Archive for May, 2009
PgcInfotech.com: Incubating business ideas.
During his college days, Yeragaselvan got to hear the stories of his college mates getting into jobs, most of which, they later realized themselves to be a square peg in a round hole. Some of the people were into jobs that drove their motivation spirit down into the drain.
Hailing from Chennai, Yeraga disliked going for the usual nine to fiver job. After completing his B.E. in Electronics and Communications from Kongu Engineering College, he went to the UK to pursue his Masters degree
at Westminster University in London . But his inner urge to become an entrepreneur saw h
im dropping his higher studies. He came back to Chennai and co-founded PGC Infotech during 2008 along with his friend Prem.
PGC Group is a diversified group having business interest across real-estate, energy, textile, retail, etc., and has launched a technology seed fund for incubating various business ideas. The objective of this fund is to incubate various business ideas, whereby, the best of the ideas are nurtured by best of the talent. Each idea gets enough resource at PGC Jacob’s Ladder dvd and the venture is meticulously planned and delivered into this world.
Each of the incubated idea at PGC Infotech takes its path from idea to delivery and then from operations to commercial deployment. It is a real challenge for Yeragaselvan, since the birth of the product right from conceiving the idea requires the same person to focus in order to make the end delivery a successful one.
Employing nearly 100 people, PGC infotech based in Chennai has a development center at Tirupur in Tamil Nadu. Getting a team at his development centre is a difficult task since it is situated too far away from a metropolitan city. Yeraga has to ensure that people joining his company will not get disoriented with the place. He takes into count the attitude of the people as the primary yardstick to judge an incumbent employee for his company. The required skills are then imparted to make the employees fit for the marathon run at PGC Infotech.
The interesting fact about Sharad the CEO at PGC Infotech is that he was in a top job at a leading corporate house before joining this startup. His designation was President and was heading the US operations at 3i Infotech, the software arm of ICICI Bank.
Being at various high responsibility jobs in India and in USA, Sharad gives out a pep talk to Startupstory.in.
“I believe to be innovative and create something new. For this I should go to the seed level rather than worry about the size of tree trunk”, quips the 35 year old Sharad.
Corporate Vs Startup
“Corporate is about defending your turf and Startups are about building a new turf. In corporate environment you focus on leveraging what you have, thus you need to be more defensive in your approach. In Corporate, you create virtual boundaries and waste time to defend them, whereas in a startup, you create new boundaries that are always focused on building your business idea. So in a Startup your approach to business is forthcoming and open.”
Sartup scenario in India
“Startup is not a new phenomenon for India, but these days it has got its needed formal identity. India has a more vibrant small business setup when compared to corporate America. Earlier in India, either you had a government job or you had to start a business. Remember startup is a painful ride with minimal immediate returns and has more complexity. But, it is the kick you get that keeps you going day in and day out.”
Strength of an Indian CEO
“We as Indians are very well equipped with dealing the unknown. In our day to day life, there is no guarantee that next moment we will have electricity, whether the elevator will work, whether the maid will show up, where the person driving in front will turn, but we very comfortably navigate it. Whereas in a developed country the factor called ‘unknown’ is negligible and is predictable. In a developed country the train arrives on time, everything works in a clockwork precision and people are in peace. So, Indian managers are seasoned to lead business in uncertain times very comfortably without panic. We have unknowingly inherited the skills needed to manage a startup which has many unknowns and is a very unpredictable system”.
The startup journey
“The pleasure is not in the destination, but in the journey, generally your current goal is your next destination. But when you reach it, your itinerary would be ready for the next destination. Enjoy the journey and remember whether the destination or milestone is success or failure. It is just incidental, don’t pay too much attention to it.”
Indian Startups and Indian economy
“Startup successes are very critical for our country. We need a lot of positive stories and press bytes. Some how I think we after independence thought it is the responsibility of the government to fix all the problems and even we want them to create employment. In current wave of economic growth, we moved from desired government job to corporate job. While we go to school, why are we trained to join in some job? Why we are not taught to start a business and solve a social / political problem and convert it into an opportunity and monetize from it?”
“The success of a startup can inspire and liberate an innocent graduate or even a college drop out to make the plunge and solve our social and economic challenges and contribute to our economy as a whole.”
