Gagan Chadha

The "Super" Man

"I wish to go back home." I said.
"Don't go, stay here and give it your best shot. Take my word for it, Naveen,
even the sand in this desert place is made of gold." he suggested.

Gagan told me this when I joined BITS in 1998. It was deja vu for him, four years earlier in 1994, he had been in a similar position and a senior had told him those same words.

Life @Bits

Gagan Chadha did his early schooling from Jammu. In 1994 after cracking J&K Board Examinations, he joined BITS as a M Sc (Tech.) Engineering Technology student. He went for ME Software Systems straight after finishing his first degree at BITS. He joined as a teaching assistant. Years at ARC division (where he was assisting professionally during his ME), were a revelation of sorts for Gagan. Here, he discovered 2 things about himself, one that he was an excellent administrator and second that he had a knack of forging relationships with people who came in touch with him. Gagan also developed his love for software during his tenure at ARCD while completing his second degree.

Life @Job
In June 2000, Gagan landed a job with a company called Trisoft in New Delhi. He promptly joined the company that primarily worked on software projects outsourced from US and UK and had a strength of around 100 engineers at that time. Within first 3 months at his job, Gagan won a software testing competition organized by Sun Microsystems. As recognition of Gagan's skills, he was made in-charge of Capacity Planning at Trisoft. Against the run of play, Gagan decided to leave Trisoft in Dec 2000 and joined Telcon, a company working on wireless applications for European clients. Gagan came in contact with Vish Bajaj, CEO Telecon and an entrepreneur at that time. Gagan also met Vijay Shukla, XLRI graduate.


Life @Ideas

The 9/11 attack was a major blow to Indian IT industry, outsourcing business shrunk and everyone wanted a chunk of European business. Telcon struggled to garner new business during this time. Along with Vish, Vijay and some more friends, Gagan started to think of starting something on his own and targeting India as a market. Idea was to tap the Indian SME sector as a potential software market and create solutions that added value to their customer's business. Gagan was hooked to the idea of mobile communications during that time. After a lot of scratching and scrapping, the idea of providing a mobile based communication middleware to enterprises/individuals took shape. Gagan along with 2 more colleagues started working on the new product.

Life @Dreams

ValueFirst was created in October, 2003 with Gagan and Vijay as directors and 5 stake holders in all. Initial capital was abysmal. Vish provided with the working capital for the company. During the initial period, hardly any salary was taken by the core team. Initial capital was spent in creating IT infrastructure and towards the sales effort.

At this time, Gagan played a multi-faceted role in the company. He took care of complete operations of the company as COO and he was involved in the development of the product plus he also managed the finances of the company. ValueFirst ended year 2004 in loss. Gagan and his friends firmly believed that their software was adding value to the customer's business. Business was slow to come. It was a new idea and acceptance in the industry was slow but they were sure that things would turn around and customers would see the benefits of their offering. But the lack of capital became a pressing issue. Salaries of employees were delayed substantially. They needed fresh capital to keep the operations running. Some initial funding was arranged through family and friends. This capital infusion kept the company going till the end of the year. In December 2004, ValueFirst booked it's first profit. In 2005, ValueFirst did revenue 10 times their revenue previous year.

Since then ValueFirst has shown phenomenal growth of more than 100% every year. In 2006, Rajesh Jain (of Indiaworld fame) picked up minority stake in the company. ValueFirst recently received funding of 6 million USD (INR 30 Crores) from NEA for expansion purposes. Gagan is in the process of hiring new talent for the company to take ValueFirst to a higher level. He is also working on some new ideas.

Life @Dreams Continues

Gagan said, " It is not important where we are today. Revenue is just a number. What matters to me is how we have reached there. Its the journey that is important rather than the final destination."

Love, Truthfulness, Faith in self & universe, and Excellence in each effort are the core values of ValueFirst. "Our values are our mantra for success. Follow these values, success 'll definitely come to you." says Gagan.

As advice to young entrepreneurs,
Gagan says, "Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana, Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani." "Keep working, be truthful to your own conscience, and believe in yourself. You 'll surely reap benefits of your efforts. Mantra is to Never Give Up."

