Annasha

Monday.com – A Company That Gives The Liberty To Design Their Own Work Management Applications.

Founded in 2012 by three entrepreneurs, Monday.com was built in a way to give companies and individual clients the liberty to develop their own applications. Depending on the needs and goals of a company, it has to buy or develop customized work management software. Monday.com is a publicly-traded company that specializes in several domains including project management, team management, no-code development platform, and many more. The project of Monday.com was started in 2012 and was officially launched two years after that. The company’s headquarters is based in Tel Aviv, Israel and currently, it has more than 1,000 employees.

About the Company

Being an expert in project and work management, the main services offered by Monday.com are sales and CRM, inventory tracking, software development, HR, operations, etc. Monday.com can be best described as a Work Operating System (Work OS) that is a very flexible option, especially for the remote work environment. It helps in shaping the entire workflow in a team from collaboration to developing custom work applications. The UI of Monday.com is very careful and it helps in visualizing a lot of information from a different perspective. Monday.com was originally famous as daPulse and its name was changed in 2017. Recently, the company was also awarded Calcalist’s most promising startups.

History

The founders of Monday.com are Roy Mann, Eran Kampf, and Eran Zinman. These three founders started the project to develop something innovative and easily customizable so that it can be used by everyone. In 2012 the company was started and it was a huge triumph for the company that later in the same year it was able to raised funding of $1.5 million in the seed round. The first step towards developing a new project, the founders tried to understand the pain points of their target customers and eventually built a prototype under the brand name daPulse. In 2014, after two years of hard work the company was finally able to launch its first commercial product, and in the same year, it was able to land its first six customers. The business started out of an apartment in Tel Aviv and in that tiny office, they hosted their first board meeting.

Expansion

The company started growing impressively as within one year of launching its first product its customer base went from having six customers to 3,181 new customers. So, it expanded the team as well and added nine new members. In 2016, the company hosted its Series A funding round and raised $7.6 million. This funding round was led by Genesis Partners and Entrée Capital. By the end of this year, the company was able to acquire more than 7,000 new customers. Monday.com released a new mobile application in 2016. The Series B funding round of the company took place in 2017 and the company successfully raised $25 million. Insight Venture Partners along with existing investors from the Series A funding round. The total customer base of the company exceeded 20,000. Monday.com eventually got some exposure in 2017 when it was featured in Globes Most Promising Startup of the Year and also became one of the top 15 companies in 500 Fastest Growing Companies. By the end of 2017, daPulse was officially branded as Monday.com.

In 2018, the company expanded more as it opened its first international office in New York City. The company also raised $50 million in Series C funding and a new investor called Stripes Group was added. In the Series D funding round, the company was able to raise $150 million and it was raised by Sapphire Ventures. The company became the recipient of the 2020 Webby Award and also achieved unicorn status. It has also expanded to the UK, Miami, and San Francisco.

Roy Mann – CEO of Monday.com

Roy Mann is one of the founders of Monday.com and the present CEO of the company. He started his career as a web developer at Finjan. Apart from co-founding Monday.com, he is also the founder of SaveAnAlien.com and served as the former C-CTO of wix.com. Mann studied computer science at Reichman University.

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Ashneer Grover – The former MD of BharatPe who took a voluntary leave from the company.

Ashneer Grover is one of the most famous businessmen in the Indian entrepreneurial world. He became famous after taking the position of Managing Director in BharatPe. Grover has been the recipient of several awards and accolades for his contribution to BharatPe and also as a visionary and leader. In 2021, Ashneer Grover was featured in Fortune India’s list of 40 Under 40 India’s brightest young business minds. From 2020, Ashneer Grover’s name has been making headlines as he got involved in some controversies. He was also sent on leave for using inappropriate language against the staff of Kotak Mahindra Bank. These are a few reasons behind his resignation from BharatPe.

