One of the major trends that we are witnessing is that businesses are transitioning from traditional IT technology to cloud computing to manage their business & increase efficiency. In the past, businesses would run applications or programmes from software downloaded on a physical computer or server in their building, & now cloud computing allows an organisation access to the same kinds of applications through the internet or a cloud service. Meet Sunando Bhattacharya, the Co-Founder, CEO and Cloud Evangelist at IndiQus Technologies. Established in 2013, IndiQus is a startup enabling telcos and other businesses build and launch their very own customised cloud service to optimise efficiency.

Sunando is a graduate of Delhi University & IIM with a vast and varied work experience. In conversation with GlobalLinker (GL) Sunando Bhattacharya (SB) shares the journey of establishing IndiQus and his firm belief that cloud computing is the future of IT. Watch this video to know more about Sunando's business journey.

GL: Tell us about your business & how it came into being.

SB: At IndiQus we help enterprises & telcos demystify cloud and use it in the best ways possible in their business and to scale their revenues.

I have been working in the IT services industry for the last 18 years. Over that period I worked with small SMEs, mid-size corporates, global MNCs and telcos. Towards the end of my professional career I started seeing a huge gap in the market in the whole understanding of cloud computing. Around 2012-13, I saw a lot of people looking at this space but not really understanding what to do with it. That’s when I realised the huge value I can add for my customers & started IndiQus with my co-founder Shiv. We built a very interesting story for our customers where they don’t have to bother about anything to do with cloud or anything to do with what goes into it. We come in and stitch the whole solution for them and enable them to build their business on top of that.

GL: What are some of the challenges you have faced in establishing your business?

SB: We started in 2013, and initially in the first year, as with any new business, the going was tough. It was difficult to hire people, it was tough to find business. We spent a lot of time thinking about where the next customer is going to come from. But we persevered and god gave us the direction.

A challenge which we faced in the initial phase, as happens with lot of startups, was that large companies didn’t take us very seriously. So we had instances where customers made us do demos & go and setup proof of concepts for them and engaged us for a very long time. But when it actually came to giving us an order, they just backed out just saying, ‘you’re a too small company to work with’.

But I think those are days of the past. We now work with pretty large companies, telcos like Airtel, Sri Lanka Telecom, companies like Ibibo and many more. Now we are getting engaged with several large brands.

GL: How big is your team & how do you keep them motivated?

SB: Most of the people who work for us are people who have worked with us in our previous companies. So there is a certain relationship of trust already there, therefore it was easier to get them onboard and convince them of our story. 

Shiv, my co-founder and I, go back more than 16 years and we have been working together as professionals. So it was quite simple for us to come together and start working on this. We are essentially friends first and partners later and that camaraderie actually goes down through the entire organisation. We believe in working hard and partying harder. We are all working very hard to meet certain goals and aspirations & hopefully we will soon get them.

When we started in 2013 we were a team of 3 people. Today 3 years hence, we are 19 and we are adding about 2 to 3 people every month. We may not be the best brand to work for, nor the biggest company. But we definitely provide an excellent environment to work where people are valued for what they do and everybody is doing something important over here. Every person has a one to one relationship with each other, there’s a huge amount of camaraderie which exists in the team. We believe in celebrating the smallest of happy moments in the company.

GL: What is the USP of your business?

SB: The business we are in is essentially a very high tech business in terms of understanding of the technology, domain and all the functions. It is very similar to doing any kind of an ERP business. So our USP is our understanding of the domain. You know while we are a startup with a relatively small team – it’s a very experienced team. And the team has worked in this domain for a long period of time and really knows what goes into building a cloud.

GL: What is your big business dream?

SB: When we started IndiQus, our dream was to really take it big and make it a global company and we are still chasing that dream. Our vision is that five year hence our software should be running the top clouds in the world and reaching at least hundred thousand businesses. We are currently doing business of about 3 to 4 crores a year. We want to take it about 100 crores in a period of 5 years.

GL: What role do you believe GlobalLinker plays in assisting SMEs?

SB: I think GlobalLinker offers a great platform for SMEs to network and interact with each other. They are spread all over the country from the metros to the smallest of cities. It is a great virtual platform where they can meet and interact and talk about business, share challenges and explore what they can do for each other. GlobalLinker creates a very interesting business platform and is a great alternative to LinkedIn and Facebook, where people can purely talk about business and entrepreneurship and nothing else. 

GL: What is your message to aspiring entrepreneurs?

SB: To all budding entrepreneurs I would say think 100 times before you start up anything. Don’t just jump into it because there is a buzz for startups going on. Think what you want to do. Be sure that it is your passion that you’re chasing and once you’re into it give everything you have. Don’t do anything with a half hearted approach because that will not get you anywhere. You need a lot of dedication and devotion towards your work; you have to bring all your passion to get there. Without a passion, success is extremely difficult.

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