I had the fortune to meet Vish, Vijay and Gagan at the same time. Most used word in their vocabulary is "Super". Listening to them, I definitely thought these were "Super" men. But the fact is that they are as human as I and you are, only more daring, more enterprising, more venturesome.

Gagan is perfect example of an atom bomb - relatively small amount of matter but releases vast quantities of energy.
BITS Pilani, played a pivotal role in transforming a small town boy to a successful entrepreneur, CEO, COO, CFO and more.....

Ramakrishna Gaddipati

Man with a "Monalisa Smile"

There he was sitting at the stairs outside the room, soaking in the bright sunlight, I looked at him and asked "So, How is the prep going ?". It was, as if I woke him up from deep reverie, he looked at me and with a surprised look on his face asked "For What ?". Now it was my turn to be surprised, I told him about the "C Programming Compre" next morning, he looked amused, didn't reply to me and went back to his day dreaming with a smile on his face. "A Monalisa Smile". For next 4 years, I would see him several times around the institute, hostel, mess, computer lab, and two things were always common, he was mostly alone and he always had that "Monalisa Smile" on his face.

We lived in the same wing in RAM when we joined BITS in 1998, I got to know him only by the end of the first semester and so we had the above conversation. I still didn't know him enough till the end of the semester to ask him such a question. I should have known I was talking to someone who could solve "C Programming" problems in his sleep, who breathed "C" in and out of his system instead of air that we lesser mortals breathe.
I am talking about Ramakrishna Gaddipati enigmatic "Ramki". "Man with a monalisa smile".


Ramki was born in famous town of Tenali in Andhra Pradesh on 8th Nov, 1981 to an educated middle class family. His early education was mostly completed in various schools in Tenali and Guntur. As a kid he challenged himself to join one of the best institutes for his graduation. He made it to BITS, Pilani and was enrolled in MMS in the year 1998.

Life@Bits

This was a major turning point in his life, BITS introduced him to the world of computer programming. Ramki first touched a computer at BITS computer facility IPC. At that time we used to have SCO based dummy terminals as part of the lab and text based email client PINE to communicate with the world outside the campus. Ramki's love with computer programming took root when he started attending Mrs. Usha V. Subramaniam's CP-I classes. Subramaniam's classes of CP-I during those
days had a cult-like following and were so jam-packed that Ramki had to attend some of them peeking through the window.

From here onwards, Ramki never looked back. He got himself a PC at the beginning of the 2nd year in college and encouraged some of his friends to get PCs and before the end of the semester he had a working LAN running in his wing. This was really remarkable as in those days, hardly any 2nd year students understood how computer networks work but Ramki's love for technology didn't need any formal courses to understand how to build a LAN of computers in his wing. For Ramki, buying that PC was an investment made into the future and he would reap benefits of that investment later in life.

He won the Intel Cyberfiesta in Apogee, 2001. He also became part of Center for Instructional Software (CIS of LearningByte), Center for Software Development at BITS, represented BITS Pilani in ACM ICPC and started contributing towards software products being develped in the BITS campus at that time. Later on,Ramki along with another colleague Vishal Malik worked on a project on mobile phone based universal remote control, which was to be demonstrated to the then President Abdul Kalam, during Apogee-05. As the prez cancelled his visit due to elections, they were advised to patent it instead of displaying it. The beauty of the BITS systems is that it not only introduced Ramki to computers but also provided enough avenues to enhance his knowledge and put that knowledge into practice to hone his skills further.

Bridle is Born !

Ramki joined "Leapstone Systems" in 2002 after completing his MMS degree from BITS. Ramki was introduced to entrepreneurship at an early age, his mother ran a "typing institute" and Ramki was involved with managing that institute even as a kid. But his first brush with entrepreneurship happened at "Leapstone Systems". He met the Directors of the company
Mr. Neil Gogte and Mr. Anurag and another senior colleague Mr. Pankaj Diwan among others, who were more of entrepreneurs than engineers. They had a very significant impact on his thought process and made him realize that with perseverance he could achieve his entrepreneurial ambitions. Ramki devised a plan to start a mineral water bottling plant which was resisted by his immediate family. He somehow felt they weren't confident enough, in spite of his good ground research and strong differentiators.

