5 founders on what it takes to build, run, and scale an IT company in India

Photo credit: dragonimages / 123RF Stock Photo

Priyanka is a TIA Star Contributor and publishes high-value content that serves the Asian tech community. Read more from TIA Star Contributors here.

The IT industry is a bedrock for India’s economy. Just look at the following statistics:

• In 2017, the IT sector contributed 7.7 percent of the country’s GDP.
• Overall, the industry provides direct employment to more than 3 million people in India.
• Indian IT companies have set up over 1,000 global delivery centers in over 200 cities globally.
• The computer software and hardware sector in the country has attracted cumulative foreign direct investment inflows of US$29.8 billion from 2007 to 2017.

Curious to know more about how these IT companies are built and scaled, I reached out to some founders whose IT companies have generated more than US$1 million in yearly revenues. Here’s what I learned along the way.

The importance of team and flexibility

What started 20 years ago as a web hosting company in a two-person office is today a company with 600+ employees building mobile apps, websites, enterprises, and ecommerce solutions. IndiaNIC CEO Sandeep Mundra attributes this to an incredible team—the strongest pillar. But he also shares the challenges of growing.

In his own words, “To keep the people around you happy is a constant challenge.” On the road to doing that, he explains that they’ve had to change from a more traditional pyramid structure to a more open, flexible “teal structure.”

For Girish Ramdas, co-founder of Magzter (a cross-platform digital newsstand), it was hiring the right resources that was difficult. When the company started in 2011, the entire app development industry was just growing, and not many developers were well-equipped with app development technologies. Even if they had the required experience, retention was a key challenge.

Another challenge in the tech space, according to Mundra, is flexibility. “If you aren’t flexible enough to change, you won’t survive,” he says. Not only do tech entrepreneurs have to deal with technology and people, they also have to deal with changing mindsets and needs.

“Our customers have changed (in the way they seek services), the employees have changed (grown smarter and more hungry for success), and there’s no getting away from keeping up the pace with them all,” reflects Mundra.

Get scrappy to build a client base

Anil Gupta started Multidots Solutions with his friend Aslam Multani in 2009, when the IT sector was recovering from the global economic recession of 2008. When they started, they faced two main challenges:

1. Monopolistic competition in the IT sector, where top notch players were heavily promoting their products with their huge marketing budget.
2. The notion that Indian software companies offer poor quality service and that they lack professionalism.

What they did to counter these was to focus on “organic customer acquisition.” From day one, the team decided to invest time to research on new technologies and bring in innovations in their service delivery approach to build a client base.

With no previous customer success stories, they tried learning and subsequently offering various skills and services on smaller projects. This turned out to be the right move, as some of their earliest clients became their largest customers and long-term associates. From here, they learned that they must focus on customer retention and provide them with value and care.

Utilize strategic partnerships

The importance of customer centricity