Your Tech Story

Tech Story

Kevin Systrom: The man behind $1 billion idea

start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Social media has expanded its domain at a very rapid pace in last 5 years. The craze of social networking sites and apps for instant messaging, photos and videos sharing has brought about a revolution in the social life of people. In the list of all such sites and apps, the inception of Instagram has set a milestone. Instagram has made a record breaking impression in the lives of millions of users in a very short span. Its unique features like filters, adding special effects before uploads and hashtags have made it one of the most popular apps on net.

Talking about the success of this app, the heavy toil and dedication of the person behind bringing out such a great idea cannot be overlooked. The journey of Kevin Systrom in building up this app worth $1 billion had been short but endowed with several twists and turns. The interest for computer programming in Systrom had developed right from the days when he attended Middlesex School in Concord and it intensified as he grew up. He graduated from Stanford University in 2006 acquiring a bachelor’s degree in management science and engineering, after which he joined Google as an associate product marketing manager. Dedicating his service to Google for two years, Systrom turned to join a travel recommendation startup named Nextstop.

Kevin Systrom
Image Source: Wikipedia

Dedication to learn
Kevin Systrom was not completely satisfied with his job at Nextstop, as he had a bigger plan in his mind. But he knew it was difficult to proceed further without a training and in-depth knowledge of computer science, thus he gave up his comfort to learn coding. He accomplished the assigned tasks of Nextstop in the office hours while learned to code at nights and on weekends. Indeed it was not easy to manage it altogether yet his inexorable efforts showed ardent result and he came out with an HTML5 prototype which he named as Burbn. The app dealt with the on-going trend of photo sharing and checking-in. Now the only thing dwelling in his mind was to take his idea further and it didn’t take much time as well. It was in March 2010 when Systrom met Baseline Ventures and Andreesen Horowitz at a party and approached them with his prototype. The party came out to be a remarkable event in his life as the two venture capitalists liked his idea and agreed to invest in it. He then quit his job to dedicate all his time and skills to Burbn and within just two weeks he raised $500,000 as seed funding from the two venture capital firms.

Steps towards success with Mike Krieger
The reassessing of Burbn began after Mike Krieger, an acquaintance from Stanford University joined in with Systrom. Now it was the time to give the app, a unique feature so as to make the experience of users different from the other popular apps. The main focus of Systrom right from the beginning was on mobile photos. The duo wanted to make the app very handy, free from the complications of too many features at a time and therefore they took few steps back and stuck to photo sharing. And then they decided to rename the app from Burbn to Instagram. Their incessant efforts and hard work were all directed to make it better by improving the photo-sharing experience of users, fixing the bugs and by passing it through several other tests.

And finally the big day came, eight weeks later Instagram was launched on 6th October, 2010. No wonder, the minds of two gems made this app with such intent care that there were hardly any complaints or issues after the launch. And by the end of the first week it had been downloaded over 100,000 times and reached to one million users by the mid of December.

Acquisition by Facebook
In not more than 4 months after its launch, Instagram with its remarkable features began attracting investors and as a result of which the company value reached around $25 million in February 2011. Seeing its increasing popularity, Jack Dorsey the executive chairman of Twitter approached Kevin Systrom offering an amount of $500 million to acquire the company. But till then Systrom had no intention of giving his dream in other hands and thus he declined the offer.

Insagram made constant progress adding up more polished features and in April 2012 it was released with a new version compatible to the android phones. With this step the app established new records as it was downloaded by more than a million of android users in less than 24 hours. Acknowledging the company’s progress even Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder could not resist himself and showed his desire to purchase Instagram. He was aware that Systrom would never agree to leave his hands completely off from the app so, he offered a tempting amount of $1 billion in cash and stock emphasizing on the provision that the company would be free to be independently managed and to this Systrom could not deny.

Hit by criticism
No successful story could be completed without the involvement of scandals and criticism. In December 2012, there were some changes made in its terms and services policy which included the clause of owner’s rights to sell users’ photos to third party without any notification and compensation. As a result of this Instagram was hard hit by criticism and there was a notable drop recorded in the number of users. But the mistake was soon rectified with an apology by Kevin Systrom himself.