This prompted Ramki to come back to BITS and complete his studies in software and he enrolled into ME Software Systems as a teaching assistant in 2003. Now Ramki got down to making plans for his first start up. As luck would have it, BITS had just started Technology Business Incubator(TBI). Ramki utilized the opportunity provided by TBI to commercialize the software solution "SchoolMate" that he was working on. Thus another BITS was born - Bridle Information and Technology Solutions in April, 2004.

Life@Bridle

Bridle was the first incubate of TBI and there was ample support from Prof. VS Rao, Prof. Gurunarayanan, Prof. Sudeep Mohan and Prof. J P Mishra for that much needed initial start. The acknowledgment from TBI, BITS Pilani also gave confidence to Ramki's family to allow him to take this initiative. With friends like Hari Krishnan and Suneel Yathati joining the team, the company got its foundations laid strong.

Initial capital for starting Bridle was brought by the founders themselves, all of them put together contributed Rs. 5 lakhs towards starting the operations. Most of this initial capital was spent in Hyderabad developing "SchoolMate", test marketing and doing market research.

In 2005, after discussions with BITS alumni and on advice of Mr. Anupendra, Ramki decided to move to subscription based SaaS model for his product "SchoolMate". Bridle realized that with such a model, money can be made only if they could scale fast. This plan required good marketing spend and also significant investment in technology development. Thats when they started looking for funds from external sources. Prof. V.S. Rao helped him to connect with several potential investors. The money was then invested by Mr. Bhaskar Atluri and Mr. Srinivas Atlur, Founder and Chairman of Core Providers LLC, Addison, TX, USA. Rs. 50,00,000/- were raised as part of first round of funding in mid 2005.

Bridle has been able to scale to more than 68 institutes in 2 cities and reach 70,000 subscribers within it first 3 years of operations. Plan is to reach 55 cities in 5 years and increase its subscriber base to more than 5,00,000.

Bridle is now in the able hands of Hari Krishnan, Ravindra Vytla and Ashokavardhan Rao. They raised a fresh round of investment from Chennai Fund lead by Raghu Rajagopal and from Chandrashekar, also BITSians, who extended a great support for the venture. Bridle is going from strength to strength and making an impact on the way education system works in India. It has been able to revolutionize the way parents and education institutes communicate using latest communication technologies like mobile phones, SMS, eMail and internet portal. For his efforts, Ramki was recognized as one of 5 Asia's Best Entrepreneur under 25 by Business Week (2006).

Life After

In 2007, Ramki due to some precarious family problems, was not able to concentrate fully on Bridle's operations. He decided to move out of Bridle and let his team take over. Ravindra, Hari Krishna and Ashokvardhan are at the helm of the company now.

Ramki took a regular job with Directi another start up, founded by two brothers Bhavin Thurakia and Divyank Thurakia. At Directi, Ramki is handling one of the products in their portfolio of future offerings in internet services domain. Ramki told me that he 'll not be venturing into another startup of his own for next 3 years. He is back to his first love of architechting and then developing software solutions and enjoying his stint at Directi.

His advice to young Bitsian entrepreneurs:

"Perseverance is the key to entrepreneurship. As one of the senior CAs told me once, he would consider a company running only if it could successfully complete three years of business. It takes time and a great deal of effort and a good deal of sacrifices to pursue a venture. You do it if you are utterly passionate about it; probably when you couldn't recollect a day in near past without dreaming about it."

Ramki attributed his own success to the same mantra of Perseverance. He also feels that Bridle's success could not have been possible without the invaluable help that he received from BITS faculty and alumni.

Personally, I think Ramki is a perfect example of what BITS does to you. A reluctant reticent young man was transformed into an award winning entrepreneur and a leader of repute. Another belief that I hold today is that for Ramki this is not the end and his best is yet to come.

Introduction

Recently I read "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" by "Rashmi Bansal" where she lists entrepreneurs from IIMs and traces their journey from starting companies to building organizations of repute.

I am inspired to write something similar for our Bitsian Entrepreneurs and this blog is an attempt at the same. I hope I 'll be able to write something that 'll inspire young Bitsians to emulate the path taken by these Bitsians who dared to dream and turn those dreams into reality.

"Kudos to All the Bitsian Entrepreneurs."