Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Binu Jacob of Experion Technologies on The Art of Product Development
26 Plays13 days ago
Join us for an enlightening episode featuring Binu Jacob, MD & CEO of Experion Technologies, as he recounts his extraordinary transition from aspiring professor to thriving entrepreneur in the product engineering services arena.
Binu is the MD & CEO of Experion Technologies, a Global Product Engineering Services company offering enterprises future-ready and transformative digital solutions. He is a visionary with a proven track record for driving growth over his 30 years of professional experience.
Akshay Datt, a serial entrepreneur having run ventures in Employability Training and hiring, is the host of "The Spotlight", presented by the Founder Thesis podcast. He has interviewed 400+ founders to date.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Bino Jacob
00:00:00
Speaker
ah Hi, everyone. This is Bino Jacob, the managing director and CEO of Experian Technologies, a product engineering company based out of Kerala.
Bino's Journey to Entrepreneurship
00:00:21
Speaker
So, Bino, welcome to the founder thesis podcast. ah Tell me your journey of becoming an entrepreneur. Actually, so when I talk about my, ah you know, initiative with Experion, I would like to say that I was never meant to be an entrepreneur. So because I should have actually been a teacher or a professor. Yeah, you look like a professor as well.
00:00:44
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so it all happened. I think the the intent or you know the interest to become an entrepreneur happened when I was doing my master's in IIT Delhi, so Keshav Mahindra was the person who actually came and gave handed the certificates over to us. So he was and invited guest for the convocation. So I think it was in It was probably in 85. So when we were actually passing out he was kind of making out a call and he said, look guys, you are all taking India government's money and then going and making America rich. So I couldn't understand what he was saying. We had to be, we are talking about the brain drain those days. And then he said, I've traveled around the world and it's not even a single corner of the earth where where I have not gone. And I've not found, you know, a team like in the, indian I mean, like Indians who actually can do everything, but then they are not good at marketing.
00:01:36
Speaker
And then obviously he went on to talk about all that and and and then he says that I am betting on the talent India and I'm going to create a project. And he did not really talk about the name of the project until then. And he says, if this investment, which was 675 crores is what I think I remember, if this goes down and then you can be rest assured that Mahindra is not going to be on the face of the earth. So that was what he's meant. And then at the end of the thing, he said, this project is called the Project Scorpio.
Career Transition to Dubai
00:02:07
Speaker
You know, so, and I mean, life went on. I passed out. I went to Dubai for a couple of years. Keshav, minder was like, I don't minder's father, is it? Yeah. I mean, I think his father-in-law, I mean, okay. yeah So he he was a chairman before that. Okay. So yeah. So he, I mean, I went on to Dubai, continued with my work. And then I came back to India and I started finding the Scorpio Jeeps on the road. You know, so that's, that's when I said, Oh my God, this is what ah he meant those days. And I found it was really good. I mean, it was a welcome change to see Scorpio from the typical, you know, 455 and those kind of models. So then, of course, I went back to Dubai and somebody from ah Dubai wanted to get me back to India. And then they said, I've got this STPA rules coming into India, so I want to start an IT company. What were you doing in Dubai?
00:03:00
Speaker
So I used to work for a Canadian IT company. I was into software testing. So it was mostly you know testing of Y2K days. it was I'm talking about 2000. So Saudi the Telecom, Alahili banks, so all these large companies, because of Y2K, they wanted to have testing of software. So I was one of the test managers. Of course, that happened because I did not have any background in software testing per se. I used to work in the armed forces. Before this job, I was in the Air Force.
00:03:26
Speaker
testing missiles. So you know the the managing director of this company, Pac McManaman, he was actually a i mean Canadian guy, but he was again IT service, I mean, software testing guy. So he said, oh if you can test missiles, well and good, you can test software. So that's how I got in. Obviously, he they taught us on how to ah what are the protocols to take up a software testing in a structured manner, et cetera. That's how I actually got into the job.
00:03:54
Speaker
but Of course, my IT thing was actually mostly, you know, technology management. So I and could ah understand how products are conceived and then how do you take it to markets, all of that. So this guy in Dubai, he said, you can come down and set up my IT company in India. So, you know, ignorance is bliss, you know. So I went ahead and started.
00:04:15
Speaker
building a company, it was a very tough job. I mean, from zero to about 105, I conceived a product, and then I created a product, started selling, went into the market, and there was no money. So this guy, though he committed a lot of money, but he did not really have enough capital. So I switched over in five years, I mean, after having built this company to about 106 people, and then found a lot of customers. It was a campus ERP. It was a concept that I had actually created, sold to customers in Dubai and Quebec. So that is my early beginning.
00:04:44
Speaker
But then I went on. This company which you set up in India was selling an yeah ERP to colleges. Yeah, primarily universities and so on. Because India, those days it was Indian colleges. Yeah, engineering ec colleges primarily. Or can some of the universities, management institutes and so on. So I had about 35 customers that I had personally gone and sold to at least about 20 of them that came on board and then people were using it. But the business wasn't making enough money because the pricing was not properly done. So there was obviously mistakes in my city.
00:05:13
Speaker
looking back i don't you think the Market opportunity itself was
Formation of Experion Technologies
00:05:17
Speaker
very limited. I mean even today colleges don't spend much on IT, right? It's a Yeah, but then yeah the SAP had a campus version So there was campus version which was actually priced very high for the big universities and so on So but then this was actually there was a market because I was selling to the campuses in in in Dubai you know those days because i based in Dubai so what happened was there was ah you know There was appetite to buy at whatever price. i mean we are not talking about So we had ITM Mumbai that bought this product for about 25 or I think 35 lakhs. So that was not a small amount those days. yeah yeah you know So that that was interesting. But anyway, then we had other products also, shipping and trading related, but it was product, conceiving products and selling. and then you know um But that was the early learning that I had because I
00:06:07
Speaker
After this job, I worked for a company called IBS, which today, I don't know if you know that they are selling to the big airlines and big oil companies and so on. So I was actually selling products after this job. So like EIP kind of products? IBS? No, IBS has got ah cargo management for big airlines like Lufthansa and things like that. so yeah So yeah. And then oil and gas. I used to manage a few product lines in IBS. So that is how my product story continued you after being starting that initial company.
00:06:37
Speaker
when I decided, so that is how Experion, you know, the early ah foundation blocks for something like an Experion happen in those days. So I had my friends who are like, we have four people out of IBS and couple, I mean, we have got the CTOs come from, Srikumar has come from ah Quest, which is today, I mean, which used to be Nest. So we heard all these senior people from IBS, we heard Manoj who's actually heading the US for us. We've got Suresh who used to head IBS Bangalore and then say Jamie who was one of the managing one of the product lines. So all of us together, we started thinking about how to create value and how to create wealth.
