WHAT THEY DO: Hire-to-Retire human resources software delivered off the cloud in the software as a service model

FOUNDED IN : Product launched in November 2011

SEED CAPITAL: ̀ 1 crore

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: Not disclosed

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: ̀ 6 crore

USP: Innovation to keep costs low. Focus on generating customer revenues

Sumeet Kapur’s first startup, a venture capital-backed customer relationship management solutions firm, went through a tough time during the dot com bubble burst in 2000. “The burn rate was high, even if you applied brakes, you were burning,” said Kapur, 50, who had to start again from scratch and started to work on the human re-sources software product in 2006. With funding being scarce, bootstrapping became a necessity for him. But it ena-bled the product to evolve based on the feedback from the customers. “It would have been a waterfall if I had raised the capital and built the product in one shot,” says Kapur. “I didn’t want to ex-periment with investor money. “Unlike his first venture, EmployWise was also able to whether the economic meltdown of 2008 as it was not dependent on ven-ture capital. The EmployWise product is now being used by 50,000 employees across various sectors including tech-nology, retail and manufacturing. But Kapur had to apply extra effort to build the firm due to which he was not able to spend more time with his family. “But I have an extremely supportive family,” said Kapur who likes taking his dog for a long walk every morning.

FOUNDER : Sumeet Kapur

EmployWise

WHAT THEY DO:Simplest way to electronically sign documents from your phone and tablet

FOUNDED IN : 2010

SEED CAPITAL : `10 lakh (personal savings)

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: ̀ 2.5 crore

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: Not disclosed

USP: Bootstrapping enabled to empathise with problem than the solution, having razor sharp focus, making it dead simple to enable people sign electronically in 60 seconds.

In the summer of 2009 when Sunil Patro visited his fiance in Mexico, he received an offer letter from a US-based company. Being in a remote location near Riviera Maya, Patro, 35, lost vacation time look-ing for a printer and a fax to return docu-ments that required his signature over email. This experience gave birth to the idea of creating an electronic signature app that would enable anyone to sign and send documents from the phone. After six months he founded ‘SignEasy’ by combining bootstrapping with travel during a backpacking trip to Latin America. The product development hap-pened in Coimbatore with the help of an engineer, his fiance handled the cus-tomer support from Mexico and he con-ceptualised the product while travelling through Latin America. “I got enough freedom to shape my own entrepreneur-ial journey and build the product with my own pace and money,” said Patro, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur. His product has now got around 2.5 million down-loads in 155 countries. The challenge that the startup, which has operations in the United States and Bangalore, faced due to bootstrapping is that it was harder to attract talent in the beginning.

FOUNDER : Sunil Patro

SignEasy

The Lone Rangers

FOUNDER : Bhanu ChopraRateGain

Bhanu Chopra drives a white Porsche Panamera to his office in Noida. That is, when he is not jetting around the world meeting customers and drum-ming up support for the proposed public issue of shares at his enterprise software firm RateGain. Although Chopra can seem like the archetypal technology entrepreneur riding high on risk capital funding, the 38-year-old entrepreneur has not raised a single rupee in venture capital. The decade-old company, which sells software for the hospitality and travel industries in 120 countries, is aiming for a share sale on Nasdaq that could value it at around ̀ 6,000 crore. Chopra, who is the largest stakeholder, has also given stock options to several of his 350 employees.“I can’t pretend to be frugal. I drive a nice car, travel business class and am still bootstrapped,” said Chopra, who pays senior executives at his firm an average salary of about ̀ 1 crore per an-num. When starting up has become synonymous

with raising copious amounts of capital, contrar-ians like Chopra and ZohoCorporation’s founder Sridhar Vembu are emerging as torchbearers of the bootstrapped approach. Vembu’s Zoho, with over $100 million (`600 crore) in revenue, competes against the likes of Microsoft in the enterprise software market. “Bootstrapping embraces the no-tion that to the extent that the future is shaped by human action, it is not much use trying to predict it,” said Saras D Sarasvathy, professor of entrepre-neurship at University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Around 73% of software product companies in India are bootstrapped, according to software product think tank iSpirt.The grouping has launched an initiative ‘BootUpIndia’ to recognise India’s best boot-strapped startups that will subsequently be mentored by industry peers. ET profiles eight boot-strapped startups which have the potential to be the next big winners.

