Your Tech Story

Story

Michael Dell, the Founder of Dell Inc.

Story, Tech Story / By

Mid 1970s was the time when computers had started entering every house. The world was introduced to a machine which possessed the potential to complete people’s tasks in the matter of minutes. And, providing these services were just a handful of companies who were dominating the market. This, in turn, resulted in higher profits for the companies and only a particular set of class benefiting from the products due to their higher cost.

But the year 1984 would change the entire scenario of tech industry and bring about a revolution in the market. The year when a young and courageous man entered the business world with a unique concept which focused primarily towards the customer needs. Born on 23rd February, 1965 in Houston, Texas, Michael Dell is the founder and CEO of Dell Inc. Born to a stockbroker father and an orthodontist mother inspired Michael to aim higher and achieve bigger in life. While studying at Herod Elementary School in his hometown, Michael appeared for the high school equivalency exam at the tender age of eight to take a leap into business. By this time Michael’s mind was prepared to venture into the business world.

Michael spent his teenage days working for several part time jobs to earn money which he invested in stock market and precious metals. Dell even confessed that he craved for computers and stock market. He earned $2000 operating a mail-order trading business for stamps and baseball cards at the age of 12. And, just two years later, he did something which, we can say, marked the beginning of the revolution. He purchased an Apple II, disassembled it completely to study the hardware build and took his interest in computers to a whole new level.

Dell also worked part time as a marketing executive for Houston Post where he learnt some master selling strategies. During his college studies, in the University of Texas, Dell finally set up his own computer company “PCs Limited” – a baby step towards his lifetime dream – with his pocket money $1000. Dell’s business strategy was to provide his customers with affordable computers than any other companies like IBM. In his interview for the Success magazine Dell said, “I saw that you’d buy a PC for about $3000 and inside the PC was about $600 worth of parts. IBM would buy most of these parts from other companies, assemble them, and sell the computer to a dealer for $2000. Then the dealer, who knew very little about selling or supporting computers, would sell it for $3000 which was even more outrageous.” This inspired Dell to think out of the box. He thought of assembling the computers by himself and decided to inculcate this skill into his business model.

Dell used the direct selling method which would allow the customers to purchase products without any intermediates like the dealer. Thus, the customers could purchase the product at a surprisingly low price and every penny of the profit earned would belong to Dell. The next big decision he took was to drop out of college to focus on his business. The company was later renamed to Dell Computer Corporation. In 1992, at the age of 27, Dell became the youngest CEO and his company was ranked among top 500 companies by the Fortune Magazine.

In 1996, consumers were able to purchase Dell products online. The launch of company’s official online buying platform increased the demand and profits to numerous folds. The coming years added hundreds of thousands of customer base to Dell’s profile. Thus, making Dell the highest PC manufacturer in the world. In 2003 the company changed its name from Dell Computers to Dell, Inc. In 2004 Kevin B. Rollins took over Michael Dell’s CEO position but within 3 years he succeeded to take back the position.

Dell Inc. is among the top computer companies in the world today with a net worth of $24.8 billion as of February, 2017. The man who earned $1000 as his first income has now acquired tremendous wealth due to his ambition and smart business decisions. Forbes magazine has estimated Dell’s net worth to be about $20.8 billion. He, along with his wife Susan, has donated more than a billion dollars for various charities working for various social causes. He is also the author of Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry. Michael Dell, with his success and achievements, has set a riveting example for the youth to start their own business, introduce newer ideas and take risks.

Palmer Luckey: An iPhone repair technician who built a $3 billion VR company

Story, Tech Story / By

Success is most often linked to age and a good experience. It is generally assumed that one could achieve success only after reaching a certain age but lately, these assumptions are breaking as today youth are coming forward to take control of entrepreneurial world in their hands. Like Oyo’s Ritesh Agarwal, Palmer Luckey, established a company, Oculus VR at the age of 21. He has established the notion that if you are truly interested and dedicated in something, nothing can take it away from you.

