The document discusses several Indian software startups that have been successfully bootstrapped, meaning they were built using the founders' personal finances rather than venture capital funding. It profiles eight such startups, including EmployWise (HR software), SignEasy (electronic signature app), Inquirly Technologies (customer engagement software), ApnaStock (construction materials procurement), Media Ant (advertising marketplace), VoiceTree Technologies (call management system), PowerStores Ecommerce (online store builder), and analyzes the advantages and challenges of the bootstrapping approach. Overall, it finds that around 73% of Indian software product companies are bootstrapped, and this model allows founders more freedom and flexibility but can also limit scaling and talent acquisition

1. EmployWise
FOUNDER : Sumeet Kapur
Sumeet Kapur’s first startup, a venture
capital-backed customer relationship
management solutions firm, went
through a tough time during the dot
com bubble burst in 2000. “The burn
rate was high, even if you applied
brakes, you were burning,” said Kapur,
50, who had to start again from scratch
and started to work on the human re-sources
software product in 2006. With
funding being scarce, bootstrapping
became a necessity for him. But it ena-bled
the product to evolve based on the
feedback from the customers. “It would
have been a waterfall if I had raised
the capital and built the product in one
shot,” says Kapur. “I didn’t want to ex-periment
with investor money. “Unlike
his first venture, EmployWise was also
able to whether the economic meltdown
of 2008 as it was not dependent on ven-ture
capital. The EmployWise product
is now being used by 50,000 employees
across various sectors including tech-nology,
retail and manufacturing. But
Kapur had to apply extra effort to build
the firm due to which he was not able to
spend more time with his family. “But I
have an extremely supportive family,”
said Kapur who likes taking his dog for
a long walk every morning.
WHAT THEY DO: Hire-to-Retire human
resources software delivered off the cloud in
the software as a service model
FOUNDED IN : Product launched in
November 2011
SEED CAPITAL: `1 crore
REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: Not disclosed
TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: `6 crore
USP: Innovation to keep costs low. Focus on
generating customer revenues
SignEasy
FOUNDER : Sunil Patro
In the summer of 2009 when Sunil Patro
visited his fiance in Mexico, he received
an offer letter from a US-based company.
Being in a remote location near Riviera
Maya, Patro, 35, lost vacation time look-ing
for a printer and a fax to return docu-ments
that required his signature over
email. This experience gave birth to the
idea of creating an electronic signature
app that would enable anyone to sign
and send documents from the phone.
After six months he founded ‘SignEasy’
by combining bootstrapping with
travel during a backpacking trip to Latin
America. The product development hap-pened
in Coimbatore with the help of
an engineer, his fiance handled the cus-tomer
support from Mexico and he con-ceptualised
the product while travelling
through Latin America. “I got enough
freedom to shape my own entrepreneur-ial
journey and build the product with
my own pace and money,” said Patro, an
alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur. His product
has now got around 2.5 million down-loads
in 155 countries. The challenge
that the startup, which has operations in
the United States and Bangalore, faced
due to bootstrapping is that it was harder
to attract talent in the beginning.
WHAT THEY DO:
Simplest way to electronically sign
documents from your phone and tablet
FOUNDED IN : 2010
SEED CAPITAL : `10 lakh
(personal savings)
REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: `2.5 crore
TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: Not
disclosed
USP: Bootstrapping enabled to empathise
with problem than the solution, having razor
sharp focus, making it dead simple to enable
people sign electronically in 60 seconds.
The Lone Rangers
A majority of software product companies in India are being built without help from
venture capitalists according to industry thinktank, iSpirt which is stepping up to boost
this brigade, find Peerzada Abrar, Krithika Krishnamurthy and Malavika Murali
RateGain
FOUNDER : Bhanu Chopra
Bhanu Chopra drives a white Porsche Panamera
to his office in Noida. That is, when he is not jetting
around the world meeting customers and drum-ming
up support for the proposed public issue of
shares at his enterprise software firm RateGain.
Although Chopra can seem like the archetypal
technology entrepreneur riding high on risk
capital funding, the 38-year-old entrepreneur has
not raised a single rupee in venture capital. The
decade-old company, which sells software for the
hospitality and travel industries in 120 countries,
is aiming for a share sale on Nasdaq that could
value it at around `6,000 crore. Chopra, who is the
largest stakeholder, has also given stock options to
several of his 350 employees.
“I can’t pretend to be frugal. I drive a nice car,
travel business class and am still bootstrapped,”
said Chopra, who pays senior executives at his
firm an average salary of about `1 crore per an-num.
