Indian Services Entrepreneurs Venturing Into Products: Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri, CoFounders of Crayon Data (Part 3)

Sramana: Srikant, what was the premise of the business that you were looking to start?

Srikant Sastri: I still carry copies of the formal business plan I wrote at that time. It was 1995, and the early signs of the technology boom in India was there. Telecom was present and IT was starting to flutter. The business plan was based on the premise that IT, telecom, and electronic media would have a convergence in India.

Many multinationals would want to enter India, so we intended to be a service provider to multinationals in text and multimedia with respect to India market entry. We were a marketing services provider, and our first five clients were Microsoft, HP, Cisco, The Discovery Channel, and Motorola.

Sramana: That is a good client list for a startup and a first-time entrepreneur. How did you get clients of that magnitude?

Srikant Sastri: It was partly by design and partly by luck. I worked on the business plan for a year, and I had built up some relationships during my work at previous companies. The IIT network was great for me as well. We were also lucky, and I wish we had not been so lucky. The first year was too easy and it made us all too cocky. We felt that entrepreneurship and setting up a business were a walk in the park. We started investing heavily into infrastructure, and then we had a disastrous second year. It came down to my last penny.

Sramana: Where were you based?

Srikant Sastri: I have been in Delhi for 27 years. Our business was across India. If you are going to be a marketing service provider, then you have to have a national footprint. We set up six offices on day one. Eventually we also set up an office in Singapore and other places in India, with the goal of being an Asian marketing provider.

Sramana: What happened after you ran out of money in year two?

Srikant Sastri: There were several events that shaped that period. When I ran out of money, there were vendors who came and held me by my collar in my office, demanding that we pay. Second, a couple of vendors had lawsuits against us demanding that we pay what we owed them. The third abiding image I have is that I would drive my own small car, and I had five credit cards that were maxed out. There was one particular day when I had 10 rupees in my wallet, all five cards were maxed out, and my car was running out of gas. I was not sure if my car or my money was going to run out first.

After the second year we really focused on our business and what we needed to do. In 2008 the economy and the IT industry started looking up, and therefore the worst period was over. What happened in 1999 and 2000 was that thanks to my brother-in-law, we raised about $500,000 of angel funding, and that money was key to our success, or we never would have made it through that period.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Indian Services Entrepreneurs Venturing Into Products: Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri, CoFounders of Crayon Data
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