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In Conversation With

Entrepreneurship was a ‘given’ in my case: Siva S, CEO, Powerup Cloud!

In life, we come across people who dream about becoming an entrepreneur but as they grow up, they seldom succeed. There are certainly reasons for the same but Siva was different. In various stages of life, he was doing different things and currently is the CEO of Powerup Cloud

Here is his inspiring story which undoubtedly will inspire the young budding entrepreneurs. 

Your parents were also into business, right?

I come from a typical Indian middle-class family. My father runs his own trading business in the textile industry and my mother is a Doctor. A major part of my school days was divided between two towns in Tamil Nadu, India – Erode and Tirupur. I did my B.E in E.C.E from CIT, Coimbatore where I was awarded the ‘Best Outgoing Student of the Year’ and my M.B.A from LBS, Delhi where I was a Gold Medal recipient. In both the institutes, I led the Placement Cell and Entrepreneurship Cell, giving me the exposure to be a leader and manage a large team.

Though my parents were doing business on their own, they always wanted me to take a secure salaried job in the government or private sector so that I don’t have to go through the struggles the went through running their own gig. But I had a different plan in my mind.

Take us through the time when you wanted to quit a job and become an entrepreneur

I would say that the dream of becoming an entrepreneur was deep inside me right from childhood days. A major part of this hunger is due to the struggles we went through as a lower-middle-class family during my school days. It all started back when I was in my 3rd grade. The financial situation in our home was pretty bad during this year and I couldn’t even afford ‘brown covers’ and ‘name labels’ for my school notebooks. The school allowed me to use Newspapers as an alternate for brown covers for my notebooks. But ‘name labels’ was a must and we couldn’t afford to buy them as we were going through a pretty lean patch.

Since I was good at freehand drawing, I tore a sheet of white paper from my notebook and started preparing name labels which would look like something I have shared in this email. I got several appreciations through the day by various subject teachers when they saw my notebook label. In a day, this became trending news within the school and my fellow 3rd graders and 4th graders started lining up in a queue during the breaks to get custom labels done for them. They would request something they like to be in the label and I would immediately draw one for them (eg: Bus, Snake, Monkey, Bird, etc). When the demand was a little too much to be handled by a 3rd-grade kid, the other kids started offering money to prioritize their requests over others. So I started charging 10 Paisa for black-and-white labels and 20 Paisa for color labels. That evening, I went home full of 10 & 20 paisa coins in my trouser and shirt pockets.

So entrepreneurship was a given in my case. It was all about when was I going to start.

I continued to experiment with my entrepreneurship skills throughout. Being an introvert, I forced myself to open up and speak to strangers as I realized that this is an important trait one should build as an entrepreneur. During my first job as a Software Engineer at an MNC in Bangalore, I used to carry 200 T-Shirts every weekend from my hometown (Tirupur) to Bangalore and used to sell from my desk. This helped me to handle my low paycheck and also fed my entrepreneurship thirst. It was really odd initially to bring in a bag full of T-Shirts every day to my desk and sell while all my fellow colleagues were coming in just with their laptop bags. But the word started spreading among my colleagues and within a few weeks, I started having pre-orders for the entire lot well before the weekend. I continued this through my 2-year stint as a software engineer in Bangalore.

When I moved to Delhi to do my MBA, I started a brand called ‘AddoPensa’ to sell custom T-Shirts in Delhi markets to businesses and colleges. I used to sell these custom T-Shirts in Karol Bagh market to get the pulse of the local shoppers. I still remember receiving my first big cheque from a customer in Faridabad. There were days when I suffered losses, called up every person I knew to loan me money, defaulted and settled a credit card, and were pretty lonely in my struggle. All these experiments did help me shape up for my first big, full-time venture.

In 2015, when I decided to make my full-time move to starting Powerupcloud, I planned about 5 months earlier. I started saving up my salary so that I can use them to pay salaries and handle operational expenses for the first 3 months. I started spending really low (as low as I could) as a family so that I can prepare myself and my family to live with limited means. The key aspect was to find early customers. I ensured that I got a couple of paying customers from the first month so that we remain cashflow positive from Day 1. This was probably the master-stroke which helped us move fast during our early days.

