4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack (Part 1)

Kashyap had early success with three of his companies, each of which had very small amounts of friends and family financing. He pretty much bootstrapped these three startups to rapid exits.

His fourth startup, HyperTrack, has been a challenging journey, but he has navigated it well, and turned around the earlier setbacks over the last five years.

Wonderful story.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Kashyap Deorah: I grew up in Mumbai. I studied at IIT Bombay. My entrepreneurial journey started in my final year at IIT Bombay in 2000, which was quite an interesting time when college kids were starting companies. There was Yahoo! That came out of Stanford.

Sramana Mitra: I started my first company as a grad student at MIT. That was 1994.

Kashyap Deorah: 1993 was the beginning of the public internet. There was a lot of inspiration in the air. Internet was our biggest inspiration. It looked like it was going to create this new world order. That’s where I started my journey as an entrepreneur. My first gig taught me how young and stupid I was.

Sramana Mitra: What did you try to do?

Kashyap Deorah: It was called RightHalf. It was blogging before there was blogging. It was a website where you could go express yourself and share your thoughts and ideas.

Sramana Mitra: You didn’t have a business model.

Kashyap Deorah: We didn’t have a business model. We didn’t know this space really well. We had absolutely no idea how to make money. Underneath that, just how hard it is to build startups was the learning. Over the next few years, I learned how to build companies by working with other entrepreneurs. Then I was ready to start my next one.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you work on that project?

Kashyap Deorah: It was about two years, but it felt like 20.

Sramana Mitra: When you stopped working on that, what was the next move?

Kashyap Deorah: We got acqui-hired into another Silicon Valley company that was looking to start its India office. These were a bunch of smart young engineers. Our product didn’t survive the acquisition, but we all became part of the company. That brought me to Silicon Valley for the first time. I remember there was this book by Po Bronson called Nudist on the Late Shift. It was a visceral understanding of Silicon Valley.

Sramana Mitra: You worked for this company that acqui-hired you?

Kashyap Deorah: Yes, this company was called PurpleYogi.

Sramana Mitra: Venki and Rakesh.

Kashyap Deorah: Yes, Venki and Anand were investors. Rakesh was the CEO. That company evolved to be Stratify, which later got acquired by Iron Mountain. I was acquired into PurpleYogi. I was in Silicon Valley for the next six years working closely with other entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to?

Kashyap Deorah: 2006 was around the time when I felt like I was ready to get back on the saddle. If you remember, UPA government in India had seen double-digit GDP growth in a long time. A lot of investors and VCs were setting up shop in India.

It was the telecom revolution. I think 50% of India had the mobile phone, but only 1% of India was on the internet. It was a toss of a coin whether I should start my next company in the US or India. I was just married then. We decided to move back to India. It was around that time when you and I met.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack
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