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India’s Flagship Global Product Story: Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh (Part 5)

Sramana: As a first time entrepreneur this is your first time heading up an enterprise software company. What has been your personal evolution and education from this process?

Jaspreet Singh: I have learned a lot. I still remember the day that Milind asked me to join him as an engineer in his startup. I talked about whether or not I should join him with my future wife. She told me that if I was bored at Veritas that I should quit my job, join him, and we would figure it out. Since then I have had nothing to lose. I put myself into the company 100% and I took on every challenge that I could find.

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India’s Flagship Global Product Story: Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh (Part 4)

Sramana: Financing in India has become a little bit easier. One of our 1M/1M companies managed to raise their first million from a VC. We worked with them during the bootstrapped phase. Our advice was to get to the point where they had paying customers. They sell to small businesses, so it’s not like they had $100,000 checks, but they have a product that customers pay for. They validated their business before they raised money. Even though it is getting better in India, it is still very tough overall.

Jaspreet Singh: I agree that it is still very tough. The ecosystem is still very young in India. The VCs put money on great ideas, and there are a few smart VCs. The top four investors in India are Sequoia, Excel, Nexus, and IDG. They have invested the majority of the money in India. It is still very difficult to get early-stage funding. >>>

India’s Flagship Global Product Story: Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh (Part 3)

Sramana: How big is endpoint backup and recovery in the commercial space?

Jaspreet Singh: It is a $650 million market, according Gartner. It is growing 10% year on year. The largest shareholder is HP, which has $250 million in revenue, but their product is 13 years old and has declining revenue. The market was ripe for disruption when we entered it. We have been disrupting it ever since.

Sramana: When you first launched, the company endpoint backup was not your primary focus, but you detected a gap in the market and pivoted the company into that solution and re-branded it as Druva. Is that correct?

Jaspreet Singh: Yes. We did not understand market size or the competitive analysis. We just knew that there were a lot of people leaving PCs and going towards mobile devices. The software they were using was designed for the PC era when you could have continuous backup of data. We wanted strong differentiators so we could have strong premiums. Today Druva is twice the cost as the number two player in the market and four times more expensive than Symantec, but we still sell like hotcakes. We are ranked number one by Gartner in the entire category. We have some large blue chip customers. >>>

India’s Flagship Global Product Story: Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh (Part 2)

Sramana: How did your journey evolve from Ensim to being a founding member of Druva?

Jaspreet Singh: While I was working on some of the open source projects, I met my co-founder, Milind. He was at Veritas and he convinced me to apply at Veritas. He told me that if I passed the criteria, I would be the only undergraduate working in the entire world wide group. I passed my interview and joined Veritas.

About a year later, Milind left to start his own company. Around that time I got terribly bored. Milind invited me to work with him as an engineer. He did not have any money to pay me but told me that if he was able to make money that he would pay me. I started working for him. In 2008 the idea of Druva came about. We decided to work towards the idea of Druva. >>>

India’s Flagship Global Product Story: Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh (Part 1)

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[This interview is featured in my Entrepreneur Journeys book, Seed India – How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India]

Jaspreet is a co-founder and CEO of Druva. An entrepreneur at heart, he bootstrapped the company while defining the product, sales and marketing strategies that have resulted in Druva’s early and impressive success. Prior to founding Druva, Jaspreet was a member of the storage foundation group at Veritas. He also held a number of engineering specific roles at Ensim Corporation. Jaspreet holds a bachelors degree in computer science from IIT Guwahati.

Sramana: Jaspreet, let’s start with your personal story. What is the background to your entrepreneurial story?

Jaspreet Singh: My father was in the Air Force, so I tell people I was born and raised in India. I have lived in all over the country and have spent a lot of time in the western part of the country. I knew different cultures and I had a lot of friends all over the place. I went on to study computer science at IIT Guwahati. >>>

Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 7)

Sramana: Are there other companies similar to yours that you compete with directly?

Dan Dillon: There are a lot of national players who are behind the scenes. An average consumer would not know about them, but they are doing stuff every day with larger accounts. They are calling on steel mills, medical buildings, and hospitals. They are not brand names, but they are national companies and they are the big players in this space. The Staples, Office Maxes and Office Depots of the world are going after the small and medium sized businesses. They are trying to capture the cleaning supply business when those customers are in shopping for office supplies. >>>

Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 6)

Sramana: Who was your third hire?

Dan Dillon: Someone to manage content. We realized how important search engine optimization was and how dirty the content was that we received from suppliers. The janitorial supply business is very old. We had to convert the information from fliers and info sheets that manufacturers had into content that we could put on our website. We basically developed our own database full of rich content. >>>

Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 4)

Sramana: When it comes to your commercial business, who are you selling to? Are your primary customers janitorial suppliers, or are they building managers?

Dan Dillon: We certainly have an audience of building contractors, maid services, and cleaning services that travel from location to location. The larger audience for us is the facility or office manager who is restocking their own facility. If you have 2,000 employees on site, then you are going to be using a lot of traffic. >>>