A majority of software product companies in India are being built without help from venture capitalists according to industry thinktank, iSpirt which is stepping up to boost

this brigade, find Peerzada Abrar, Krithika Krishnamurthy and Malavika Murali

What It MeansBootstrapping - When an entrepre-neur uses personal finances or revenues to build a company.

Bootstrapping traces its origin back to 19th century United States, to the phrase “pull oneself over a fence by one’s bootstraps”, to mean an absurdly impossible action

More freedom to take quick decisions

Build the company at one’s own pace and money

Become more customer-focused, and efficient in business

Use time to build business than chasing investors

Adv

antages

Disadv

antages

Competitors with better financial standing can push bootstrapped firms out

Cannot scale as quickly as a funded company

Marketing and hiring talent is difficult

No access to mentoringand network of venture capitalists

Famous bootstrapped

companies overseas

AppleDellHewlett-PackardMicrosoft

India’s most famous bootstrapped companiesZoho

RateGain

Kayako

FusionCharts

VWO

BrowserStack

Cosmic Circuits

HappyFox

51% 55%of the entrepreneurs between age of 31-40 years (Data by iSpirt)

of the founders bring in the engineering expertise

70%startups treat SMB customers as strategic

57%of the start-ups see average deal size of more than ̀ 50 lakhs

73%of software product companies in India are bootstrapped

Sharad Sharma, cofounder, iSpirt

Customer engagement was a new term for a large number of mom and pop shops - until Anand Krushnan jumped in to sell software to small shops and bring back those customers that crossed their threshold.

Since early 2013, the team of 150 employees has covered 1,500 shops across India and has been frugal in doing so. By working out of his ex-employers office, called Tangence, Krushnan has eliminated all costs related to infrastructure.

Bootstrapped entrepreneurs have it worse than funded ones is a notion that Krushnan disagrees with.

“Whatever you do, you can’t be stressed. I play badminton every day, and work for 12 hours a day. That’s how it has always been,” said Krushnan, 39 a graduate of at GM Institute of Technology, Chitradurga.

Bangalore-based Inquirly Technologies, started up by Anjan Choudhary and his wife, bootstrapped with ̀ 92 lakh and fol-lows a business to business model. The 2013 startup sells software to restaurants, edu-cational institutions and other small and medium enterprises.

It provides a tablet-based interaction software charging monthly and quarterly subscriptions starting from ̀ 6,000 upwards and is looking to get onto the global plat-form by early next March, generating a revenue of ̀ 61 lakh.

A business needs to achieve certain trac-tion before seeking for investors, said Choudhary, who pooled in his paychecks during his stint at Accenture to startup and is targeting a revenue of ̀ 6 crore by tapping into global markets early next March.

“Anyone can use the product: from a ‘pan-walah’ to a ‘planewalah’,” said Choudhary, an alumnus of Bangalore University.

WHAT THEY DO: Sells customer-engagement and interaction software for small and medium businesses

FOUNDED IN : 2013

SEED CAPITAL: Around `92 lakh (through paychecks while working at Accenture)

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: Around ̀ 61 lakh

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: ̀ 6 crore

USP: Using low-cost technology to bring efficiency into greenfield industries like education and food management

WHAT THEY DO:Helps small retail outlets acquire and retain customers

FOUNDED IN : 2013

SEED CAPITAL: Undisclosed

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: `3 crore

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: Undisclosed

USP: Shifts the focus back on offline advertising

FOUNDER : Anand Krushnan

FOUNDER : Anjan Choudhary

Exclusife Inquirly TechnologiesBootstrapped

firms have a different pathway to growth/IPO and need to be nurtured

rather than be treated as an aberration

Started by Ankit Jain and his brother, VoiceTree Technologies is a Delhi-based startup that pro-vides virtual software as a service-based call man-agement system to small and medium businesses. Started up in 2010 with a seed capital of ̀ 2 lakh, the duo started out in a three-bedroom apartment.

