Case I: Proteans' Founders Chose To Drive Their Destiny!

Neelam Dwivedi, vice president of corporate communications at Proteans, earlier worked in Oracle's server technology division. Proteans' vice president of sales Nilesh Patel was a star at IBM. COO Prashant Singh and CEO Sudhakar Gorti were also racing ahead in their respective careers at Oracle. Yet in spite of the passion they brought to their workplaces, this group of friends craved to start something of their own, to push themselves to their limits and to take their destiny in their own hands. They perceived the creation of a new entity as a plunge to create business value for customers, and money for themselves and their shareholders.

Friends turned partners:

The foursome eventually decided to apply their impeccable track records, leadership abilities and education to the test. Thus, Proteans was born, to focus on outsourced software product development for technology companies, a niche they chose "because it was thrilling to build products for our customers and help their market wins through our technology inputs."

But more seriously, software was a natural choice for these partners who all have technical backgrounds and hence, recognized the immense potential in the sector. Besides, their successful stints with well-known IT companies had proven their capability to deliver results in terms of software development. Product development would now allow them to fully apply their creativity, handle ambiguity and adopt the mentality of the end customer - a reason why their clientele treat them more as partners than mere vendors.

Multi-faceted role playing

However, since all the partners were techies turned first-generation entrepreneurs, gaps in their exposure to diverse business skills - sales, business development, finance, HR, operations etc - emerged. Sudhakar and Prashant had been associated with startups and their combined experience was useful - but not enough. As Neelam points out, "it was not a dream combination to start a new business!"

So the entrepreneurs turned to professionals who still work with them on a part-time basis, for as Neelam explains, "as Proteans is still a small company - 150 people strong - we still don't have the luxury to create full-time job roles for functions like finance, operations, marketing and HR. Yet, we have always understood the importance of these functions in the creation of business value, and have evolved models in which very senior experts in these fields give us consultations on a part-time basis every month and we tune Proteans according to the best practices they suggest."

A hard journey

Establishing Proteans involved more than hard work, it also required all the partners to sink their savings. Initially, the entrepreneurs worked 16 x 7 out of a small house. They staunchly refused external funding, preferring instead to prove their worth by successfully running Proteans. As a result, Proteans has yielded profits since day one, and this profit has to a large extent fuelled its growth. However, in 2006, the foursome raised funds from KITVEN, a reputed institutional investment firm in Bangalore to finance Proteans' infrastructural and US growth plans.

Since Proteans had by then recorded consistent growth, finance to fund the creation of a campus in Bangalore to seat 1000 was forthcoming. These plans also mark the future growth plans of the company - Proteans envisages its staff expanding from 160 to 1000 in the next two years! Establishing a US presence was tricky and the fact that Proteans managed beat tough competition went a long way to boost the teams' morale. 

The need for Mentors

Is it enough to just be inspired by international and national role models such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Narayan Murthy and Captain Gopinath, who have amply shown what can be achieved by having a vision, and pursuing it with passion and persistence? Even as he points out that "experience has been our greatest mentor," Neelam reiterates that "guidance and mentorship are important while building a business as they save you from a lot of unnecessary learning and reinventing the wheel."

Proteans' selection in the prestigious NASSCOM Mentorship Program which involves some of the best minds in the Indian IT industry and veteran venture capitalists interacting with entrepreneurs on a one-to-one basis as mentors, has immensely helped charter its growth.

Making Proteans a great place to work

Having worked with MNCs, the team understood the need to have people friendly policies and strong technical delivery processes in place. Thus, the Proteans' way (for employees) applies high benchmarks thus making it a chosen destination for software professionals seeking a challenging, yet rewarding career in Bangalore. 

Today, Proteans has experience under its belt and its satisfied customers have doubly benefited from the lower cost of outsourcing.

Proteans is an endeavour that has borne fruit and promises more.  Evidently, these entrepreneurs got their formula right - which is...? Neelam believes all entrepreneurs possess an ideal mix of the right qualities - drive, passion, persistence, work ethics, vision, trust, leadership and great employees who take ownership - and are aided by a conducive business environment.  After all, he says, becoming an entrepreneur is nothing but practicing the "Art of Start" for the right opportunity, and not being afraid of failure!

Case II: The Making of Aurigo Software Technologies Inc.

In the year 2000, Balaji Sreenivasan (CEO) and Deepak Pulipati (COO) founded Aurigo Software Technologies Inc. Like most entrepreneurs, they were driven to create something new. Deepak lists the joy of creating jobs and the intellectual stimulation that managing an enterprise calls for, as factors that inspired him to establish his own business. However, it is not as though the duo had no other options.

