Bootstrapping Using Services: Krish Kupathil, CEO, AgreeYa Mobility (Part 6)

Sramana: How much financing have you secured?

Krish Kupathil: We took very little from Saama, only $2 million. We also took $4 million of debt financing.

Sramana: How much were you doing in revenue?

Krish Kupathil: We did $10 million in revenue last year, and we will do over $20 million this year.

Sramana: What are some of the other interesting strategic moves you have made, and what was the thinking behind those choices?

Krish Kupathil: I believe that most of our interesting choices were made with partner alignment. Partnering with Microsoft was important. If you have to do anything in the enterprise space, then you need Microsoft. People hate Microsoft, but on the enterprise level, everyone uses them. Some shops are 100% Microsoft and others are 50%, but they all use it.

Of course, there are a lot of new technologies coming up, like Dropbox, and we will be aligning with them as well. As a startup, it was important to align with the correct partner and convince that partner to support us. We have licensing and interoperability deals that we have signed with them, and those deals are very important. That gave us a good initial push and also gave us a lot of credibility.

Another key partner was Samsung. Apart from support in terms of hardware and a global marketing effort, the Samsung team also gave us a lot of good advice when we were developing the solution. Obviously they have a team that understands customer problems.

The thing I want to stress was aligning with the right partners. I believe that raising money or getting money is the easy part. Having partners who give you the depth and support from a technical and marketing perspective is extremely important. I think aligning with the right partners has really helped us. That has set up a very nice foundation for us to get to the next level.

Sramana: Do you credit your $20 million business all to Microsoft?

Krish Kupathil: No. I think around $15 million will be aligned to the services side of our business, and the other $5 million comes from our product side.

Sramana: Are the services part of the Microsoft ecosystem as well?

Krish Kupathil: The services have nothing to do with Microsoft. Those services are purely Android and iOS. They are the same services that we used to start the company with.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services: Krish Kupathil, CEO, AgreeYa Mobility
1 2 3 4 5 6 7