00:07:14
Speaker
And I think that intent also happened because I used to be in the armed forces. And when I was traveling on a continuous basis, I could not find a single product made in India. So if you go to, let's say, typical B&Q in, in in ah let's say, UK, would it be least ah mean sorry B and&Q is a big superstore which has everything under the earth. You can buy building materials, you can buy groceries, you can buy everything there.
00:07:40
Speaker
So you I was traveling all the way. It's a two, three acre superstore. And then when I mean, all I could find because on my travels, I used to find this you know place interesting. So when I went around three, four hours there, I could find only one product made in India, which was a co-armat from Alapene Kerala.
00:08:00
Speaker
And I used to think, what is this? One sixth of India's population i mean global population is India's one sixth. And we don't have anything made in India. Are we so low and on the value chain? And so that was another motivation. I thought we should create something interesting. And then so i sharing with my friends that, say look, there is an opportunity. IT t is becoming quite in demand in the world. So let's not why not create a company? So that's how the whole ah discussion started. And obviously, Experian used to be ah you know called Infoshin and two guys, one of my IIT alumni guys, he based in Germany and another guy from Switzerland, they already started a services company. And on my trips to Europe, this guy came and met me and said, look, we've got a small company, but difficult to manage remotely. So can you come on board? you know So that is how the discussion all started. And then I went and told them, look, I've got these friends who are
00:08:53
Speaker
proven to be working with very large cost customers like the biggest airlines in the world, biggest oil companies. So can you get them on board? ah He was okay, but the Swiss guy wasn't. Then, okay, that discussion went off. And after a couple of months, these guys came back to me again and said, look, let's look at your proposal. That's how the whole experience on philosophy started. And then we started, we all met up together in Kerala. And then he said, the and not for your business plan, but for the people, you know for the for the other founders that you brought in.
00:09:21
Speaker
We are game, let's go ahead. So they moved out and then that's how we started in 2008. And 2008, you can imagine what is the, you know, ah phase one in the industry, you know, we had the prime learning crisis. But what happened was I think what was critical for us, we had the right team, you know, if you look at the team that came along with the the five co-founders that we have. um There was the right business knowledge, technical knowledge, you know market approach, and so on. But over and above the value system, ethics, and entity, all of that. And um the DNA of innovation existed. So imagine what we started with. We said,
00:09:58
Speaker
we could do Uber
Pivot to Mobile App Development
00:10:00
Speaker
on text. So that was a big you know big initiative in 2008. So we went to Vodafone. Vodafone said this idea is great because ARPU, average revenue per user today in the Indian telecom is only based on voice revenue. So when I talked about this Uber on text, which was like, you know,
00:10:17
Speaker
text message to a short quote and then you have somebody calling you to take you for a ride, that is a philosophy. And then we had book my show equivalent on text. So both his ideas, Vodafone said, give us you know the right to market and then don't give it to anybody else. I said that doesn't work because then they asked for six months exclusivity. So anyway, long story short,
00:10:35
Speaker
we could actually launch this product to market because Vodafone took us to market. So that is how it actually happened. And I remember the CTO of the company, he said this product concept can be created on Symbian phones. so So there was no apps those days.
00:10:48
Speaker
So that was very interesting. And then we actually created Nokia phones. We had this booking application for movie theaters. We had 129 theaters across Kerala. We launched it. We had some of the theater guys coming out. So it was all you know great fanfare. And we could see actually who's booking for which movie. you know And we had 22 taxi operators who actually tested this product. And then we could actually have this work on LBS. LBS is nothing but location-based services.
00:11:15
Speaker
so So we had the greatest idea those days, but then obviously 2008 was, you know, all the customers we had from Europe vanished because of the prime lending crisis, because they were the from the financial sector. What was the existing business? ah The revenues were coming from what kind of services? I mean, we just had 10 people. So when I took over, it was like 10, 12 people, and they were doing pure services for fin and FinTech companies in Switzerland. So that was what they used to do. So it was primarily... Like, old-stack development.
00:11:43
Speaker
It was those days dot .NET and even before not that I think visual basic ASPX based, ah you know, application developments for this FinTech company. so And but how much revenue was it making? I think it was some 72 lakhs was the you know revenue when I took over. In Indian rupees. So great that was nothing much. and yeah nothing It peaked over 16 people and then When I took over, it was like 10 people plus one accountant. So that was it. And we were in the basement of a building in Technopark called Tejasvini. So it was minus two. So parking building converted to ash. So that that was how we we didn't really have a lot of money. So what we did, all of us pulled in some money, brought in equal stake holding out of that.
00:12:31
Speaker
Anyway, so the products did really well in terms of market acceptance. ah Movie theater booking was, you know, we could see on a good movie, it would get, all the seats would get full. mean We had a very limited in inventory. So, but the technology that we created was taken by, you know, Sun Microsystems to Mobile World Congress and so on. So it was very exciting. But now since we we were not making revenue because Vodafone was making about 70% of the revenue.
00:12:57
Speaker
we were not really getting any money, investing and continuously bleeding. So we are buying, borrowing, stealing, you know, whatever to sustain the operations. Because for creating this product from 10 people, we had scaled up to about 35, 40 people because we had to create technology on mobile apps, web apps, all of that. But anyway, so we we decided that we can't sustain, not because of the product was bad, because the theater guys themselves actually said they were selling tickets on black. So we could not really ah run with this product when movies or good movies were they were being released. Anyway, so finally we decided to shut down these products and then both myself and the CTO, I mean Srikumar, we decided to pack the bags and go across to Europe.
00:13:40
Speaker
start finding projects in mobile application development. So that was the beginning. beginning So that was really how ah we could find some customers to sustain revenues. I mean, obviously we couldn't take any money home, but we had to pay the salary. So that's how we kind of got many small projects when mobile applicants were coming kind of coming alive.
Strategic Focus on Product Engineering
00:13:58
Speaker
And by, I think, 2010 or 2011, the mobile iOS was launched. Then later came Android. So all these times we could, so Sree was very you know excited to build new technologies. So he would find youngsters, teach them technology, you know everybody you know motivated to build something exciting new. So that's how we kept kept on our innovation DNA alive. And that's been there from then till you know even today.
00:14:24
Speaker
So today we're talking about AI. So we've got teams who are of learning that. So that's how the innovation thing got us projects from Denmark, Sweden, because we used to go on a train journey all the way from Sweden down to Italy. So wherever we could go and pitch our mobile story, we could go. We started finding projects and I think 2000 9 to 11 was very very tough because market was bad. But from 11-12 onwards we could start getting smaller projects and we are continuously scaling up. So ah today what is interesting is every year we have continued to grow except 2009.
