Scaling a Technology Company Against Major Competitors: Solix CEO Sai Gundavelli (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you work for Cisco? When did you finish the Cisco gig?

Sai Gundavelli: It was in 1996. I worked there from 1991 through 1996.

Sramana Mitra: That was when you started your first company?

Sai Gundavelli: That’s right. I started my first company in 1996.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about that company. What was the idea that you were going to build on? How did you get that company off the ground?

Sai Gundavelli: This was in the very early days of bringing software technology back in India. What I did at Cisco was primarily to help them implement back office application where they can process a billion transactions. That’s what they called as an ERP. I was one of the leads implementing ERP in Cisco. That gave me an idea. A lot of companies are going to implement ERP. I was working with KPMG to implement ERP. I said I wanted to build a mini-KPMG.

Since I had a connection with Oracle, I went to Oracle and said, “I want to start a company. I’ve learned enough at Cisco. Can you be my partner?” They liked what I said. They partnered with me. I brought this software back to India and started training my people on this ERP enterprise application. That’s how I began my journey to build a mini-KPMG on enterprise application implementation. That’s how I started my journey in 1996.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you did outsourced Oracle application development first.

Sai Gundavelli: I wouldn’t say outsourced. It was primarily to help implement Oracle applications. That word outsource was not there in 1996. The outsourcing word really started post 2009.

Sramana Mitra: Maybe the word didn’t exist, but that’s what you did, right?

Sai Gundavelli: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: How long did that journey continue? How long did you do that work?

Sai Gundavelli: I did that for close to four years. I started implementing enterprise applications and I started building my practice. I didn’t have any major infrastructure back in India. I did it for about four years. The transformation happened when the economy collapsed and everything started going back to India. I realized I’m too late and I’m not ready for the outsourcing work. That’s when I said, “I’ve got to build a new team and start this new company.”

Sramana Mitra: You basically closed down the whole outsourcing business?

Sai Gundavelli: I decided not to push through the outsourcing business.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you start Solix?

Sai Gundavelli: I started Solix in 2003.

Sramana Mitra: What was the premise of Solix?

Sai Gundavelli: This was during the early stages of Google vendor where they were providing Google Search and all of that. I said, “I can do Google Search for enterprises.” I partnered with Google. I took that Google Search and started talking to enterprises.

Customers liked the idea but nobody was willing to put any money. They said, “We don’t even know what data we have and we really can’t budget this kind of software. I can’t figure out a way to monetize Google Search in an enterprise.” That triggered me to create a business in terms of enterprise data management. The technology that we built at that point in time was about understanding the data, providing security, archiving the data, retiring the data, and then providing a search.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Scaling a Technology Company Against Major Competitors: Solix CEO Sai Gundavelli
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