Story of Vivek Wadhwa- a Silicon valley tech entrepreneur turned academician

start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

‘Hard work bears sweet fruits’; this old adage has successfully proved its veracity in every age. And sweetness to these fruits is enhanced when talent and skills are blended to it. While reaching to the pedestal of success, failures are generally encountered but one must not sway away from the aim. It is the firm determination and incessant efforts that can aid you in achieving what you wish for.

The story of Vivek Wadhwa, a Delhi born technology entrepreneur from America voices out the same dedication and hard work which helped him to grab his goal. Wadhwa completed his graduation from University of Canberra in 1974 with a B.A. degree in Computer Studies. After graduating, he upheld his career in programming computers, adding a mere number in the prodigious swarm of programmers to make his ends meet. But as time passed, it became cumbersome to carry on with the same pace. Expanding family demanded more income and at the same time he too realized the need to progress. Thus, his needs and talent invoked in him the passion to come out of his shell and break new ground.

Image Credit: Wikemedia

Matter of choice

The decision to move into a new life wasn’t a trivial one. He knew his one step forward would change his entire world for good and the uncertainty of the outcome was hanging like a sword over his neck. But a ordinary life was not what Wadhwa desired. It is said that stagnation leads to rotting and this is what kept him moving. At the time when he was newly married and his wife was expecting, he decided to enroll for a MBA degree from New York University. It was biggest bet of his life as he didn’t have enough savings which meant tough times ahead.

His thirst for knowledge knew no boundaries and he was aware that doing an MBA would enrich his brain with the understanding of business world which he did not know of in much depth. With the hope for a bright future he invested all his savings and time to earn the degree. Vivek had to make many compromises to pursue MBA as he had to scale down his living standards and also had to shift to a compact one-bedroom flat with his wife.

Education never deceives you

Though he considers doing MBA as best investments as it helped him grow professionally and become an entrepreneur, yet he is no more an advocate of hiring MBA’s in startups. Vivek sees a clear gap between the skills that a business school teaches and what a startup requires.

After MBA Vivek secured a decent job in the IT department of CS First Boston, where he rose from the position of a programmer to become a project leader and then to the post of vice president of the company. His skills and hard work were finally illuminating his way to success.

Although he was doing a praiseworthy job at CS First Boston he couldn’t achieve complete satisfaction from his work and then he decided to lay his first step in the entrepreneurial world by spinning of the startup, Seer Technologies. He used his skills to persuade IBM to invest $20 million in his company and this gave the initial bolt to his company. Under his leadership Seer Technology grew to $118 million publicly traded company.He later founded Relativity Technologies in North Carolina in 1997 which was considered as one of the best companies to work in the world.

Later, he left the company and shifted his focus to academic research. Vivek Wadhwa is now a fellow with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, a professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and Vice President of Innovation and Research at Singularity University. He writes for different blogs like Techcrunch and Businessweek.com. Vivek Wadhwa has set an example for everyone that success could be achieved if you are ready to dedicate your time and energy to your aim without dwindling for a moment.

Quick Heal Technologies: From earning $12 per month to billion dollar antivirus company

start-up, Tech Story / By

Stories of great achievers are always very enchanting, yet they are true and no fairy tales. Anyone with required skills, dedication, hard work, patience and never say die attitude can strive for the success.

Kailash Katkar, MD and CEO of Quick Heal Technologies Limited, never waited for success to find him, rather made all possible efforts to reach out to it. He did not belong to a rich family, did not have luxuries to lead a comfortable life yet he is at a position now where he can enjoy every comfort of life. But all this did not come to him in legacy; it is the fruit of his hard work and talent. And in his journey to the desired destination, his younger brother Sanjay Katkar accompanied him as a reliable support.