00:14:59
Speaker
and And growing ah quite fast. So 2010, Manoj was there in the US. He started creating a US market. I think the first year revenue was 250K, US dollars. But we started recording 150, 200 because the base was small, we could create. So how did you acquire clients? Because at that time,
00:15:22
Speaker
Very few companies would have been investing in mobile applications because I mean, this was pre iPhone. ah You were essentially doing on Symbian. So this would have been a very, very small market. so How did you even go and acquire these clients? Yeah, so we had we had contacts. Being in the industry, all of us were in the industry for quite some time. So we used to kind of call out people, talk about our technology skills. So somebody would say there's a mini golf application that's required for a Netherlands company.
00:15:52
Speaker
So we would go and talk to them, because nobody used to know how to make mobile applications. So I remember having gone and talked to people through partners, known contacts, even employees who passed you know moved out from ah previous organizations, all of them. So ah we had the you know cycling apps, for because Netherlands is great for cycling, right? There was a Danish army application where you know armed forces, people wanted to attract people into, ah you know, joining the forces. So all these different mobile apps were kind of created. And the biggest one we got was Qatar Airways. They were wanting to have a mobile booking engine because Emirates was trying to create one and they didn't know how to make it. So we had a team which was already created.
00:16:29
Speaker
I think about 15 people. So we created Blackberry applications, Windows applications, iOS application, and Android. So four different booking engines for Qatar Airways that came from us. So so by I think 2014, we had enough case studies to group all these various applications, you know whether it is mobile, mostly mobile, but even web applications into domain buckets. And 2014, we decided to talk about domain stories and go to market.
00:16:55
Speaker
So what was interesting was every three years, those days we could change our strategy. So, you know, so we were scaling, obviously, but winning customers. We went to US market. Manoj started the US market in 2010. I went to Australia, created again, a small set of projects in Australia through again, known contacts. So we were trying to get projects from anywhere. That was how it was. you know So 2010 to 14, the strategy was spray and pray. Like you would.
00:17:23
Speaker
whatever projects you can get from whichever industries, you would aggressively just try and acquire customers because you needed survival, you needed a capital base to be built up. ah So then how did this strategy change from 14 onwards? So 14 onwards, we decided to look at the domain focus. so See, i I had a clear conviction that unless you are improving the domain or improving in business advantage to let's say healthcare or retail,
00:17:50
Speaker
you wouldn't really stand out because you can talk about technology story for a while. But if you really want to talk ah good revenues, then you go to look at SME. So we had, so the, okay, 2012, 14, that is the time we decided we'll go and do product engineering because we all came from product companies. We said, let's look at product engineering and not typical service like everybody does. Everybody does primarily by loading bodies. Is it product engineering the same as services? Isn't it a service? Like how is it different?
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, so product engineering is, see, how you make products is a little different from services. Services is mostly like, let's say GE will tell you, I need 2,000 people for my, you know, various projects and you need, you know, 100.NET, 200 Java. That's the kind of, and they would manage the project. You don't really have to worry about product. Whereas a typical product businesses, you have either an old product that got to be created into newer skin or newer technology, or conceive fully new products. Today you're talking about digital, right?
00:18:49
Speaker
So look at Uber. Uber is a you know product that is a platform which is completely digital. so ah So then the nuts and bolts of building a product is completely different from services. So I can give you some of the examples. We have ah one of the you know biggest ah retail application builders you know in in Australia who's our customer. So they have about 1,800 stores which are running on their platform, which is right from procurement to POS, the entire lifecycle of ah running a retail shop. You're not talking about small ones. You're talking about 25, 30 tills, like a big bazaar or bigger than that.
00:19:23
Speaker
running on this product. So it's a very complex process of you know procuring or pricing it right and then managing different departments whether it is grocery or meat and poultry section and things like that. so So those are products that will kind of repeat. So the customer gives us the order but then they go and sell these products to multiple customers to make their revenue. So we have one project ah which is a product engineering product, which is a mission critical business, critical application for their customers. So that's a difference in product. So that's for retail. Now, if you look at, let's say the one of the large automotive companies in in US, they're using us to build their EV charging platform. So you go across North America and Canada.
00:20:04
Speaker
that company's particular EV charging platform, whether there it is mobile application, finding charging stations or whatever, everything is running on a product that we built. So it's a product that continuously gets improved and newer you know cars getting released, you know the same application would get upgraded. So that those are products. Then insurance companies, I think one of the top three insurance companies in the world, you know again out of US, their product running in different insurance companies we are building, so property and casualty insurance. So products are typically ah Interesting because it's also got a roadmap. Like you have your car, right? You have ah Honda Accord 2020 version, 21 version, twenty I mean, so similar. So that way, products are completely different ballgame. And one is the stickiness. you know Once you build a product, you you understand the domain, how our retail is run, how EV charging philosophy is there in the market. So all these things are actually understood by your team.
00:20:58
Speaker
And your team, which is like, you know, start with probably 10 people, it grows to 100 people and it keeps growing or it, you know, it'll get different compartmentalized into maintenance and core product engineering, training, implementation, so different ah buckets of, ah you know, activities. So that's how, ah when you have a product and then you are ah domain knowledge is what keeps you on you know because you know how ah retail is running in in let's say Australia and UK all of this so anyway coming coming back to the product engineering story so we pitched to becoming a product engineering company in 2014 what is
00:21:41
Speaker
I'm assuming that Infosys, Wipro, all these IT t giants would all want to do product engineering as well.
Value Addition Through Expertise
00:21:48
Speaker
How did you as a small company compete with these giants? What do you need to do to build a business in this product engineering space? Because for them, it should not be very hard to do it, right?
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah, see, it's again about the scale. See, how do you, how does Infosys find, let's say, their revenues? 70% of the business comes from large maintenance projects. So you're talking about, let's say, Bank of America or large banks where they require tons of people. So it is all about five-year contracts, 10-year contracts where they have this committed, you know, thousand Java people and kind of things, you know, so that, so the For them, it is just about the cost arbitrage and the number of people that's getting billed. So that is their focus. It is not that they can't do project product engineering. Obviously, they would also have products like clinical they have, which is a product which is in-house. But if you look at the kind of percentages, it brings in very little revenue. But our thing is, having lived in the product engineering philosophy throughout our past, ah we could understand as to, let's say you're talking about 100 member teams, 150 member teams,
00:22:52
Speaker
Those are the kind of teams that will continue to grow the customer's business and then sustain that business for longer. But then the value the value chain that you are in is much higher. you know You are much higher in the value chain, especially the challenges challenges with technology. ah Whereas in a large maintenance project, you're talking about a small screen, an employee, he would kind of work on a small screen for one year, two years, and he'll get bored of it.
00:23:18
Speaker
Whereas here, you're looking at the entire um you know philosophy of the product right from, and let's say, the and conceptualization to productization to implementation. and you know And you will see how customers are getting benefited. Like, for example, this retail product, we realize that this customer, 57% of the revenue is from loyal customers because they have done something very special in the domain to create the loyalty base.
