Continued from my previous post "The humble beginnings" ...

In April 2007, I was in Los Angeles and was on a call with Narayan (Dot3rdEye). There is a saying that a happy customer gets you more customers. He mentioned an opportunity with Care Dynamics in Holland for Health-Care optimization. I could sense that this could be one stable client that we had aimed for. However things were not smooth. There were challenges. The work was in Access/VBA and Care Dynamics was close to finalizing the vendor. I had to quickly get a visa in 10 days and arrive on the shores of Netherlands to have any chance of bagging the project. My trip in USA was still midway and provided I get a visa, I would have to make itinerary rescheduling as well. Luckily there is a Netherlands consulate in LA. I went there first thing in the morning and showed up there saying "I want a business visa to travel to Holland. What do I need to do?". They must have been skeptical about who is this young guy who is not even a US citizen and is asking for a Netherlands visa. To cut the long story short, they told me that in urgent situations any consulate can give a business visa and told me the documents that were required. I arranged all the documents, took help from Chicky and Narayan and showed up at the consulate on day 2 with a prepared application.

The visa arrived in 5 days and I made itinerary adjustments to take a break at Frankfurt on my original return leg for India (I was flying Lufthansa). I reached the shores of Hoorn, Netherlands in about a week. The next morning I went to the meeting with the Care Dynamics team. The meetings went well, I understood all the requirements and pitched our capabilities and work philosophy. In the meanwhile recruited two people in Jaipur to work for our company. Care Dynamics had put us on a 2 week probation period during which we had to demonstrate what we could do. During the days I would understand requirements, go back to my hotel room in the evening and then translate the requirements to the team in India. Night outs started for everyone and everybody pushed themselves to the limit. The work culture and customer focus mantras were shaping up at GirnarSoft: "No matter what it takes, we have to make the customer successful and exceed his expectations". Two weeks passed by and we did more than what they expected. We won our second project and this laid the foundation for GirnarSoft that it is here to stay.

A couple of months passed by and the project with Care Dynamics was a big success. We were raring to go at more projects and Chicky negotiated a new project with Trilogy, YourBillBuddy in the telecom domain. YourBillBuddy is a service for Indian mobile users to optimize their post-paid plans. We struck a business value deal with Trilogy and guaranteed them business results. They were struggling to get the traffic on their site and now had given us a quarter to prove that we could make this a success. The core values and niche work area of the company were taking shape in "online customer acquisition". Getting a customer is the most toughest part for any website/business and we built IP around the same. We became experts of viral marketing, community ideas, conversions, web analytics and getting search engine traffic (SEO). The website registration rate jumped 20 times by our efforts and at the end of 2 quarters, the result is an engine that grows by itself. Every new user gets you more users! This is the power of viral marketing. The team at GirnarSoft was growing fast. We hit the 20 mark soon and were running full capacity from the 2 rooms we started the company in.

The third quarter was coming to completion and we wanted to increase GirnarSoft's portfolio of products. Chicky and I envisioned that we want to be a billion dollar company with a strength of 200 people. Something that Facebook, a popular social networking site in USA is doing. We brainstormed on a lot of ideas and finally zeroed out on a few ideas. We started building our own products. The company started working in two verticals. One vertical was totally customer centric and the other vertical was building GirnarSoft's products. In December 2007 we inaugurated our new office campus which can seat about 100 people. In my opinion this growth period is the most exciting phase of being a start up. One has to innovate everyday. There are no set of rules that you adhere to while working. You have to be really agile in your thinking and do a fast cycle time implementation to try out various ideas in a short span of time. This is the core strength of GirnarSoft, that we deliver in 1/4th of the time of what others accompalish with same or higher levels of quality. The results could be seen in the products we built:

- www.CarDekho.com is THE one stop solution for all car buyers in India. If you are a new car buyer or have interest in cars or want to locate car dealers or want to read/write car reviews in India you will get everything here.

- www.MyJewelryDeals.com an online portal for buying Indian Sterling Silver jewelry with gemstones at wholesale rates, straight from the manufacturers.

The current effort on these two sites is not even 2 months old as of April 2008. Right from the beginning we were choosy about what we will be doing and we only took projects that had synergy with the spirit of GirnarSoft. We did not take up some projects that did not align with our vision. Last quarter of this 2007-08 we got more projects that we were interested in. The GirnarSoft repertoire is constantly increasing.

The first financial year closed last week and I am proud to say that we are a cash positive company in our first year of operations. All of the team at GirnarSoft is responsible for this. Everyone has put in their more than 100%, sweat and blood to make this happen. The pace at which we work is unparalleled in the industry and I can safely say we are no longer a startup. We are a visionary company and are here to stay. With the kind of team that is the core of GirnarSoft, I am confident that we will exceed our expectations as well as customer expectations this year as well!

All the best to everyone at GirnarSoft! Lets keep the spirits high and the sky will be the limit to our achievements!!