"Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life."
Mr. Mohan Kumar filled with new and intriguing ideas influenced us to know about his ideas and his walk throughout his journey.
Interviewer: Mr. Mohan, what does your company actually deals with?
Mr. Mohan: I represent this company and am the founder of the company called iAccept Softwares. It is an IT product company creating products which are collaborative in nature. All our platforms enable collaboration between companieswho may also be competitors, which is our unique feature. We have 3 platforms which are; 1. iAccept-which is used before an employer hires an employee, 2. Thijori- we call it as Vault on the Cloud that is used to manage queries of employers with respect to the employees who have left the organization, 3. The most important is Pehechano which is a social initiative and deals with safety of the citizens created to map out multiple identities of an individual.
Interviewer: Could you brief us a little about the platform Pehechano?
Mr. Mohan: It is basically a mobile application though freely available and does not intrude with 3rd party advertisements.Companies send a short message regarding the identity of the technician who would attend their clients, to ensure the safety of the person opening the door. Companies are motivated to use it to avoid fraudulent activities and embarrassment. It is a crowd sourced platform for citizen’s safety.
Interviewer: What ignited the spark in you to initiate this business venture?
Mr. Mohan: There was a theft at one of the NGOs and on investigation it was found that a security guard, who had left his job about 6 months ago, was the culprit. During investigation, we also realized that the complete details of the said security guard were not available. This was because the 3rd party agency which had deputed the person had not given all the details. The records were also not clear and this person who had a good knowledge about the place committed the crime. It was then that it occurred to us, that this same person might still be employed with some other institution locally, and they may not be aware of his background. He might even be employed, not as a security guard, but could be practicing some other vocation.
And that made us realize that it would be helpful for the society to build such a platform to exchange critical information. And this information is stored safely and is provided to only people, who are in need of such information about a particular person who is being hired.
And there have been many such cases which motivated us even more for the launch of this platform.
Interviewer: What did you learn from the failures, if they were any?
Mr. Mohan: As an entrepreneur, we generally boot strap &under-capitalize the company which means we are very optimistic in terms of the revenue. These are things that one should be careful before starting an enterprise. Selection of initial team is also very important. The revenue may or may not come at the time you are expecting it, so one should be prepared for the same and plan for cash flows.
For the Pehechano platform, after creating and developing it, we realized it might not always be possible to force someone to download and use it. That is when we created this URL API plug in. But the positive aspect of using the application is that the user can merge all the different type of visitors they encounter.
Interviewer: What are the main principles you follow to maintain a healthy customer and employee relationship?
Mr. Mohan: In terms of our employees, we provide them with a lot of freedom and we do not actually look over their shoulder. The philosophy of the company is that we are employing adults and people are responsible for their own actions. Since they are answerable for their actions, they are able to perform better and start engaging in the activities themselves. We give them a lot of freedom for learning and experimenting and provide them with end to end exposure.
Interviewer: How would advice entrepreneurs coming up with new ideas?
Mr. Mohan: If somebody is really passionate about providing a solution or they really feel that they are able to solve a real life problem then the budding entrepreneur will be successful, if not today but tomorrow. Patience and passion drives the person in the right direction. Sometimes a productthat is very appealing but is not solving a real life problem, is bound to fail in the long run.