George Koomullil
Founder & CEO
INDUS Techinnovations
Company Profile
INDUS TechInnovations is a knowledge discovery based software product company. It was founded in 2009 and is based in Bangalore. We provide solutions in different application areas by extracting and connecting relevant information from different kinds of raw data. We currently focus on a couple of different application areas, one niche and the other more broad-based.Our product, Relecura, identifies and connects key ideas from patents to help analyze them and uncover their potential value. Our learning platform, Creonto, extracts knowledge from diverse educational content and creates learning supplements that help easier comprehension and learning.
Leadership Skills
The most important insight was to shift our focus from just developing the technology to applying it to create products that solved our customer’s problems. This may seem obvious in hindsight, but listening to your potential customers and providing solutions to them is the key to building successful products. This approach has helped us drive both the development of the technology and the cash flows in tandem.Another important realization was to pay attention to and develop the different aspects of the business from the very beginning. The growth of an organization can sometimes be hampered by not paying enough attention aspects other than the development of technology and products. I would like to acknowledge the positive influence of TiE through its events and workshops, in helping me get a holistic view of entrepreneurship.
Getting first customer
I was fortunate to have our first customer approach us to provide him with a solution. One of my friends approached us when he encountered a problem with managing a large dataset within his organization, and convinced us to provide him with a solution using our platform. We thought long and hard before commencing work on it as it required a shift in our focus from developing our planned product. As it turned out, we needed to make only minor changes to our technology platform to deliver the solution. In addition, acquiring a paying customer helped boost our confidence and improved our cash flow.
Choosing People
I find it difficult to convince people to work for a start-up in India. On occasions I have spent months pursuing candidates who could potentially be a perfect fit for certain critical positions in the organization. Initial recruits were through friends and ex-colleagues and later we used hiring agencies and employment portals. Most people have unique abilities and my task is to identify them and provide the right opportunities to these individuals to bring their special abilities to the fore. We have had some amazing contributions and solutions coming from different individuals in the team, once they have bought into the overall vision of the organization and understand where they fit in and how they can best contribute to the end goals.
Thoughts regarding entrepreneurship
Although entrepreneurs and small companies do not have the luxury of large resources, they are on a level playing field with large competitors in the sphere of innovation. I believe that entrepreneurs have a better chance for success if they focus on innovation. It always pays to listen closely to your customers about their problems and their ideas. One can then tap into the collective abilities of the team to deliver solutions and products that are novel and innovative. As an entrepreneur it is essential to cultivate an environment of innovation within the company by having a culture of objective assessment of new ideas and providing the freedom to the team to put forth their ideas, to make mistakes on occasion, and to move forward by learning from them.
Advice to young entrepreneurs
Do not have failure as an option in entrepreneurship as it will seem like an obvious choice when the going gets tough.