Early Life

Grover was born in Delhi in 1982 and was raised in the same city. After completing his schooling, he joined IIT Delhi to study Civil Engineering. While he was studying at IIT, he was one of the six students who got selected for an exchange program for a university in France. After he went to France he also received a scholarship of Rs 5 lakh from the French embassy. After graduating from IIT Delhi, he got enrolled in IIM Ahmedabad in the Finance Program for MBA. During the placement season, Grover secured a job at Kotak Investment Banking and started his career.

Career

When Grover got his first offer, he directly joined the company as its Vice President. After joining Kotak Investment Banking, he worked there for almost 7 years and left the company in 2013. He then joined American Express, a well-known MNC, and worked there for a couple of years. In 2015, he left American Express to join Grofers as the company’s Chief Financial Officer. In these several years, Ashneer tried to expand his network and made connections with several investors as well. After working with multiple companies, he wanted to do something different and thus joined PC Jewellers as Business Head. His main target in the company was to develop an improvement with the payment option.

Since he was developing new payment options for the company, he got the idea for a new start-up revolving around the same. So, in 208, Ashneer Grover along with Shasvat Nakrani and Bhavik Koladiya launched BharatPe. Today, it is one of the most widely used digital payment options in the country. It is India’s first UPI interoperable QR code. Launching a startup was quite challenging for Grover in the early days. Initially, he wasn’t able to afford too many employees but he needed someone to manage the operations with him. So, eventually his wife, Madhuri became a part of the company. Grover is also famous as one of the sharks in Shark Tank India, a reality show for startup businesses.

Resignation from BharatPe

There are several controversies and criticism that have surfaced in the last few years against Grover. For example, a lawsuit was filed against Grover and his company, BharatPe by Paytm and a few other companies for distributing pamphlets that suggested that they were not fully India-based companies. The companies that filed the lawsuit also requested the Reserve Bank of India to take appropriate actions against BharatPe. Another battle also took place between BharatPe and PhonePe regarding the usage of the same suffix.

But one controversy that escalated fast and didn’t leave Grover any other option but to retire was an abusive audio clip. In January 2022, the audio of Grover having a conversation with Kotak Mahindra Bank went viral where abusive languages were used. The bank also alleged that both Grover and his wife threatened the staff of the bank. Later, Grover tweeted that it was a fake audio clip. In March 2022, Grover stepped down as the Managing Director of the company and quit from BharatPe.

Personal Life

Ashneer Grover is married to Madhuri Grover who is also an entrepreneur. Before she started working for BharatPe, she was an interior designer and worked with many high-profile people. The couple has two children, a son (Avy Grover) and a daughter (Mannat Grover).

Annasha

Anupam Mittal – The Indian Entrepreneur Behind The Success Of Shaadi.com And Many Other Endeavors.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Anupam Mittal is one of the most powerful people in India, especially in the startup ecosystem. He is known as the founder of Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Mauj Mobile, and People Pictures (under the People Group). Apart from being a successful entrepreneur, Mittal is also an investor who has invested in more than 200 companies till now. Currently, he is also a part of the reality show called Shark Tank (a show for aspiring entrepreneurs). Mittal was featured in The Week magazine as one of the top 25 people to watch out for.

Early Life

Born in December 1971, Anupam Mittal hailed from an entrepreneurial background as his father, Gopal Krishna Mittal was a businessman. Mittal went to Boston College, Massachusetts and he studied Operations and Strategic Management for three years. After he graduated, he started working for MicroStrategy in 1998 as a product manager. While he was working for the company he visited India and an encounter with an Indian priest (pandit) gave him the idea to build Shaadi.com.

Mittal had an encounter with a pandit because the latter came with a lot of biodata of women for finding a life partner for Mittal. After having a conversation with the pandit, Mittal realized that finding a life partner in that way of collecting and passing biodata physically limits the choice. So, he wanted to harness the power of the internet to help anyone find a life partner by overcoming geographical and spatial limitations. So, he founded Sagaai.com which was rebranded as Shaadi.com later. He was the CEO of the company until 2015 when he stepped down to explore other areas.