00:23:45
Speaker
you know And then they were also winning customers in other parts of the world because this product was actually giving them better ah ROI. So this is really adding value. IT is supposed to add value to a core business. So the domain value addition is a philosophy that you know products are supposed to play.
Enterprise Focus and Financial Challenges
00:24:00
Speaker
This retail product was like the pause, the retail pause for it? or just got Yeah, pause is one part of it. Pause is the final billing section, like you have, but inventory station, you've got procurement, you've got pricing, you've got how do you manage your expiry dates? I mean, a lot of those things, how do you plan a graph? See, if you put bread, milk, and let's say eggs together, they'll all get picked up faster, you know? Whereas if you put milk in some other part. So all of those and also has got a bearing on how the businesses run better.
00:24:29
Speaker
So I think, uh, so the products give you a lot of knowledge on how to improve that particular business rather than just giving bodies, you know, so that's a definitely different, uh, uh, in the, in the value chain. So that's what I meant. Okay. Interesting. this but Yeah. So coming to the growth journey again, so we were doing small product for small companies, let's say Netherlands, and we started looking at the face of growth that we did. We said, we should look at SMEs today. We had done product for startups. Let's look at SMEs.
00:24:56
Speaker
So by 2014 to about 19, we were focusing on SMEs who probably the deal value could be $100,000, $200,000. So that shift happened from let's say $50,000 engagements to, you know, 200, quarter million dollars. And 2019 is when we said. These products were largely something like a specialized ERP for that company, like to manage.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, it could be different. I think um so. The SMEs obviously will be small ERPs, but you know something like a mini golf application, where to find your you know golf courses and so on, something like that for a startup was different, which was a much smaller project. It was mobile applications, a couple of mobile applications, iOS and Android. From that, for startups, the core product of the startup, which it was offering to customers, you were that also was coming to you, ah like people were outsourcing that to you.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah, because somebody with an idea, somebody maybe who's running a golf course, he would have this idea and he would come and tell us, can you convert this idea into a product? That's what he would say. Startups would be mostly new ideas to products. right Whereas SMEs could be re-engineering, this retail applications are re-engineering an old product to a proper cloud-based application. ah Now, looking at larger applications, like today we have one one of the biggest home healthcare companies in the US. s They got 30,000 employees, you know mostly nurses and stuff. And they've got people who are sent or scheduled to go and serve as a home ah for probably looking up an old man. so
00:26:30
Speaker
That kind of a product is a huge application. It's a platform. So we're building that again as a platform. And you're talking about you know three to four years of product life cycle, even more. It'll keep on growing. So from ah small startup products to SME products, in 2014 to 2019, we were focusing on domain and SME products. So we shifted gear in 2019. We said we should definitely look at enterprise because that's a bigger ah play and that's a longer term play.
00:26:58
Speaker
And that's how this ah you know EV charging application or home health care application, we've got one of the biggest luxury travel companies building their application. Again, three to four years lifecycle. So all of these platforms that we started building for enterprises happened in 2019. And in 2019 is when we found, ah you know we we had Shashank who's in the US, he joined us because he came from Infosys, able to target large enterprises. so we decided to focus both in the US and UK as well as in Australia and larger enterprises. So we have some of the larger enterprises again coming to us for product engineering. So I would say 83% of the ah business that we do is all product engineering as a service. And team sizes are biggest, I think is about 160 for one of the product engagements that we have. Otherwise it's all 100 people, 60, 70 people, but we have many of those engagements.
00:27:49
Speaker
So ah shifting gears every three years to a new strategy. 2019 when you did the pivot to enterprise, what was your revenue like? and no Probably in 2019, I would say you would have been more than 12 to 15 that range, a million dollars. you know that totally in this okay I say we were probably sub 800 people or something like that.
00:28:12
Speaker
And but this was all bootstrapped, no fundraise. completely re bootstapped So that was another thing. So we had no way to go, right? I mean, getting the first CGTMS loan was a challenge for us. One crore loan, I think it was in 2011, 2012, we were struggling, we didn't have money. So that that itself was sort of because a banker who would say, I mean, those days you're talking about CDs, right?
00:28:31
Speaker
The banker would say, your IP, whatever is in a sitting in a CD, what happens if the CD breaks? That is what one of the bankers asked me as a question. I said, see, this is not CD. I mean, we've got ah product IP sitting there, which is all interesting. So they don't understand that. They said, can you give collateral? So we were actually, all of us, we had No homes are owned. We are all rented in those days. So we said we have no collateral to give. One of the guys had a small land. One of the directors had land to pledge. And that's how we got that one crore loan even to sustain the operation. So that was why. Why did you need the loan? Because see, um as I said, we were um we lost the customers. We were trying to just pay salaries and sustain operation. We were scaling. So growth was constant for us. We were always growing.
00:29:17
Speaker
But the capital wouldn't be adequate, right? I mean, we had, you know, the typical compliance requirements, you've got the provident fund, your taxes, everything gets, you know, a backseat when you have to first pay the salaries and keep the employees happy. So we wanted some working capital that wasn't available because we brought in, I think, you know, some 20 lags per head, you know, that's how we contributed first. But with the prime lending crisis, all that money was gone, you know.
00:29:41
Speaker
you got to build and you know we we We did something interesting. 2009-10, we had a basement office in this parking area. We said to impress customers, we should have a beautiful office. So we decided to go and sign up an office. We didn't have the money to build it. So in fact, the park authorities who are kind of giving us the space ah said, you run it for six months, pay the rent later. So a lot of support was there in those days. you know But somehow, that office also got us some good traction. Customers came to visit. It was looking beautiful, though we were running in debt. So all this consumes capital. So that was why we wanted ah loans from somebody. So yeah so coming back, so 2019, when we looked at the enterprise, and that is when the real growth happened. So 2014.
00:30:31
Speaker
ah When we were looking at this product engineering ah for startups and SMEs, we had so sufficient capital. We could start taking some salaries as well on the directors. It was very tough. ah But in 1900, we did really see the and light at the end of the tunnel where we could get customers. Customers could believe in the philosophy.
00:30:51
Speaker
Because we had some of our guys who were very, very good in the middle level leaders who understood the product engineering lifecycle processes much better than typical IT services companies. And that got us attention in front of the larger customers. And many large like this EV charging platform, they were not letting us in for about a year. But once they saw the value of the product engineering lifecycle,
00:31:12
Speaker
They said, this is interesting because TCS is doing about half a billion worth of revenue under us, but you guys are bringing a different comp you know competence to light. So, and that's how we got in there. And today we are like, I think three, four years now. What is this product engineering life cycle?
