Fitness Freak, Meditator, Chef, Ideator, Entrepreneur | Anish Betawadkar

On the way to create a software superstar

Every startup gets lucky sooner or later, but the ability of the startup to multiply the luck matters the most. This is why we see some organizations getting plateaued at a certain stage. IncubXperts started their journey in Dec 2016. Four individuals left their handsome paying jobs and positions in IT services/product companies and embarked on one of the most exciting journeys of their lives. Anish Betawadkar, Amit Dhandal, Rahul Bagal, and Preetam Tiwari are all first-generation entrepreneurs with sound experience and expertise in their own technical and functional areas.

The team’s first attempt was to incubate an IT product. However the attempt failed and they soon realized that it takes more than just a good product to get success as a product company. One needs a strong financial backbone and network to take the product to the right customers. The ‘power of four’ helped them pivot and focus on their strength; building products for others, the classic IT services business.

Commoditization can be defined as the process by which a product/service that was unique or innovative becomes generic and widely available. To differentiate, businesses often obsess around big-bang criteria. What often gets missed out is that differentiation matters however razor-thin. But to be able to differentiate, you should be able to see through the eyes of your customers and prospects. IT services is a highly commoditized industry. It is almost impossible to create any differentiators. Despite this natural limitation, the IncubXperts team could differentiate themselves in several ways from the countless also-rans through their unique philosophy and approach to business.

Like most startups, IncubXperts made their humble beginning in a single room in a vacant flat. In just over five years, they have a team of 100+ in a new super-posh, sprawling, world-class 175-seater facility with nine conference rooms in Symphony IT Park in Nanded City. They serve customers from across the globe. Needless to say, they have played a few things right and are treading the right path.

Talking about their consistent growth, Rahul mentions, “We strongly believe that to make it big, you have to behave like one. Organizations that showcase a continuous graph of growth can be identified distinctly by how they approach external and internal growth.” Authors Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle talk about the ‘growing pains’ of an organization in their well-acclaimed book Growing Pains. They assert that it is critical to build the organizational infrastructure – an umbrella term used to describe the organization’s resources, operational systems, and management systems – to support and sustain growth.

Right from their very first year, IncubXperts focused on building a 360 degree mentorship program for technical people. Rahul and Amit are their technology backbones and they drive an initiative called Tech Circle under which IncubXperts grooms talent on product development life cycle. The initiative includes training on new technologies, usage of tools in code quality management, dev ops, and technical reviews in the development life cycle.

Anish heads business development and finance along with driving few delivery accounts. He articulates his belief, “Technology is just a vehicle to solve a business problem. A developer must understand that we are in the business of solving business problems, optimizing customer’s revenue, and delivering value to customer’s customer. To ensure that this focus remains in the forefront, we follow an approach that we take pride in, called Business Intent Driven Development (BIDD).”

Anish educates on the BIDD approach, “We do not just take a requirement at its face value without understanding the Why, What, and How. What is the business problem the product will solve? Why is the given approach the right one? Are there any available workarounds rather than building new product functionality? How would it make life simple for my customer’s customer? Who is the end user? What is his/her persona?”

Anish further adds, “If a developer doesn’t understand all the above mentioned aspects, the solution developed based on the given customer requirement might not actually solve the problem. After having spent a good amount of dollars, if customers do not get what they want, they lose their faith on offshorization. They simply conclude that offshore team is unable to fathom what I want. This is the problem IncubXperts solves with their BIDD approach, and that is why 80 percent of our new business is repeat or referral.”

How does IncubXperts ensure that BIDD is effectively taken to the last node of the organization?  Anish and Preetam run two initiatives PMBA Leadership Nexus and Raw Diamonds. These initiatives help them mentor today’s and tomorrow’s leadership on BIDD. The bimonthly meetings also serve as a good feedback mechanism. 

IncubXperts’ conscious organization development effort over these five years has made their steep evolution path possible. Preetam, who heads HR and deliveries for IncubXperts, shares, “We do not just help our customer’s to automate their business, we focus as much on automating our own business functions i.e. HR, operations, finance, and so on. Right since we were 25-30 people strong, we started using enterprise software tools like MS Teams, Outlook, Zoho People, and Zoho Books. For functions like asset management, appraisals, and skill matrix, we have developed homegrown solutions. This helps us manage our processes well.”

Preetam adds, “We have a sound cash flow. We do projectized accounting and keep the team investments optimum. We do resource allocation based on skill matrix and can forecast the resourcing need effectively.” One of the primary tasks for Preetam is to recruit the right talent, plan training & development, run various HRD initiatives to retain talent, and appraise them based on the value (and not just number of years of experience) that they bring in.  This entire workflow is completely driven by automated tools which bring in quality and predictability, and reduces the people dependency.

Preetam concludes, “Our customers love the way we manage our own business. This gives them enough confidence in us and the repeat-referral business reflects that trust. We have the excellence of a mature organization, because we think like one. Alongside we bring in the agility and speed of a startup, which makes us special.”

IncubXperts believes in repeating what has worked for them. Investing into the ‘intangibles’ has been their mantra, and it has worked wonders till date. They are aware that there are areas in which they need to improve. The foundation is laid and they have distance to travel.

Website : www.incubxperts.com
Email : engage@incubxperts.com