Are you still defending your own turf at a big company? Why not build a new turf?
Are the Corporates hearing?
Address: www.pgcinfotech.com Level 6, 10/11 Dr.Radhakrishna Salai Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, 600004 T: +91 421 4314400, Toll Free - 1800 103 0800E: info@pgcinfotech.com
W: pgcinfotech.com, whereismyboss.com
Sharad’s twitter - twitter.com/sharadvajpayee
Deskaway.com: Put your projects on cruise control
Gone are the days, when managing a team project involved the flexing steps of planning, scheduling and setting up the project. With the blessing of internet, now less planning is done and more of work is executed, with people in the team dispersed far and away even across the globe.
Sahil Parikh, the 29 year old entrepreneur from Mumbai sets in to cool off the vapours which usually rumbles up whenever more people are involved in a project. His SaaS (Software as a service) Daylight divx venture, DeskAway.com is a subscription based collaborative online service which enables business teams to organize, manage & track the progress of their team work from anywhere. This self funded startup is on track to provide simple and powerful tools through the web for people to work in a smarter way and at an affordable cost. Besides the project collaboration features, DeskAway also includes comment threads, RSS feeds, instant email notifications, user profiles and twitter-like social message updates.
In the year 1997, Sahil went to USA for pursuing his higher education at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wherein he got associated with the founding team of an entrepreneurship society in his university. He had the luck of rubbing shoulders with investors and incubators. Further he got into multiple jobs which gave him the moral strength to co-start his own web design and development consultancy with his wife in March 2002.
The perception then in the USA was that India is a low-cost service destination perfect for off-shoring and that good quality products don’t come out of India that often. Though the number of clients for his service business grew in the successive 3 years, Sahil’s interest to plunge into a product business made him quit his job and shift his web design business to India in early 2005. Later he added up DeskAway, his first ever SaaS product during late 2007.
Though he was trying to phase out his service business, he could not do so since there was no other income to fuel his uphill journey. To earn the money needed for running his product business, he added up a couple of web development projects. Unlike a service business which earns money right from day one, a product business needs much of the time and effort to build and it pays back only at a later stage. The effort needed for steaming up his product business was getting beaten down and his entrepreneurial journey was facing a slippery path. He then took the critical decision to quit all service projects and concentrate 100% on DeskAway
. He quips that it was best decision he had ever made in his life.
Now a team of 12 comprising of developers, online marketers, web/UI designer, business strategy consultants, testers, etc., manage the show. Sahil feels a joy in helping a developer learn new things to create a win-win situation. He is particular on hiring a person who wants to learn, rather than an expert who only wants to earn.
Web-savvy teams and professional small businesses which work in virtual teams are his target users. Though there are more than 11,000 registered users to boast off, getting new customers have been his real juggernaut. In India, people didn’t understand the business model of this online product and why the software was so affordable? He laughs at instances where he was called in by Ad agencies and PR firms for presentations, and they would want to buy and install the DeskAway software in their stand alone PCs. There is an online help & video section to impart knowledge on how to get started with DeskAway
. This has drastically reduced the cost which was otherwise incurred towards customer acquisition and support.
A social network sort of open relationship exists between this company and feedback from their customers are taken in the right spirit to make DeskAway more productive for the user. Their product offer starts with a basic “free” version (supports 5 users) which has almost all aspects of the product to the higher end “$99/month” model (Unlimited users). Poltergeist divx
Sahil votes for promoting his business through the online medium due to lower cost and higher reach. To make their presence known far away, initiatives such as SEO, SEM, online affiliation are often explored in addition to implementing a vibrant FaceBook Fanpage and maintaining an active presence on Twitter.
“At the end of the day software should be fun and easy to use. Just like your social network. Right?” Sahil tells to Startupstory.
Address: DeskAway.com, Great Western Bldg, 1st Floor, 130/132, Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg,Near Lion Gate, Fort, Mumbai, India - 400023, T: +91-22-22854133 E: info@synage.com
Blogs: DeskAway.com/blog & SahilParikh,com
Micro Blogs: Twitter.com/DeskAway & Twitter.com/SahilParikh
FaceBook Fanpage : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Deskaway/34895509600 November Son buy
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