00:31:28
Speaker
ah So the process to build a product, you know, right from because a lot of time goes into planning the product, it's like building a car, you can't just, you know, buy a parts and assembly and then come out with a car, you got to go to the drawing board, you got to see how ah the the product a roadmap is what are the features to be brought in the release one because you got to monetize right so if you had to monetize rather than bring out all the features to build a complete product you will prioritize and you will see that there's something called radial mind map which is actually done first and then you have ah you you know you will think about the competition look at the price so you're not looking at in typical service but you're looking at a lot of the other factors like
00:32:08
Speaker
What are the competitors doing? What are the features that is ah earning revenue? Why is a product like, for example, ah let me tell you in a car, you have got a catalytic converter. Somebody will buy it because, you know, ah the bar at six or you know whatever norms that are coming in will want you to have that feature in the product. So all those things get looked into a product when you're actually considering. So our guys understand that philosophy. And that's how ah we impress a customer to say, look, these guys are not ah typical services where they're talking about bodies. But They've got a different philosophy. That's how we win projects. And and conversion rate is also pretty good. If you go and pitch in front of a customer, talked about the story that we've done for various other customers. See, the biggest second biggest mining company in the world, I would say, you know they're using a product, to a mining planning product to run their copper mines and and iron ore mines. So they're smaller engagements, but these are interesting you know in in terms of the the philosophy that you're trying to take to market.
00:33:06
Speaker
good So like you need a ah like typically most product startups have like a product manager or a head of product or a chief product officer
Sales Process and Complex Projects
00:33:19
Speaker
or whatever. So so that that role you provide to a client like a product management team. Yeah, product proxy. Yes. ah So we'll have the product proxy. See the client manager would be the product owner, but our product proxy would actually work along with the product manager.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah. Why is it called proxy? Because the product generally, see all the products that we build, IP belongs to customers. So customer is the one who actually is managing the product, right? We'll have somebody who is mirroring him within the company ah to be able to take up the role because we are also managing the entire life cycle because customers most of the time business wise managing the product where technology wise we are managing the product.
00:34:00
Speaker
And it so your product proxy would actually need to understand both business consumer needs and product and technology. And like like it it would be a really multi-skilled kind of a person who can play that role, right? Because he needs to speak the language of technology, he needs to speak the language of P&L as well. He also needs to understand the design wire framing, all of that. yeah yes yeah so we have all those All those functions, so and unless you understand, unless you're able to talk the language, getting the deal will not be easy. i mean Then you're not really different from a typical service company.
00:34:37
Speaker
So we would have a domain, so typical business analyst who understand the domain well, if they don't really know the domain fully well, they would still research, they would still engage with the customers, um you know, and and they get get that understanding. So if you look at this retail product, I think we started in 2016.
00:34:53
Speaker
So this has been going on for so many years. So we understand the domain pretty much the way they manage their product. you know so So that domain understanding is key. See, other projects, if you're doing a project for six months, you don't get that domain knowledge. You're talking about so many years. This insurance product, I think, it is more than 10 years now that we've been working with that customer. So all these engagements are very long.
00:35:14
Speaker
I mean, sometimes we might also have to bring people from the domain, somebody from, you know, banking, financial services, knowledge, somebody with logistics background. So we've built warehouses, management application for customers. We've got that competency sitting inside, you know, having learned on the product itself, sometimes customers domain experts role is to
00:35:36
Speaker
explain what functionalities are needed and like what the product should do like like what should be the outcome of the product that is what the domain expert guides. Yeah yeah so our outcome and ROI so the customers ROI philosophy should be well understood customers business should be well understood competitors business should be understood what are the products in the market how technology is fairing see today you're talking about digital transformation. So we are doing product engineering work you know in the digital transformation space, where you've got multiple technologies or hybrid technologies, you know typically like all this Uberization or Airbnb. All these are products with multi-technologies, multiple hybrid technologies. Mobile apps on one side, you've got data intelligence giving you how to run your business better. So all these, um so it's a multifaceted role that this guy let play.
00:36:28
Speaker
Fascinating. ah yeah Is your sales done by these people only or is it done by a separate sales team? How does the sales happen? Yeah, so sales people, we have people in the regions. Regions I would mean, so of our operations are between the US, UK, Europe, Japan and Australia. So Japan was a recent acquisition that we did. okay But all the sales guys, what they do is they will go and find out customer prospects and then ah We'll have our business analyst who are part of the delivery team who are probably part of the product team. They would come and engage with the customer in a typical pre-sale cycle and say, look, these are the kind of skills that we have. These are the kind of domain elements that we've actually improvised for customer X or customer Y. and then so Hence, we are well placed to you know take up your project ah product development project.
00:37:15
Speaker
So, and then customer would look at, Oh, this is interesting. Many times we can't even share what we have because IP protected, but we let it go with the stories and they would do it in the conversation. They would understand that these guys understand what they mean. So that's how.
00:37:28
Speaker
They get the confidence to entrust the product engineering work to us. And then obviously it is a typical architecture discussions and why would this product scale, you know, for example, let's say talk about this healthcare product company. What happens if I mean they had many of these customers that come to us after failing with other companies.
00:37:47
Speaker
you know If you launch it to a 30,000 people network, will this scale really? I mean, you're talking about cloud engineering, cloud architecture, because if it if it scales and if it doesn't if it doesn't scale, then your business is again at risk. So all of these things the the architects would come and give that confidence. Domain Guy will talk about, okay, you don't have to worry about telling each and everything. We understand the you know product roadmap, we understand the business critical elements that are required. So all these are required for us to give that confidence to customers. And today we are seeing that you know coming by more easily than what it used to be in the past. So we've got ah domain teams so in retail, transportation, healthcare, care
00:38:27
Speaker
you know And EduTech is another one. So we've got ah five core domains where we are continuously you know doing projects. And if you look at transportation, the biggest transportation a road network, the best managed road transportation is actually a transportation network is managed by ah our asset ah management product that we built, which is getting replicated now. So it was done in Europe, and then it is going to other European countries. It's going to Australia. Again, customer owns the IP.
00:38:56
Speaker
but But see, the r ROI is important. Since this product, if implemented for a typical road ah network, you know like your national highways, it will probably save you billions of dollars of revenue, let's say, in a 10-year life cycle, versus not having that product. So that's a kind of but impact. Why does the National Highway Authority need a software product?
00:39:18
Speaker
but managing today Yeah, I can tell you the, you know, I can draw a similarity with what is happening in India. In India, how do you maintain a road? You will have the most powerful MLA will maintain the road in front of his house, right? I mean, he'll continuously tar it every year, come what way? Because I'm the most powerful MLA. But scientifically, roads are to be built, let's say for 25 years or 60 years of warranty, you know, it has to be built to that quality.
