Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about Guwahati. What was it like building this company in Guwahati? You must have a very loyal employee base, right?

Anjan Pathak: Yes, that is the best part. Employee loyalty is high. The attrition rate is low. In the last six months, only one or two people have left, but they left for higher studies. Earlier, we used to lose people because we could not pay well. We are technologically advanced, we use some of the best technologies.

I have a technical background, so I knew that I could build a technology team but of course marketing is not my forte. My co-founder was also there. We started building the teams slowly in Guwahati. It’s all been organic growth. We don’t get any skills here, but we get a lot of talent. We just need to groom people, and they are enthusiastic because we are doing well.

In terms of jobs and employment in Guwahati, there is hardly anything, so running an employee engagement company is asking people to engage their employees. We are quite enthusiastic about the people and our colleagues. They like what we do. 

Sramana Mitra: Are there other companies in Guwahati besides yourself who are doing interesting startup companies? Is there a startup community or are you the only one?

Anjan Pathak: There is another company called Zaloni, which is slightly bigger than us. They are mostly into services without products. There’s no big product company here except us. We do marketing the right way. It’s proper digital marketing.

Now, we have a big marketing team. Almost half of the team is in marketing. Sales have also started in Guwahati. We are trying to do outbound sales from here. We hired someone from Bangalore because we couldn’t find anyone who is experienced in SaaS selling. That is the only person that we hired from outside.  

Sramana Mitra: This person is working from Bangalore?

Anjan Pathak: He has moved to Guwahati. We are lucky to have him. It has only been three months now, so we are seeing how it goes. We are hopeful about setting up a sales team. The marketing is good. You will see us being quite vocal on the internet. That is what we are doing.

We are running a global corporate walkathon right now to experiment with how we can help employers make their employees happy. We are seeing a lot of growth in Vantage Fit. Vantage Rewards are also there. We now have two people working from the US as well. Their job is to reach customers in the US. 

Sramana Mitra: Are these two people in the US people you knew before? How do you hire these people?

Anjan Pathak: A friend of mine from my college days helped us. He wanted to help us in the same process in the US. It’s a build and transfer model. They will build a team and once it’s done, they will operate it for two years and then they will give it to us. We are experimenting with this model. 

Sramana Mitra: There must be a diaspora from Guwahati, right? You could tap into that diaspora. 

Anjan Pathak: It’s not a big diaspora. We also get some help in the Indian community but not specifically from Assam or anything like that. 

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting Anjan. I am happy that you reached out and wanted to share your story. We look forward to covering it. I love seeing companies come up in small towns, because that is going to have a lot of impact on your community.

You are going to be a role model in this community. If you take some of that responsibility as building the next generation of entrepreneurs, then you could make a big impact in your community.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle
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