1. Brief introduction of the company

Thinking Hut is a software start-up that believes in changing the world leveraging technology. The company was started by a bunch of experienced leaders from a Tier I Indian IT company in late 2010. The founders have experience across various functions viz. sales, account management, delivery, product development, consulting, quality & processes & relationship management. Thinking Hut does a range of activities – we consult on healthcare & logistics, have invested in IP in the Healthcare space and provide software services, mainly to start-ups.

2. Please define the market landscape that you cater to.

Thinking Hut caters to following cross section of market –

• Consulting – Healthcare, Logistics in India and US
• Services – New age technologies including cloud based deployment, designed for start-ups in developed markets
• Childcare portal – meant for young, tech savvy parents of young children in India (http://www.achhabachha.com)

Uday
Founder and CEO

3. What are you Product/ Solution offerings & Value Proposition to clients?

We have an offering branded catStart. We know what start-ups needs and look for. Funded or not, typically start-ups have small teams and tight budgets. They look for more than just development services. They need someone who understands them, can walk with them, can speak to and can provide high value services at reasonable price. We provide development capabilities and much more to the start-ups at the price of development. This is possible because of the high leadership to developer ratio that we have in the company. We align our billing cycles with the start-ups funding cycles. We believe we know how to work with start-ups.

4. What are the differentiating points of your product/ solution/ services against that of the competition?

• Product – The childcare product that we are working on is pretty unique. There is a big whitespace as far as the Indian market is concerned. We do have some resources on the web but they are not comprehensive, integrated and interactive the way we have envisaged it. It’s in the final stages of development.
  
   
• catStart – It’s the offering targeted to start-ups. We know what start-ups needs and look for. Funded or not, typically start-ups have small teams and tight budgets. They look for more than just development services. They need someone who understand them, can walk with them, can speak to and can provide high value services at reasonable price. We provide development capabilities and much more to the start-ups at the price of development. This is possible because of the high leadership to developer ratio that we have in the company. We align our billing cycles with the start-ups funding cycles. We believe we know how to work with start-ups.

5. Can you provide examples of your clients and how they have benefitted from your offerings?

We are working with a host of clients and have been able to help many of them in a significant way.We are working with a start-up called groMONEY which brings together social media and portfolio management in a unique way. We have not only developed the portal for them, we have ideated for them and even “lent” our CTO.

Hitachi Consulting was working on healthcare based product for a client of theirs in the US. We were able to bring in the much required domain capabilities through one of our directors because of his extensive exposure to the healthcare sector.

Anzu needed a web-based e-Commerce platform to compliment the iOS based app that they had already developed. We worked closely with their internal team to build the e-Commerce platform

Likeit.com needed extensive capabilities on Google App Engine which are not easy to come by. We have been able to place a team of developers for rapid development. This was possible because our own product is developed on the same platform. We have been able to cross-staff the resources effectively.

6. In the segment that you address, what are some of the trends you see in the market landscape and how are your offerings geared towards addressing those trends?

Services - We mainly work with start-ups in the developed economies. Considering the macro-economic environment, the funding is not easy to come by. The start-ups need something that already has good amount of traffic to be able to attract the right kind of investment. Simply put, zero to five is more critical and challenging than five to hundred. We enter during zero to five level and hence are able to add value.

Product – Today’s parents are savvier and more aware. They want to do more for their children. They are short on time and would love if technology comes to rescue. In achhabachha.com, we have the solution for such parents of young children. It provides a set of tools and resources that help the young parents to track and monitor the health of their young ones.

7. Can you describe Competition? How intense is it and how uniquely you are positioned?

We are too small to worry about competition right now. All the factors – macro-economic, micro-economic and other players are immaterial considering the space that we play in and the size we have. We are playing chess in a football ground!

8. Can you elaborate on your Organizational Culture, Employee programs, Innovations etc?

We believe in an environment where everyone is equal. We encourage ideas, discussion and debate… We have roles and designations but they don’t come in the way of interaction and communication. We have a well-defined employee policy which puts a lot of stress on equality. Everyone makes their own tea, including the founding members of the company.

There are various ways in which we encourage performance. We have all the right things in place for our employees to perform well including the benefits policy. We have an initiative called Wii which looks after employee requirements (Wii stands for workplace improvement initiative).

We have awards like employee of the month, TechWiz and MVP in place to recognize stellar performance.

One unique policy we follow is mid-term salary revision. We revise the salary of deserving employees at any point of the year. We do not wait for a particular date. The revision could be upward or downward.

We also encourage the employee, who are not able to fit-in, to move on.

9. What are you Growth Plans?

Our intent is to grow in terms of stature and capability rather than numbers. We will always remain a small, boutique shop. We want to be sought after by the client rather than the other way round. We are long way from that but we would get there. I believe we are taking the right steps in the right direction for the same.

10. What are your Go-to-market Plans/ Global Strategy?

Product (http://www.achhabachha.com) is meant for Indian parents. While it’s targeted to the Indian market, the functionality is rich enough to cater other markets as well. We are planning for an e-launch in this quarter. A pan-India marketing plan is being worked on as we speak.

Services are targeted towards the English speaking developed market. The offerings, especially catStart, are designed for the said market. We depend on a sales team and global network to reach out to the prospects.

11. Current Status: No. of Employees, Revenue, Investors, Investment opportunity

            Employees – 30+

            Investors – Founder directors

12. Road Ahead: What are the challenges you foresee and how is the company geared to address those challenges?

We want to quickly scale up to 100 and then focus on building our niche which is around our capability to work with start-ups. Our unhindered focus is the only thing required right now to meet our goal.