00:39:45
Speaker
But what happens is due to certain conditions maybe because of weathering or rain, road might break up or overloaded trucks could break the road faster. So you have to actually ah scan the road through a road ah scanner using lidar and deflectometers and things like that. And then once you scan it, you will probably figure out that this road is just beginning to crack.
00:40:08
Speaker
you know if you don't If you don't fix it today, it'll become a big pothole and then your cost of fixing will be much higher. So ah generally around the world, developed nations will always have this ah scanning vehicles which will run at the let's say 80 kilometers per hour, 100 kilometers per hour and still get everything footage into a Google Map Equivalent. They'll have much more professional maps. And it will show you a red, amber, green a kind of footprint on the map. And if you're at a red, it means you your spend on the fixing will be much higher. Amber means if you fix it now, your cost will probably not be 1,000 crores, but it could be, let's say, 500 crores. So that that is something that comes out of ah road asset management systems. And we've built similar product for a company that is reselling this product to multiple countries.
00:40:56
Speaker
you know so So that, again, is a big product with the GIS underneath. You've got a web application, mobile application to go and report potholes and things like that. So it's a big application. We are talking about 100 people having built it over a two-year time frame. So that's the kind of product that we actually built.
00:41:12
Speaker
And now the thing is, in a product engineering work, we also work with the customer to help them do bidding. you know like They'll go and let's say bid in let's say Pacific Islands for a road asset system. We are the ones who actually go and show it on a road map or on a GIS Google Map equivalent equivalent as to how their road network will look like, you know giving in some past data and the you know so things like that so that. So these are very interesting, very top-of-the-line products. you know that we actually are building for customers. And you know employees really are happy because they are working on a piece of GIS on one side. Somebody else is working on an Android you know application to report road problems. Then you have a web application which will give you analytics and statistics as to how ah your road cost of maintenance will look like. you know Again, accidents. All these are captured. and it's a It's a huge platform.
00:42:03
Speaker
And the work that is an experience is very interesting because of the nature of products and the technology that we use. It's all DX digital transformation kind of projects that we do and nothing in the legacy technology. you know you know You're talking about cobalt based applications still running in Bank of America. Are you interested in working on a black and white screen or are you interested in working on something very exciting with social media integration and all of that? So I think that you know brings in a lot of excitement in the team. So that also helps us bring down the attrition rates within the company and they can work on something exciting. They get a holistic view rather than working on a small piece of screen for six months, you know, you get bored of life. And that's why ah sometimes ah people leave the large logos and large brands in IT companies and in India and come and
Talent Development and Regional Expansion
00:42:52
Speaker
work with us. I mean, we've got people joining from, which is ah very interesting for them, you know, coming and working on. Right. ah Working on products is a lot more appealing.
00:43:01
Speaker
ah In your sales cycle, so your sales cycle would be something like this. Your regional sales associate will kind of open a door, arrange for a meeting, then a business analyst who has the expertise in that domain will give a presentation to the client and try and understand what kind of product they want to build. ah yeah And after that, do you also like start preparing like a business requirement document, etc. or that happens after the deal is confirmed?
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, most of the time this high level user requirements will be in user stories as we call it today in this crumb world ah that comes in and then we'll probably analyze and then, you know, draw parallels to whatever we've done something in the past and then go back to them with a proposal, you know, which obviously will have a cost. Sometimes you won't get all the requirements, you know, because customers also wouldn't be able to spell it out.
00:43:51
Speaker
But we go on a high level, high ballpark estimates and say that we this is the kind of roadmap that you should probably take in and you know go along with that. And most of the time, customers will do workshops. you know it's We call it something called the discovery phase. So in the typical product ah lifecycle, we've got something called explore and execute. So these are the two phases. Explore phase will probably have some ah MVP to show them how a product should look. you know Recently, we won a project from one of the large ah you know, financial services customers. I mean, it was purely on usability. See, for example, how does a product get used? There are so many, if you look at WhatsApp, simplest use, right? I mean, there are so many WhatsApp equivalents that came in. Why is WhatsApp more interesting?
00:44:39
Speaker
Because the usability engineering that is done for a product, for a mass consumption, is probably different from a typical, you know, Dalal Street, you know, share threading application. Because there it's it's a different, you're talking about limited users. So you've got to think about and usability itself. You should think not just about the usage itself, but the culture of the country where this is getting implemented. You know, look at Europe, they don't have this flashy colors as you have in India.
00:45:06
Speaker
So all of that matters. So we have to come out with all these elements that are going into a typical product building exercise and that they'll get it when they see the philosophy that we kind of preach.
00:45:18
Speaker
okay okay and ah in the how is the pricing decided? Is that decided upfront or you tell them that in our estimate this is X man hours and we charge Y dollars per ah man hour? Yeah, I mean that so the estimation generally happens that way you know estimation is always a dollar and the effort that is required but it's generally a guidance that we give but our billing rates are definitely higher than typical services I mean because for product engineering the kind of ah salaries you go to pay is much higher. The processes are probably costlier. We've been mostly on a lot of the tools that are required to run product processes efficiently. So all that costs we have, I would say we should be definitely 20-25% costlier than typical services companies. I think a services company would bill maybe what between about $5,000 per
00:46:12
Speaker
employee per month, something like that? It could be, I mean, there are services companies, typical could be, let's say $20 an hour kind of a building rate. Okay. Um, yeah, it could be that the, I mean, smaller companies would probably go down the path, you know, because they, they would use trainees to kind of run trucks and so on. yeah We would, we wouldn't be anywhere. We can't do that because see many a time customers would also see what is the kind of caliber of your architect, you know, because architects are very expensive. You know, somebody who can do a, you know, AWS architecture. Yeah. So.
00:46:46
Speaker
and data architects, you know and you usability engineering guys, all these guys are seasoned guys who understand the culture, the philosophy of the target region and so on. So I mean obviously they understand that because I mean you can actually get comparable rates to even on-site you know some of the Yeah, not not that we we will charge that. What I'm saying is, if you're really product engineering, you might also have the people on site. We have ah people in every region that we are operating. Not in too many numbers, but senior leadership teams, technical teams are also there. That's important for effective customer coordination.
00:47:26
Speaker
OK, like the delivery teams are also on site, not just the sales teams. Yeah, I mean, we'll at least have a skeletal delivery team. So like this and National Highways project that we're talking about, we've been having on-site architect, business analyst, and you know technical guys, business analyst for the last three years. I mean, this project has been running. So we're required to have those kind of costs provisioned in. OK, fascinating. How do you build talent? like You know, you need really self-driven, intelligent people, especially for the analyst, the business analyst role, because he is really holding it all together, right? He's like... Yeah, so we have... Business analysts get built. No, we have experienced business analysts coming from, I mean, carefully being selected from companies from the domain, like somebody working, let's say for retail or someone working in the transportation space for quite some time.
