From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Do you primarily go after the large enterprises?

Mahendra Alladi: Of late, we focus more on the large enterprises, but it’s a mix.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to a million-dollar ARR?

Mahendra Alladi: Within the first year.

Sramana Mitra: You continue to bootstrap?

Mahendra Alladi: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers did it require to get to a million-dollar ARR in the first year?

Mahendra Alladi: Probably 10 to 20.

Sramana Mitra: You were getting sizeable customers in the first year.

Mahendra Alladi: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like it was mostly inbound.

Mahendra Alladi: A lot of outbound also. We did have a sales development team. Right now, it’s 50/50.

Sramana Mitra: Is there a particular title in a company that you go after?

Mahendra Alladi: Head of Testing and CTOs. Today, quality has become the most significant aspect of a development lifecycle. Anyone that is dealing with software development and responsibilities in delivery. If you think of ERP applications, there isn’t a clear distinction. It’s mostly the business that owns the delivery.

Sramana Mitra: You’re still doing this in India?

Mahendra Alladi: We have a big presence in Dallas. We started last year in Australia. We have a sizeable market there. The business development is all from the US.

Sramana Mitra: When did you set up the Dallas operation?

Mahendra Alladi: Dallas is my second home. I’ve lived there for 15 years. I was there from day one. I still live here, but I split my team between Hyderabad and Dallas.

Sramana Mitra: Where is the center of gravity?

Mahendra Alladi: Dallas.

Sramana Mitra: After you reached one million, was there anything different in the strategic maneuvering?

Mahendra Alladi: The field is very broad. The field is as green as it was five years ago.

Sramana Mitra: Why is that?

Mahendra Alladi: The field is evolving so fast. With COVID, the IT teams are under pressure to deliver faster and better. Thanks to Salesforce and Microsoft, software development is leaning more towards configuring these ERP applications. Testing is still complicated. Some of the banking consumes more than 20 to 30 off-the-shelf applications. Their software development effort has been cut down.

When it comes to quality assurance, you have very little control on these third-party applications. What we have are good for today, but there is so much more that we need to evolve. As the development side is progressing and making the job easier, the testing is getting more complicated.

Sramana Mitra: Do your customers understand that? One thing that I learned about selling is, you can only sell something when the buyer acknowledges that there is a problem.

Mahendra Alladi: They do. There is a lot more awareness now. In today’s world, the reason quality has become such a deal-breaker is, you could have an app with millions of downloads. All it needs is a couple of glitches and you come crashing down. Automation is the only way to go. Automation was complicated before us. Either it was too shallow or extremely complex to adopt.

You could develop complex applications by purchasing the software, but testing requires a lot of coding. We are probably the only codeless platform that is comprehensive. Even on the development side, it’s going codeless. After the first year of our journey, we were evaluated by Forester. On our first submission, we were recognized as leaders in the domain. That was shocking. That was a big turning point.

This segment is part 4 in the series : From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi
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