Completed 4 years of Shapia’s operations in December’12 – The Mind Journey.

Completed 4 years of Shapia’s operations in December’12 – The Mind Journey. 

Was it a smooth ride?

O boy, mind it. If you have ever been to an amusement park, where you take up the ride, which tilts your body upside down, then I got to tell you this is a very similar experience. Good part in these rides is that you are in this state for couple of minutes, but in business you are in this state for months together. In fact, you learn to live with your state of being in an upside down position, with all the blood and adrenalin rushing to your mind all the time….

What were we primarily doing in the last 4 years?

We were just doing 2 things – trying to survive and finding room to innovate. Most of the businesses fail because they do not understand this basic, that you need to survive to keep innovating. We have to incessantly do long term and short term strategizing. If your strategy is too long term oriented, you will not be able to mobilize enough fund to survive in the short term; and if you are too short term focused, you will always remain a small player, with just enough to survive. Is there a right balance between sustenance and innovation. Frankly, I don’t have an answer. This is something which the business needs to evolve and understand at all point of time….

Do you really need huge funds to start your venture?

Cut the crap. Leave the investors and the excuses aside. You don’t need a million dollars to start. All you need to have is the passion and the willingness to be perseverant all the time. There are lots of businesses, who have been able to make it big, with zero investment. I started with zero bank balance…..

How to keep the cash flow always flowing?

It is very important to keep your business cash funded all the time. Remember, cash is king. Cash flow is the crux of business. It does not matter, whether this cash is coming from your customer, loan – short term/long term, investors etc. You should always have ample funds to pay off your staffs salary and manage your operations. The moment you see there is a gap, go all out in the market and start mobilizing funds. All those who will fund you, is looking at the minimum amount balance in your bank account. Remember, there are myriad ways of raising fund from the market, and the best source of funding is “Customer’s Money”……

Did our business model evolve?

Those who say that they had everything clear in their business plan, and they have had been able to follow and pursue their business goals, as per their business plan;  are either lying or they don’t know how to do business. Business keeps evolving, keeps changing. It is very important to keep observing your business like a hawk, and identifying all the major revenue generating areas, and optimizing your business strategy all along the process of running your business. Though our vision remains the same, but our business model evolved to nearly 50% to what we had envisaged earlier. We have moved on from a pure play web model to cloud, to mobile, to enterprise and to a product model and to a lot more exciting things we are coming up with…..

How long does it take to build a successful business?

Those who say that business can be built in 2 to 3 years, are just joking or are but, rather naïve. Business takes minimum of 5 to 7 years to be successful. Rome was not built in a day, and so it is the same with business as well….

What is the most important aspect of creating a successful business?

If you ask me, the one thing that is going to define the success quotient – its got to be the quality of “Persistence”. You got to be a maverick optimist, and belief that your business is going to be a success; and you need to be persistent with it. It does require a lot of patience, tons of perseverance and a gargantuan belief on yourself and your ideas. I know all these words sounds like a motivational jargon, but trust me, “Persistence” and “Perseverance” is what is going to be a big difference. Failures will be there, it will always be there – so what? Let it be. That should not deter you to give up. We need to forget these failures, and quickly come out of it ( “quickly” is emphasized here, as we cannot keep sulking about it ), and move on with the next set of strategically defined steps…..

Do you need to know it all?

Yes. It is a continuous learning process. You need to know about all the business processes be it marketing, sales, execution, resource management, finance & accounts etc. In business, when we say “ you are jack of all trades and master of none”, it is taken as a compliment. In fact, you need to have high level overview about all the business processes. You may employ people for various functions or you may outsource some of them, but you definitely need to know what you are delegating our outsourcing. I remember, I, being from the software background did not know ABC of accounting, and when my accounting company told me some accountant jargons and I was kind of lost; I remained awake 2 nights and went through lots of books on accounting, and Yes, right now I am jack of accounting, though not a master in it….

Delegate or do it myself?

This is one of the biggest dilemma, which every Entrepreneur faces – whether to delegate or do it yourself. We know for certain things we are the best and nobody else can do it better. We need to know that we all have just 24 hours in a day. We cannot be doing everything on our own. We got to learn to let go of things and delegate. We may not always get things done as per our expectations; but we need to get this into practice. This is one of the reasons, why many startups fail to scale up as fast as they should or could have done……

What was my biggest mind dilemma?

My mind has always been working on creating business on conglomerate model. Time and again, I was tempted to do lot of things at a time. So, my biggest challenge with myself, was to keep focused on task in hand, and keep trying to work out ways to innovate within that. Remember, we cannot keep on jumping from one business model to another, just because we find something else more exciting than what we are doing. Definitely, vision of building one of the biggest conglomerate business is still there, and it will always be, but I have learnt to or rather I should say, coerced by mind, to take it as a more gradual evolving process…..

Was my spiritual beliefs of any help?

Answer is Yes and No. Answer is Yes, because if it was not for my spiritual faith, we would not have been still sustaining, surviving, growing and innovating. The answer is No, because Spirituality also does not have some of the answers related to the material connotations. Ask Buddha, why he had to leave his family to attain Spiritual Enlightenment…..

Thanks to all those who were part of this journey. Special thanks to Piya, my wife, for just being there, all the time, every time…. 

N.B.:

Shapia Software is a leading software company based out of Bangalore, providing web solutions, cloud based product development, industry specific ERP solutions, Mobility solutions. We are coming up with a series of our cloud and ERP based products. We also have separate division handling interning and digital marketing services. For more details, visit https://www.shapia.com .