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Sridhar Vembu: How this man from India created a 500 million dollar company that competes with Google?

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Sridhar Vembu is living the dream of every entrepreneur. He is constantly chased by VCs and he is rejecting them! The company, who are the makers of online Zoho Office Suite and other similar products, has reached to an extent where Mac Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, is desperate to buy the company, due to nervousness of getting out-beaten. But Sridhar rejected his offer as well.

Beginning of an era

sridhar vembu
image Credit: https://www.zoho.com

Sridhar Vembu belongs to a modest middle class family, situated in Chennai, India. He completed his schooling from a government aided school in Tamilnadu. He then went to IIT-Madras and obtained his undergraduate degree. At IIT, he met Tony Thomas, who was three years senior to him, and who is the co-founder of AdventNet, which later became Zoho Corporation. Later on, Sridhar moved to Princeton University, in 1989, and completed his Electrical Engineering.

In 1994, he completed his Ph.D. and joined Qualcomm, where he worked for two years. When his brother suggested the plan to start a company, he quit his job at Qualcomm and rushed back to India. The two brothers along with Tony Thomas founded Vembu Software.

All the business was bootstrapped, with the investment made only by family and friends. To this day, when the Zoho had become a multi-million dollar company, they still work without any external funding, rejecting the continuous offers they keep on receiving.

“On those fundamental principles, we are not budging,” says Raju Vegesna, 37, Zoho’s chief evangelist. “We keep getting calls from venture capitalists but Sridhar (CEO) has even blogged asking them not to bug us.”

The business started well and they sold their products to a lot of companies in Silicon Valley and in Japan too. By the end of the year 2000, they’d grown to 115 engineers in India, 7 employees in US, with a business of $10 Million USD.

The setback and the comeback

In the year 2001, during the Dot Com Bubble burst, the networking faced a huge setback. The company customers list reduced from 150 customers down to just three customers. This resulted into a lot of resources and engineers being idle.

What seemed like a setback was blessing in disguise. They took two mandatory decisions.

They took the management networking software which they sold as Order Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and converted it into an Enterprise model. This gave birth to ManageEngine.

On the other hand they had an on demand effort. They invested some man power and resources into that and this gave rise to Zoho!

The company changed its name to AdventNet in 2005, and later changed it to Zoho Corporation in 2009. The business started growing over the internet for the rented software rather than selling the licensed copy for expensive software. They started Zoho.com, offering internet based software for work. They also started three more divisions, Zoho.com, WebNMS and Manage Engine. The graph of company’s growth headed upwards rapidly. Sridhar and team so loved the name Zoho that the domain name was purchased for $5000 from a us based startup that was in liquidation process.

By the end of the year 2012, the total revenue of the Zoho Corporation was near to $120 million USD and that of 2006 was $500 million USD, with 18 million users worldwide!

zoho sample
Image Credit: Wikipedia

Company culture and competition

Zoho has its own way of recruiting. They had set up their own Zoho University where they hire college dropouts and underprivileged students from low income backgrounds and train them to code and develop software products in India.

“I hardly spoke any English at the time, but I was really good at math… maybe that’s why they hired me,” says Babu, who was one of six young people recruited into what would become the first batch of trainees at Zoho University. He is now 28 and is product manager at Chennai based Zoho corporation private limited. Unlike other big shots in software industry, Vembu believes in smartness of individuals and hence recruits in a very innovative fashion. On one hand, where all the toppers are the point of attractions for regular recruiters, Vembu, who is an alumni of an elite institute, invests in training dropouts.

Today Zoho has more than 30 products that compete with big companies like Google & Salesforce. Vembu believe that he makes his prime minister and country proud in their Make In India campaign. ‘I am a great fan of Modi,’ says Vembu.

Although their customer base is spread worldwide, their major man power source is in India, that too, otherwise neglected youth. Thus, the true objective of make in India is fulfilled by Vembu and company.

