Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was Infosys paying you extra for doing this? 

Anjan Pathak: No, they were not paying, because they were our first customer. We used to get a 5% discount on the gift vouchers. That was our primary revenue. Of course, there was a lot of incoming cash flow, but the primary revenue was anything that they gave. 

Sramana Mitra: It’s still a commission, so Infosys is giving the gift rewards and you are getting 5% from that as commission from the brands. How big did this become? 

Anjan Pathak: It is about 3 crores (~$500K) from Infosys even now, but then Deloitte came in. That was big. In 2016, they gave about 30 crores (~$5M) worth of rewards through our platform. They started doing the same thing. That is how it started. There were a few other companies that also came in.

We then decided that we should include rewards and recognition systems in Vantage Rewards. That is now taken up by a lot of big companies. It’s simple. It’s like a feed pot where people can recognize each other. People can recognize their colleagues and managers can recognize their subordinates. 

Sramana Mitra: Was it rewards in the sense of people writing good things about other or cash rewards? 

Anjan Pathak: They can give cash rewards as well. There is a complicated system where you can upload wallets and then the managers can give them to subordinates. There is a budget involved. All these are now there. 

Sramana Mitra: I see. You have created the full workflow of corporate rewards within the organization.

Anjan Pathak: Yes. The first time was with Larsen & Toubro Infotech. They took our product and we developed it along with them. Deloitte came in 2016. Deloitte continues to give rewards to our platform. They recently gave 130 crores (~$20M) worth of rewards to our platform in one go. That is a yearly thing that we have got. Every day they are giving rewards to our platform. This reward system is very simple. We get CSV files of rewards and we just upload them. Employees can come in and redeem it. 

Sramana Mitra: Do you get 5% out of that?

Anjan Pathak: We also get a lot of floats, which means that they prepay us. So the money stays with us because the employees do not redeem them right away. 

Sramana Mitra: Deloitte is your largest customer today?

Anjan Pathak: Yes. 

Sramana Mitra: You kept saying that Deloitte and Cognizant came in. What did you do to get these people to come in?

Anjan Pathak: We used to just do outbound sales. My co-founder is in sales. He reached out to people. There was a brand being built in India during that time. We were the first movers, so we had a good name amongst the HR community. That’s how it worked till 2017, but not anymore. We are into marketing now.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle
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