Early Interest in Electronics and Technology
Getting success in any field is not an overnight thing. One has to start building up for it from a very early age. Passion for technology was deep seated in Luckey right from his childhood. Although he was home schooled by his mother when he was a child, yet the drift towards electronics and technical world was initiated by then. At the age of 14 he founded a forum called ModRetro which concentrates on modifying vintage game consoles. This forum was made for all the electronic enthusiasts. Despite not gaining any formal training in electronics, he kept on experimenting with various complex electronic objects like lasers, coil guns, Tesla coils etc. His passion for electronics grew more with age and this could be marked by his success in stepping into the gaming world when he made a PC gaming ‘rig’. It costed him a lot of money but he took it as a challenge and went ahead to develop the game with a six-monitor setup.

As he began stepping out of teenage, he found himself very passionate about Virtual Reality. Trying new projects is a costly affair and need a good amount of funding. Luckey, being a self-dependent boy didn’t turn to his parents, friends or relatives for financial help. Rather, his own talent got him all the funding for his new experiments and projects. He repaired and resold damaged iPhones from which he received around $36,000. He also worked as groundskeeper, computer repair technician and youth sailing coach in his free time. His dedication and passion for his work made him build a private collection of more than 50 head-mounted displays.

palmer_luckey_at_svvr_2014
Image Credit: Wikipedia

His Enthusiasm for VR Led Him to Build Oculus VR
He enrolled himself at California State University and joined a degree course in journalism. However, his love for technical filed did not fade even for a moment. As a result of which he had to drop the course and dedicate his whole time to Virtual Reality. His motive behind establishing the company was to develop a unique head-mounted display which would be highly efficient, low cost, light weight and easily portable. The first prototype of his model was designed by him at the age of 17 in his parents’ garage. This gave a 90 degree featured view and also proved to be a push for his company. From then on he developed a series of such prototypes and kept modifying them as per the need. He intended to sell one of his prototypes which he named as ‘Rift’ on Kickstarter crowdfunding website and for the launch of Rift’s Kickstarter campaign he officially started Oculus VR.

With the establishment of his company, more responsibility piled upon him as he was the sole worker and owner of the company. He did all the paperwork, model making, and client dealings all by himself. But not for a single moment he tried to escape from the hard work and stood up all alone to take his company further in the entrepreneurial world. With time his company got more members and soon he was joined by Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov. Luckey’s prototypes greatly interested Iribe and he agreed to invest a few hundred thousand dollars in the Rift Kickstarter Campaign and later joined in as the CEO of Oculus VR. Anatonov left his job in a company named Scaleform and joined in as chief software architect of the company. The Kickstarter Campaign turned out to be a huge success as its value raised to $2.5 million with an additional funding of $16 million.

Oculus VR Acquisition by Facebook
Facebook never fails to get hold of any great product. When the popularity and success of Oculus VR reached Zuckerberg’s ears, his interest grew more in it. In March 2014 Facebook acquired the company for $3 billion. But Luckey still works at Oculus VR on the technology he developed.

In September 2016, Luckey in support for Trump donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a group against the then Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. There was a hate post on Reddit from Luckey’s user id in the name of Hillary Clinton. This brought down his image and also posed much loss for Oculus VR as many clients turned down their deals with the company. Palmer Luckey has been named as most richest entrepreneur (22th) under 40 in America. Forbes magazine estimated his net worth around $700 million.

Infosys Story: From A Small Room Office To $11 Billion Multinational Company

Story, Tech Story / By

After seeing the success of startups like Whatsapp, SlideShare, Uber, Snapdeal, the thirst of becoming entrepreneur among today’s youth is increasing at a rapid pace. However, after two or three failed attempts, most of them step back in despair. One thing everyone should keep in mind that nobody or no venture becomes successful without tasting failures. Setting a high aim is perfectly fine but one should also be prepared for the challenges that will come on the way. Worldwide acclaimed and India’s top software company, Infosys too has tasted failures before it became software giant. The huge empire we see today also started from a speck of dust. The only thing that made this company a huge success is firm determination of Narayana Murthy, one of the founders of the company.

