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We are pleased to publish interview with Ms. Sreevidya P., who is the founder of Business Infoware, Inc., an Analytics and Business Intelligence solution provider in Virginia, USA. She has also co-founded a company in India that provides multi-channel sales management solutions, with proprietary cell phone based platforms and occasional connectivity platforms to provide real time / near time information to users. Prior to her startup ventures, she worked with multiple MNCs and IT Companies in India, US and UK in Senior Management roles.
Yogesh K. Upadhyaya from Chronicle talks to Sreevidya about her start-up business ventures, which may inspire other fellow alumnae.
(Ms. Sreevidya P.)
Q-1: Welcome, Sreevidya. Please introduce yourself to our readers.
First of all, thanks for the opportunity and thanks to Arvind (EcE 92) for recommending my profile. And thanks to all the readers for taking time to read this article.
It may sound silly at the moment; still let me introduce myself as taught in ragging: “A murgi of 1988 batch, with hava of 1558”!!
As obvious now, I am a 1992 batch graduate (in Electronics) from IT-BHU. Having born and brought up in Sindri, Dhanbad in a simple family with emphasis on academic, social service, family ideals and Indian culture, I started my college life as a timid, small town girl (with 2 braid :)), totally confused even with a city as small as Banaras!
Whatever our college did, it did something right, apart from a valued Degree, to land this diffident mortal in a “then coveted” job as Graduate Trainee in Tata Steel. However, let me share a secret: I believe I made through this rather ostentatious interview, only due to generous commendation by my batchmates (both EcE & Mech. 92) to “Major Gupta”! Many of us may recollect Major Gupta as a significant figure in deciding the fate of “Tata Steel job aspiring” Engineering graduates for more than a decade!
Eventually, Tata Steel gave me a lot – it worked out to be an excellent launch pad. Earnestly, it groomed me in all aspects, some even unheard of in other companies – including an opportunity with a TV Commercial and potential opportunity in Bollywood films!!
With the Tata Steel foundation, I kept getting great opportunities with MNCs in India, US and UK as consultant, strategist, board member and other leadership roles. I have an unfinished effort on MS in Information Systems from IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology), Chicago and John Hopkins, Maryland – one of which may serve as an interesting post-retirement project!!
Q-2: How did you get the idea about starting the business venture?
Let me start with what inspired me to start a company (this was 1999/2000):
1. Hype, high TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and high % of overwhelmed / dissatisfied end-users in IT.
2. No globally recognized “Made in India” Software Product, in spite of India’s significant contributions*1 to the global software market.
*1Although only 1/10th of what it is today, India still provided about $5B worth software services in 1999-2000, leave apart the high % of India educated Engineers working in IT in US, Europe and various Software dreams of non-Indian MNCs!
I don’t know if it was finally the entrepreneurship or patriotism or a combination of both that made me start a venture. All I know is that starting a new venture seemed to be the easiest option to achieve the above objectives.
I was inspired by the power of Cell Phones, especially the computing power of SIM Cards (subscriber identity module in cell phones). Once while travelling in a train in India in 1999/2000 (where no other equipment is as handy as cell phone – even in economy class in international flights these days), I started to wonder as to why nobody had come up with appropriate interfaces and tools to utilize this powerful platform better. I started visualizing ways to shrink the gap between software and telecom industry by cross-utilizing this platform.
In the meantime, I had also worked on application integration projects. As many of you in IT may recollect, integration was one among the highly convoluted/hyped subjects in IT during that time, probably preceded only by Y2K and .com.
Since cell phone was too new a platform for a startup to venture at that time (in 1999/2000), I decided to start with an automated integration tool that would not only minimize TCO but also end user’s dependency on IT programmers. And dreamt about how people would look at data/information access differently when these two platforms would be combined in future.
I was fortunate to meet some like-minded people, and we together formed the core team of our business. All of us had our own set of ideas, our own objective to distinction, but what ultimately kept us together till date in this journey of creating business reality out of individual dreams, were a tight similarity in our business ideals and the intrinsic fire to succeed.
