Hello, all you raring to join the start-up brigade.
Read in for some valuable insights from Rahul Bhalla, core member of the team
that powered Zenatix.
(I wrote this
piece for the business academy of VISA. It is on the business academy
website)
When Rahul Bhalla, Vishal Bansal and
Amarjeet Singh of the batch of 2002 graduated from IIT Delhi it was to walk
career paths as varied as legal outsourcing, financial services and technology.
But the commonality of their engineering background, of having lived in the
same hostel and of wanting to do something together at some point ensured that
they not only kept in touch but also kept bouncing ideas for a start up. In
2013 when they quit their comfortable jobs the only certainty was that their
future lay in the application of data analytics.
Reminiscing about the ‘ what to do, when
to do’ days Rahul says, ‘we felt quitting our jobs as the first step was
necessary in order to come out of our
individual cushioned cocoons and look for opportunities. We were passionate
about data analytics and as a natural corollary started researching on
application of data analytics for verticals such as retail, health care,
e-commerce, financial services, energy etc. before zeroing in on energy
efficiency’.
The clinching factor was that Amarjeet
had already done a lot of research in energy sustainability.
Zenatix was formally launched in the
November of 2013. Quiz him about how the trio sustained themselves financially
in the gap period between leaving their jobs and starting Zenatix, and Rahul
Bhalla laughs. Calling it a slow growth period he says that even after the
launch the three kept pumping in savings and putting back whatever money they
were making into the business. It took 15-18 months for things to start looking
up. By this time they had some good customers and had raised some money.
In this period of slow growth it was
trust and faith coupled with belief in his co-workers that kept Bhalla going.
Building
the Product
This energy data analytics firm helps
large commercial customers of energy reduce their energy consumption using
intelligence from their energy data. The basic premise of the company is
operational behaviour – simply put it is what time certain equipment is
switched on or off.
Rahul Bhalla, CEO and Head of Sales,
gives an example he has found most people are able to relate to: that of a
telephone bill. In a telephone bill one is able to see how much one has spent
on SMS’s, local calls, STD charges, and international calls and so on. If the
mobile bill is higher than normal in a particular month one can check and see
that the roaming charges make sense because one was traveling. Compare this to
an electricity bill which gives no insight beyond the total number of units
consumed. This lack of insight hits the commercial sector spending lakhs, or
even crores, every month the hardest.
Zenatix helps disaggregate energy
consumption into major electrical loadsand does so in real time. It uses
physical sensors to acquire data on usage and sets up cloud based software for
real time monitoring of the client’s energy consumption. It runs advanced
analytics on the collected data and the softwaretriggers controls or prompts
for controls, which drive energy savings.
Ask him about their journey in
developing the product and he feels identifying a problem and its solution is
important but even more than that is the ability to evolve because the
customers and the market are never static. When one takes a product to the
market the market reacts in a certain fashion and the customers react in
another and one has to learn very quickly.
He says,’ when we started we were throwing data at people but soon
realised that this data was not helping them. If we had not evolved and
narrowed down our focus to commercial buildings and air conditioners our
product would not have had any compelling raison d 'être.
Building
the Team
Zenatix is divided into three verticals.
Sales and Business Development headed by Rahul Bhalla,Operations headed by VishalBansal and Technology headed
by Amarjeet Singh. Presently the firm has about fifteen employees but plans to
scale up the number by ten in the coming months. Ask Rahul Bhalla what he looks
for in a prospective employee and his answer is a succinct ‘passion and mind
set’. He feels that in the start up world the mind set a person needs to have
is very different from the cushy and predictable environment of established
firms where one comes in and leaves office at a certain time. In a start up the
employee needs to be able to contribute to self-growth and the growth of the
company. And of course get rewarded in return.
This is what worked for him personally
and what keeps him going. He always worked for companies which were start ups at
the time he joined: Evalueserve ,CPA Global, and UnitedLex Corporation. He was the first employee at the
latter. The company grew to about 100 million dollars in top line in about 6-7
years and concomitantly he went on to become the Vice President of Intellectual
Property.
Staying
Motivated
Passion is a lietmotif of Bhalla’s talk.
‘The scale of electricity consumption of corporates, hotels hospitals is huge.
If I can reduce a large building’s energy consumption by 10% that can possibly
power four villages in India. The realisation that if we are able to scale up
our business and impact how people live in this world keeps me motivated’.
Freshness and newness of challenges also keep him motivated.
There is a smile in his voice as he
repeats, ‘my eureka moments’? A pause and then he continues,’the eureka moments
come firstly when you see that your product has made a difference in someone’s
life. The second is when your start-up raises money.’
Zenatix raised around Rs 1.27 crore
($200k) in seed funding from a number of high profile investors. ‘When you see
a good set of individuals helping you in your endeavour to have your product
have a wider outreach it is a validation of your work and yes, it becomes a
special moment.’
For him the favourite aspect of being an
entrepreneur is seeing a new challenge daily. ‘When you get up in the morning
you have one thing in your mind but that goes up to ten when you reach office. Every
day is a new day and this is what keeps me going. The focus is on how to
deliver more and more value to the customer’.
Executing
and Staying Ahead
Bhalla feels that innovation and
execution are the key to staying ahead in today’s competitive market. An idea
is nothing on its own – it requires execution. This means installation of
hardware and software, engaging with customers, delivering on promises.
He firmly believes that building a
business is not so much about an idea but more about execution. So before one
starts looking out for ideas, look for co-founder(s) so that there is a solid
team that can execute well. That's what they (co-founders of Zenatix) did. When
they quit their jobs, they had no clue what they were we going to do but had
faith in each other's capabilities. Their goal was simple - solve a real
problem that has a big scale. Energy
efficiency is a real problem and one never has to worry about scale - everybody
on this planet is a consumer of electricity!
Ethical concerns are what most
entrepreneurs setting up base in India have to face including he and his
co-founders. ’We were clear in our minds that we would never engage in any
unethical practice. If our business succeeded well and good, otherwise we would
figure out something else. Once we had taken a stand we stuck to it and that
worked for us. So far we have been able to demonstrate significant growth based
on value for our product.’
The ready laugh is there again when he
is asked about the trio being labelled “The powerpuff boys” by a national
weekly. ‘Yes, that was a smart line and one felt good’.
And that’s how one leaves him- feeling
good about his work, motivated by the feedback, in love with the space he is in
at the present.
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