The Foundation
The fire to get success in entrepreneurial world was ignited in Narayana Murthy in the early 70’s, when he founded his first venture, Softronics. But unfortunately, the company couldn’t stand the demands of the business world and Murthy had to shut it down. Murthy went back to job and joined Patni Computer Systems as General Manager. However, the urge to go back to entrepreneurship didn’t let him settle down in job. The wait for the right time was finally over when on one morning of January 1981, he sat with his six software engineer friends, N S Raghavan, S Gopalakrishnan, Nandan Nilekani, S D Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora to talk about opening a company to develop software.

infosyslogoThe spark and passion to establish the company was then brimmed in all of them but the biggest hurdle was funds required for setting up a company. None of them had the required capital to invest in the business. This is when Sudha, Narayana Murthy’s wife helped them with $250 (Rs.10,000), her savings of three years, to lay the foundation of the company. The first milestone was crossed after 6 months and  they registered their company on 2nd July 1981 as Infosys Consultants Private Limited.

Burning mid night oil
Although they had registered N S Raghavan’s house in Dadar, Mumbai as the company’s office but there was no company office as such. But in 1982, when Murthy and his wife moved to Pune and bought a small house there, the front room of the house was then used as the office of the company.

In 1983 Infosys got its first client, Data Basics Corporation, a U.S based company. They had to move their company to Bangalore to make the dealings with their client easier. Murthy alone moved to Bangalore to manage the company. The environment around was not at all business friendly and this is why Murthy and the other company founders had to face difficulties at every step. Due to insufficiency of money, he could not make a separate office for the company and worked from home. As time passed, the whole team shifted to Bangalore and devoted themselves to the work. The financial status of the company didn’t allow them to recruit employees and thus all the founders along with Murthy’s wife toiled themselves day and night to write codes.

On the verge of breakdown
Around three years later, the company moved into a joint venture with Kurt Salmon Associates. But the venture couldn’t last long and collapsed in 1989. This dissolution of the joint venture gave them a big jolt. The little bit of hope left to take to company few steps ahead was also gone. Even after 8 years, they found themselves stagnated at the same place without any success while their class fellows were all leading a luxurious life. This failure got them into a situation of crisis as the company was about to collapse. Seeing the present condition, one of the founders, Ashok Arora decided to sell his shares and quit as he could not see any hope left in this company.

A new beginning
While other partners were left bewildered from this failure, Narayana Murthy stood firm in his determination and decided to continue trying. The others too got inspired from his optimism and soon they returned to work with the same passion and vigor as they started eight years ago. This time they made up some plans and strategies to move ahead. They divided the work among themselves where Murthy took the responsibility of a manager, Nilekani handled sales department, Krishnan and Shibulal overtook the technical end, Rhaghavan was given the responsibility to deal with people and Dinesh looked in the matters of quality.

With their dedicated efforts, talent and efficiency the company began gaining the momentum. The light of success was visible now as their hard work started paying off. The company began expanding with more employees and offices. In no time they established their first international office in Boston city of U.S.

Infosys established itself as an top software company in India by mid of 90’s. Narayana Murthy now looked forward to build up a good image of the company in the country as well as overseas. He began investing in building huge campuses to seep deeper into the global market. But the stupor of success could not infect him as he always followed the principles he made for his business. For him ethics in business were more important than gaining profit and this is the reason that took his company to become India’s second biggest software company.

By 1995, Infosys opened global development centers including an office in U.K. In the year 1999, the company with a worth of $100 million got listed in NASDAQ. Though there was some troubling time in 2012-13 which forced Narayan Murti to come back to Infosys. Now under Vishal Sikka’s leadership Infosys is again on growth path. Today, Infosys has offices in various countries and its present worth is around $11 billion.

Ursula Burns: The first black women CEO of a fortune 500 company

Story / By

It all started with a woman, living in the rough and tumble public housing projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, believing that educating her children was the only solution to all her problems, mostly poverty. This woman was Ursula Burns’ mother.

“We were poor for sure but my brother and my sister and I were shielded totally form this poverty and we were shielded by this one person and that was my mother”, says Ursula, who was ranked by Forbes magazine amongst the most powerful women on the planet. She adds, “she was a frantic every day to try to make sure that we were safe and fed and educated”.

