Starting out

A first generation entrepreneur, Kantanu always wanted to do something big to help society. During his engineering in Electronics and Communications, Kantanu wanted to develop a device that could control all electrical and electronic components in a house. “You could say the idea of working for any big companies in the software or chip design space was not sitting well with me,” he explains. Moreover, having spent many years in a startup-oriented environment in Silicon Valley and having been influenced by many great people like Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, and Marc Benioff, Kantanu finally decided to start his own journey. Armed with sufficient experience, Kantanu started a2zApps.com in 2007.

Ideation

Kantanu was part of a startup growth at Salesforce.com in San Francisco where he saw how online sales applications could help small and medium-sized companies to achieve their goals without investing in hardware or software. “Looking at the growing number of SMEs in India and their lack of IT knowledge/resources and their inability to afford SAP or Oracle apps, I personally thought they could be served better through a subscription-based and installation-free business model,” he says. But Kantanu wanted to offer a single platform on which multiple business apps such as CRM, Billing, HR, Project management etc. could be created in a few hours or within days. “I also wanted a simple, easy to remember and self-explanatory name that could communicate our business model. It’s evident with our name that we deliver all types (a-to-z) of business applications over the internet. This is how A2Zapps.com – a cloud-based platform- was born,” recounts Kantanu.

Challenges

Kantanu and his team found it difficult to find the ideal IT, startup-friendly, office space at an affordable price or even the right developers while training employees on this emerging new technology. “We still have many challenges in front of us - reach out to more companies in the unorganised sector in India, educate them about this model and identify good resellers,” points out Kantanu.

Funding

“The seed fund was provided by me. I was also lucky to get help from my family members,” says Kantanu. A significant amount of investment also came from an associate from Palo Alto, USA in late 2008. “I have put every penny of my savings to grow this company. Till now I have invested close to Rs. 50 lakhs. We are currently working on a plan to raise VC funds by mid-2011,” he says.

USP and Model

A2zApps’s USP lies in their customer-centric model. “Customers get what they want very quickly. Every solution to our customers is unique unlike other vendors where customers need to adapt to the out-of-the-box product. Customers pay a monthly fee towards the service. Customers don’t have to install servers or purchase software. They just need an internet connection and very minimal training. In addition, they get frequent upgrades which are instant and free.”

Competition

According to Kantanu, “Our closest competitor is SalesForce.com. The way we both present the data to end-users is similar. But they have two parallel products – Salesforce.com CRM and Force.com platform. Salesforce.com CRM is sold directly by them and the Force.com through a third party. We have an edge here because we offer a single platform product – a2zApps.com through which we deliver XRM/ERP apps to our customers directly. Since our product is built on multi-tenant architecture and platform concept, it allows us to add new features more frequently than our competitors. We publish upgrades six times a year.” They also have the ability to deliver business apps to customers worldwide at their price point and with a good margin.

Future plans

“We are looking to be ‘CIO in the Cloud’ for small companies who can’t afford IT teams or to be ‘Assistant to CIO in the Cloud’ for big companies who have a strong internal IT team already,” Kantanu says. Initially they want to make their services successful with their first 10,000 customers. With the arrival of 3G, netbooks/tablets and smart phones, Kantanu expects a strong growth in the enterprise space in the coming years and aims to reach this number in the next 2-3 years. He believes that if customers are happy, word will spread and this will help to expand the customer base. “We also want our regional partners to grow fast with our revolutionary IT-free model,” he adds.