Pallav Nadhani-How this teenager’s extra pocket money effort is now a multi-million dollar company?

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What started as an attempt to suffice the monetary requirements of a teenager, is now a multi-million dollar company whose customer list includes Google, Facebook, Microsoft and the federal government of United States. When Nadhanis moved to Kolkata, Pallav Nadhani was admitted in the La Martiniere for Boys School.

‘Here I got the aspiration that I want to be like them. And for me to be like them, I really need to work hard. I need to be on top of the game in whatever I am working on,’ he says.

It wasn’t feasible for him to be like them with a measly pocket money of Rs. 1,000. He was reluctant to ask his father for extra pocket money. Thus emerged the necessity of finding a way to make some fortune of his own.

His first endeavor was in the field of writing. He came across Wrox Press’ website ASPtoday.com, which paid a generous amount for innovative articles. Pallav Nadhani made an impressive amount of $2,000 by writing two articles. The third article he wrote turned out to be a life changing milestone in his journey.

Nadhanis owned a computer, which was a luxury in those days(2001-02). His father owned a web design company where Pallav initially worked. His share of work included preparing charts on Microsoft Excel. He found those charts extremely dull and boring. Along with this, he was also working with Macromedia Flash player (Adobe Flash now) for making designs for senior Nadhani’s company. He began exploring ways in which he could combine both to create better charts. He wrote an article on this idea for ASPtoday and made $1,500 from the article, which was the primal investment for his entrepreneurial journey.pallav-11Image Credit: http://www.fusioncharts.com

Still in his school, Pallav, who calls himself an accidental entrepreneur, started his company Infosoft Global, based on the very idea of making interactive charts for business world. For the first three years, he did the work of designing, marketing, making and receiving calls, all by himself.

The company started growing and things were never the same again. The growth was so stupendous that in the year 2005, senior Nadhani, who according to Pallav is a sucker for growth and adventure, shut down his company and joined his son’s venture.  Currently, he holds the position of CFO in the company. They also hired 20 employees and acquired office space in Bangur, Kolkata.

But Pallav Nadhani isn’t someone whose thirst is quenched easily. Expanding his company’s profile, he moved to Bangalore in the year 2010. In Bangalore he set up a company which excelled not only in the quality of the product it delivered, but also in the management and organizational aspect. The next year FusionCharts earned a revenue of 4.5 million USD.

Unlike his father, whose business ventures ranged from selling bicycles to writing books and running a computer training center, Pallav believes in a focused approach. Even after being a millionaire, he is still stuck with the idea he believed in when he was just a teenager.

‘I wish I could be like him (senior Nadhani). Being multi-faceted helps you have a very nice perspective of life. But if you have to really excel at something, you need focus,’ he said in an interview with Forbes magazine. In the same interview he talks about his plan for the next ten years, ‘I know that for the next 10 years, I want to do just one thing. Build software products and build the software product industry in India.’

Today, FusionChart’s client list includes 50,000 clients spread over 118 countries. In 2010, US president Barack Obama selected FusionCharts to design digital dashboard for the federal administration, the Federal IT Dashboard. It became the first Indian start-up to gain the attention of the Obama administration.

 

Dinesh Agarwal-From A Worker In Railways To Creating $2 billion Company

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Everyone looks up to the owner of IndiaMART as the Ideal Businessman from India owning the biggest B2B Marketplace having a revenue of $2 billion (Rs. 225 Crore). Do you know that Dinesh Agarwal whose company Indiamart wrapped Delhi Metro with its banners once worked with Indian Railways to oversee the computerized reservations system of the New Delhi Railway Station.

There has been ups and down, dot-com bust, market crash, but with a clear Goal in his mind, hard work and dedication, he succeeded in executing things in the right manner.

Never Give Up

IndiaMART was founded in 1996, a time when internet did not have many users. Many in India didn’t even have an internet connection at that time, and Dinesh Agarwal made a B2B Market place, even before the world’s largest b2b Market place, Alibaba got registered. He has been risk taker and visionary, a must trait for any entrepreneur.