Her mother used to make $4400 a year, half of which was spent in sending her three children into a catholic school. Ursula remembers her childhood and says, “we got dental care by her (Ursula’s mother) cleaning the dental office. We got healthcare by her cleaning the doctor’s office”.

So, when Ursula completed her schooling and was looking forward to start her college life, her primary motive was to choose a degree course that would help her earn lot of money. After doing some research she came to know that Chemical engineering promised a carrier with the maximum monetary gains. She applied to various colleges and got admitted to Brooklyn Polly.

Ursula Burns
Ursula Burns, Image Credit: fortunelivemedia, Flickr

At Brooklyn Polly, after attending the first lecture, she realized two things. First, she wasn’t good at chemistry. Second, she hated the subject. Disappointed, she decided to stick to her previous plan of being a teacher, which she had abandoned after knowing the salary of a teacher. She also thought of becoming a nun or a nurse.

Fortuitously, her advisor suggested her to look out for other branches of Engineering. Ursula Burns settled for Mechanical Engineering and in her own words, ‘rest is history!’

She was hired by Xerox in 1980 as an intern and a year later she was made a permanent employee. About the time when she joined the firm Ursula recalls, ‘when I joined in 1980 there were literally and virtually no women in engineering.’ She also adds that the absence of any black women in the engineering department became a significant advantage for her. Being different from the crowd she was easily and frequently noticed.

She slowly climbed the ladder of numerous positions before becoming the CEO of the company, thirty years later. She appreciated Xerox’s policy of not asking her to become something or someone they want. All they wanted was her hard work and efforts and in return provided her with ample opportunities. One of the reasons, she admits, that she stayed at Xerox all this time through was that the company stood upon their promises.

Besides Xerox, Ursula Burns has served on numerous professional and community boards, which includes Exxon Mobil Corporation, American Express, Boston Scientific, National Association of Manufacturers, University of Rochester, the MIT Corporation, the Rochester Business Alliance, and the RUMP Group. She is also among the founding Board of Directors of Change the Equation, which is an organization that focuses on improving STEM-based education in the United States.

Ursula became the first black-African women CEO of a fortune 500 company. In 2014, Forbes ranked her the 22nd most powerful women in the world.

In a speech she delivered at MIT she recalls an advise her mother gave her: Where you are is not who you are. ‘…until I became the president of Xerox and I started to realize that if you don’t check yourself early you’ll start to become these ugly people these ugly leaders who think they’ve so much and that they’re so far away from the people who actually make the world go.’

In the same commencement speech at MIT, from where her own son graduated, she concluded by saying,

‘The measure of money is the least important measure over the long term.’

 

Rahul Sharma: Raising Micromax to 10th largest mobile company of the world

India, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

“It’s an Indian product, why don’t you look for a similar one from a renowned company like Samsung or HTC…”

A quote that could be easily heard in mobile stores whenever someone tried to buy a mobile phone of Indian brand few years back until Micromax made its debut in the mobile market. Since the entry of Micromax in the world of mobile phones, the perception of Indian products have changed globally.

Micromax  an Indian mobile manufacturing company is world’s 10th largest company and India’s no. 2 mobile company after Samsung. Micromax was started by Rahul Sharma along with his friends. When smartphones emerged in India, the market was dominated by Samsung and few lesser known Chinese phones. Micromax has changed that to large extent. Today people proudly flaunt their Micromax smartphone.

The Beginning
Micromax Informatics was started by Rahul Sharma and his three friends, but the main driving force behind the success of company can be attributed to the dynamic nature of Rahul. Rahul Sharma is married to Indian Bollywood actress Asin. The company was started in 2000 as an eCommerce company. Since gadget industry was very lucrative at that time, Micromax pivoted to developing embedded systems. The company was providing best class products and services and hence got the attention of the world’s leading mobile company, Nokia. Micromax clinched a hardware deal with Nokia for their M2M (Machine-to-Machine) business which resulted in a huge success for the company.micromax

 The Unwavering Beliefs
But the road to success was not supposed to be easy. In 2013 their M2M business partner, Nokia sold their mobile business to Microsoft. Nokia, considering the excellent quality of products and services provided by Micromax Informatics,  offered them a new collaboration in Nokia Networks. But the Micromax team decided to decline the offer to collaborate with Nokia and walked away. Now being separated from Nokia they continued their existing business believing in their own products and capabilities.

