India is on the cusp of a startup revolution. With a big investment push from corporate investors, corporate houses, celebrities and a range of favorable schemes by central/state government has positively created the euphoria of Start-up India Standup India.
The team at eTravos (powered by team i2Space lead by Founder & CEO Bhargava Vangapally) would love to share their journey that might help budding & experienced entrepreneurs alike.
The Story Before the Year 2013
Like most of the software companies in Hyderabad i2Space was into web development – specializing in custom travel portal development. We did that for years till one fine day the Founder & CEO realized that majority of the developers out of a total strength of almost 40 (peak strength during 2012) were engaged in fixing bugs or handling never ending change request. There was hardly any new development in sight because of the work load stress to the existing developers.
The Problem – Unable to Focus on New Development
During the period of 4 years i2Space has served 100+ domestic (India based) clients with their branded custom domain. Bhargava observed a pattern in the problems (support request) they were facing on a frequent basis.
A few pointers:
- Software Bugs – at times repeated due to carelessness.
- API consumption related changes due to updates in source API.
- UI changes.
- Payment Gateway related changes (Remove Existing PG, Add new PG etc.)
The above pattern persisted with the team and clients – a never-ending wild goose chase with clients support request. Our woes compounded as India is an extremely price sensitive market you literally need to keep on haggling with the client for support related payments!
SOS – To Our Rescue – A Multitenant SaaS
Bhargava build a team of 5 developers of i2Space and spearheaded the development of a Multi-tenant SaaS later launched with the brand name eTravos. For the uninitiated, Multi-tenant SaaS is software that can cater to the needs of similar workflow from a single code base & possibly a single database. After putting almost 2 years of hard work in development & testing we had a stable service named eTravos that has the ability to cater to the needs of 100s of clients from a single code base & 2 databases. Yes, this was challenging but we did it.
As of today eTravos has 9 services with rich set of configuration screens that it can signup new client within 15 minutes with his chosen set of services & UI themes. The client can start his business in a couple of days!
Optional information: The bookings of following services is supported by eTrvaos:
- Bus
- Cabs
- Domestic Flight
- International Flight
- Hotels
- Holiday Packages
- Recharges
- Bills Payment
- Service Apartments
What We Did with eTravos?
Once eTravos was stable (almost a year ago) we started to migrate our existing clients on eTravos platform. Most of them were more than happy to use our shiny new service. We had a few new sign-ups as well. The time & resources we spend in support & maintenance was drastically reduced. Now we’ve a far smaller team with a better productivity than ever before.
Statistics Speaks for itself
Not to boast but in last 12 months we’ve the following figures:
- Number of clients = 135 clients
- Number of users (Site-Admins, Distributors, Agents) = 1528
- Turnover = INR 13021560
- Number of Bookings = 13611
- April 2016 – Monthly Turnover – INR 3700058
- April 2016 – Number of Bookings – 3308
With the current pace of growth we can reach a Monthly turnover of INR 10 Million by October 2016.
Smart use of Technology is the prime leverage to get ahead in your entrepreneurial journey. Never ignore it. Sometimes you need to pause, look back and start afresh to gain the desired results. Finally the perseverance pays. Happy Entrepreneurial Journey…