During his early days he himself used to write the names and addresses of small businesses from his apartment in East Delhi. He himself went to the Post Office to deposit huge bundles of envelopes in order to get the contact details of business firms across India to list them on IndiaMART. He sent letters to at least half a million businesses.

His website did not have much traffic initially since having a computer and internet connection was a luxury. He made efforts to convince businessmen to get registered on his portal during those days when internet used to be pretty slow, mostly dial up with 56 Kbps. He used to stand up in front of Pragati Maidan in New Delhi for getting forms filled by everyone who came there and created their web pages on IndiaMart.

Dinesh Agarwal IndiaMART

He believed that internet was going to be the primary source of communication in the future and would connect the whole world and make life easy. He was in US when he first used the internet and was fascinated, as finding anything got easy with Internet. It is then he planned  about doing something related to software and internet in India.

He came from a traditional business family and knew that small and medium enterprises have a significant market share in all terms from generating employment to manufacturing goods. Hence he thought of connecting them in an online business directory. IndiaMart started as a listing site and then evolved into a business supply store. During 1997-1998, he succeeded in getting 100 paying clients on board.

Surviving Market Downturn

His company was among one of the few survivors that survived market downturns. After the 9/11 attacks, the global market was going through a bad phase but Dinesh did not fire any employee, he instead took steps like cost cutting and delaying salary hikes till things back to normal.

Tolexo and ABCPaymemts

Dinesh Agarwal did not stop at IndiaMart; he started an online Payment Gateway named ABCPayments.com in 2004 and Tolexo.com, an eCommerce website for industry equipment in 2014.

His company IndiaMART is targeting a revenue of 20 billion by 2020. Today the company has more than 100,000 paying customers and 2.2 million suppliers on its platform with 55 offices and more than 2400 employees scattered across 100 cities.

All this would not have been possible if he hadn’t taken the first step, he implemented his ideas and never lost focus, believing that it will happen without worrying how it’s going to, since then he never looked back.

 

 

Team Indus: An Indian space technology startup in the race to land on moon

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Team Indus a Bangalore, India based technology startup is one of few companies in the world and only company from India that have ventured into highly costly and research intensive aerospace industry. Team Indus (Axiom Research Labs) founded by Rahul Narayan, Dilip Chabria, Indranil Chakraborty, Sameer Joshi and Julius Amrit has plans to land on moon. ISRO a Govt. of India organization is the only agency in India that works in aerospace field and has been working on a mission to mars called Chandrayaan since 2003.  There are only three countries in world that have soft-landed on moon (China, USSR & US). Soft landing means lading with controlled speed without any damage to spacecraft and surface.

rover on moon Image Credit: Wikipedia

This Indian space startup is participating in Google Lunar XPRIZE competition and working on a spacecraft that will be capable of landing on the moon along with a rover that will explore moon. Google will be offering $30 million as  prize money to the winners of this competition (cost of this kind of project is way hire than prize money offered by Google). Team Indus was one of five teams selected to compete in the Milestone prizes and they won $1M as a Milestone prize for their landing technology. To win the contest participating team has to land a robot on the moon, cover 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send data and pictures back to the earth.

Team Indus started working in 2010. The team which had no experience in space technology worked hard for three years and came up with first design in 2013. Adimurthy, a retired  ISRO scientist rejected their design after first review in 2013. Indus team worked hard and was ready with a new propulsion system in a year.

Propulsion technology innovation

Since propulsion technology used by other countries is highly confidential and inaccessible, Team Indus decided to design their own propulsion system. Team Indus is going to use a propulsion systems that  has never been used before for such critical space mission. They are using a combination of small fixed thrust engines and produce the variable thrust effect using control algorithms. So what other space organizations have been doing with hardware, Team Indus is trying to do with software algorithms.