Image Credit: www.quickheal.co.in

Early life & hard work
Katkar belongs to a very modest Maharashtrian family, born in a small village at Rahimatpur, India. Since, the village was too small to support them with future prospects, they moved to Pune where his father worked as a machine setter in Philips. With a handful amount of family income, it was getting tough to manage all the requirements and this made Katkar take up a job right after his graduation. He worked as a mechanic at a local calculator and radio repair shop and managed to add $12 (INR. 400) to the family income kitty. But stagnation was something not made for Katkar. Following his interest in technical field, he learned to repair gadgets popularly used in offices in those days which included desktop electric calculators, radios, TVs, ledger posting machines and so on. From this side business, he could successfully earn $65 (INR 2000) a month which was undoubtedly an achievement for him then. But this achievement did not make him happy enough to stop. His dreams were not of walking on roads but to fly in the sky. Pursuing the same he set up his own hardware repair shop, whose success gave him a comfortable living.

Entry into the entrepreneur world
A comfortable life never tempted Kailash Katkar so much as to settle down. His first step into the entrepreneur world could be marked by the opening of his own shop with an initial investment of around $200 (Rs. 15,000) which was a big deal two decades back. The first year of this one-man venture gave him an income of $1100 (INR 45,000) which was quite decent but not enough to satisfy Katkar. He began feeling an incompetency in his skills and therefore went on to attend short computer courses around 1991-92 so as to look forward to a better venture and earn more and more. He set a second milestone in his way to be a successful entrepreneur by establishing a new business of computer services, keeping up the repair shop running at the same time. In 1993 he won the annual maintenance contract for New India Insurance, leaving all the well-established corporate ventures far behind. This success shows the amount of dedication this man gave to his work which led him to generate a turnover of $2300 (INR. 100,000).

During this time, popularity of computers in India began expanding and at the same time many virus related problems were also observed. This is when Kailash Katkar and his brother Sanjay Katkar got the idea of developing antivirus software to relieve people of such issues with their systems. Going along with the flow of their business, they appointed some software engineers later and with the immense efforts of each member they developed a better version of antivirus software.

Rebounded from the verge of shutdown
Promotion and marketing of Quick Heal remained limited to Pune area only for many years. Katkar brothers were finding it hard to manage a office in Pune in the absence of outside investment. It was then in 1999 when they decided to shut down the antivirus business.

However, on the suggestions of few friends they decided to give it a last shot with aggressive marketing. They started with half page ad in Times of India. Happy with their success they went on to open various branches of their setup in different parts of the country and by the year 2005-2006, they expanded the cause focusing on computer speed, mobile security and gateway level protection. They then, renamed their company to Quick Heal Technologies in 2007 which is counted among one of the popular companies in this field. In 2010, Quick Heal received an investment of $13 million (INR 60 Crores) from Sequoia Capital with another round of funding of $19.7 million from anchor investors, including BNP Paribas Advantage and Reliance Mutual Fund later.

This funding helped Katkar open sales offices in countries like Japan and the US. Today, Quick Heal Technologies have tie ups with several countries across the globe and its achievement is surely not unheard. It has grown to  31 branch offices with over 8 million customers worldwide.

From Rags to Riches: Journey of Jyothi Reddy from a farmer to the CEO of a $15 million IT firm

start-up, Tech Story / By

Everybody dreams of being a millionaire, but have you ever thought why everyone doesn’t become rich? We shall not impose all blame on luck, yes indeed, good fate is a necessary aspect to achieve success but relying completely on it isn’t justifiable. Persistent efforts, patience, hard work, determination and a good intention are equally important to get what you want. And we do have examples of those who started from zero but reached the zenith of success.

“I could not stand being poor. I was born poor and was wed into another poor family.”

These are the words of Jyothi Reddy, CEO of a $15 million US based IT company, Key Software Solutions. The story of Jyothi Reddy is about her extraordinary journey from a poverty ridden life to that of utmost luxury. She has set an example for all those women who have the potential to ascend the ladder of success but belonging to a weak economic background leaves them hopeless. There is nothing impossible in this world and one should never make any compromise with one’s dreams as you never know when time changes and transforms your life.

