G Srinivasan
Short Description
Brief about company, offerings and foundation of the company
embWiSe was founded in April 2004 by me and Mr.Alagu Sankar. embWiSe is an acronym for Embedded Wireless Systems Engineering. As the name suggests, we provide embedded WiFi connectivity software solutions on different hardware/OS platforms for Mobile,CE and other connected devices. An embedded software stack for SDIO interconnect technology,namely,SDIOWorx, WiSe-Supplicant an enterprise security framework conforming to Cisco's CCX specifications for Application Specific Devices and WiSe-Zeroconf , an OS independent Auto IP / Zeroconf stack framework ,complete our product/IP portfolio. These IPs complement or supplement our WiFi connectivity software offerings. As one size doesn't fit all we provide platform customization of our offerings through a value-added NRE services model.
My thoughts related to entrepreneurship/ leadership and management
Most critical decision
The process of ensuring transparency to the customer, Revenue enhancement & Profit Maximization along with Resource Alignment on a daily basis is a tough job by itself, but the most critical decision we had to take was to let go of many pure play embedded services opportunities - unrelated to the technologies that we are focusing on - that came our way, when embWiSe was in its infancy and when it needed cash to bootstrap its product development. It was very tempting to go after those opportunities but a conscious decision was made not to
Motivation and Drives factor
Needless to say, the very idea of our products getting into a tier-I vendors' devices gives all of us at embWiSe ,the greatest motivation. Additionally , my pursuit to Optimize is my key motivation and that desire has translated in our constant search for optimization of our internal business and the product development processes to ensure that embWiSe meet its goal of providing faster and affordable quality solution to customers .
Three big lessons/ mistakes encountered while building company
The key lessons learnt as part of building this company is to identify the ideas that are risky versus the ideas that provide benefit to the organization. We had committed a few mistakes on this front , fortunately for us at a very early stage of embWiSe,hurting us short term. We have matured our process of selection and filtering of these ideas and ensured that the new product ideas that we have chosen are realistic and align with the strategic objectives of the Organization.
Risks involved in business and way of addressing
embWiSe, like all other new startups that are in the cusp of providing Products/Services had the primary risks of Customer Acquisition, Relationship Development & Customer Retention. But along with that we had some unique challenges that arise from talent acquisition in an emerging technology then, which tier -I organizations' India design centers were also seeking. We being a self-funded start-up, needed to make sure that everything that we do can be supported by the revenues and profits that we generate and would grow only as fast as our profits would allow us to. Added to this, we had to face the customer perception of a small company – particularly from India - going under or getting bought over by a competitor and so not preferring to work with us, though we may have something compelling that they can use. To overcome the risks, we had to create better credibility and visibility through technology partnerships and building our products more efficiently. And this has been a continuous process.
The biggest difficulty as in most product development process is to perform the feasibility analysis on the idea or solution conceived. The key part of the feasibility analysis is to ensure that not only will the product meets the target market need but also includes concept testing, forecasting and financial analysis. The key for any new product at embWiSe is to put it through what we call as the “BURP” test - Believability, Realistic, Usefulness & Practicality. And another practical difficulty that we faced was (and still is) with acquiring good talent. When we started, with the initial greenhorn resources available, the product development cycle and schedule were taking a hit and was putting enormous pressure on the revenues and cash flow. Bringing someone upto speed quickly, with the technology that we focused on , was in itself a challenge.
It has been the ability of the organization to understand its gaps and hire the right people to fill the gap. I have to admit that this has been a continuous challenge. We go through an elaborate process of hiring the talent with the right attitude. We at embWiSe believe that it is easy to learn and bridge the gap in one’s technical skills/abilities but if we do not have the right attitude, it is a difficult gap to bridge. Our entire hiring process is focused on identifying talent with the right attitude. We specifically look for people with the “Can Do” attitude.
In the initial days, our only sales and marketing tool was our website. The customers found us through search engines! Our first customer is a feature phone vendor in Far-East – due to the language barriers, the cycle of their evaluation of our first product, price negotiation and agreeing on the legal aspects took a longer time than we would have liked. Subsequently we set-up distributor network in key geographies, which helped in shortening the process.
It has been a humbling and learning experience; I think the key skill that investors are looking for is the ability to provide disruptive innovative solutions for clients but still maintaining focus on scaling. In our case innovation is in our unique ability to reducing the product engineering life cycle time and lower the Total Cost of Ownership of our customers. We have to admit that we came short of expectations of investors in terms of scaling. We are constantly brainstorming on this aspect to build a model by which we can scale up in the next two years.
I am not sure if there are many unique ways of motivating troops, but I think a sense of Mentoring and helping every employee transition through the phase of advancing their skills and becoming a leader in their area/skill is the biggest motivation possible. And as I mentioned earlier, the very thought that each of them contibute to a particular product engineering/development and which when gets embedded in say a leading mobile phone or a digital camera or a printer , is a motivation by itself.
There have been a few like HP,Sony and GE,as I grew up but the company that I admire most is Apple,primarily for the way it has transformed itself in the last decade,their engineering execellence,zeal with which it protects its Intellectual Property and the value it creates for its shareholders.
The key aspect for me is to define criteria for the assessment of projects / ideas and identifying how these criteria will be addressed or assigned. Once that is assigned , providing the responsibility, freedom and the right guidance from time to time for everyone involved in the organization, has been the most effective way. The constant internal brainstorming and deriving the correct methodology have been the error mitigating factors. Inputs on the technology and business model from our partners also go a long way in us planning on a lot of things proactively and executing the plans with minimal error percentage.
If I have to start all over again, I would have invested on bringing senior engineers/managers onboard a little early on,in the venture
I would have a sales /marketing set-up in the Silicon Valley within the first year of starting up, to work in close proximity with the technology vendor partners, to create a better visibility
I would have looked at M&A options that came our way, a little sooner – to either grow inorganically or that would have created better visibility for embWiSe and would have facilitated our products and technologies get into designs of Tier I device vendors and our designs put to good use by customers,who otherwise wouldn't have worked with us.