When starting up has become synonymous
with raising copious amounts of capital, contrar-ians
like Chopra and ZohoCorporation’s founder
Sridhar Vembu are emerging as torchbearers of
the bootstrapped approach. Vembu’s Zoho, with
over $100 million (`600 crore) in revenue, competes
against the likes of Microsoft in the enterprise
software market. “Bootstrapping embraces the no-tion
that to the extent that the future is shaped by
human action, it is not much use trying to predict
it,” said Saras D Sarasvathy, professor of entrepre-neurship
at University of Virginia Darden School
of Business. Around 73% of software product
companies in India are bootstrapped, according to
software product think tank iSpirt.
The grouping has launched an initiative
‘BootUpIndia’ to recognise India’s best boot-strapped
startups that will subsequently be
mentored by industry peers. ET profiles eight boot-strapped
startups which have the potential to be
the next big winners.
Exclusife Inquirly
VoiceTree
Technologies
What It Means
Bootstrapping - When an entrepre-neur
uses personal finances or
revenues to build a company.
Bootstrapping traces its origin back
to 19th century United States, to
the phrase “pull oneself over a
fence by one’s bootstraps”, to mean
an absurdly impossible action
ApnaStock
Vinit Bhansali has boot-strapped
successfully
through all this three ven-tures,
ApnaStock, his third ven-ture,
helps small builders
procure construction ma-terials
at wholesale prices,
and has done sales of `1
crore since this January.
Despite running an
ecommerce venture,
which is traditionally
known for guzzling money,
ApnaStock has not spent
a penny on Google or
Facebook ads, let alone
traditional media and
closed a fifth of his deals
on WhatsApp, and the rest
through word-of-mouth
publicity. “No one wants
to remain bootstrapped
forever. But quite often we
lust after mentoring and
networking, not money,”
said 34-year-old CEO Vinit
Bhansali. The company
has signed 70 builders in
Bangalore and said he
wants the Bangalore-based
company to reach a critical
mass before seeking addi-tional
capital.
More freedom to
take quick decisions
Build the company
at one’s own pace
and money
Become more
customer-focused,
and efficient in
business
Use time to build
business than
chasing investors
and how.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Bootstrapped Technologies
firms have a
different
pathway to
growth/IPO
and need to
be nurtured
Media Ant PowerStores
Everyone wants to adver-tise
but not everyone can
afford it. Media Ant was
born to help startups and
SMBs showcase ads in
newer and cost-effective
media outlets.
“But people were not able
to relate to the idea,” said
Mukesh Agrawal, who
started operations out of his
balcony in September 2012.
Now, the company has
identified 5,000 media op-tions
such as on credit card
bills, washrooms and lug-gage
tags for showcasing
Competitors with better
financial standing can push
bootstrapped firms out
Cannot scale as quickly as a
funded company
Marketing and hiring talent
is difficult
No access to mentoring
and network of venture
capitalists
ads. For the first year, the
company used a Wordpress
blog as their official web-site,
and they still don’t
own a printer at office.
“With bootstrapping, life
didn’t change much.
It was my mindset that
did,” said Agrawal. “It’s
not that I can’t afford cer-tain
things like a printer, it
is about spending for what
you absolutely need,” said
Agrawal, 29, who said the
company is now beginning
to attract investor atten-tion.
India’s most famous
bootstrapped companies
Zoho
VWO
RateGain
BrowserStack
Kayako
Cosmic Circuits
FusionCharts
Famous
bootstrapped
companies
overseas
HappyFox
Apple
Dell
Hewlett-Packard
Microsoft
51% 55% of the entrepreneurs
between age of 31-40
years (Data by iSpirt)
of the founders bring
in the engineering
expertise
70%
startups
treat SMB
customers as
strategic
57%
of the start-ups
see average deal
size of more
than `50 lakhs
73%
of software
product companies
in India are
bootstrapped
Sharad Sharma, cofounder, iSpirt
Customer engagement was a new
term for a large number of mom and
pop shops - until Anand Krushnan
jumped in to sell software to small
shops and bring back those customers
that crossed their threshold.
Since early 2013, the team of 150
employees has covered 1,500 shops
across India and has been frugal in
doing so. By working out of his ex-employers
office, called Tangence,
Krushnan has eliminated all costs
related to infrastructure.
Bootstrapped entrepreneurs have
it worse than funded ones is a notion
that Krushnan disagrees with.
“Whatever you do, you can’t be
stressed. I play badminton every
day, and work for 12 hours a day.