Constant struggle turning out to be fruitful

Jyothi Reddy, being from an extremely poor family from India had to become a forced orphan for 5 years where she attended a government school from class 5 to 10. After 5 years living in the orphanage, she determined to live a better life but leaving the orphanage proved no better for her as she was married off at the age of 16 to an impoverished farmer 10 years older to her. Poor economic condition did not leave her side and her life grew even worse. As a result of dearth of money, she too was compelled to toil as a farm laborer earning a meager amount of Rs.5 per day and this continued from 1985 to 1990.

Jyothi Reddy
Image Credit: jyothireddy.com

Meanwhile she became the mother of two daughters and this gave her the strength to fight for herself and for her daughters. By her sheer efforts, she grabbed the opportunity of teaching in a government school. But the money she earned from teaching was not sufficient to run her family of 4. Therefore, she constantly looked for other small works like stitching petticoats, selling one or the other things on buses and trains. But Reddy never lost hopes and she never turned back but prepared herself to fly victoriously. As she knew the importance of education, she graduated herself from Ambedkar Open University and also learned typewriting.

Prepared the way to America all by herself

Her first step to enter into the techno world could be marked by her meeting with a US cousin who inspired her to escape the situation of poverty by going to the US. The cousin too saw a spark in her to strive for her set goal. Reddy then drove herself to take computer science classes with great dedication. And after all needed arrangements were made; she made it to US alone. Reaching US did not make her problems go away, tussle for success didn’t end there but a new struggle awaited her. Her initial days there were of great struggle as she was not fluent in English and also had no big degree but again she not for a moment dwindled. She worked as baby-sitter, load/unload goods and many such places there. She also worked as a software recruiter in Virginia, from where she learned all about techno world and got much useful experience.

Beginning of entrepreneurial journey

Her ambitions never let her remain satisfied and this is the reason that she is standing at the pedestal of success today. Her job as a recruiter weaved her dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. She returned back from US only to determine herself to open her own software company in US. She set up an office at Phoenix in 2011 with an investment of her savings of $40,000 and since then she is running her company, Keys Software Solutions.

Today Jyothi Reddy is a known social activist and philanthropist working for the upliftment of orphans.

Defying the stereotypes, Afghan woman makes it to Entrepreneurship

Tech Story / By

Those who say women should better stay behind the four walls need a reality check. Looking at women excelling in all the fields one must realize the need of breaking all the stereotypical notions formed against their capabilities. From being a teacher to flying airplanes, women these days are leaving their imprints everywhere.

One such woman is Roya Mahboob, the founder and CEO of Afghan Citadel Software Company. She was born in Herat, Afghanistan a country with more than 85% illiteracy among women. Her childhood was not a bed of roses as she had to leave her homeland with family with the advent of Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. She took refuge in Pakistan and Iran like other homeless people of her country. This was the tough time for her and others. She was not allowed to attend a school and go outside to play. Who then knew, this refugee would one day become an entrepreneur? Her journey continued and she returned back to Afghanistan in 2003 and put her first step towards the entrepreneurial journey. She learned English while volunteering at a French NGO. In 2005, she enrolled herself in Herat University to pursue bachelor in Computer Science for information and communications technology. Since then she never looked back. Where women in Afghanistan even today remain behind the veil, Roya Mahboob has dared to break the stereotype and stand aloof from the line. After completing her graduation, she worked as IT Director in her university and also acquired an MBA in Information Technology in 2011.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

A woman of substance

Her progress towards entrepreneurship began when she was included among seven Afghan entrepreneurs as a part of the Herat Information Technology program. While pursuing her MBA, Mahboob with her two university classmates, laid the foundation of Afghan Citadel Software Company in 2010 with an investment of $20,000. Such a risky initiative she took with a positive intention of providing an opportunity to recent university graduates particularly women to look for a job in Afghanistan’s growing tech market. This initiative proved to be helpful for all those women like her who wanted to break away from the prejudiced notions and stand independent on their feet. The company aimed at developing software as required by the clients that were mainly government ministries, international organizations and universities. Thus, the company began to come into recognition of not just few but many.

Roya Mahboob is applauded worldwide for her efforts in giving a boost to technology and encourage women. She despite receiving several threats from her own countrymen kept her pace on and responded on these threats-

“You have to show everybody that men and women are equal. Women can do something if you allow them. Give them opportunity and they can prove themselves”.

