The days with failures and the days of vagabond are not yet over. When you start thinking of entrepreneurship and that to a B2B model, it’s hard to sit and enjoy as a CEO. You have to be the T2S (Technology to sales) person of your own venture. And I am proudly of two ventures.
The journey started from 2010 when I was doing web development of my Institute fests and other club’s website. Being an Electrical engineer from NIT Rourkela, people always ask me why I didn’ttake CSE in 2008. And to that I happily reply that there was recession in IT. From the day 1 of my self-learning of codes, I am a fond of Open source. The first introduction of Joomla to my institute was initiated by me and my friend Suraj Dash who is best at Adobe world. Then I started a web hosting and Design Company called Sell4u. Now it is Hosthangout.in and partner of TEDx as a service provider.
After graduating in 2012 I joined Coal India Limited and learnt many managerial quality and left on July 2013 with some inspiration from RajeshwariPurohit (CTO and Co-Founder at Simplibuy Technologies) who clearly said “Burn your boat b4 u start”. Then a happy life began at voylla.com and I owe my thanks to Jagrati and Vishwas for the faith but I have to quit for illness of my mother. After some months of wandering to find my own goal, I met with an accident and accidentally developed a SAAS based Institute management software called SATiED(School Administration Tool in Education)from a Fedena Open source. I was acquainted with institute management from the beginning of the engineering degree in NIT Rourkela, we called it EIMS. And this was the driving factor.
At Present, I am working as Intern with 36hrs.in and on a parallel track planning out the marketing and sales strategy with two of my co-worker Sarthak Nayak & Priyanka Priyadarshini. We are now conducting client and parent’s feedback on automation of school management on cloud. For now we have 2 schools from my native (Dhenkanal,Odisha) who are using this for rigorous testing. We are planning to launch public demo version within Jan 20, 2014. In private beta version, 3-4 Bhubaneswar (State Capital) based Engineering Institutes are shown their keen interest and given 30-40% consent for implementation for their institutes due the lean pricing structure as compared to small ERP players.
Being a newbie to marketing and survey, I personally visited some of the premier Institutes of Odisha. And I experienced some appreciation, some feedback and some new trends. The director KIIT, Bhubaneswar said “Beta, you are late by 15 days and now I am thrilled by knowing cloud solution of ERP.” The placement director of Shrusti Academy of Management appreciated the cloud solution and planning to go for SATiED. These days I sit and talk to the clerk of school/institute rather than a boss, because I am jumping in to solve the issue of clerk in managing salary slip to accounts.
When you design a product for a business, it’s not only technology or UI but the marketing and sales achievement matters. The day when I jumped to market with a new cloud based ERP for institutes; I got some appreciation and some feedbacks. Points to remember when you jump to market:
Always have an appointment with fund approving authority: This is because the idea can be sold to anybody and you will listen “Beta, Actually I have to talk to Chairman/Director regarding this.” So avoid this. Grab contact info about the boss of bosses.
Always take 4-5 minute to describe you and your product:Make your presentation brief. Let yourself bounded to describe your idea as you do when pitching a VC.
Show them their profits: The important factor is how you make a business analyze that the profit they can make when buying your service/product.
Get their VCard and leave yours: The person accepts your idea to implement or not, but always get their VCard as it will help you in future. Always leave your VCard too.
Email and Phone Marketing: If you are starting without any fundraising, then before you visit their business, send a mail about your product and demo versions (if available). Before you reach their place, just ring them up and inform about your arrival. Actually they feel privileged.
Be Prepare for Q & A: Get yourself armed with every field like pricing, why your service? I was asked about the difference between a ERP and ERP as SAAS on cloud. The business will compare you and even a small ERP provider of your locality. So don’t get harassed, just get energy from the QA session.
List your future goals: The best thing to attract a business is describing the future add-ons to your SAAS which will dramatically change their mind.
Don’t Compare: Never compare your service even they tease you like hell.
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This guy above , Ajit Kumar Satpathy is the BEST campus-legends of my college.
To this part of the country ( yes 'country' is the right word! for them who think it should be 'college' ) , he, with his back-breaking hard-work he introduced the concept of TEDx events.
From my personal experience there are two kinds of people .
The first kind. Who think they are different and they try to be different.
The ones in the second kind simply BELONG in the being-different category. they dont try to be out-of-the-box, they simply are .
And he is a proud member of that awesome second category.
i think if i even try to list his start-up ventures i wont do proper justice. in addition to the names mentioned above, there were numerous other ideas and ventures which for some or other reason didn't kick-off well.
I can remember him advising his juniors ( including me) , always no matter what is the scene involved , " think different". He is the living personification of that concept. ( y) for him.
Thanks Swadheen. You were also a part of my journey from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Sarang to NIT Rourkela. Thanks for boosting me up when i was down...
Really dude, we have known and seen you so well,
This is just a piece of article abt u, we know you as a book :)
Hats off to your interests n determination !!
Keep pursuing... All d best