- Do not fall into the trap of theory of entrepreneurship. If you have a good idea and you think you can pull it off and if you can prove to yourself that you can do it - Forget the scaling, forget everything else. I mean, how would it grow? Will it become a billion dollars business? All such similar questions - probably a hundred of them. The first starting point is you need to be convinced about the idea itself. These points might have been studied, but don’t go by the book at times, do it yourself. It is ok to go off the book that you can always come back and join later on.

MandE: Thank you Swaroop and Vivek for this wonderful interview.

Entrepreneur Interview - Transitainment Ventures

MandE: Thanks Nithin for accepting to come down here, for this interview. I would like to begin the interview with a brief background about you and then explain about what you company - Transitainment does.

Nithin: I am basically a computer engineer, Graduated from NITK Suratkal in 2007, and I worked for some time in product R&D with National Instruments. Post that I completed my MBA from IIM Bangalore. It was after the MBA that I decided to start something on my own. Right now I am running a start up called ‘Transitainmenet Ventures’. We are focused on the travelling consumer. A lot of people now are spending an increasingly large amount of time commuting to work and they are really not doing anything during that time. So we thought of accessing this customer while they are travelling and do interesting things around it.

MandE: You just told you “decided” to start off, was it that you all of a sudden decided to start off or you always nurtured the aspiration to start off?

Nithin: I think everyone in India has an aspiration to start a business of their own. Rather than a question of “If”, Its more a question of “when?” A lot of people have reason that this is not probably the right time to start; I will do it later, when I have some money and  when I am more secure etc... My reason was very simple. At this point of time I really don’t have a lot of personal commitment and the hunger is there. Also India is growing market now with tremendous opportunities everywhere. Very soon get a lot of these opportunity will get closed up. Right now there is a lot more room to do funky things. You go a decade later and I think the number of opportunities would be much considerably less than now. I maybe wrong, but I guess if it helps me keep my mind clear, so be it.

MandE: I understand that you started off from a personal angle of saying it is ‘NOW’. How did you team receive this? How did you go about forming your team that way? 

Nithin: When I started really? The idea hit me in a bus. When I was just going around in a bus, I was really bored and I saw the other 50 people in the bus were just staring into the blue sky. I said there is something here.  

Then, we thought “OK, In that case, What can we do around it?” and we discussed it out. But then the current team that we have now is different than the team we started off with. Lots of things happen and the team kind of evolves over a period of time. Right now, what we have is a well evolved team I would say. It had come together in a process of time. The team I don’t think happens one day or overnight - It never does. A lot of conflicts of interests happen and it needs to mature after sometime, interests have to align. So it takes some time, for us I think it took about six month to eight months. That is when the team actually came together

MandE: So how did the team actually evolve?

Nithin: There were three guys actually to start off with. There was me, and there were two other people from IIMB. When this idea came in they also got interested and they said there were some people whom they knew who could pitch in. Then we started working for some time and technology was kind of evolving. As the technology evolved, what I did was I got a lot of people with whom I worked with, I went to my school with and went to my college with to informal chats about the idea, during lunch, dinner etc..I wasn’t asking if they would join. I was just getting their inputs. You kind of involve people, they also evaluate your idea, and you also get comfortable with them. So this is kind of how we evolved. 

As I said everyone has an aspiration to be a part of something exciting, It is just a question of finding the match. So more you can talk and more you kind of work with people, the more chances that you hit the right people . That’s exactly what we did.

MandE: Fine, That’s one part of it the puzzle, So the next one is the money part it.  I understand that your business is an extremely different kind of business - in terms of it being extremely innovative, So I see that money would be a challenge. So how did you go about fixing the money aspect of it?

Nithin:  Money… humm…I have a belief that early stage business in India, the early stage finance ecosystem in India is not very well developed.

I think it’s got be the interest rate arbitrage. In the US, it’s a 4% reign, or it’s really a 0% reign and in India it’s a 10% reign. All these banks and VCs etc have access to capital from the developed nation, where the expectation of returns is very low. When it comes to India, even if you put the capital in a risk free bond you get 10%. So what happens here is that you have access to alternate lower risk investments, where the VC industry can actually make money from. So the money that actually trickles down to early stage start ups, which are really high risk high returns kind of a game, is very low. So there are very few players around. It is more or less the incubation centers in the IIMs, IITs etc and some small funds that are around. So we are kind of working with a few people right now. I don’t think the change will happen immediately in India, it will take some time. 