Working independently in India, Micromax decided to manufacture their own hardware. With their services already being top notch, they soon collaborated with the Indian network provider giant, Bharti Airtel. Micromax’s first project with Airtel was to install payphones in the remote areas of Jammu and Kashmir. With their dedication and hard-work the project was completed successfully despite the rough geographical terrain.

Inspiration is just a different perception
Things were going smooth with company but it was not enough for the founders. Being chased by their passion and dreams to achieve new heights continuously they were always trying to grow their company. When such ideals are being followed, a small spark is enough to light a dazzling flame to blind the world.

When Rahul Sharma was on a trip to an interior region of West Bengal, he met a payphone operator, who was operating his business in an area with no electricity and very low network coverage. That network operator was using truck battery to supply power to the payphone. Rahul was amused by this innovative solution to the problem of power shortage but this encounter also made him think about the most common problem faced by the customers of mobile phones, fast draining batteries that required charging after few hours.

Rahul came up with the idea of entering the mobile phone market with mobile phones with battery lasting one month on a single charge. But his partners were reluctant to accept his idea as there was heavy competition in the mobile market. Not willing to give up, Rahul managed to convince them about the huge possibilities in the mobile market.

Expect the Unexpected
Though everyone agreed to the idea, it was decided to manufacture only 10,000 units initially and then observe the market’s reaction to their product. Hence, Micromax’s first ‘Stamina Battery’ phone was launched in 2008. In just 10 days, all phones got sold. The thing that astonished everyone was that their product went out of stock in such a short time without any serious advertising. It was publicized only through word-of-mouth.

Motivated with this huge positive feedback, company invested more money and resources in mobile phone market and soon launched more models. Considering the end users in India, Micromax’s all phones are designed keeping in mind the daily usage of common Indian customer. One of the main qualities of their products is their reasonable pricing.

While rising through the Indian mobile market and considering various options to help their customers in their everyday life, Micromax came up with the idea of dual-sim mobile phones. Providing this extremely useful feature to their customers this revolutionary idea had an ever changing effect on the mobile industry and created new niche in the mobile sector. Micromax’s popularity rocketed to new heights. To keep up with the extreme challenge being posed by Micromax many other top companies had to follow in the footsteps of Micromax and hence also introduced dual-sim mobile phones.

Soon after Micromax challenged all major mobile phone players globally  to became  world’s 10th largest phone manufacturing company. The company believed that if the end user are benefited from the product in one way or the other,  the product would definitely be a success. Which proved right for various devices that the company launched into the market worldwide.

Things fall but to rise up again
In 2014, Micromax was second largest mobile phone company in India, and was challenging the world’s top and the number 1 mobile phone maker in Indian market. Its founders decided to bring managers from outside to help the company go forward. In the fourth quarter of 2014, with full dedication towards the company’s betterment its executives and CEOs along with the innovative ideas outperformed, the Korean company, Samsung and took the No.1 spot in the Indian mobile market.

But soon after the appointment of new executives, problems arose. The creative and risk taking dynamic approach of Micromax founders like Rahul Sharma, was not easily comprehended by the new executives who used to rely more on the facts and figures. Thus, Alibaba (one of the huge investors of Micromax) left the client pool of Micromax and walked away from a $1.2 billion purchase of about 20% shares in Micromax.

Due to lack of funding some of the Micromax projects had to be shut down and by final quarter of 2015 its smartphone market fell to 13% from 22%. But with founders Rahul Sharma, Vikas Jain, Sumeet Arora and Rajesh Agarwal still controlling the about 80% of the company have kept the company in profit.