Today, our business model has evolved way beyond in the value chain. We took advantage of bottom-up evolution, with integration as a backend. We utilized domain expertise in the team to identify a niche in the value chain. And with our innovative cell phone & mobility platforms and innovative technology designs, we bridge significant gap between IT and non-tech savvy end users in our domain where limitations in IT infrastructure as well as resources are also common.
As a result, today many of our end users themselves are evangelists of our solution as they find our solution to be a wonder IT tool which “even they” could use without any help from their IT Department!
We still have a long way to go. As a team, we are confident of achieving our final goal of a “truly global Made in India software product” that would escalate India’s pride to even greater heights in the Global Software Map.
Q-2b: Can you elaborate on your journey till now? What is the learning for aspiring Entrepreneurs?
One thing we have always been sensitive to is the market. And unlike the norm in innovation startups, we have always addressed a mature market space. Our core competency today is our ability to address the dynamically changing “current mature market in an untraditional way”.
As mentioned, our journey started with “a highly ambitious” automated integration tool. We built probably one of the first “almost fully” automated integration tool with even the adapter*2 creation 90-95% automated! But we soon learnt (the hard way!) that the key to success is not just technological uniqueness. So when this market began to get crowded, we swiftly moved into specialized areas in Business Analytics and Business Intelligence, with the advantage of integration tool at the backend.
In the process, we identified critical gaps in the CRM and SCM space, especially in case of multinationals in highly competitive and unpredictable markets, like that of FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) / CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) in emerging markets. Moreover, they are posed with a new type of challenge today with the changes in economy and liberalization.
Our company was re-launched with this new concept of unCRM.
Our sensitivity to market gave us a distinction here too. Instead of going by the general trend of building tools suitable for retail mature markets of US and Europe, and expecting all emerging markets to simply follow their footprint, we were sensitive to the key differences and limitations in such markets. Due to the same reason, our technology has competency to support innovative price models more pertinent to such markets, while many other solutions available today still require price points not supported by the current IT trends.
Apart from being market sensitive on the business front, we also watch technology aggressively. As most you in IT may know, telecom and mobility solutions witnessed historical transformations in the last 6-7 years. We were quick to launch our unique cell phone and mobility communication platform in 2003. This when combined with our unCRM model and our data management capabilities, give us an unrivaled competitive advantage in our target market. Today we beat competition from even the former Big 5 consulting firms.
*2For our non-software readers, integration adapter means set of codes that translates data between two enterprise systems being integrated.
Some of my learning I would like to share are the following:
1. Don’t get stuck to your ideas – move the way market changes.
2. Identify right people with good stake in your dreams – don’t be a do-all person.
3. As a startup with small budget, stick to what market needs NOW. What it needs in future can be built in future.
4. Keep technical complexities at the backend, not in the forefront of your product.
5. Build team judiciously. Get people to dream with you. As a startup with practically no HR development/motivation budget, hire only self-motivated people who believe in your dreams. One bad fish will spoil the whole pond.
6. Contrary to the general belief of “selling yourself first to make a sale”, what I experienced is “sell your products genuinely and you will never have to “sell” yourself”!
7. Last but not the least, as primary stakeholders, you and your core team should never lose optimism. Pessimism trickles faster than optimism.
Q-3: Please tell us more about your company
Still more?
As mentioned, we are a software products company. We focus on business analytics & intelligence in Sales Management of multi-channel trade.
Our solution is available as SaaS (Software as a Service) on desktop, web, mobile web and ordinary cell phones. It comes packaged with its own automated integration adapters, configuration tools, maintenance tools and user support tools, automating the implementation and reducing go-live time by more than 80%.
We currently sell subscription licenses in India and consulting services in similar domain in the US.
Q-4: What advice would you like to provide to women engineers to start an IT business venture?
