OfficeYes.com is a 6-month old company which was established in May 2012. We have a catalogue of around 3000 products, spread across various categories including office furniture, stationery and customized gifting products, providing a one-stop-shop for customers. The achievements of the company have been vast and we have grown dramatically in size: in October we tripled revenue and now we are an annualized multimillion dollar company.

Challenges faced while building Office Yes

Any company can’t function without a team, thus I would like to talk about my team and the people involved in shaping it, to what it is today. The company has grown immensely with the help of an enthusiastic team and Co- Founder Arvind Sivdas.

Holding an MBA from Oxford University, I started my career as a consultant at a hedge fund and later I lead an investment banking team in Evalueserve, based in London. Before establishing ‘OfficeYes.com’, I worked at a VC firm called Rocket internet where I was the director.

Arvind Sivdas was at McKinsey and Company as a management consultant earlier. He holds an MBA from IIM Kolkata and an engineering degree from IIT Madras. Both of us share our roles; I run the marketing and technology function and he leads the operations and sourcing function. Within the team there are many strong individuals who are credible for the growth of the company. For example, our Head of Technology was the key person for Jeevansathi.com and 99 acres. Another member worked for Microsoft and Yahoo! In marketing we are specialized with professionals who have work experience in top agencies. At OfficeYes.com talent is a big priority. On Arvind’s side, we have an IIM Lucknow graduate who heads operations. In terms of head count we have around 70- 75 people and I want our company to grow at a very strong pace.

Speaking of difficulties I would say that, it is critical to note that we are the single largest company in B2B e-commerce industry in India. There are numerous B2C e-commerce companies in India, while there is not much of B2B e-commerce and we are the largest. Thus we are breaking new ground and this is a big challenge.

Thoughts relating to entrepreneurship

Siddharth Nambiar
Founder

I believe that entrepreneurship is a state of mind. I have few thoughts on it, which are:

1. Firstly, I feel that you should be an entrepreneur at heart; you can’t turn it on or off.  “At heart” means, you should be intellectually curious, filled with high energy and intrinsically a sales person, to sell ideas. You should have a passion for your product or service. This helps to convince and ultimately sell your idea.
2. Experiment: Secondly, you have to have high interest and should learn to experiment.

Lastly, you should know how to run a startup.

Best Company according to you

I personally admire three companies; Google, General Electric (GE) and IBM.I feel that Google is a great company with a great mission statement that any company would look upto. General Electric produces leaders, as it is a people factory and a place for learning. As I am keen on analytics and data, I look upto IBM as global leader for their power data.

Advice to budding entrepreneurs
I feel that in the current day the importance of genuine interest in your field of work is of paramount importance. Genuine interest will lead to passion, which leads to success.