Some of the ERP systems of which we were a part of earlier were configurable to a little extent, customizable to an extent more, the result was that the resealable opportunity was only limited to the similar vertical but again with customization needs.
While some others were fully tailor made as per order the cost and the maintenance part became costly and cumbersome for the client, and for us the resealable opportunities were almost zero.
Coming with the baggage of already implemented, seen, observed solutions for an enterprise, typically a manufacturing, service or trading industry. It has been difficult to see how an application we wanted to create would compete with existing vendors leave alone stand apart.
On careful thinking we observed that most of the customization which we did were mainly related to adding or removing few screens, or adding or removing certain fields in the screen or related to the work/data flow and validations.
The idea of creating a system which was in control of the user, in order to enable him to create his own screens, set up validations, data flow rules, user controls came to me in the year 2007. It though looked difficult to execute, but I have always believed what you can dream you can build. However, when I presented the idea to our CTO in the year 2008 ( i was working as an employee at that time), it was termed as too heavy a system to build and was rejected as unfeasible by him.
Though the idea was rejected by my then employers, it was always at the back of my mind as an exciting project. I wanted to try to create this system and see what happened next.
God willing, I could not put into execution the project as working as an employee in a top heavy company, there was too little a time to spend on personal activities. But as God wills, there came a time when I had to leave the job and make my re-entry as an entrepreneur.
The new phase started with a bang, and soon went bust, almost. I realized that the promises on the way of being an entrepreneur are big, but are only kept for those who walk the path to the end.
Sometime during that period I received an e-mail from Economic Times – power of Ideas, and while browsing the links available I came across the name ALOK KEJRIWAL and RODINHOOD. Reading the stories and blogs on it maybe helped. I understood that quitting is not an option, and asking for help to survive is the last thing to do, maybe to grow, but not to survive.
I started work on the system and before I realized the system was ready. As a test phase or an exercise similar to beta release and testing, we released the system in the market. We have been so far slow on marketing and have acquired 10 projects mostly from friends and relatives, and to our great relief and utmost satisfaction, our baby is live and healthy.
We knew that our achievement cannot be discounted for the fact that our initial projects were from people we knew, as they all are serious businessmen and were using our system for their day to day book keeping, AR, AP and MIS. And they would have discarded our system if any drawbacks or problems were found in the system.
It also soon became apparent that our decision to release an half baked product was good business sense. Our users demanded more features, which were always given with a smile. The end result – our product is more ready and feature rich then ever, and the clients are happy to see that their wish is our command.
Our next horizons are the enterprises which have an active base of ERP users in the range of 25-200 and multiple locations.
Now I can proudly convey to my ex employer, a good man at heart, whom I have always seen as and have addressed though not directly, as Big Boss, that we are truly on our way to create an Indian equivalent to SAP, at-least in terms of configurable ability if not scale, a dream which he harbors I think till now.
With our company philosophy “If few hours of our efforts can help the users of our ERP everyday, go ahead and do it.”, and our commitment to excel in whatever we do, we know we can draw good talent to work with us and share the excitements of the journey.
Our journey has started and the path seems clear. We are willing, we are able, we will go through. God willing.
Jai Shree Krishna.
