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Bootstrapping a Robust SaaS company from India: Rategain CEO Bhanu Chopra (Part 1)

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 captures CEO 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 the 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. >>>

Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What happened after Dell?

Peter Mann: When I was at Dell, I learned pretty quickly that the culture wasn’t what I was expecting. At the same time, the Internet bubble burst. Dell started going through round after round of layoffs. The morale was low. It was a difficult environment from a cultural perspective. I was confident that I wasn’t going to lose my job but at the same time, no one really knew what was going to happen.

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Bootstrapping to $13 Million in 4 Years in Niche E-commerce: Pavel Sokolovsky, CEO of eComfort.com (Part 7)

Sramana: How does the supply chain work in your industry? Where is the margin getting eroded?

Pavel Sokolovsky: Here is my version of how the industry came to be. In the 1950s and 1960s, the manufacturers wanted to have national exposure for their products. This required boots on the ground to install and service the product. They had to have a way to reach the contractors. Contractors needed the product very quickly in order to satisfy their clients and they were generally not in a position to hold inventory. This created a need for a local distributor. They hold inventory to sell to the contractor so that homeowners can get the product quickly.

There were a lot of local distributors and they did not necessarily want to maintain massive amounts of inventory. This led to the rise of regional distributors. A lot of times, local distributors buy directly from a regional distributor. That places three levels of markup before the inventory hits the homeowner. Manufacturers realized that in order to manage their regional distributors, they needed outside representatives local to the region who knew the players and the games. Every single person in that supply chain takes a percentage on the product before it hits the homeowner. >>>

Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 2)

Peter Mann: Shortly after that, the Gulf War began and so we were sent over the Red Sea for about six months. That was a changing event for me. I got married a year out of college. We got married very young. I missed the last six months of the pregnancy and I missed the birth. I didn’t actually find out he was born until a day or two after because we didn’t have Internet.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking of when you got back from the Gulf War?

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Bootstrapping to $13 Million in 4 Years in Niche E-commerce: Pavel Sokolovsky, CEO of eComfort.com (Part 6)

Sramana: How do you handle merchandising? Merchandising involves building relationships with suppliers, determining what products to bring on, what products to create deals around, and how to position them with consumers.

Pavel Sokolovsky: Merchandising is an interesting term. In a traditional sense we did not do much of it. It just happened as a by-product of our business. I always thought that merchandising was all about presenting the product to consumers, so it’s good to realize that perhaps we did more there than we thought we did. >>>

Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 1)

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

Peter Mann started Oransi as a B-to-C e-commerce company. Today, 40% of his $10M revenue comes from China. This is the kind of company America hopes to see more of – selling American products to international consumers.

Sramana Mitra: Peter, let’s start with your background. Where were you born and raised? What kind of background leads up to your entrepreneur story?

Peter Mann: I was born in Syracuse, New York. I lived in the same house till I was 18 and went off to college. My father was a mechanical engineer. He was a manager at General Electric. He comes from a time when people worked 40 years in a company and then get their retirement package. He was also a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Syracuse University. We were heavily involved with the university. I grew up around a university atmosphere during my childhood.

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Bootstrapping to $13 Million in 4 Years in Niche E-commerce: Pavel Sokolovsky, CEO of eComfort.com (Part 5)

Sramana: How do you do in terms of sell-through? How much of the inventory that you invest in is able to be liquidated?

Pavel Sokolovsky: I would love to say all of it but there have been some decisions that turned out to be less than ideal. Eventually we have been able to sell all of it. >>>

Bootstrapping to $13 Million in 4 Years in Niche E-commerce: Pavel Sokolovsky, CEO of eComfort.com (Part 4)

Sramana: This is very similar to how you probably manage CPC [cost-per-click] campaigns with Google AdWords.

Pavel Sokolovsky: The high level logic is the same. You have to know how much a data object is worth and when to stop spending.
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