Empowering women

She later joined in with partnership with Film Annex, to launch the Afghan Development project in the year 2012. Mahboob and Film Annex together are striving to make internet classrooms in the schools of Afghanistan so as to increase the connectivity in the education system throughout the country and offer them a hopeful future so that they are not led astray and don’t end up in joining the poisonous terror groups.

She has successfully collected many awards and titles for her social initiatives. Her nonprofit, Digital Citizen Fund, is helping women realize their potential, strength and freedom to fulfill their goals. Her tech efforts are aimed at connecting business and social world. She also got a place in the 2013 list of Times magazine of “100 Most Influential People In The World”.  Roya Mahboob’s determination, courage and entrepreneurial capabilities will surely encourage other women not only in Afghanistan but other developing countries to take charge of themselves and step out of their protective environment to participate in all sectors of economic life important to build stronger economy and to improve the quality of life for family and community.

An Indian CEO wants BMW for all his employees

Inspiration, Story, Tech Story / By

A simple comment on Hacker News motivated an employee of Zoho Corp. to leave his cushy job and build a b2b company that recently got $31 million in funding at $250 valuation from Tiger Global.  Company in case is Freshdesk and the person behind this hugely successful venture is Girish Mathrubootham.

Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Fresdesk founded this cloud-based customer support platform in 2010. Girsih was VP of Product Management at the ManageEngine division of Zoho Corp when he read on Hacker News that Zendesk (now a competitor of Freshdesk) is increasing prices by 60% to 300%. In this comment of an unhappy customer of Zendesk, Girsih saw a potential business opportunity.


There was another personal experience where Girish never got a response to his 20+ emails from insurance company for his damaged TV. But when he posted his plight on a public forum he got immediate attention of the company.  He realized that he had  all that it takes to create a platform like Zendesk. He decided to hit the $37 billion customer relationship market with a SaaS based customer support platform along with his colleague Shan Krishnasamy.

They worked day & night with dedication for eight months to get the product out in market. In 2011, Freshdesk signed up its first client, Australia’s Atwell College. Freshdesk also emerged as winner at Microsoft BizSpark Startup Challenge winning $40,000. Girish and his co-founder maintained from the beginning that if within a year Freshdesk doesn’t get enough traction, they will shutdown and go back to job. However, that situation never arrived and soon they signed up 100 customer and became Zendesk’s biggest rival.

Smart Moves
Since inception Girish and his team planned everything from marketing to operations within budget. When they couldn’t integrate a US payment gateway to handle recurring payments which is essential part of any SaaS business and since their target customers were in US, Girish went ahead and registered a US company while sitting in India for just $1278. This paved the way to get a US bank account and integration of recurring payment gateway.

Girish always loved the work culture at Zoho Corp and felt the  strong sense of ownership and pride of being part of the Zoho group. He brought the same culture to his company. Unlike other big startups, Freshdesk don’t prefer to hire people from IIT or IIMs. On the lines of Zoho, Freshdesk also prefer to hire top talent of tier II, tier III  educational institutes. Girish is a kind of  CEO whose happiness lies within the happiness of his employees. In an interview to ET, on being asked about wealth creation, he answered

“Wealth creation to me means creating wealth not only for founders and shareholders, but also for all the employees who are passionately building the company along with us.I think it is a great opportunity that I have as the founder to be able to create and share wealth. When I started the company I told my wife that I am not starting a company for me to buy a BMW, I am starting a company so that all my employees can buy BMWs.”

Once on a trip to San Francisco, Girish was proud to know from a taxi driver that he uses Freshdesk on his day job as support engineer. In 2012 Freshdesk launched a mobile SDK, Mobihelp, which lets its clients to engage their customers within their mobile app. In 2015, Freshdesk acquired a social recommendation platform Frilp and a live video chat company 1CLICK to strengthen its customer support platform. Today, Freshdesk is used worldwide and has a huge customer base with a plush office in Chennai along with branches in cities like London, Sydney and San Francisco.

Image Credit: Freshdesk