MandE: With the Money aspect taken care of let me get to the consumer aspect of it. Could you talk about the end consumer of your platform and the intermediary that comes in your business? How did you about acquiring in that? 

Nithin: That I think we had much less problem here because the  need was there. When you are travelling you are really stressed out and really wanted do something.  

But in our business, you will have to build partnership in multiple places. But that it was much simpler than what we thought it would be. You go and tell a story, the value proportion, in a simple crisp manner. 

But the real deal in this start up is not getting the one customer, it is really getting the entire partnership going together. You go and sell to one guy one story, to another guy another story and third guy another story. But the only person who knows the entire story is you and you got to put it together in a manner that everyone is happy, that is when the value is created. 

MandE: Ok, So that covers the 3 portions of any of business you can think off – the money, the people and the paying customer. Let’s get to saying what the biggest challenge is that you faced in the way you formed the business. Being around 10 months old what are the big challenges you have faced?

Nithin: The first thing is that the wind blows in some direction right? Currently the wind is connectivity. You are on the Internet – everything is connected. Our business is kind of disconnecting it! Our business is to disconnect it and make it cheaper. Disconnect the content   purely from a delivery point of view and make it cheaper. 

The technology is not really not going with wind per say. We are challenging lot of thing. It will take a lot of time for people in the ecosystem to omprehend. It’s the same thing for everybody. When Flipkart started, people said that ... e-commerce is dead etc, noone saw the larger story of what they were trying to do. There is a certain amount of conviction that you need, in your idea, in the thing you are doing.. Its also imp not be bogged by someone telling you that the story is not right. Because he/she is not supposed to understand the story, only you are, the complete story atleast. And if the story is that obvious people would’ve done it already .It is a nice dichotomy actually: “if there is an obvious business around, I don’t think there is business there, because someone has done it already.” and if there is no obvious business around, then lot people will oppose you. So the very fact that a lot of people are telling you and opposing you means that you see something that they don’t.  And if you see it, that’s where the value is. That is where the challenge really is, You have to be that convinced, you have to be head strong sometime, that stubborn sometimes, and tell that ‘NO’ this is there - kind of thing. You will finally find the partners it will just take time.

MandE: How are you going about the vision that created for your company? What is the vision, If may I ask you that way?

Nithin: The vision is really is, we simply started with a need and vision is really not the technology. Our vision is still the need, that – “go and engage the travelling customers” that’s it. A person, who was travelling now is doing nothing - engage him. That will reduce the stress and it will make travel all the more comfortable and it’ll increase the quality of living. It will make money for everybody. That is the real value we are trying to create. In Technology we are doing multiple things. And I am pretty sure that technology will change. We cannot stick to one technology. We say stick to the customer and do whatever possible to engage the customer that’s it. That’s our motto.

MandE: That is pretty interesting. If I may ask you, what is your biggest inspiration to start off that way?

Nithin: I really don’t think that’s hard! It’s Money really...  You know finally everyone wants to make a lots of money and retire early and all those things. that is always there. But then also things like working for your own. There is lot of fun in doing something, that actually challenges you that much.  It is extremely challenging and  mentally exhausting – this start ups. You are  fire fighting everywhere and at the same time fighting a lot of people… There is a natural high there. 

MandE: What would you like to tell to any aspiring entrepreneurs? 

Nithin:  “Stop aspiring start doing” that is the only way of starting anything - People can you tell you hundred different things. The fundamental thing about a start up is that you need to do something different. The moment you are following somebody you are doing something wrong. You are not doing justice to entrepreneurship. Just start and figure things along the way, its good fun. 

MandE: Thank you Nithin for taking time for the interview thank a lot. 

Entrepreneur Interview - Permeative Technologies - iPhone & Android Development Company

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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. 

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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. 

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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. 

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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. 

MandE: 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. 

 MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: Thank you Basavaraj, for taking time out to this interview, thank you once again.

Interview - Plan my health - A student run venture @ NSRCEL IIMB

MandE: 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

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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.

MandE: 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

MandE: 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?

MandE: Thanks Sandeep, Thanks Abhay for your time.