How an IT Services Startup Wants to Disrupt Itself in the AI Era: Sanjay Jupudi, CEO of Qentelli (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a little bit about this process of brainstorming about what you were going to focus on in the next company. What was the process with coming up with where you were going to place your bet?

Sanjay Jupudi: There was a quality assurance company that was hiring people to test applications. If you need testing services, I have 10 people and they’ll manually write all the test cases. When Agile started, a lot of clients were saying, “Testing function is slowing us down. Our people are developing code and then we have to wait three weeks for the testing to be complete.”

What they did was they wrote code to test code. Once the user story is developed, all the testers get together and they start testing in the waterfall way. After that, the code goes into production. You’re losing time and there’s a lot of frustration. It’s an inefficient process. There is potential to release faster if you create smaller user stories and smaller features. Then you can release software quicker. You don’t have to wait six months.

The problem, however, was that there was a lack in automation that allows you to test the code that was developed. The process was: developer develops code, someone builds it, and then someone tests it. The new way of doing it is: a developer develops a code. There’s something called a continuous integration and continuous deployment. The automation scripts that were previously written are testing the code. The toolchain takes the code from development to production. There is no manual intervention here; it’s complete automation.

Sramana Mitra: You can do ongoing development as new features are being built.

Sanjay Jupudi: Exactly. If you go look at Amazon, they release hundreds of new features. The site is not down for a single minute. Everything goes into production in a seamless way. We put together a plan to orchestrate quality engineering like Facebook and Amazon.

Sramana Mitra: Is it a service company?

Sanjay Jupudi: Ours is a service company.

Sramana Mitra: Services companies are very easy to bootstrap. Given the fact that you have so much domain knowledge, you can go and get your first customer and get it rolling with revenue.

Sanjay Jupudi: We invested and we haven’t raised any funding afterward. I know companies require larger cash to begin. Our service was pretty good, so the investment was a check from customers that wanted us to solve their problem.

Sramana Mitra: That’s your seed money. What sector of the IT industry did you get traction from?

Sanjay Jupudi: Our clients range from airlines to banks.

Sramana Mitra: How do you acquire customers?

Sanjay Jupudi: Mostly through my network. The other thing is through email campaigns. I have an inside sales team that constantly sends emails.

Sramana Mitra: What is your average deal size?

Sanjay Jupudi: We started low. It can range from $50,000 to $3 million a year. The reason we do $50,000 is, we do POC to compete. If we fail, they don’t pay us. Then that goes up eventually.

Sramana Mitra: How is your company structured? You are based in Dallas. What portion of the company is in Dallas? Do you have an offshore location?

Sanjay Jupudi: We have an offshore location in Hyderabad. About 60% of my employees are in Hyderabad, and 40% are in the US but not necessarily in Dallas. We have a few people on the client side and the rest will stay in India. The people who are on the client side work closely with the clients and get the requirements.

This segment is part 2 in the series : How an IT Services Startup Wants to Disrupt Itself in the AI Era: Sanjay Jupudi, CEO of Qentelli
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