00:48:24
Speaker
kind of come in with the right attitude, with the right temperament. So we we have such guys in the team. We also hire from MBA institutes a you know and train them through the process. you know Because for scaling, once you have one product engineering engagement, definitely this will get replicated. Because something that you do, let's say, in a warehouse management, you might require other warehouse management management projects. So you need to have people in the team in the mix coming in.
00:48:51
Speaker
So a major um part of the hiring happens also from campuses like last year we had about 250 odd engineers joined from campuses. and they get trained in various batches. So our product engineering philosophy, that the training that we do, our own guys actually do the training. And they learn ah something, six months they learn in the classroom and then another three months on OJT and so typically at least a year before they can get into any product ah engineering engagement. So that is how the fresh, and we have found that fresh guys who come with fresh minds and newer ideas,
00:49:28
Speaker
They are always better than, you know, you know, taking everybody from lateral. So, laterals are required for the experience and expertise, but getting this into the mix. I mean, we just tell typically what everybody will do, but we look for the attitude and aptitude, you know, in being able to um learn multiple technology, like your full stack developers you talk about. We also have for products you require those kind of skills. So, we have the the mix that is coming in through hiring from campuses and also from laterals. So, we look for that attitude.
00:49:58
Speaker
So we don't do anything unless see somebody from the senior leadership looks at a person who's coming into the organization. So we have multiple interviews and campus. It's very interesting. We have got tests one round and then logic tests, and then we have group discussions and then interviews. So that happens. And then sometimes psychometric tests also are done, you know, to get the right challenge on board. What is your headcount today?
00:50:23
Speaker
Today we are about 1,600 odd. So 1,650. I mean, it keeps last year, last quarter. I think we added, uh, I was looking at the reports of somewhere around 50 people were added. 1,650 and we're looking at, we've got something called the plan 3k, uh, which was announced last year. And so three years, 3,000 people, that's the kind of, so we need to keep engaging the.
00:50:45
Speaker
uh... product uh... uh... you know contracts as many as possible replicating and you know uh... the domain stories and so that's all we're looking at it and scaling the cells as well out of the sixteen hundred uh... how many are in india so i would say uh... between u.s. and japan australia and uk we would probably have about sixty five seventy odd people okay the rest are all in india so key leadership is only there uh... in in The majority is still in India, which I think is something that we're trying to change. We want to actually have more people on site because larger customers like the tier one, we've got at least a half a dozen or more tier one engage customers. You know, all these brands that you can and look um for a confidentiality reason. I cannot disclose some of the names, but we have got some of the top notch automotive companies, you know insurance companies.
00:51:40
Speaker
you know, mining companies, all of them as our customers. So many of them demand onsite resources. and right Like the but the most sexiest brand, you know, motorcycle brand, they want ah people of both offshore and in India. and know So we've got ah people being hired onsite in the US now and also scaling up teams in India. so So when a brand wants on site, you send someone from India or you hire a fresh resource? It's difficult, especially in the US, s it's difficult to move people.
00:52:12
Speaker
because of visa restrictions. So we hire them on site. okay It's easy in the UK, but Japan, it's easy. So we have we've got 35 engineers learning Japanese in India. yeah We are moving them gradually. So I think we've got a Japanese teacher sitting at in our Kerala office, both shifting between Toronto and Coaching. We also have an office in Bangalore, but majority of the size is in Kerala. So the Japanese teacher came from Japan, but you know living in Kerala, teaching good engineers how to speak japanese because japanese they don't understand english it's very difficult to converse in japan in english so we have i think 35 plus has already completed i think four moved last month but we are moving more people to
00:52:56
Speaker
ah Some of the interesting brands in ah Japan are also ah demanding people you know come on site. So we have that. In fact, the EV charging platform that we did for this US customer, we are trying to replicate in Japan. So Japan has been a little late too.
00:53:13
Speaker
electrification. So we are seeing such opportunities. So cross-pollination of opportunities happen, you know, when you do something in, let's say, US, it can get replicated in Japan, US. So that's the interesting part of the world about the product engineering story.
Acquisition by EQT and Future Outlook
00:53:27
Speaker
You said you acquired a company to enter Japan. This was what, like a software or a product engineering company? me in japan it was ah It was not a so product engineering company. It was a typical staffing company. It was a very small 25 member team. okay So one of the reasons is that we heard the CTO again and he's got a few people. I think we've got about 15 people who came with him.
00:53:50
Speaker
from his past life, which was purely Japan focus. So Japan, it's interesting because of the ah you know know the quality expectation in Japan are very, very high. So if you do something in Japan, you can be rest assured that your quality cycle in the project it will be very good. so ah so the So he was actually very keen, but making an entry into Japan is a humongous process. So that's the reason why we acquired this company, which is like 20 years in Japan.
00:54:19
Speaker
ah during COVID they kind of went down or they had a reduction in headcount so they were looking at support so we said we can actually take those people and we have some they had some customers already so use that customer ah you know customer background to go and tell others look we've got customer base we are a 20-year company so we renamed it to Experion And then ah that then we did an inauguration last year, ah which got some attention of local Japanese people who came from you know IT associations and so on. And we started getting projects from good logos. So those were all tier 3, tier 2 logos.
00:54:57
Speaker
and we have now quite a few good tier one logos again talking about the product philosophy so that's ah that's how we made this japan entry last year it's almost a year now fascinating what's what's your revenue now how much will you close up this year revenue i mean we are for technical reasons i'm not supposed to say but we are sub 50 i would say okay amazing amazing ah and This acquisition strategy, have you used it in other markets also? This has only been in Japan so far. Yeah. We recently, also about six months back, we took over a small Australian product company, which is in the tier two, tier three banking space.
00:55:39
Speaker
So what they do is they have like the but unions, like credit unions, which are using products to process loans, process collection services, and also credit reporting. So these few areas they had. But what was interesting was the the product that they had could be customized to green lending. So that's quite interesting. So we took this company over, and we have now a product called Glass. So Glass is green lending as a service. So that's, again, interesting.
00:56:09
Speaker
So that lending platform that we've we already had is customized to ah you know look at the green lending norms here, solar panels or windmills, things like that, project loans or even ah commercial loans or even retail loans. So this product is interesting because you for the current carbon credits, you need to have reporting and so on. So that is something that we've actually taken. So we had recently been at an event called COBA.
00:56:35
Speaker
community owned banking association and this was a highlight of the product. So we had an electric car in our stall and all these products were displayed. So there's a lot of excitement. So this take over happened I think in April, probably around the March, April timeframe.
00:56:52
Speaker
And we already have a few customers now who have come on board to experience. So from from the existing um you know customer list that they had, they're shifting to experience. That process is going on, but it's very interesting. And there is a lot of tier two, tier three banks that would require such products. So that's a product that we kind of took over. So two acquisitions during the last, I would say 16, 17 years now from 2008 when we started.
