Is this the first company that you have started, and what drove you towards it?
After working as a volunteer for 4 years in college on various community projects, I was convinced that large scale development can only be achieved if the activity does not depend on grants and charity.
With computers, connectivity and skilled people jobs can move from one part of the world to another seamlessly. To begin with can simple data intensive jobs be done by well trained rural youth? That was the philosophy behind the beginning of DesiCrew.
How did you finance your start-up operations and how long did it take for the company to become self-sustainable?
I was lucky to get support from the infoDev funded Rural Technology and Business Incubator located at IIT Madras, Chennai, India. Apart from this DesiCrew also raised money from vendors and I chipped in with my personal savings and earnings.
The company has just completed one year of operation and we hope to becoming self-sustainable by the end of our second year of operation.
"Our services are unique in the communities we are active in because they bring knowledge based jobs to the villages. Thus young people, especially girls, do not have to travel out of their hometown to find jobs in urban areas and cities."
What are your major products and services and how are they unique? What is your competition?
DesiCrew offers low-end back office services to the financial companies, publishers and corporate. The services include digitization, data entry, localization, transcription in Indian languages, web search, mailing list compilations amongst other.
Our services are unique in the communities we are active in because they bring knowledge based jobs to the villages. Thus young people, especially girls, do not have to travel out of their hometown to find jobs in urban areas and cities.
How did you first launch the product?
We set up small offices in each community and trained our man power on basic skills as well as soft skills to meet the demands from clients. Basic skills include computer literacy with a strong focus on keyboard skills, use of the internet and web based tools. Soft skills training brushes up communication skills, reporting to managers and team building.
How do you measure the success of the company?
In addition to the revenues and profit of the company, DesiCrew measures it success by looking at the increase in household income and standard of living of all our employees.
Who are your clients and how many do you have? How are you focusing on expanding your user community?
DesiCrew serves 7 customers on an ongoing basis. These are mostly financial services companies and publishers. DesiCrew also offers services to corporate clients. Due to reasons of confidentially names of most clients cannot be disclosed.
DesiCrew has 2 user communities – the clients who provide projects and the rural youth who work on these projects. The strategy to expand the client base is to focus on quality and timely delivery. On the other hand for the rural youth, the retention and expansion plans include providing a career path in addition to the addition incomes. We are expanding the number of rural youth working for us by collarborating with the district
Are you planning to patent your product and do you see any obstacles in doing so?
Not planning to patent the business model or the services developed.
What was the biggest challenge in starting an innovative business in your country and how did you overcome that?
Today India has a number of opportunities for young people who prefer joining big organization for the brand and higher salaries. Attracting and retention of talent is the biggest challenge. Also being in a services business, people are the back-bone of DesiCrew.
As veterans in the industry put it, you cannot overcome this problem, but only learn to deal with it. However by creating a positive work environment, showing how start-up companies present good growth option for individuals and empowering people with responsibility helps in retaining talent. The strong social motivation behind DesiCrew also helps keep people together in the team. Our attrition rate is less than 2% over the last one year.
Who are the shareholders in your company?
The incubator holds shares apart from my personal shareholding.
How have you benefited from business incubation?
The incubator has provided help in several ways. First of all, we had a physical space for running an office and were able to use the office infrastructure, such as Internet, telephone, etc to jump start and maintain our operations. Having such infrastructure and office space provided overall company credibility, and a place to meet clients and demonstrate our work.
The incubator also provided us with a seed fund for getting started with the business. A very important benefit was the network of like-minded entrepreneurs that we were able to network with not only in the incubator, but even virtually worldwide, through the incubator's contact network. This provided us with a valuable peer group to learn and share lessons and to understand how to grow a company, especially from other start-ups in the areas.
As a young entrepreneur in my first business, the business incubation support framework helped to retain the focus on talking to the customer and building strong operations.
Do you have some specific lessons that you know now and wish you would have known when you started your business, and which you would like to share with fellow entrepreneurs
I would like to share 2 things:
- Focus on the market: The real money in the company is from the customer, not from the funder or supporter. That is the money you need to chase. Listen to the market to build a strong business.
- Importance of teams: The team is the reason the organization grows. One need to work with people and delegate the tasks you have mastered. In times of crises protect you team and stand up for them
Do you feel that you had the necessary advisory and support network when you started your company?
With the help of the incubator and from my personal network, a strong advisory network was formed for DesiCrew over a period of time. The demands of the organization keep changing and more people are added to the network as and when required. Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala has been the chief mentor for DesiCrew.
What is your message to funders/supporters and what is your message to the users of your product?
Funders and supporters should actively use the products and services of the incubate companies as far as possible. They should be active participants in growing the business in the first few years and ask the right questions. This will build the confidence of the organization and lead them to the right direction.
For more information about Desicrew, please visit their website.
For more information about the TeNet Business Incubator, please visit their profile in the Global Network Directory.