Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did you start with? Were you bootstrapping the company?

Sunny Singh: Yes, I took about 18 to 20 credit cards. That was seed money for Edifecs. I had no concept of VCs. I was not business savvy. That was how Edifecs got started. I’ve never run a business before.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you go on in this solo entrepreneur working out of the apartment?

Sunny Singh: In about two years, we moved into our first office, which was an old motel-turned office by a stingy, frugal landlord who had sheep in the back. Interestingly, the first night we moved in there, there was no security. I was so scared. I slept in the office at night. We hired a team of about six or seven people who were doing sales and some development. One funny incident was the leftover food would be sent to the sheep in the back. There was no AC in there so we had to open the windows. There were all kinds of noises from the sheep. The customers would always ask, “Where are you guys?” That was the first office. We stayed there for three years. Then, we moved on to a bigger office.

Sramana Mitra: You said your first contract was $2,000. While you were going through this process, did the pricing evolve to something that was concrete and repeatable?

Sunny Singh: Absolutely. For the first set of customers, sometimes you have to just do whatever pricing you can. We did the same for the first 10 or so customers. We just did whatever we had to do to acquire them at whatever price point. Very soon, the pricing became quite standardized. We knew what the competition’s pricing was. We can’t be a cheaper product. That value has to be much bigger than that.

When you’re providing higher value than others in the market at a lower price point and you’re exceptionally customer-oriented, nothing can stop you. The other company was well-funded and had been in business for more than six years prior to us.

Sramana Mitra: What was the competition at that time?

Sunny Singh: There was this small company called Foresight. They entered the market with similar products six years before we did. They had sales people and developers. We were a new entrant to the market.

In the beginning, they took legal action saying that we had copied their product. We got a letter in the mail from them. It was a Friday. I spent the weekend documenting all the stats. I got an attorney involved and within three days, we sent a reply. We never heard back from them because they really have no case. They eventually got acquired in 2010 by Tipco. By that time, we were three times their size.

Sramana Mitra: There was no major company that you had to compete with. There was another startup.

Sunny Singh: I wouldn’t call them a startup because they were a company that was functioning very well with good revenues.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh
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