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Startup > My Story > Suhel Faridi
Suhel Faridi

Suhel Faridi

CEO & MD
GAPS Technologies

Short Description

Entrepreneurship/ leadership and management is not a subject that can be summarized, it’s a fruit that has to be grown within ourselves when you are evolved into these roles, whatever you do make It possible with with your efforts and vision, Try to be odd with solutions and thoughts you will have your own path of success. The most important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is not to try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it. No one talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is, business is not a financial rocket science which I learned but it's about trading.

Brief about company, offerings and foundation of the company

GAPS is a Junction of highly accomplished professionals and veterans from IT & Non-IT firms and specializes in combining expertise, strategy and cutting-edge technology into varied businesses. Our 

Skilled team represents one of the leading resources for innovative and sophisticated web-based solutions, Custom Made ERP's and CRM Solutions in the market. We believe in delivering the best of 

Knowledge and experience to our esteemed customers and that too, in minimal time and cost. Tagged as a premier CRM Solution Provider in India, GAPS provides state-of-the-art technology to a wide 

Array of industries and users across the globe. Our online & offline solutions are driven to ease the access of solutions anywhere in the world. GAPS offers unique and comprehensive solutions for 

Technical Support Centers, Call Centers, Manufacturing Units, Media, Broadcasting, Cable TV, Pay TV, MSO etc. We started our operations with 4 founding members and a 120 Sq ft. of office space in 

2010, We are now more than 20 Team mates with 3500 Sq. Ft. of well furnished office space in Software Technology Parks of India, We are one of the fastest growing company in Jodhpur and Rajasthan. 

Risks involved in business and way of addressing

Risk is a the most common term when you start-up your business or run it, we have faced problems on initial stage where we have to provide web solutions with competitive prices as the market is very competitive and you have to prove your costing with deliverables, We dealt with every problem and provided out of the box solutions to our customer which helped ous getting a good name in the 

Market, Our major risk was dealing with CRM giants already in the market doing well with figures; we tried to develop a robust solution which helped business owners to run their tech support 

Operations with unmatched features introduced first time in CRM industry like social pages, games, polls and many more, this helped ous competing with Market leaders, we also faced challenges in 

data security which was taken care by our experts as they have implemented a very high security multi checks on each navigation, copy of data, searching data, looking up customers information and 

Many more it’s kind of a key logger into a CRM system. 

Most critical decision

As we know that it’s very hard to adapt solutions which are new into the market and majorly solutions which are new for industries, After a good research we took a hard step of Introducing a 

Complete CRM system for Managing TV subscribers in a different and easy way, at last we made it possible to Introduce UniCRM the first complete CRM solution for Managing TV subscribers in the globe  With the most interactive features. We developed a CRM solution for Media and broadcasting industry where still we are waiting for the digitalization in every state and city of India, We made our 

approach tough as our CRM solutions are very specific to industry and other CRM market leaders are providing solution which can be used in any segment where they want to manage and support their 

Customers, Developing and introducing out of the box solution helped us getting a good name in the market and this is how our CRM solutions are creating a good impact.

Some of the difficulties faced while building product/ solution

It’s always a tough job to peek into neighbour’s house and write a story of it, it’s same like dealing with industries and workflows which you have never heard or never came across, we faced 

Challenges and difficulties dealing with our CRM solution for Media and broadcasting industry as their technical terms are not familiar and using Google always takes you nowhere, we tried to build 

Up a social network by joining veterans and technical engineers from this industry to our profiles and asking them about their procedures and process of handling subscribers their shared information 

Was thoroughly fabricated to a perfect CRM solution. It’s very hard to manufacture a medicine if you are an engineer. 


Three big lessons/ mistakes encountered while building company

1. Proper Documentation of Customer requirements- Every start-up is in a race to deliver everything to your initial customers and later on they realize that they are simply delivering and 

Delivering, we were also in the same race and found that we are not able to focus and wrap up developments for our multiple customers, later on we started working on specs to be closed before us 

Kick off. This helped ous delivering solution on time and at last generating good revenues on extra requirements

 

2. Project Management- It is said to be the smartest work which helps companies to develop and delivery projects in a standard way, we wanted to be the next bill gates in few months we started 

Taking projects of many types and we were unable to deliver them even working 18hrs daily which mismanaged our project management skills and ended up on no man’s land, we improved our Marketing team And delivery team which lead us to a good management of projects.

 

3. Marketing- Starting up a company in a town may help reducing lots of overhead expenses but it increases the difference between a customer from metro cities and company, we faced challenges in 

Approaching customers and doing marketing in a very old style, later on the results were next to 2% of what we have expected; to overcome of this situation we started building up channel partners 

And distributors which helped out in Marketing, Support and Implementation. 

