Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc (Part 3)

Varun Singh: They had a lot of problems with the website. They weren’t search engine optimized. They really didn’t have any traffic other than the traffic that CNBC would push to them by doing TV advertising. I’m like, “It’ll take you guys a long time to figure out how to go ahead and do this. I am really out of media.” The point is I was done with all of this stuff. Here’s somebody who’s reaching out to you and I was being completely immature.

Sramana Mitra: And arrogant.

Varun Singh: Yes, and arrogant. Somehow, it worked out. He forwarded that email to his CEO. He’s like, “We’ll meet later but first, you’re going to meet my CEO.” I go meet the CEO and repeat the same things I said on the mail but of course in a more respectful manner. He said, “Why don’t you sit down with Money Control team and give them your feedback.” I gave them first-level feedback and they called back within a few days. They wanted more. I gave them more feedback and thought, “These guys seem to be understanding some of it. It might become another consulting gig I can do on the side.”

Fifteen days later, I met the CEO and he said, “We want to go ahead and start a new technology brand. We want you to be the Executive Editor for that.” I’m like, “I’m done with that. I don’t particularly care to do another technology brand.” He said, “What are you interested in?” I said, “I’m interested in doing technology. I’m interested in building content management systems or SEO.” He said, “You can go ahead and run technology for us.” He puts together a very credible plan and said, “You decide what you want to do. You can go ahead and have the ability to guide us in the right direction.” As long as I’m getting the freedom, I’m happy.

I joined them and within two months, we did an acquisition based on my guidance. We acquired one of the web design companies which was doing very well in India. They also had a lot of tech talents and had evaluated them previously. That became their entire web division. The reason they called me after 15 days is because all the suggestions that were given increased their traffic by 45% in three weeks.

Sramana Mitra: They had listened and implemented.

Varun Singh: Yes. After that, within three and a half years, they ended up building CNN, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Home Shopping Network, and all the other stuff that came along with that. I quit after they had already ramped up to about 40 million users. I quit to start ScaleArc.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc
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