Team Indus is being led by Rahul Narayana along with more than 20 ISRO scientist. Team Indus with more than 100 employees has secured funding to the tune of $35 M from Pallav Nadhani (Fusion Charts), Subrata Mitra & Shekhar Kirani (Accel Partners), Sharad Sharma (former Yahoo India R&D head), Vivek Raghavan (chief product manager of UIDAI), Pallaw Sharma (director of analytics at Microsoft),  Bala Parthasarthy(AngelPrime angel investors), Sunil Kalra(entrepreneur & investor) and Paras Chopra.

Team Indus has acquired a launch vehicle (PSLV) from ISRO on commercial rates for sending their spacecraft and rover to moon from Sriharikota in 2017. It would be interesting to see who lands on moon first, ISRO, Team Indus or Elon Musk‘s SpaceX which has already started booking for earth to moon flight.

Alexis Ohanian’s journey from a waiter at Pizza hut to running Reddit

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Alexis Ohanian is a popular name in the entrepreneurial world as he co-founded one of the biggest content sharing sites, Reddit. Ohanian was born in the year 1983 in New York and had his schooling in Maryland. He completed his graduation in Commerce and History from the University of Virginia in 2005. Although he had no formal education in technical field and was not much aware of the business world that time yet the desire to achieve something big in life kept enlightening his hopes. And his persistent efforts and hard work to get what he wanted turned out to be fruitful. His journey to success had not been a cakewalk. He considered every failure as a stepping stone in his path and accepted the challenges to secure the desired aim.

Ohanian’s first job as a waiter at Pizza Hut played an important role in making him a successful entrepreneur. He has set a very inspiring example for all those who wish t o reach at the pedestal of success that no job is big or small in itself and every task has its own importance. Waiting at the tables for customers gave him much experience to deal in customer service which is a crucial part of every business.

While Alexis Ohanian was studying in the University of Virginia, he shared his room with Steve Huffman who was a student of Computer Science. The beginning of the journey towards the business world could be traced from the room they lived in. It is after befriending Huffman that Alexis got some idea of programming and technology. Steve Huffman discussed his dream idea of opening a food app with Alexis and got positive response from him. This encouraged Steve’s spirit and he insisted Alexis to take the idea further and discuss it with the programming expert Paul Graham.

Although Graham rejected the idea of food app but the talent and spark in the duo made him welcome both Alexis and Steve to work with him and their working together gave birth to the idea of Reddit. Surprisingly the site took only 3 months to be built and from then on Alexis Ohanian and his partners never looked back. Movement is the basic mantra of life, all you have to keep yourself away from is stagnation.

Image Credit: Wikiepedia
Image Credit: Wikipedia

The world fell in the awe of Reddit
The foundation of Reddit in June 2005 created a storm in the techno world as it was one of the earliest websites that offered social news, discussion and web content rating. Alexis Ohanian managed to get the initial funding from Y Combinator. However, later in the year 2006 when the website gained much of popularity, Conde Naste proposed to acquire the company while Ohanian still being one of the members of Reddit’s Boards of Directors.

Alexis Ohanian’s exit from Reddit
After serving the company for about four years, Alexis Ohanian took an exit from the company in 2009. After leaving the company Alexis didn’t just simply sit back at his home rather he looked out for opportunities wherever he found better prospects.

After deciding to leave Reddit, Alexis worked as a fellow in a micro finance company for three months where he gained more knowledge about technology, marketing and business.

Never ending quest for stability
Ohanian’s journey with technology and computers began with Reddit and such was its seduction upon him that he clung to it even after. In the mid of 2010 he established another company aiming to deal with startups, consulting and advising. The company he named as Das Kapital Capital focused on helping the new youths who wish to turn stones in the entrepreneurial field but possess less knowledge and experience. He also opened many other websites like Hipmunk and Breadpig to keep himself constantly in touch with the techno world.