Founding Shaadi.com

Shaadi.com was the breakthrough for Mittal and made him a very famous and successful entrepreneur. It is one of the most used matrimonial sites not only among Indians but also among Asians. Shaadi.com’s core market is India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh but it is available across the world from UAE to the US. Since Mittal made Shaadi.com a global enterprise, he clearly understood how the business growth in India was different from that in the west. According to Mittal, the US population adopted the internet very fast but in India internet became available to normal people only after Jio started offering data plans at a reasonable rate. And as more Indian people started getting access to the internet, the number of users of Shaadi.com also increased. Currently, Shaadi.com has more than 35 million users across the world.

Success Stories

After Shaadi.com became a huge success, Anupam Mittal founded Makaan.com in 2007 to bridge the gap between sellers and buyers. Mittal’s entrepreneurial mindset was based on the potential of the internet and how it digitized every aspect of our life. Makaan.com was built so that buyers can search for real estate properties based on their price range and other factors. In 2015, the business was taken over by Proptiger.com, an online real estate advisor.

Mittal founded Mauj, a global online media company in 2006 and it was incorporated in 2007. The company mainly deals with mobile content and applications including games, wallpapers, matrimonials, etc. Apart from Mittal’s entrepreneurial career, Mittal is also an investor who has invested in several start-ups and other companies (through Shark Tank). Currently, his total worth is $25 million.

Investing

As an angel investor, Mittal has heavily invested in several startups because he appreciates the entrepreneurial mind. The Indian startup culture has massively developed in the last two decades and it is mainly fueled by people who are in their 20s. Some of the startup companies in which Mittal invested are Druva, Sapiens Analytics, Cafe Zoe, Fab Hotels, BigBasket, Ketto, and many more. He also started investing in several other companies after joining Shark Tank India. They are Cocofit, Bamboo India, The Yarn Bazaar, Hair Originals, etc. For his entrepreneurial and investing journey, Mittal was awarded the “Hall of Fame” 2020 awards by The Indus Entrepreneurs.

Annasha

Adrian Marco’s TechnologyOne Is Australia’s Largest Enterprise Software Company.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Adrian Di Marco, an Australian entrepreneur founded TechnologyOne in 1987. The company received unicorn status in 2014 and it is mainly known for offering commercial support software. It has its headquarters based in Brisbane, Australia and apart from the Australian market, it has an international presence in the UK, New Zealand, South Pacific, and Asia. TechnologyOne has 1,200 employees and currently, the CEO of the company is Edward Chung. It mainly offers SaaS products as in 2012 the company decided to transfer its business solution from on-premise business software to a SaaS provider. TechnologyOne is a publicly-traded company and it is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the symbol TNE.

About TechnologyOne

TechnologyOne is one of the first startups in Australia and when it was founded its main focus was deep research and using innovative cutting-edge technology. The company is known for investing heavily in its R&D unit. It invests 20% of the total annual revenue for research purposes. The company today operates in six market categories. They are local government, education, health and community services, government, asset and project-intensive, and financial services and corporates. TechnologyOne is currently associated with more than 150 health and community organizations for better health outcomes. The company started expanding in the 21st-century by opening international offices and also through several acquisitions.

History

Adrian Di Marco decided to establish a new enterprise software company when he saw the immense potential to build a new generation of accounting software. The initial investment to establish TechnologyOne was offered by J L Mactaggart Industries (John and Dugal Mactaggart) which was a former client as well. TechnologyOne developed configurable software such that every client can use the same code but the software can be configured to meet individual needs. In the year TechnologyOne was established, the company opened its R&D center in Mactaggart’s hide processing plant.

The company introduced its first product in the market, FinanceOne in 1991. Marco’s idea was to make the foundation of the company based on relational database technology and it paid off. After the first product was released, TechnologyOne was recognized by various magazines. In 1995, the company’s name was on top of the customer satisfaction survey list released by CFO magazine. In the late 1990s, the company opened several other offices in Australia. It also started getting international contracts and big projects. For example, in the 1990s the company built Automated Titling System (ATS) for the Queensland Department of Natural Resource and Mines. In 2000 and the following years, TechnologyOne opened new offices in London and New Zealand and currently it is focusing on the local government market and tertiary education.

