You’re reading an eChai Interview, an insightful and candid conversation with Entrepreneurs — a publication of eChai Ventures.

eChai with Abhishek Desai, Co-Founder, Digicorp

Our today's guest for eChai with An Entrepreneur is Abhishek Desai, Co-Founder of Digicorp which helps entrepreneurs and companies build scalable software products. Focused on design and speed, our solutions outsmart the competition. Digicorp has offices in India and USA.

Abhishek is responsible for managing Digicorp's diverse product portfolio, its worldwide network of strategic alliances, and the overall business strategy. He also applies his significant experience in strategic brand design and management to Digicorp's Global Advertising, Marketing, PR, Events, Communications and Sales.

During his 6 years at Digicorp, Abhishek oversaw the gradual increase of the development team from 4 to a strength of over 70 developers. Abhishek completed his B.E. in Computer Engineering from Nirma Institute of Technology. In his free time you will probably find Abhishek either outdoors playing cricket and test-driving fast cars; or indoors, relaxing with his wife and daughter, and watching a good movie.

Here is the insightful and candid conversation with Abhishek. Join the conversation to ask any specific questions to Abhishek.

Early Years : When did it first strike you to begin this venture and why? Your Eureka Moment (the moment you decided to be an entrepreneur).

We were a group of friends in college. We passed out in 2003. After passing out, we all did jobs in different companies in different cities. For e.g. I was in Mumbai. Kuntal, Sanket and Nachiket were in Ahmedabad. Their US student visa was rejected for doing masters so reluctantly they had to do job!

After few months, I came back in Ahmedabad. One of our relatives had a small project which she wanted us to do. We decided to give it a shot by working part-time on it.So we used to do a full time job during day and used to work on the project during night time. We all had stacked up our old computers in one empty flat provided by Kuntal’s uncle. It was fun time and it went on for few weeks. After a while, we had to choose. Either we are in doing this project full-time or job full-time. So we all decided to quit our job and focused on this project. So it was kind of accidental and there was no specific eureka moment in this I guess. 

Business Venture : What is your business model and what problems does it solve? What are market opportunities? How is it different from your competitors? How do you generate revenues ?

Business model is very simple. Digicorp helps entrepreneurs and companies build scalable software products. Focused on design and speed, our solutions outsmart the competition.The idea is to be strive for absolute best in whatever we do. There was, is and will be demand for quality software design and development in the market forever. So we have a lot of opportunity in front of us.

Our solutions focus on design and scalability. We don’t work on too many projects at the same time. We try to apply our decade of learning in all the projects we do for clients. We are opinionated and sometimes it does not go well with clients. But that’s what we are. We do fail often and we are not proud of it but every time failures make us stronger.

Revenues are coming from the design and development services we provide. We also have stake in few of the startups we are working with. So we are not keeping all our eggs in one basket. We do believe that one of these startups is going to make it very big.

Sales : How did you make your first sale and how much time it took you from starting up to closing the first sale ? How long is your sales cycle ? 

Well, I don’t remember the very first sale but I do remember the first major sale we did. It was a healthcare project from US and it was very big for us at that time. Somebody was looking for a team of developers to build EMR (Electronic Medical Records) for clinics in US. EMR is a very comprehensive system. It does require good functional and technical expertise. We were referred for the project by Kuntal’s ex-boss. Client came to see our office, met us and later awarded us the project! He hired team of total 8 developers. We hired 3 of our classmates to join us :). It was a lucky break because we hardly knew VB.NET and project was supposed to be done in that technology.

Company Culture : What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

From initial days, we always wanted to create a company where we would like to work with. It was nice and easier to manage when we were few in numbers. No hard and fast rules and we were quite adhoc at that time. After a while it became difficult to manage and we had to establish certain norms. Some very basic ones. Still we believe we have a very cool culture which is focused more on producing quality work for clients than anything else. Because we four are technical people, our team members trust our judgment more and we understand them better. This fact has really helped us all these years and setting up the right tone at Digicorp. We are proud of what we have created so far from that perspective but we really want to do so much better than this. Idea is to create the best company to work for and work with.

Partnerships : What are your views about finding the right Co-Founder ? How did you find your business partner? According to you who is the ideal business partner?

It was easy for us because we 4 were together from day one. We were friends before and starting Digicorp made that relation stronger. Ideal business partner is one whose vision aligns with yours or vice versa. Having complementary skill sets also helps a lot. If all partners are determined and focused on building the company, there are few chances of conflicts.

Hiring : How did you hire your first employee ? And in general what's your hiring policy ? How important have good employees been to your success?

Our first employee was a designer. Since we were programmers, we needed a designer to help us in design. Don’t remember how did we hire him. We try to hire people who fit in our culture. They have to go through at least 2 rounds of interview and if required a practical test of writing code or doing actual design. You can’t hire a programmer without seeing her code.

We firmly believe that our success is solely because of the kind of people we have worked with so far. They are our ambassadors even when they  are not with us. We owe a lot to them. I suggest you to read following blog post from Kuntal to understand importance of having good people.

http://www.digi-corp.com/blog/turning–11/

Learning : How did you handle your disappointments and failures?

We have failed a lot and have been disappointed a lot of time. It pains for a while but by default we are very positive people. We hardly let any negativity comes between us and Digicorp. We feel we are here on this earth for a very short time and it is not worth spending this short time in disappointments.

Vision : What's your vision for your venture. What do you want to accomplish in your life ? What are your future aspirations?

Vision is build an organisation, which lasts for at least 100 years. Digicorp should be the best company to work with and work for and that too for a very long time. The only way we can achieve this is by building great teams. Great teams build great products. Great products give you great results and it is a positive cycle. We also need a very strong foundation, which we are trying to lay now based on our learning of past 11 years.

Work-Life Balance : How do you find a balance between work family and social life?

Since last few years we have all weekends off in Digicorp. We do try to adhere to it diligently. We value our family life same as our work life. What’s the point of doing all this if you don’t have a family to enjoy success with. If you plan well, work-life balance can be achieved and should be achieved by everyone.

Risks : Which was the boldest decision you ever made to have this venture work?

Not sure if we can consider one particular decision the boldest one but may be quitting our day jobs to start Digicorp was the boldest decision because that’s how this journey started.

Checkout " The Digicorp Story" presented first time at the 10-year celebration event of Digicorp, this video narrates the Digicorp journey beautifully :

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3--KcwRjR8

Here are some amazing photos from Abhishek's entrepreneurial journey.