Alexis Ohanian is also a wonderful speaker and internet activist. He stood against Congress’s protests against online piracy and spoke so confidently that he is known as one of the best speakers in the field of internet and technology. In October 2012, Ohanian worked in collaboration with Erik Martin, the General Manager of Reddit to support the open internet during the debates of President and Vice President.

Alexis was mentioned as important figure in the technology industry by Forbes magazine in 2012. In 2015, Alexis was accused to have played an important role in the firing of Reddit’s communications director Victoria Taylor. Ohanian is supposed to be in a relationship with Serena Williams.

How an IIT dropout became the ‘Bad Boy’ of Indian Startups

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Every idea is not meant to be successful in long run but what matters is your intention and focus. The story of the founder of Housing.com, Rahul Yadav speaks the same. Like most of the youngsters who belong to a middle class family, Yadav too had a target to settle down with a decent college and then a good job. But life had different plans for Yadav and this is why even after joining IIT Bombay in the year 2007 he could not fit in there.

Love for Programming

Although Yadav enrolled himself to study metallurgy but he figured out that this department was not his final destination. He carried on with his thirst for the right place unless he found the well of computers and programming to quench it. While in college he built an online question bank with the name Exambaba.com, for the students of engineering which provided them with the old question papers of IIT Bombay. His interest towards computers led him to drop his college and enter into the world of entrepreneurship. Life changing ideas always involve sincere effort, risk and out of the box thinking and Rahul Yadav was all game for it.

Rahul Yadav
Image Credit: Wikipedia

Foundation of Housing.com

The biggest problem faced by anyone  coming to a metropolitan city is of finding a proper accommodation. Rahul Yadav after coming to Bombay dealt with the same issue and this left a deep imprint on his mind. Therefore, after dropping out from college to start a venture the first and foremost thought that came to his mind was of creating an online market from where people can easily look out for houses to rent or buy. This startup was founded by Yadav with 11 of his classmates and was launched in 2012 with Yadav holding the responsibility of CEO of the company. The company started off well and acquired much attention both from the investors and the public. Many renowned and well-known investors like Haresh Chawla, Nexus Venture Partners, Softbank Cpital and Qualcomm Ventures came forward to invest in the company. Housing.com amassed the funding more than $150 million in the year 2014 and set itself as one of the established firm in the market.

Falling off the position

The first 2 years of the company turned out to be splendid ones with a good amount of funding as well as popularity among the mass. With the great success of the company more and more members began adding up to maintain the pace of company’s progress. Everything seemed to be at its place and it seemed as if the graph of their success would continue to grow. But the wheel of time never waits for anyone to turn its direction.

Right from the beginning of 2015 things turned out to grow worse in the business and within no time the company’s graph faced a steep downfall. It is believed that this was the outcome of Yadav’s rash and impulsive actions. His indulgence in controversies seemed to be more than his focus on the business. He was very vocal  against his competitors than taking his own company and plans forward. And as a result of his consistent involvement in controversies he was fired from the company in June 2015.

Rahul Yadav came into the spotlight for a number of controversial statements he made against his competitors including the founder of Zomato, the CEO of Infosys and the founder of Ola. Also his bold announcement of distributing his company shares worth $30 million among the employees created a tumult in the business world. He also sent some controversial mails to the company’s investors which resulted in further soaring his relationship with the board.

With all these controversies, the board of directors of the Housing.com made a unanimous decision of firing Rahul Yadav for he was too straightforward to do the business.

His New Venture: The return of Rahul Yadav

Yadav was never among those who would be thrashed by a failure or a defeat. He had much experience in standing again on his legs even after falling down 100 times. In about 2 and half months, Yadav again made a sensational entry in the market with his new venture, Intelligent Interfaces in September 2015. This start-up is all about data analysis and visualization in e-commerce. The company reportedly was said to have acquired funding from Paytm, YouWeCan, Flipkart and Micromax. However, so far there is no news of of his new venture except rumors of its failure and shutting down in months. It seems that Industry has to wait for “the return of Rahul Yadav”.