Success

There was a shift in the strategy of TechnologyOne in 2005 when it decided to shift from functionality-centric software to people-centric software. In 2004, TechnologyOne recorded $1 billion market capitalization and entered the S&P/ASX 200 Index. Marco was the CEO and COO of the company until 2017 when he decided to step down and his place was taken by Edward Chung. By the end of 2017, TechnologyOne recorded a huge profit from its cloud business for the first time and landed 112 new cloud customers. Currently, its annual revenue has reached $300 million.

Acquisitions

TechnologyOne has also expanded its territory through a series of acquisitions. In 2000, it made the first acquisition when it purchased Tablelands Computer Systems followed by ProClaim software in the same year. In 2002, it acquired Infloplan and Avand Pty Ltd 2007. In 2015 the company acquired three businesses, namely, ICON Software, Digital Mapping Solutions, and Jeff Roorda & Associates.

Edward Chung – CEO of TechnologyOne

Edward Chung became the CEO of the company in 2017 but he has experience with TechnologyOne for more than 10 years. He worked for the products and solution division of the company and also became the COO of the company before getting appointed as CEO. Edward also worked for Queensland Rail and Queensland Audit Office for 10 years.

Annasha

Jeffrey S. Hussey, An Investment Banker Behind The Idea Of Foundation Of F5 Inc.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

F5 Inc is an American software company that was established in 1996. The company was originally founded as F5 Labs and formerly branded as F5 Networks Inc. The main solutions offered by F5 Inc include application security, online fraud prevention, application delivery networking (ADN), multi-cloud management, network security, and many more. The headquarters of the company is based in Seattle, Washington, US. Apart from the headquarters, the company has 75 offices in 43 countries. Apart from the development of main software products, these offices are built to support marketing, sales, support, etc, especially on the international markets. Apart from America, F5 has a strong market in Europe.

About F5 Inc

F5 Inc was originally a provider of application delivery controller (ADC) technology. Eventually, the company expanded to other related sectors like automation and security services. F5 has landed some of the biggest tech companies in the world as its clients like Microsoft, Oracle, Tesla, and Meta. It also serves many companies from the Fortune 1000 companies and 48 out of Fortune 50 are also clients of F5 Inc. Apart from North America and Europe, F5 is also expanding its market to the Asia-Pacific region. F5 has also made a few significant acquisitions in the last few years. They include NGINX Inc for $670 million, Shape Security Inc for $1 billion, Volterra Inc for $500 million, and Threat Stack Inc for $68 million.

History

The original brain behind the foundation of F5 Inc was an investment banker, Jeffrey S. Hussey. After he passed out from the University of Washington, he opened his business in Seattle. At the time when he opened his business in Seattle, that place was the hotspot for all types of IT activities, and his idea revolved around assisting businesses to help with internet traffic. When Hussey started the company, there was no initial product that he had in mind but he relied on the potential of the new economy that was to be formed with the rapid expansion of an internet-based world. After the company was established in 1995, he became the CEO, President, and Chairman of the company and started hiring employees. It took one year to build a product to market and then finally in 1997 the company was ready to roll out BIG/ip Controller.

Expansion

It was only a few months that F5 Inc rolled out its first product in the market that it came under the radar of its gigantic competitors. Companies like Cisco Systems Nortel Networks Corporation were already big companies but F5 got a foothold in the market and its product was good enough to compete with these tech giants. By the end of FY 1998, F5 generated annual revenue of $4.7 million from a single product. Shortly, the company released another product, 3DNS Controller and after launching these two products F5 Inc planned to go public. In April 1999, after the company changed its name from F5 Labs to F5 Networks it went public. By the time the company entered the 21st century, it landed more than 1,600 customers. There was a big change in the year 2000 as Hussey stepped down as the CEO of the company and his place was taken by John McAdam.

The company faced a decline in its sale and there was a loss of revenue in 2000. So, McAdam’s first priority was to improve the reputation of the company and turn around its fate. After a few years, from the mid-2000s, the company again started making profits and in 2004 its profit gain increased by 705%. In 2017, John McAdam was replaced by François Locoh-Donou and the headquarters shifted to the F5 Tower.

