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Bootstrapping a SaaS Company in India: Greytip CEO Girish Rowjee (Part 3)

Sramana: Did you complete your project as planned and purchase a new computer with the 5,000 rupees earned from that contract?

Girish Rowjee: We did finish the project, however, the individual did not pay us. We were able to get the bulletin board up and running in Mysore and we were able to connect to AOL and download messages. Unfortunately, he was not able to find anybody in Mysore to subscribe to the service. >>>

Bootstrapping a SaaS Company in India: Greytip CEO Girish Rowjee (Part 2)

Sramana: Did you form a business out of one of the software projects you had developed in your study group?

Girish Rowjee: Not directly. In 1993, after we finished college, a couple of folks in our late-night programming group stayed in the area to study for their GRE. Three of us from that group decided to start a company. The group included Sayeed Anjum, who is a co-founder of Greytip.

Sramana: You come from a family with entrepreneurial traditions. Did Sayeed’s family have an entrepreneurial background?

Girish Rowjee: No. Neither of the other two came from entrepreneurial families. Their parents were looking for jobs for them. >>>

Bootstrapping a SaaS Company in India: Greytip CEO Girish Rowjee (Part 1)

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[Also check out my Entrepreneur Journeys book, Seed India – How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India]

Girish Rowjee is the CEO of Greytip Software, a company that specializes in HR software. Girish is responsible for strategic direction, day-to-day operations, product delivery and international business. His “never say die” attitude and excellent analytical skills have made him indispensable to the organization. Girish holds an engineering degree from Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering (SJCE), and he is a corporate member of NASSCOM and a member of TiE.

Greytip has pioneered the SaaS model in India. They have successfully bootstrapped a SaaS company while keeping their primary focus on Indian corporations. In spite of numerous challenges they have proven that with perseverance and strategic adjustments the SaaS model does indeed have a place in India. While valuable for everyone, this is a key case study for Indian entrepreneurs.

Sramana: Girish, what is your background? Where do your entrepreneurial roots come from?

Girish Rowjee: I was born in a small town about 300 kilometers from Bangalore. I did my basic education there before moving to Mysore. My family has generally been an entrepreneurial family. My grandfather ran a bus service between several small towns, which was the first time bus service had been made available [in that area]. He then branched out into several retail shops where he sold electronic goods. Today my father runs operations of the electronics retail business that my grandfather founded in 1937.

Sramana: After your standard education, the equivalent of 12th grade, you moved to Mysore. What year was that?

Girish Rowjee: I moved to Mysore in 1989. I enrolled in engineering courses at SJCE. >>>

Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 7)

Sramana: With $12 million, in revenue you can raise money anywhere you want. When a company has substantial revenues, they do not need to move to Silicon Valley to fund raise. Have you considered where you are going to look at raising money?

Aaron Fulkerson: Making the decision to move to Silicon Valley or not is an intriguing discussion. I personally believe that the culture in Silicon Valley merits making the move. People in the Valley are moving with their hair on fire. They want to impact the world. >>>

Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 6)

Sramana: There is also a difference between B2B and B2C oriented companies. In B2B there is only one metric: are customers willing to pay for what you are offering or not? In B2C it is a bit more complicated. There is free stuff flowing around, and you have to monetize through a variety of methods.

Aaron Fulkerson: The result is that people give you money. They do that because you create generative value. Everybody focuses on the result, which may be customer engagement. The bottom line is the focus should be on generative value. >>>

Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 5)

Sramana: What is your pricing model?

Aaron Fulkerson: We price based on the value derived from the implementation, which is what I love about SaaS. You have to earn your customers’ business. If you don’t, then they turn you off. I have tried to make our pricing model entirely value based and tie the cost of the license to have value proposition. Our pricing is typically based on the number of agents or authors used by our clients, not the number of customers that our clients have. >>>

Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 4)

Sramana: Do you make any assumptions about customer support agents? Do you expect that they will use this product as well?

Aaron Fulkerson: Yes, and I will give you an example to illustrate this. A typical deployment by a software company will leverage our subscription payment system. It will typically start with one individual who will create a self-improving support cycle of MindTouch. This individual will seed the content on the knowledge center. Support will then plug that content into the CRM system so that every time support personnel answer a question, they can drag and drop knowledge articles into the case so that customers have additional resources. >>>

Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 3)

Sramana: It sounds like you avoided the problem of becoming diluted in a broad collaboration market by focusing on your original premise. Is that a fair statement?

Aaron Fulkerson: Yes. We went back to what we were originally very excited about. This is a valuable lesson for other entrepreneurs. You will have investors and other entrepreneurs who want to steer your product in a different direction, and you have to be very diligent to stay focused. We knew that we wanted to create a place for people across the organization to collaborate and create knowledge around supporting customers in their use of a product. That product could be a manufactured product or a service by extension. HTC and Intel are customers of ours. They all had a hard problem to solve and turned to us to solve it. >>>