The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.
March - 2008 - issue > STARTUP CITY
SLOKA TELECOM
Jayakishore Bayadi
There was a point of time when founder of the Sloka, Sujai Karampuri ran out of cash for about one year. He went back to his brother, mother, father and his uncle who helped him with their savings and possessions, just to keep the show on. Karampuri did this for more than six months. He wanted about six million dollars for his venture. Karampuri went to more than six VCs requesting to fund his venture. But no one agreed.
However, an investor who finally agreed to fund, wanted Karampuri to slash the budget. After many negotiations it came down to three millions; then to two. But grippingly, Sloka team was able to develop its niche product within one million.
Sloka faced the obvious challenges boldly since its inception. Finally, now, company runs its operation through revenues. Sloka Telecom made its first deployment to power France’s first 5.8MHz WiMax network in the town of Saint Medard en Jalles. Incidentally, it was the first WiMAX base station in France, and for the Sloka team it was surprising.
DIFFERENTIATOR
The real differentiation of Sloka is the sum of all the technological factors below. However, cost effectiveness is the key factor. The Sloka team brainstormed heavily to achieve cost effectiveness through many innovations in the areas of product development like architecture of the product, software design, hardware design, mechanical design, thermal analysis etc., some of which are patented.
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