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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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Pumas.ai CEO Joga Gobburu (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Were you able to get that approval?

Joga Gobburu: Yes. We got the consensus from the FDA, and they agreed to this preemptive marker. It’s underway already.

Sramana Mitra: My next question in the context of this case study is, what is it that you know from the adult trial that can be applied to the pediatric trial? What are some of the parameters that you could model?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping with Services, Two Products, Splitting and Scaling

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

Bootstrapping with service, then building two products, then splitting up the company into two, and finally, scaling a sizable product company – not the kind of stories we hear often. This story is a rare window into the journey of a group of entrepreneurs who have achieved amazing feats. This conversation with Ajay Sharma, Co-founder and CEO of Srishti Software Applications, took place in 2014.

Sramana: Let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from and what kind of family do you come from?

Ajay Sharma: I was brought up in a village in Bihar. My father was a college professor in a rural college. It was actually rather common at that time for professors to pass through rural areas at some point of their career to help bolster those smaller, rural colleges. I attended rural schools until the tenth class. I then moved to another small, sleepy agricultural town for the eleventh and twelfth classes.

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Pumas.ai CEO Joga Gobburu (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’d like to explore two directions based on what you said. Have you actually developed a drug using this methodology or have you facilitated drug development for a pharmaceutical? If you’re allowed to talk about that, I want to do a use case of stepping through the whole process.

Joga Gobburu: Absolutely.

The Paradigm Shift in EdTech: Why Online Learning Startups Are the Future

Online learning has exploded in popularity over the last decade. In Covid, the field has found a tremendous force multiplier.

Many founders are now turning to online education for startup ideas. Here’s why: it can be extremely profitable because online courses do not require physical classrooms, startup costs are more affordable, and startup time frames are shorter. The ability to scale fast makes this space very attractive for new ventures.

The education world has made a shift in the last decade from a sage-on-stage model to a guide-on-side model. In the former, teachers lectured to students in an auditorium format. In the latter, kids were assigned YouTube or Khan Academy videos as homework, and they did exercises in class with the teacher assisting as needed.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to Exit

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

Krish Kupathil is the Founder of Mobiliya Technologies. When we spoke in 2013, the company was known as AgreeYa Mobility, an enterprise mobility and mobile system integration company providing solutions for collaboration and communication products for mobile platforms. QuEST Global acquired Mobiliya in 2018.

Sramana: Krish, let’s start with your personal story. Where are you from? What is the story to your personal journey?

Krish Kupathil: I was born and brought up in Delhi, India. I did my schooling and college in India. I started dabbling in software in 1987 and did some initial work in India. I got into software related businesses surrounding finance. I did some work out of Europe and Singapore before landing in the U.S. ten years ago. I was involved in a few startups in earlier years as well.

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Pumas.ai CEO Joga Gobburu (Part 1)

Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning techniques are starting to achieve dramatic impact on drug discovery and precision medicine.

Pumas.ai is a bootstrapped venture at the cutting edge of the field. I learned much from this conversation. You will too!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with an introduction of yourself as well as the company.

Catching Up On Readings: MWC 2023

This feature from The Wall Street Journal covers the highlights of the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona last week. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.