Facing tough competition now, Micromax plans to increase its production by 100% that is from about 1.5 million units every month to 3 million units per month. Micromax also plans to increase its business overseas. Already a top 10 brand in Russia, Micromax has been looking for a partner to help it expand outside India and to indulge more in the business of televisions and tablets.

The Battle Royale
With vendors from Dragon land  and other beasts like Samsung, Lenovo and Sony now taking the Indian market more seriously and introducing better products at cheap prices, the legendary Indian warrior Micromax has taken the fight head on and has been continuously rolling out products with performance at par with products from any other competitor, giving all competitors a run for their money around the globe. Today Micromax is a popular name in LED TV industry in addition to Smartphones.

rahul-sharma-micromax-quote

Rocket Internet: The failed rocket science behind Jabong, Foodpanda and many more startups

India, Story, Tech Story / By

Rocket Internet is a German Internet company that replicates successful online startups in lesser explored markets. Opposite to the name there is no rocket science used by Samwer brothers in their company, the Rocket Internet. The business model is simple, they would build companies which already existed but with a new and hungry work force. They would spend a huge capital to make sure the company grows in the span of two years or so and then sell the company at an alluring price. People say that unoriginal and copied ideas never work for long time. But, against all odds Rocket Internet’s strategy worked for long. Oliver Samwer also made a statement to Financial Times that

“There are three e-commerce companies in the world – Amazon, Alibaba and us”.

The only trick they used was to create products which were successful in USA and China and then launch these so called “new companies or products” in the other European countries. Rocket Internet is pretty good at marketing and business plan.

rocket internet
Image Credit: Wikipedia

Replicating and selling eBay’s business model to eBay itself

The start to such an idea was formulated when the three brothers spent their time studying about the emerging startups in the Silicon Valley, while staying in San Francisco in 1998. They observed that many people bought stuff online and also sold stuff online on eBay. The Samwer brothers after returning to Germany implemented eBay’s business model and forged a company in Berlin called “Alando” which was a replica of an online auction company. Alando was aquired by eBay for $43 million within 3 months of its launch.

Rocket Internet

Thre brothers Marc, Oliver, Alexander Samwer continued this strategy and in 2007 founded their company Rocket Internet. Oliver Samwer was the driving force behind the company. The company was mainly into food and groceries, fashion, travel, home and living, general merchandise and new business and investments.

In 2010 Samwer brothers started CityDeals which was acquired by Groupon for $170 million within five months of it’s launch. In 2008 Rocket Internet founded Zalando, an online shopping website inspired from Zappos.com. They even tried to create a copy of Airbnb but couldn’t succeed because of brand name and niche community.

Rocket Internet expanded in other markets including India. Rocket Internet started its Indian journey with the help of three Indians entrepreneurs- Ankur Warikoo, Praveen Sinha and Arun Chandra Mohan. They were to handle the Indian business of Rocket India. These three Indians were the front line of Asasa.com, Rocket Internet’s first business in India. All of the three were invited to a boot camp in Zalando’s warehouse in Berlin to know more about how things work in there since they had to replicate the operations and other procedure in India.

In 2011 the three Indians hired approximately 70 employees after returning from boot camp as they were ready to go live in India. These entrepreneurs were given the post of MD and co-founders and were on a monthly payroll. They were minority share holders of the company. In later years the co-founders started realizing that they were valued very less as compared to the revenues and profits made by these companies. This was one of the reasons for the failure of Rocket Internet in India and also the death of Asasa.com. Later in the years  Jabong and Fabfurnish also could not capture the Indian market and failed to fight competitors like Myntra, Flipkart. Rocket Internet ended up in selling them as well.

According to many people the harsh nature of Rocket Internet with employees and founders lead to a failure in India. The co-founders had low equity in the companies and also there was a fear of job insecurity in their minds since more or less they were treated like employees and not founders. Owing to many such issues the Rocket India could not grow any further. Recently Foodpanda was also sold to Delivery Hero. Despite all these failures, HelloFresh, a Rocket Internet company recently raised $88 million. Answer only lies in future as to how far Rocket Internet goes in terms of growth and revenues.