François Locoh-Donou – CEO of F5 Inc

François Locoh-Donou joined F5 Inc in 2017 and he has more than 20 years of experience in enterprise technology. Before joining F5 Inc, he was a part of Ciena and Photonetics, a French company. He also co-founded Cajou Espoir, a social enterprise. Donou completed his undergraduate studies in France and then Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Annasha

Ceridian – A Leading Provider Of Human Resource Software Across Several Continents.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Ceridian is a publicly-traded software company that exclusively develops human resource software and products. It was launched 30 years ago and currently, its headquarters is based in Minnesota, US. Ceridian is popular in the USA and it has also established an international market in Australia, Europe, Mauritius, and Canada. The company currently has 6,000 employees and the company’s recent focus is on its Dayforce platform (launched in Mauritius two years ago). Dayforce is a very successful product suite of the company that integrates that combines every purpose from payroll to workforce management in a single cloud solution.

About Ceridian

Ceridian is a human capital management company and its full name is Ceridian HCM Holding Inc. The company’s main flagship product became Dayforce in 2012 after the acquisition of the company. It provides several necessary HR features like payroll, talent management, employee benefits, etc. From recruiting to retirement, It helps in managing the entire employee lifecycle with the help of Dayforce.

Apart from Dayforce, Ceridian has solutions for a wide range of sectors from healthcare to entertainment. Company has also received several awards on various grounds such as Gender Equality Index 2022 by Bloomberg, Top HR Product 2020, Great Place to Work, etc. This year, Ceridian has also appointed Leagh Turner as the Co-CEO (sharing the position with David Ossip) and also as a member of the company’s Board of Directors.

History of the Company

In 1992, Ceridian was established as a result of restructuring Control Data Corporation (CDC) which was one of the biggest US-based computer companies in the 1960s. The company was originally formed as an information services company. After it was spun out of CDC, many CDC businesses were operated under the brand name of Ceridian. Until 2007, Compay was listed on New York Stock Exchange but then it was acquired by a private equity firm. Thomas H. Lee Partners and Fidelity National Financial (FNF) got the ownership of Ceridian for $5.3 billion. Ceridian started gaining a lot of importance in the payroll market because it was the time when all-cloud HCM software solutions were rising in the market and Company grasped the opportunity, especially with Dayforce.

In March 2012, Ceridian acquired Dayforce, a SaaS application appropriate for all HR purposes. Ceridian’s HR solutions started flourishing after acquiring Dayforce and in 2013 it decided to its HCM and payment businesses. After a few months and several transactions, the separation was finally completed in October 2013. The company decided that its payment business will be operated under the name “Comdata” and the HCM business will be operated under the name “Ceridian HCM.” The company decided to hold the brand name for its HCM product suite because it has already become very popular among customers as Ceridian. In the same year, David Ossip became the CEO of the company. It again decided to go public in 2018 and hence filed an IPO and raised over $400 million. Recently, Ceridian has also acquired a few companies. They are Riteq, an Australian-based workforce management enterprise (2019), an Asian HCM called Excelity Global Solutions (2020), and Ascender HCM (2021).

About Control Data Corporation

CDC was a very reputed computer firm because during the 1960s this company had some of the world’s fastest computers. Seymour Cray, a supercomputer architect also worked for the company but he left to establish Cray Research in the 1970s. After the company entered in the 1980s, it started facing huge loss and thus most of the business and manufacturing unit of the company was shut down. Rest whatever was left came under the brand name Ceridian.

David Ossip – CEO

David Ossip is the current CEO and Chairman of Ceridian. He founded Dayforce in 2009 and when it was acquired by Ceridian, he joined the company. David also founded Workbrain before he became a part of Ceridian. He also served as the Chairman of LifeWorks for two years and Advisory Board Member of OMERS Ventures for four years. David went to the University of Toronto followed by Harvard Business School.

Annasha

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