The duo was forced to bootstrap after being

turned down by investors.“In retrospect, it gave us

time to innovate and work on our product at our own pace,” said Jain, CEO, whose company is cur-rently chasing a revenue run rate of ̀ 4 crore and is looking to take its product to global markets in the next four months and increase revenue growth by 400% in the upcoming fiscal.

Goa-based PowerStores Ecommerce offers users software where they can set up their own online website or store by regis-tering themselves.

The decision to bootstrap was one out of choice, said Indrajit Chowdhury, CTO of the 2011-registered compa-ny, who started up with CEO Cory York. The decision to bootstrap was one out of choice. The process is simi-

lar to registering on Gmail, where users just need to provide basic details.

With subscriptions start-ing at ̀ 7,000 a month, the startup has amassed over 800 customers in six months. It will focus on lo-cal markets in the coming months. The startup did not disclose the revenue figures, but is looking to expand its service to the Asian market.

WHAT THEY DO: Provides an end-to-end call management system through SaaS called MyOperator to small and medium businesses

FOUNDED IN : 2010

SEED CAPITAL: `2 lakh

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: `4 crore

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: Looking at larger than 400% revenue growth

USP: Bootstrapping enabled consistent innovation of the product

WHAT THEY DO: Helps SMBs advertise on non-traditional media

FOUNDED IN : 2012

SEED CAPITAL: ̀ 3 lakh

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: ̀ 4 crore

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: ̀ 8-10 crore

USP: Help fill a gap in the advertising industry

Everyone wants to adver-tise but not everyone can afford it. Media Ant was born to help startups and SMBs showcase ads in newer and cost-effective media outlets.

“But people were not able to relate to the idea,” said Mukesh Agrawal, who started operations out of his balcony in September 2012.

Now, the company has identified 5,000 media op-tions such as on credit card bills, washrooms and lug-gage tags for showcasing

ads. For the first year, the company used a Wordpress blog as their official web-site, and they still don’t own a printer at office.

“With bootstrapping, life didn’t change much. It was my mindset that did,” said Agrawal. “It’s not that I can’t afford cer-tain things like a printer, it is about spending for what you absolutely need,” said Agrawal, 29, who said the company is now beginning to attract investor atten-tion.

WHAT THEY DO: Helps small builders find material at wholesale prices

FOUNDED IN : 2014

SEED CAPITAL: ̀ 1 lakh

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: ̀ 1 crore

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: ̀ 5 crore

USP: Help builders procure materials at lesser prices

Vinit Bhansali has boot-strapped successfully through all this three ven-tures, and how.

ApnaStock, his third ven-ture, helps small builders procure construction ma-terials at wholesale prices, and has done sales of ̀ 1crore since this January.

Despite running an ecommerce venture, which is traditionally known for guzzling money, ApnaStock has not spent a penny on Google or Facebook ads, let alone

traditional media and closed a fifth of his deals on WhatsApp, and the rest through word-of-mouth publicity. “No one wants to remain bootstrapped forever. But quite often we lust after mentoring and networking, not money,” said 34-year-old CEO Vinit Bhansali. The company has signed 70 builders in Bangalore and said he wants the Bangalore-based company to reach a critical mass before seeking addi-tional capital.

WHAT THEY DO: Allows users to set up their own ecommerce store or website through a simple registration, similar to a Gmail registration

FOUNDED IN : Registered in 2011, but came out with the service in 2013

SEED CAPITAL : ̀ 20 lakh

REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2014: Undisclosed

TARGET REVENUE FOR FISCAL 2015: Undisclosed

USP: Helps small businesses gain online presence

FOUNDER : Vinit Bhansali

ApnaStockFOUNDER : Mukesh Agrawal

Media Ant PowerStores EcommerceFOUNDER : Indrajit Chowdhury

FOUNDER : Ankit Jain

VoiceTree Technologies

14�THE ECONOMIC TIMES | BANGALORE | FRIDAY | 3 OCTOBER 2014Power of Ideas