My advice to both men and women alike is to primarily listen to your heart – make sure you start your own business only if you feel strongly about it.
The excitement of a new business will soon fade with the struggles and hardships, very different from your erstwhile experiences in established companies. It is only your optimism, conviction and “dying to reach your goals” that will keep you going. (Well, isn’t this true for all major decisions in life?)
Once you have wholeheartedly decided to start your new business, it is all about understanding the market and deriving a thorough execution plan, while managing your financials smartly. Another very important thing is to identify your limitations critical to the business and get partners/stakeholders to bridge these limitations.
To my women contemporaries, I have only one special advice: not let our emotional inclinations / weak spots bother us. We can convert these to our strength and in combination with our inherent nurturing skills, we can make good managers out of us. After all, today all industries talk of EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)!
Q-5: Please describe your college days
IT-BHU gave me one of the most treasured memories of my life.
And probably hostel life was the best among all.
Although we were told that the Girls Hostel lacked in amenities, I do not specifically remember what we lacked. From what we were told, the management was overwhelmed with 10 girls in our batch!; and hence had to make some rushed arrangement by converting an old Director’s bungalow into a hostel. Some say the bungalow was haunted!! – a nice strategy by the management to drive the spirits away!! Maybe it worked! The planchets suddenly had faster response in Vish!!
All jokes apart, I think the best take away from these types of hostels and the college in general, are real good lifetime friends. Probably it’s the age too. While we are all just mature enough to form realistic friends, whilst the innocence of a teenager still being there, I guess the friends we make in college are a genre apart from any other friends we make later in life.
Another thing I remember about Banaras is its temples with all those eateries, the Kachori & Jalebi breakfast at the corner end of Lanka, the burgers at the back gate and of course all the maharajas and maharanis. Before you all conclude that I am just a foodie, let me name some other memories like Kashi Yatra, SPICMACAY programs, IT Gymkhana matches (with its terrible quality of girls’ tournaments, still with a huge audience! On hindsight, while we already made a joker out of us, we should have at least made some money in tickets!), occasional genuinely “attended” classes, and even less genuinely derived lab results!! The Freshers nite is another great memory – the pride factor, for whatever we were convinced about, is strangely incomparable to any other growth seen in future!. Just one more on food –when in 4th year, finally some of us girls mustered the courage for a restrained, sneaky visit to a chai shop in front of DG (Dhanrajgiri Hostel)!! - One dream that we finally lived up to!! Today these and such restrictions seem unreal, but I guess that’s what increased the “perceived excitement and adventure” in our college life.
And the more silly an incident seems today, the more treasured I feel about it, strangely!
Q-6: Please tell us about your family life
My immediate family is my mother, brother, his wife, my sister, her husband and my world is my nephew! My father died in 1994.
My mother is the reason for my continued faith in the care and righteousness of the Creator, and my father’s advice and ideals still provide me endurance in my dark moments. My brother has been a guidance and support and both he and my sister have been my strength when all other options wane. My 4-yr old nephew has taught me things that none of my managers or any incident from my otherwise eventful life could teach!
I am obliged to my family, close friends and all my colleagues at work, for whatever I am today. I am influenced by Mr. Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and highly inspired by his book “Imagining India”.
Sreevidya, it was nice talking to you.
Sreevidya Perilakalam can be contacted at: sreevidya.p@businessinfoware.com
(We thank Arvind Gupta (ECE 1992) for forwarding us the info about Sreevidya)
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1) Business Infoware, Inc.
http://www.businessinfoware.com
2) DirectioAllCell brand
http://www.directioallcell.biz
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A very inspiring interview indeed. All ITBHU alumni (esp. the fairer sex) should read this.
best wishes,
Animesh
CSE03
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(if you having troubles, try posting your comment on this page or send an email to chronicle @ itbhuglobal.org)Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP
I think that to get the credit loans from creditors you ought to have a good reason. However, one time I have received a collateral loan, just because I wanted to buy a building.
August 11, 2011 9:53 AM