The journey would’ve been difficult initially. What made you keep going

I would state that ‘Difficult’ is an easier word. We had challenges from every possible side. A 27-year-old with less than 2 years of experience in the IT services industry space, I had to learn a lot along with my co-founders to get the business moving. We faced collection issues, cash flow issues, delivery issues, operational issues, competitor issues, customer issues, people issues, hiring issues, statutory payment issues and more. But we were not ready to give up at any point in time. The struggles my family went through in my childhood days were a huge source of motivation. We set ourselves aggressive targets and we made sure that we hit them year-on-year.

Now you have customers all around the world. How does it feel?

Great but still a long way to go. Within 4 years from the start, Powerup was doing business in at least 4 countries – India, Singapore, USA & UAE. Now with the LTI acquisition of Powerup, we will be operating in more than 30 countries, growing our team by 15x in the next 3 years.

Starting businesses in new countries is not an easy feat. But thanks to blogs by Girish Mathrubootham (Founder, FreshDesk)( https://freshdesk.com/general/the-freshdesk-story-blog/ ) and some right advice from fellow entrepreneur friends, we were able to make some right decisions w.r.to global expansion. We did make mistakes, but that’s how you learn. 

Advice for upcoming entrepreneurs

1. Take the leap and don’t give up, ever.

2. Set yourself a 3-year target and move towards that. 3 years is the nest timeframe in today’s fast-moving world.

3. You don’t need funding to survive/grow. As long as you have the 3-year target in mind and keep working towards it, things will work its way automatically for you.

4. If you are building a product business, have a services model under a separate entity that will help you with the necessary cash flow and also keep your product company unadulterated by services revenue.

5. Have the right intent while building your business. If you hurt or cheat someone to build your business, it will always come back and hit you hard. Building your business with the best possible intention will give you a good night’s sleep and sleep is important for an entrepreneur.

6. Find like-minded friends and bring them on-board as your cofounders. Bring only those whom you can trust with your life because intent supersedes talent.

7. More importantly, identify and choose your mentors as early as possible. The right mentors will help you from doing mistakes and save you a lot of time. The right mentors will help you keep focused on your goal and be your sounding board in every key decision. I found 3 amazing mentors who helped immensely in building Powerup. They shared some of my struggles as it was their own. Balamurali Krishna was my partner manager from AWS and he guided us during our early stages of the business, helping us set up a strong foundation. Baba Sam is our sales and leadership mentor who helped us bring in a lot of hygiene in our sales process and leadership communication. This is one of the most important aspects to consider for a startup. This will help you get the cash into the company. Jayaprakash Rajangam is our finance mentor and M&A advisor. He helped us manage the cash we brought in to the company and also helped us streamline our books, preparing us for a fund-raise round. And Eshwar is our legal advisor, helping us through during some of our tough times. Find the right mentors asap.

8. And finally, be patient with your family, especially the likes of wife, kids, parents, siblings. They go through a lot with you during your business building days. Without their unflinching support, you can never achieve what you set out far.

Future plans

The team

The immediate plan is to build Powerup and LTI’s Global Cloud Practice into a world’s leading cloud technology consulting group in the next 3 years. My long term plan is to build a bigger enterprise in the Artificial Intelligence space in the next few years and dedicate myself to philanthropical engagements during my retirement years.

I am also planning to invest in startups from Tier-2 cities, mentor and help small-town entrepreneurs in receiving the necessary exposure and support which are till now slightly easier to access in big cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, etc. There are also plans to create a fund to back promising ‘services startups’ in technology domain which receive very little support from the ‘product heavy’ funding industry. India is a huge ‘services company’ land and I would like to help them go global with this services-focused fund.

This interview is for men’s day special. Share us a few words about the day.

To all the hard-working men who want to make the lives of their family, friends, dependents better, go out every day like a Lion. You are here to make a killing and there is no one to stop you. You will struggle, you will fall, you will cry and you might want to quit. But think about people who depend on you, who believe in you. Go out for them. The world is yours to conquer. Do not betray your friend. Do not cheat your customers and partners. Find the right mentors. And take care of your health.

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