From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 1)

Mahendra transitioned from a developer to a successful entrepreneur with his first company, exited it, and then started ACCELQ. ACCELQ already has 200 customers and is a profitable, bootstrapped company growing fast. A wonderful and inspiring 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?

Mahendra Alladi: I grew up in Hyderabad, India. Most of my college education was there. I moved to Bangalore for my Masters. I got my first job opportunity in the US through campus placement. I lived there for 20 plus years and moved back to India about five to six years ago.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you work in the US?

Mahendra Alladi: I started working for a company called Sanchez Associates. We were building a proprietary database engine. I spent two to three years there. Then I moved to Dallas and worked at i2. Then another few years at Travelocity. Six years into my career, I co-founded my startup.

Sramana Mitra: You were in a technical role up until Travelocity?

Mahendra Alladi: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What were the circumstances under which you started your first company? You quit Travelocity and just decided that you were going to start a company?

Mahendra Alladi: While I was at Travelocity, I came across a couple of interesting problems with Travelocity and other companies that were relevant in the testing domain. When I looked at the similarity, there is probably a need for a common solution. I had a prototype that I had built while I was at Travelocity.

Sramana Mitra: You encountered a technical problem and you decided to solve it. You did it on the side.

Mahendra Alladi: That’s correct. I developed a small pilot and started realizing that it has greater applicability and left Travelocity.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do next?

Mahendra Alladi: I co-founded Gallop. The prototype was not in a fully-finished form. Slowly, that product matured. Initially, we started with services. We got a partnership with HP. The product that I built was playing into the HP ecosystem. That opened up the doors. The solution was very unique. They gave us a worldwide exclusive opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: Who was your partner?

Mahendra Alladi: Manohar. He comes from a business background.

Sramana Mitra: Did he work with you at Travelocity?

Mahendra Alladi: No, I knew him from before.

Sramana Mitra: You started with a services model. You knew this problem and you had a solution approach. Did you start taking on a bunch of services projects to solve that problem at different companies?

Mahendra Alladi: Exactly. Before this tool, the problem was completely services based. But we had this tool on hand which would accelerate that and probably cut down the manual requirement to 20% of what it was. Once we proved that with a pilot, it was a no brainer because it was a problem that needed to be solved and comes at a lower cost.

Sramana Mitra: Services business is a very good way to start companies. You can build a product along, preserve the intellectual property, and then productize it.

Mahendra Alladi: More importantly, it exposes you to the real world.

Sramana Mitra: Customer intimacy is one of the great benefits of a services situation. How long did you continue in that services mode before you were ready to go after a product business?

Mahendra Alladi: Until we got the HP contract.

This segment is part 1 in the series : From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi
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