Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Udupi, Karnataka: Rohith Bhat’s Exhilarating Journey with Robosoft (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Chronologically, we are in the 1996 to 1997 timeframe?

Rohith Bhat: Yes. From 1996 to 1998, we worked for, at least, five to six companies. I have not met any of these folks from the United States. I was in Bombay. Getting talent for my startup was now becoming a little bit difficult because I had to compete with bigger companies. I figured that my customers didn’t bother where I am because they didn’t bother to meet me in person. It didn’t make any difference if I was in Bombay or in another part of the country.

That’s when I decided that maybe I should go back to my hometown because back then, Internet had just come into my hometown.There was this technology institute in my hometown which had an incubation center. I thought that maybe I’ll go back there and build a bigger team. I went back in 1998 to my hometown and started this company. I hired seven to eight engineers and hired a few interns as well. I started developing more products.

Sramana Mitra: Were you still based in Mumbai or did you move to your hometown?

Rohith Bhat: I moved to my hometown.

Sramana Mitra: Your entire business at this point was based near your hometown, which is a small place in Southern India?

Rohith Bhat: That’s right. For the first two years, I was in Mumbai. I had two more people with me.

Sramana Mitra: They were freelancers?

Rohith Bhat: They started working for me full-time.

Sramana Mitra: You hired them?

Rohith Bhat: In 1997, I hired them. In 1998, because they were not willing to relocate to another part of the country, I, alone, went back to my hometown. Because I come from a technology background, I was able to train the new hires and get them up to speed. That continued for some time. In 2000, dot-com happened. All the projects related to Internet started coming to us. At that point in time, Apple had made a shift to their new operating system called OS X. This was based on the operating system that came from Steve Job’s earlier company.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, you know my husband used to run that.

Rohith Bhat: Oh, wow! That’s a very interesting coincidence. Because the OS was different, every manufacturer in the world had to rewrite their devices. Within the next 12 months, we had built really good capabilities. We started working for the Epson’s of the world, the HP’s of the world. We started working with OEM’s in Taiwan.

Sramana Mitra: How did you get to them? Did Apple help you get to these OEM’s in Taiwan?

Rohith Bhat: Apple introduced us to the big companies like Hewlett Packard and Canon. These big companies, in turn, introduced us to their partners in Taiwan. That kept us busy. We started building expertise on the Windows platform by 2002. We started building drivers for Windows. That’s what we did for those four to five years.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Udupi, Karnataka: Rohith Bhat’s Exhilarating Journey with Robosoft
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