That’s how it has always been,” said
Krushnan, 39 a graduate of at GM
Institute of Technology, Chitradurga.
Bangalore-based Inquirly Technologies,
started up by Anjan Choudhary and his
wife, bootstrapped with `92 lakh and fol-lows
a business to business model. The 2013
startup sells software to restaurants, edu-cational
institutions and other small and
medium enterprises.
It provides a tablet-based interaction
software charging monthly and quarterly
subscriptions starting from `6,000 upwards
and is looking to get onto the global plat-form
by early next March, generating a
revenue of ` 61 lakh.
A business needs to achieve certain trac-tion
before seeking for investors, said
Choudhary, who pooled in his paychecks
during his stint at Accenture to startup and
is targeting a revenue of `6 crore by tapping
into global markets early next March.
“Anyone can use the product: from a ‘pan-walah’
to a ‘planewalah’,” said Choudhary,
an alumnus of Bangalore University.
WHAT THEY DO: Sells
customer-engagement and
interaction software for
small and medium
businesses
FOUNDED IN : 2013
SEED CAPITAL: Around
`92 lakh (through
paychecks while working
at Accenture)
REVENUE FOR FISCAL
2014: Around `61 lakh
TARGET REVENUE FOR
FISCAL 2015: `6 crore
USP: Using low-cost
technology to bring
efficiency into greenfield
industries like education
and food management
WHAT THEY DO:
Helps small retail
outlets acquire
and retain
customers
FOUNDED IN :
2013
SEED CAPITAL:
Undisclosed
REVENUE FOR
FISCAL 2014:
`3 crore
TARGET REVENUE
FOR FISCAL 2015:
Undisclosed
USP:
Shifts the focus
back on offline
advertising
FOUNDER : Anand Krushnan
FOUNDER : Anjan Choudhary
rather than be treated as
an aberration
Started by Ankit Jain and
his brother, VoiceTree
Technologies is a Delhi-based
startup that pro-vides
virtual software as
a service-based call man-agement
system to small
and medium businesses.
Started up in 2010 with a
seed capital of `2 lakh, the
duo started out in a three-bedroom
apartment.
The duo was forced to
bootstrap after being
turned down by investors.
“In retrospect, it gave us
time to innovate and work
on our product at our own
pace,” said Jain, CEO,
whose company is cur-rently
chasing a revenue
run rate of `4 crore and is
looking to take its product
to global markets in the
next four months and
increase revenue growth
by 400% in the upcoming
fiscal.
Goa-based PowerStores
Ecommerce offers users
software where they can
set up their own online
website or store by regis-tering
themselves.
The decision to bootstrap
was one out of choice, said
Indrajit Chowdhury, CTO of
the 2011-registered compa-ny,
who started up with CEO
Cory York. The decision
to bootstrap was one out of
choice. The process is simi-lar
to registering on Gmail,
where users just need to
provide basic details.
With subscriptions start-ing
at `7,000 a month,
the startup has amassed
over 800 customers in six
months. It will focus on lo-cal
markets in the coming
months. The startup did
not disclose the revenue
figures, but is looking to
expand its service to the
Asian market.
WHAT THEY DO: Provides an end-to-end call management
system through SaaS called MyOperator to small and medium
businesses
FOUNDED IN : 2010
SEED CAPITAL: `2 lakh
REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: `4 crore
TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: Looking at larger than 400%
revenue growth
USP: Bootstrapping enabled consistent innovation of the product
WHAT THEY DO: Helps SMBs advertise on non-traditional media
FOUNDED IN : 2012
SEED CAPITAL: `3 lakh
REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: `4 crore
TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: `8-10 crore
USP: Help fill a gap in the advertising industry
WHAT THEY DO: Helps small builders find material at wholesale
prices
FOUNDED IN : 2014
SEED CAPITAL: `1 lakh
REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: `1 crore
TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: `5 crore
USP: Help builders procure materials at lesser prices
WHAT THEY DO: Allows users to set up their own ecommerce
store or website through a simple registration, similar to a
Gmail registration
FOUNDED IN : Registered in 2011, but came out with the
service in 2013
SEED CAPITAL : `20 lakh
REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: Undisclosed
TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: Undisclosed
USP: Helps small businesses gain online presence
FOUNDER : Vinit Bhansali
FOUNDER : Mukesh Agrawal
Ecommerce
FOUNDER : Indrajit
Chowdhury
FOUNDER : Ankit Jain
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THE ECONOMIC TIMES | BANGALORE | FRIDAY | 3 OCTOBER 2014 Power of Ideas