Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 1)

Andrew has built a company with a rigorous data-driven approach. Learn how!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Andrew Filev: I was born in St. Petersburg in Russia. I got interested in computers pretty early. I spent a lot of my childhood playing with computers, building and programming, and designing. I also had a big interest in other sciences as well. I competed in different math, physics, and chemistry competitions.

Part of my heritage and the reason why I did a lot of that was that if I go back in time and compare my upbringing with what I see today for my kids, there was very little entertainment. Everything was pretty scarce. I spent my childhood summers mostly reading books and playing chess >>>

Bootstrapping to $300 Million: Faisal Husain, CEO of Synechron (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the concept around which you founded Synechron?

Faisal Husain: The concept was based on being a customer of this industry. I saw a gap in the service that I was getting from the company out in the market. The gap was that they didn’t have sufficient business skills. The whole outsourcing model was very appealing to clients and they wanted to embrace that, but these firms really lacked sophisticated technology capabilities. They lacked business knowledge. They lacked an agile and iterative approach to projects. Those were the gaps I saw.

I left my job at Merrill and tried to start this venture that involved very high-end technology capability combined with very deep business knowledge, and what today we all recognize and call an agile approach. 15 years ago, there was no term for it. We decided on that vision and that’s what we followed. That’s what got us to where we are. >>>

Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Very good. It’s wonderful to see that you pulled a hardcore technology product company out of India.

Varun Singh: You asked me earlier where the engineers were from. They’re from Veritas and IBM.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a good place to hire from. That’s a good thing about India right now. There are actually several generation of highly trained engineers who have worked at good companies building good products. There’s a lot of rich stuff if you can make them take risks.

Let me ask you a question, which is in the contemporary psyche. This whole notion of going to college. You didn’t go to college. You learned everything that you needed to learn in a very rich way. At the end of the day, you learned more by doing things hands-on than by studying theory. There’s no disagreement there. >>>

Building a Founding Team Financed Business from Omaha, Nebraska: InfoFree CEO Rakesh Gupta (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to when you started this company. What did you do to get this off the ground?

Rakesh Gupta: The first thing was to figure out, with some level of clarity, what space are you going to go after. As our dear friend in Omaha, Warren Buffett, always says, “There has to be a level of clarity in your circle of confidence.” We had to figure out our circle of confidence that we can shine in. The first thing we had to do was define it clearly. That’s the first thing we did. That’s how the three things that I talked about came about. >>>

Raising Money From 75 Angels: Manmeet Singh, CEO of Dataguise (Part 4)

Manmeet Singh: I stayed on my course. VCs were not ready to put in money. If you look at history, that was the worst time to raise money. That was the time that I had to go from one angel to another. I did coffee and lunch where I invited 10 to 20 people. Five of them showed up. Everybody wrote a check worth $35,000 to $50,000. Basically, this is how I got my first $7 million.

Sramana Mitra: How were you pricing the round? I imagine the $7 million was not in convertible debt.

Manmeet Singh: You’d be surprised. $5 million was in convertible debt.

Sramana Mitra: Wow! I’ve never heard this before. >>>

Indian Cab Company Uses Biometrics to Improve Security and Service

By guest author and 1M/1M member Pinky Thakkar

Meru Cab, the largest taxicab company in India, needed an effective way to identify and monitor its more than 5,000 drivers. To ensure high-quality service, the company terminates its agreements with drivers who seriously violate its customer service standards, and blacklists them for future employment with the organization. >>>

8 Companies Inducted Into the iSPIRT BootUpINDIA Inner Circle

iSPIRT has announced the eight bootstrapped Indian companies that have been inducted into the BootUpIndia Inner Circle. As one of the jurors, Sramana Mitra would like to offer her encouragement and support to all of the participants and congratulate the winners: Sumeet Kapur/Global Groupware Solutions, Anand Krushnan/Exclusife, Sunil Patro/SignEasy, Indrajit Chowdhury/PowerStores Ecommerce, Ankit Jain/VoiceTree Technologies, Vinit Bhansali/ApnaStock Solutions, Anjan Choudhary/Inquirly Technologies, and Mukesh Agrawal/The Media Ant.

September 15 – Deadline To Apply For BootUpINDIA Awards

Bootstrapped Indian entrepreneurs should consider nominating yourselves for BootUpINDIA, an iSPIRT initiative. Through a self-nomination/application process, a select group of winners will be chosen by a jury of successful product champions, including Sramana Mitra. Winners will be awarded participation in BootUpINDIA’s year long mentorship program. You can find more details here. The BootUpINDIA program launch will take place on October 2, 2014, in Bangalore, India.

The deadline to apply is September 15, 2014: CLICK HERE TO APPLY.