Ever wondered who are more successful, first generation entrepreneurs or second generation entrepreneurs? The jury is still out on this one, but the story of first generation entrepreneurs definitely makes for a more exciting read. One such interesting tale is about Murali Kakarla, who fought against all odds and built a successful company, Innobox, from the ground up. Known for innovating in the space of wireless networking, computer vision and media streaming, Kakarla's venture that had a rather humble beginning is today spear heading the industry. Having overcome a plethora of challenges that every first generation entrepreneur faces, Kakarla's vision as an entrepreneur, and his go-getter attitude as a technocrat, has helped the company clock in revenue of over Rs.5 crore in 2013-14. The fast growing company is poised to leverage its position, in terms of capital and technology development, to stay ahead on the development curve.

The strong foundation of the company lies in Kakarla's decade long experience of leading and managing teams that developed and built some of the most cutting edge portable media products with various leading semiconductor companies. Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, he identified that the near future would see a convergence of various specialty streams like networking, wireless, multimedia and portable devices. Along with a group of like-minded colleagues he set out to start Innobox, a company that provides computer vision and media products and offers a wide range of solutions and services that address the ever increasing demands of the industry, for a dominant presence in networking, wireless, computer vision, cloud computing, embedded systems and multimedia.

Overcoming Hurdles

However, Innobox's journey from an idea to a successful venture has not been bereft of challenges. As first generation of entrepreneurs who only had work experience to back them up, it was not easy to convince clients and industry veterans alike.The team faced a tough time to get into the entrepreneur mode and win clients over. The company was in a very specialized domain and its team of engineers was skilled and oriented to product development. "It took a lot of my persuasive skills to engage potential clients in the U.S. and in India, and we had to do pilot programs before we could sign up long-term clients," explains Murali Kakarla, Founder & CEO, Innobox.

Arranging finance was another task.However, the team received generous support from friends and families as they had complete faith in the team's ideas and vision. They also had ample guidance from some successful entrepreneurs that the team had worked with in the past.
Since, the company was targeting a space that was still evolving, and was highly specialized and narrow in terms of expertise it was not easy to convince the professionals, the 'marquee' and 'specialists' in the industry to join Innobox.