I’m honored to be with Mr.Vivekananthan, Founder Pertly… Vivek’s entrepreneurial journey starts from his student days and let us gets from him…
Q. Good Day Vivek. Can you tell us about yourself?
A. Hi Anand, Thanks for getting me into this interview. I am Computer science graduate dreamt about starting a company to improve the everyday lives of people. Founder of Pertly. Throughout this interview you would find how my dreams became actionable.
Q. When & how did your entrepreneur desire started & evolved?
A. During my second year of college I took up a challenge of taking a project which my seniors left it off saying they cannot do. I challenged them and started it off, added to the fact that I don’t know any programming language at that time. I geared up in preparing for that project. I hardly got a week’s time to deliver. I started reading good books and slowly 4 individuals highly talented voluntarily joined with me saying they would help me out to complete this project.
We put our best efforts and we completed the project on time and delivered on the said exhibited time. Our team got praised everywere and eventually we won the first prize for best project exhibited.
This is the first event that acknowledged my skills. That is the proud moment I started finding opportunities everywere. I decided to take the road less travelled [during our college days]. I haven’t prepared for any campus interview, even my favorite teachers scolded me for being a bad example for my juniors. I never give up, I focused my energy in forming a team and again a golden opportunity knocked at me, this time it’s pretty big, our college is being selected for an open source project named “Tamil Database” its been funded by Tamilnadu government. I took up that project for two reasons, a. I don’t have capital to ignite a company b. I don’t like to ask it from my parents, becoz its my dream and I don’t want to risk my parent’s hard earned money. I see this as a golden opportunity.
With many helping hands from IIT, especially from Dr. Hema moorthy [Prof. Computer science department] we were able to complete that huge project.
Once after completing my degree I still had very less money to start a company so went for interviews and almost through to Accenture, but that is the best moment as one of my senior called me up [with whom I decided to start a company during college days] asked me to join hands with him to co-found a company in Chennai. My parents believed on me and I came to Chennai to start my entrepreneur carreer. My first company is Universal Elements. We developed a travel product and it got very high profile clients in Chennai. We have grown a considerable way and we developed from 2 t o12. After a year or so myself and my co-founder got a difference in attitude. It was him who called me up to start a company, hence I left my company with empty hands and cheerful memories. I gave all my clients to them, but they refused to take up one single client whom they cannot manage, so I took them up resided in friends place and did projects for them to feed myself. This is how Pertly evolved.
Q. What are you hobbies other than your business?
A. It includes playing chess, reading books, watching films, spending some time with friends.
Q. Tell us how Pertly took shape?
A. After being a one man, I started with typical office cum residence, then slowly we have moved to a separate office of ours. This is how Pertly took shape.
Q. Tell us about your previous ventures?
A. We started to sell our services and products. We learnt that products is the only way were you can bring harmony to the lives of people. Our product did it for travel industry.
Q. Tell the challenges you faced (Pre formation & post formation)?
A. The biggest challenge is forming a team and finding the right balance between demand and the resources to fulfill the demand.
As for registering a company we did outsourced it to Mr. Bala (Cogzidel), they did a great job and I found no problems in forming a company.
As far as post formation is considered, its all about creating talent pool.
Q. Tell us about Pertly’s business model?
A. Our initial motto is “Do one and do it better”, It doesn’t mean that we would stick to only one in our lifespan, it means we would be in only one until certain process is evolved above the threshold. Once our base is strong we can build how many ever floors we want on the top of it.
We have started our focus on products, we are prototyping ideas, I suggest wait for few months to know more about that.
Q. Tell us about Pertly’s services & products?
A.
We are currently a service oriented company.
We design and develop applications pertaining to web. Our service offerings includes:
- Graphic design
- Websites – PSD to XHTML/CSS compliant websites
- Content management – WordPress, Plugin development
- Ecommerce
- Payment gateways
- Webapplication
Q. Do you feel the impact of recession? How do you plan to overcome this recession?
A. We are growing actually. Yes payments are getting delayed but other than that we don’t feel the heat. We are indeed expanding our team and starting growing ever faster.
Q. What are your future plans?
A. We are in the starting phase of our product designs and all I can say is only that, I can say more about that once official announcements are released.
Q. What is your advice for new startups and wannabe entrepreneurs?
A. “All things are created twice, once in your mind & once in the real world”, so create your idea in your mind and start evolving it faster and faster.
- Register your company as soon as possible.
- Get networked with fellow entrepreneurs
I hope you all enjoyed this interview let me know your thoughts on to it.
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Thank you very much Vivek for sparing your valuable time with us and it was really inspiring to be with you. We wish you all the very best… To know more about Pertly kindly visit http://www.pertly.co.in…
AnandNataraj 