Coming together with like-minded people: Armed with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from NIT - Trichy and a Masters from the University of Florida, Balaji was gainfully employed as an IT  design engineer in USA prior to relocating to India. Deepak had worked with Shell Australia after completing his MBA from the University of Technology in Sydney. He returned to India and was toying with the idea of joining his family's construction business, when a chance meeting with Balaji led to the creation of Aurigo.

They applied their know-how and skills to establish a venture that they were (and still are) both very passionate about. They started out as an enterprise technology company dealing in generic mobile middleware and aimed to cater to both the Indian and US markets.

A product driven company: In 2002, however, a client of theirs - Jeffrey La Croix (now Vice President, Product Strategy) - put forward his idea of creating a product to manage the construction process, automating the entire workflow of large capital improvement projects in the US, right after the design phase and up until ribbon cutting, this included estimation, contract management and mobile inspections. Jeffrey - a registered professional civil engineer and a graduate from Washington State University with extensive experience in engineering construction design, contracts and project management of large-scale A/E/C Projects - backed up his idea convincingly with  workflow created over seven years. Balaji and Deepak decided it was better to merge the two entities and the rest, as they say, is history!

The two acquired Jeffrey's idea and set about translating it into a workflow layer within their middleware product platform. As head of engineering (at the time), Balaji worked with Jeff to shape Aurigo's product, the AMP3 suite, into its current form.

Division of work: Today, Balaji plays a key role in growing Aurigo's business and global market share by working closely with customers and also managing sales, marketing, engineering and support teams, driving better value to customers. Deepak's role at Aurigo is to oversee and manage operations and human resources. In the process, he invests much time and energy in improving the quality of hiring, training and retaining skilled technical resources that design and develop Aurigo's software products. Jeff oversees product strategy, roadmap and business workflow analysis of enterprise customer requirements.

However, this division of work evolved over years. In their early days, Balaji and Deepak struggled with business aspects that they were not familiar with. With no mentors whatsoever to fall back on for guidance, financial structuring and the raising of capital especially were big question marks that they had to work round. In retrospect, Deepak points out that all the degrees in the world cannot compare with real-world experience. But an entrepreneur cannot fear a learning curve, for running an enterprise requires a medley of skills and strengths. If it were not for their process of trial and error, Deepak says today they would not be so proficient in understanding finance, or any other subject.

Money to grow a business: Having relied on their family for funding to start Aurigo - the two continued to support the venture, opting not to approach institutions or venture capitalists for funding without experiencing a synchronicity of ideology with the backer. As Deepak explains, they were not out to simply get a cheque to support and grow their business, as many venture capitalists lend support to companies simply with a hefty return on investment in mind.

Since Aurigo is a product driven company, the partners realized that they would have to wait that much longer for success, as opposed to offering a service. Hence, they only desired to take onboard as directors, investors who shared their passion for their product. Balaji relentlessly took Aurigo's business plan to entrepreneurs turned investors across the globe with a clear focus to bring in the mentors in addition to the capital that the company lacked, while Deepak managed the show at Bangalore.

As a result, Sridhar Manthani, Sunil Nanda and Ravi Gulati joined Aurigo's board as investor directors in 2004 and 2005 respectively as part of Aurigo's Series A round of funding. These experienced and successful professionals have contributed immensely to steer Aurigo forward. As chairman of the board, Ravi's technology industry experience of over 40 years - that includes the establishing and sale of Stonybrook Software - has given the team new direction. Sridhar Manthani and Sunil Nanda co-founded Thinkit Technologies Inc. - an entity that was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2000 and have held other senior executive positions in the US technology sector for over twenty years.

Perseverance has paid off

Today Aurigo boasts of numerous awards and recognition. In 2006, it was declared one of the most innovative companies by Microsoft and also made it to the Red Herring's Asia top 100 technology companies list. The company has built its customer base from a handful of pilot deployments, to include multi-year contracts with large cities, countries, transit authorities and State DOTs in the US, and is now making forays in the Indian market.

Having come so far, what would Deepak identify as ingredients to be a successful entrepreneur? A strong conviction, unstoppable drive and tremendous passion to build up something from scratch. He adds that the next step is to take Aurigo from being an organization to an institution. Aurigo staff today number 45 across USA and India (Bangalore). However, he reiterates that as a product company, even as they scale up operations manifold, the staff numbers are unlikely to increase by over hundred percent over the next two years. Evidently, these entrepreneurs have a sound technical team and support staff in place. Enough to supply their innovative product to construction companies across the world!

Charu Bahri is a freelance writer and author of two books. She also writes funding grants and software for a charity working in the health sector. 

Issue BG71 Feb07

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Comments (1)

	1. 18-10-2008 22:00
	Entreneurship is the only way of generating more employment on its own and reduce the much arising unemployment scenario in our country today. Registered Report

JOHN CAJEE

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