Different actions if I rebuild my company from scratch all over again

We believe that we have started this company with our efforts of extensive working 18hrs daily with no leaves, if we would have given an opportunity to re-build it we would have definitely approached VC's which would have helped ous getting finance to build up a good team in our initial days and we would have completed our developments quickly, This would have given a good impact on our quick growth. 

Motivation and Drives factor

Our vision motivates the most, we all four carry the same vision and motivation to be the best, We always believe in creating things which are innovative and interactive and new to industry, A team

Of four child hood friends started their journey to be successful entrepreneurs, our knowledge, dedication and vision motivates ous the most. Our customer helps us increasing our motivational 

Factor by appreciating our solutions which gives an impact to their business operations. 

Unique about my way of motivating troops

Team is said to be a powerful word, Motivation is a term which helps building good teams, I believe that there are many ways to motivate your team and that too sometimes don't work, every human has  a quality of self motivation which can be evaluated in doing some tasks, Our team tries to get involve in every activity or development which helps them building confidence which results to great 

Solutions, we try to play some games, music competition which helps them getting closer to the management. We try to build up a family rather than stack of employees struggling with PC's. 

Way of choosing my people

There are many categories of people which come across when you are hiring for different designations, we know that fresher’s are like white-board with good theoretical knowledge and less exposure on live projects and developments, we try to hire more fresher’s as they are willing to learn from us and trying to give their 100% to the company, we search for fresher’s who are good with communication skills and are interactive on a major side, these factors helps fresher’s turning up to a good knowledge base of technologies and frameworks, while hiring experienced team mates we always look for Interactivity, personality, vision and motivational factor rest we know that an experienced team mate has done something previously or we will help him doing, we are very much known for giving platforms to fresher’s to work and learn with us, We always intend to choose Interactive team mates as they try to create a healthy work environment and keep giving ideas in discussion Sessions held at our office.

The challenges and lessons learnt to get first customer

We were referred by our school friend for a web project of the most valuable and top most school in our town, we cracked the deal in our first meeting with the management of that school which took 

ous to heights of happiness, The major challenge was to prove our work and deliver the web project on selected dates with ERP Integration and dual-way synch application, we agreed upon all the 

Customization and integrations they required on a formal note with delivery date, we didn't gather much information about the customizations and did not analyzed the time it will take to develop 

And deliver, Later we were unable to deliver our first project on time and faced problems, this helped us in streamlining our process and later we never faced any similar issues

Experience of reaching out to potential investors

Investors are said to be huge brains with money, we never tried to approach any VC as we were not guided by any financial consultant nor any one of us hold a commerce degree, We think we have missed a major part.

My role at different dimensions as the company evolved

When you start with nothing with only few team mates you are left with no specific work, I have been involved in all major operations in the company, I did face many challenges as I left a job and 

started this niche, it was hard for me to adapt many responsibilities from financial and non-financial works, I tried to document projects, solutions which we used to make to keep everything safe, 

started learning accounts from preventing raids and ill-legal activities and transactions, Made templates for financial proposals, Made technical documents for our CRM products, Made some good 

Processes for handling customer and maintaining SLA's. This helped our company to run seamlessly without major issues. Later as we managed funds we introduced departments and new faces to handle 

Set of works and responsibilities.

As a leader how I make sure that I am connecting the right dots

Vision and focus to be a market leader helps you moving towards your path of success, every single project or customer teaches you something new, Failure of projects makes you stronger to overcome 

mistakes and errors made which lead to a failure, Mistakes are very common terms in business, I try to share problems and challenges with my team mates as everyone carry different opinion and 

can be helpful to overcome problems, I try to update myself daily with current affairs which helps me doing good business, Reducing risks and garbing profitable opportunities helps the company 

Growth. I try to engage the right person for the right job as a perfection is always required for a better result.

My thoughts related to entrepreneurship/ leadership and management

Entrepreneurship/ leadership and management is not a subject that can be summarized, it’s a fruit that has to be grown within ourselves when you are evolved into these roles, whatever you do make 

It possible with with your efforts and vision, Try to be odd with solutions and thoughts you will have your own path of success. The most important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is not to try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it. No one talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is, business is not a financial rocket science which I learned but it's about trading. 

Best company I admire globally

Sales Force- A CRM leader in the market, I admire this company as it has always something new to offer, a group of interactive team turned up to a world's leading CRM company and listed amongst most Valuable companies across the globe.

Advice for fellow entrepreneurs

Don’t run after money as its not running, take efforts to be successful, delivery your solutions, build up good customer relationship, work as a team member, be a good project lead rest money will be after you ....Create solutions which makes this world a better place, adapt go green word, donate your extra money to children's which will help this nation as a healthy nation, help poor which will purify your soul, Work with right deeds