00:57:18
Speaker
So ah you told me till 2019 you had not raised any funds. ah oh What has been the journey after that? So we've never raised any funds till date. So it is all bootstrapped. and But about middle of October, you know we've actually been picked up by EQT. EQT is the third biggest fund. So one of the portfolio companies of EQT. So the investment had been, so we are just ah yet to close that. But that that has been the latest news. you know As in they acquired a majority stake?
00:57:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So simple majority has been acquired. Okay. Primarily we had quite a few silent investors who actually had to exit. So that exit had been enabled, but we'll have no changes technically.
Advice for Young Entrepreneurs
00:58:05
Speaker
We primarily will continue to be as a... What's the source of these silent investors? Like when you took over the company, they were already investors at that? Yeah, they were already there. They were not operationally involved. So they just were sitting on as shareholders and they continue to operate. We never exited or we never had any intention to exit. So ah this was a time we could bring somebody with a lot of background. So both equity and India. India was a portfolio through which the investments were channelized. So they have, India is primarily a US s player. They don't have spread across other geographies. And equity has got a very large portfolio of customers around the world. they
00:58:42
Speaker
ah very large and so we get access to those portfolio companies as well as India's own customers. So that's something that is just completed about a week back. The transaction process is still going on and we can't divulge a lot of information but so these two ah brands I can already talk about because the equity through the Hong Kong office has already released this into into the media. I'm assuming the the valuation would have been a couple of hundred million dollars.
00:59:13
Speaker
I mean, as I said, a q but right I'm not asking for a specific number. so it it is it it is ah it's ah It's going to be a phased approach. So we would probably talk about the valuation maybe a few years down the line. So we are ah this is just a work in progress ah because we are looking at you know continuing assets to create ah more value and valuation and probably it will be as per the ah e equity zone, exit norms and so on. so Amazing. But definitely it will be in that range that you say probably post closure sometime later in life. Okay, amazing amazing. So let me end with this. What's your advice to young people? and I mean, you know you've been hiring young people straight out of campus. You have like a first-hand view of the the coming generation. what What advice would you like to share with them?
01:00:08
Speaker
yeah so See, ah the excitement of starting a new company, becoming an entrepreneur is all celebrated quite well. you know So I think that is, I mean, I've heard many examples even in, we've got a startup mission in our state as well. So they get misled to get into this just like that. And you know finally, so it is not easy. I mean, I think unless you have certain experience in the market, a solid handle on technology,
01:00:34
Speaker
And you have a very clear plan as to what you want to achieve. you know They shouldn't just get into the you know entrepreneurship for the sake of you know being celebrated like an entrepreneur. But they'll fall apart very soon. It's not easy. There's so many startups that actually come and go. I think you have to be able to see technology. IT, per se, is actually supposed to add value to your domain. unlike This is not a mainline function. like IT should enable. like look ah Uber Eats, for example.
01:01:02
Speaker
or delivery for that matter. I mean, there is a lot of investment that go into that before you actually can pay success. So ah clarity of the goal has to be very clear you know in the beginning itself that, yes, I see an opportunity. I can spot that opportunity. ju But I think for that, you will definitely require some wisdom to actually happen. So we started when we were like 40 years. And there was a point when we were we could have actually broken down because the financial crisis crippled us, we still kept on. so But there was some course correction at every year. So what we started with was Uber on text, but we ended up with product engineering services company. right So that clarity of thought and your mettle to continue because
01:01:47
Speaker
Continuing for five years without any compensation is going to be tough. And that is, I think, ah generally the journey of any ah entrepreneur who actually can succeed. So you should be ah kind of braced up to to be able to i know see such scenarios. Otherwise, it's not going to be easy. So clarity of thought on the outcome that you are going to deliver to customers. a Customers should be defined very clearly.
01:02:09
Speaker
ah the technology adeptness that you should have. So you should have that or you should have somebody. Like I am not a technology expert. I've got people like ah CTO, Srikumar or other delivery heads that we have in Suresh or Jamie.
01:02:22
Speaker
or and people who know the market will like money. So I think it's a combination of those factors that will actually make to you successful. So it's not it's not an easy journey at all. I mean, probably I've graved so much, you know, during the ah course of my life, you know, it's it's a lot of stress and strain and it's not easy, you know, and because even the governments who tell you that they'll support you, they'll only come after you if you don't pay your, you know,
01:02:46
Speaker
taxes on time or rodent fund think on time. So it's it's it's a lot of effort and and another thing is knowing your market. The overseas markets is where you still go for ah getting customers and it's not easy to break in. Today it's getting tougher and tougher especially with AI coming in you know The scale that we have India had in the past is not going to be the game that you go to play now. You know you can sit in any corner and using let's say the likes of Copilot and build technology if you're smart. So I think a lot of these factors are ah critical to be successful. So I think having the right mindset, understanding the market, you know being there for the long haul is all important.
Impact of AI on the IT Industry
01:03:26
Speaker
And don't just jump into it for the sake of
01:03:28
Speaker
you know But it's it's a great mission. We are able to see so many employees earn their livelihood and do good ah you know technology work. That's all exciting, but it's not easy. I want to ask a follow-up question. You said like something like a copilot is reducing the manpower needed to build software. How will this impact ah like the Infosys TCS Vipros of India?
01:03:55
Speaker
It will certainly impact because see many of the things will become a conveyor belt model. like if you If you know how to manage the conveyor belt, you know technology code can be taken. You probably go to customize it for the requirement. So the scale that you had in the past, like you can in India, Infosys can probably get 50,000 people into campuses. They can hire from the campus and then onboard into the team.
01:04:18
Speaker
That definitely is likely to change. That is not going with the game anymore. So even come countries like Nigeria or Philippines, if you've got a smart talent you know available to use those ah resources, you can build technology. And customers today, they don't want to talk hear your stories. They don't even want to, let's say, building a dashboard. And they said,
01:04:38
Speaker
you don't have to, don't make me waste time on all this. You tell me the software has to get me, get my purpose solved. So that's the kind of philosophy customers are you know out with today. So the the game of numbers is probably going to change for sure. And all these new technologies are going to ah make the life more tougher is what I think. I mean, at least another few years, you will see that change drastically because all these technologies will become more mature.
01:05:07
Speaker
the AI tools that you're talking about, and then it's going to be ah different a that you need to run. But technology will continue to prevail, and that's going to be still leading ah the development of the world. It's going to be driven by technology. but Fascinating. You want to be careful. yeah Thank you so much for your time, Bino. It was a real pleasure.
01:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, but thank you Ashay for having me. It was really great to talk you and all the interviewing questions that you were asking me. But thanks for that. And I look forward to speaking to you again.