Building a Robotics Company from India: Ritukar Vijay CEO of Ottonomy (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How did you find your co-founder?

Ritukar Vijay: One of the co-founders was in my college in the Robotics club. That goes back more than 15 years. The other two guys, we met through our careers during 2010 to 2012.

Sramana Mitra: In the robotics company?

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to $15M in Venture Capital

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We continue to see exciting enterprise software companies being built by entrepreneurs who have roots in the consulting business and who have taken their domain knowledge and customer insights to develop compelling products to solve specific problems. Gravitant is yet another case in point. Before Gravitant was acquired by IBM in 2015, I spoke with Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq about his journey.

Sramana: Mohammed, let’s start our discussion by reviewing your background. Where do you come from? What are the roots of your entrepreneurial journey?

Mohammed Farooq: I am originally from India, close to Hyderabad. I went to engineering school in India and came to the United States in 1991 to attend graduate school. I was born in 1967 and went to school locally in India. I attended Gulbarga University in India where I studied mechanical engineering. I attended graduate school in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, I completed a dual degree in operations research and computer science. I then did an MBA in finance as well.

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Video FAQs

Building a Robotics Company from India: Ritukar Vijay CEO of Ottonomy (Part 1)

This is a very interesting story of bringing really complex technology from India to the global market with a complex sales cycle.

The long term potential is huge. The short term complexity of the business is equally huge. The founding team is doing an admirable job navigating the opportunity with commitment and resolve.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $20M in Charleston, South Carolina

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.

As part of our coverage of entrepreneurship far away from Silicon Valley, we bring you a conversation with Mike Carter, Founder of eGroup, in Charleston, South Carolina. Typically, these environments have bred bootstrapped companies, and bootstrapping using services continues to be a popular method. Here is our conversation from 2014.

Sramana Mitra: Mike, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of circumstances leads up to the entrepreneurial story?

Mike Carter: I was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina which is a coastal town here in the Southeast. My parents are both originally from the area but I grew up all around the country and some places abroad. My father was a career air force fighter pilot. That meant that he spent a lot of time traveling to different military installations around the world and as a by-product, I grew up in that environment. When I returned to Charlestown for college, I went to a military college called The Citadel. I ended up staying and getting a degree in Computer Science. I’ve been an enthusiast with technology. My passion is what got me into business. That’s what my classical education along with a desire to succeed coming from a military household brought.

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Pumas.ai CEO Joga Gobburu (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch to your precision medicine area. Take me through a case study.

Joga Gobburu: What we have is an advanced clinical decision support system. This system is integrated and sits within the hospital electronic health records. When a physician diagnoses a patient with a condition and is considering a treatment, let’s say for a very serious infection.

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First, a bit of my own bias on the automation versus human debate.

If you think about what a doctor needs to do to diagnose an illness, she needs to consider all the symptoms, take into account all the test results, consider all the treatment options, factor in all the side-effects of various medications and their interplay with other medications the patient is already taking. This is, effectively, a multi-variate optimization problem that a doctor has to do in her head. And, she needs to keep up with all the new research and advances in medical science, and factor those in as well. The field of medicine is full of incorrect diagnosis and mistreatment of illnesses. Now, if you replace this whole process with software, medical diagnosis becomes a truly scientific, deterministic process. I can tell you, if I have the option of being diagnosed by software versus a human doctor, I would always prefer software. It will be far more accurate.

If the medical profession can be automated to that extent, billions of people can have access to quality medical care. Today, this number is relatively low.

Entrepreneurs have a tremendous opportunity ahead.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Robust SaaS Company from India

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

RateGain is one of the top global SaaS companies built out of India. This interview from 2014 captures Founder Bhanu Chopra’s entrepreneurial journey.

Sramana: Bhanu, let’s start with the beginning of your story. What kind of circumstances where you raised in? What is the genesis of your entrepreneurial journey?

Bhanu Chopra: I am a Delhi boy, I was born and raised in a business family in Delhi. Right after I completed school, I went to the US for my undergraduate studies. I went to Indiana University and have a double degree in finance and computer science. When I was growing up, I was very good with numbers. The advice that my father gave me was to get into something like finance. Computers are a derivation of mathematics. That is why I got interested in computers.

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