Interviewer : Can you tell us something about your company? Why did you choose to enter this particular field of business?
Mr. Anuj: We are e10 Infotech, we are a Pvt. Ltd company and we do a lot of video streaming and live video content as well as on demand video content that we deliver on all channels.
Since, I come from a family of failed entrepreneurs, and professionals, it intrigued me to pursue entrepreneurship even more. I was 3-4 years old when my grandfather passed away. I have heard about him from people of my surrounding villages. With his acute entrepreneurship and social thinking nature, he would setup businesses for the welfare of the people of village. I got inspired by this at very young age, though unaware of how to go about it, until I completed my graduation, like anyone else in the city like Mumbai, I wanted to do job for Multi Nationals.
Then I completed engineering diploma and found the answer to HOW, I was looking for. I now had the means to solve a problem. All my friends were getting interviewed; I participated in a few too. But being an average student, this was not easy for me. The DOTCOM boom was very much at its peak. And I saw great opportunity to decide the road ahead for me, then to let someone else choose it for me.
It’s not a business. You are always an employee, if you don’t serve as a boss; your clients are your boss.
Interviewer : To what do you owe your success? What is the driving force that pushes you?
Mr. Anuj: Do it better today. I always believe I am a better, smarter person then of my past self. Though I look at what I did wrong yesterday I don’t dwell on it. I seek to find way to improve myself and keep learning. It’s not that I have not made mistakes, everyone does.
Sometimes, knowingly by pursuing a decision, bound to fail. And sometimes, unknowingly.
Interviewer : The online market has bloomed in the last decade and has become very competitive, what makes your company so unique?
Mr. Anuj: It is the niche product itself, technically you would have separate industries where you would have develop a particular product and deliver it to your client. In our case its mostly the video delivery itself, we felicitate the client in bringing the video content online and suggest ideas as to how to bring the content online and enormous amounts of viewership online, whereas in the traditional media houses you would only be able to use the present satellite channels, they have their limitations, somebody has to sit in front of a television to be able to watch those. We always believe we first need to inform and educate our clients for the challenges and ground reality of the technologies and their costs. This helps clients take an informed decision. Our sales team is also engineers at heart and takes a huge pride in finding a solution for you, rather to just increase their sales numbers. We believe earning a Trust of clients if the best revenue we can make.
Interviewer : If you had not become a business person, what would you be doing right now?
Mr. Anuj: That’s a hard one, you can say I might have done a job for not for long may be 2-3 years and then again jumped back to doing business. Doing a business for me is like raising a child. I cannot, not be doing this.
Interviewer : As an entrepreneur why did you think of starting your own business when you could have joined other media houses?
Mr. Anuj: We initially started as a central service provider, then we developed from a service provider to being a product development company, we have evolved over time. To take a decision it is really hard, it was never in to my nature to be able to do a job per se, rather to be able to dictate your own terms, to be able to control your own destiny to be able to take the path that you want to achieve, one has to be able to take decisions like this, even if I would have been doing a job, it would be a few years and then I would end up doing business itself.
Interviewer : There is a continuous debate about print v/s digital and traditional v/s non-conventional media, so where do you see the future of your industry going, do you think it is going to overtake the traditional media that we have today?
Mr. Anuj: Yes definitely, eventually you are going to see only digital media, there is not going to be any traditional one, the paper is going to be dead, it is already dead in most developed nations I feel, you have people who would want to keep it as a treasure from the past, you have people who would treasure a book or a newspaper cutting, but sooner or later it will all be digital. It is going to evolve into full-fledged digital media altogether.
Interviewer : What is your basic target audience? On a scale of 1 to 10 how satisfied do you think your customers are?
Mr. Anuj: Media houses mostly and somebody who would produce content would need it to be distributed, it is our focus. We try to market to people who would want content to be produced and delivered and distributed. We provide what big channels like YouTube or maybe sound cloud miss, we allow people to have their own channel or space to display their own content with their own branding and own ideas, why would you want to start a business when you would have somebody else’s branding over it. This is where we come into the picture, we try to bring your idea into your picture and move it further from there
And, as far as the satisfaction of my customers is concerned, I think, on a scale of 10, the range would be 9.8, and that’s all you can achieve. You can never satisfy anyone 100%. There is always something missing which is what drives you to work harder and push the limits of your ability. And eventually achieving 99% of what you were looking for.
Interviewer : Since the last year we have had many changes in the financial policy, demonetization and the GST right now, so how has that affected your company and the industry as a whole?
Mr. Anuj: The industry will definitely be subject to any changes in taxation, any policy will increase or decrease the cost, there is very little margining that normally the IT industry works on. Last decade itself the amount of competition has become very vast, you always have a scenario where you would be looking to cut cost or margins. GST is no different there are few gains and few losses as well, setting up infrastructure and hiring resource on top of it, that cost definitely has gone up, it used to be in the range of 14-15 per cent but now it has gone up to 18 per cent, so the cost that has increased in my understanding will eventually even out, there is not going to be much of a difference.
Interviewer : Do you have any advice or message for an entrepreneur seeking a place in the IT industry?
Mr. Anuj: The first thing is trust in what you would want to do, trust yourself and you would also want to find it in your client. If there is anything that you really want to do deliver it with confidence, if you don’t have confidence in yourself you are not going to achieve it. Once you have it then you would want your clients or students or anybody you want to deliver it to. Trust in yourself when needed.
Interviewer : How do you see the future of your industry and of your firm?
Mr. Anuj: Very Bullish, online video streaming industry and overall IT industry is bound to grow in long run. Some hiccups might be there, I see a great future for e10, with the first-hand knowledge of having it done for so long and the cloud as infrastructure at your fingertip it’s looking very positive. When the web started it was only text then came the pictures and now with the rise of services like YouTube and Sound Cloud, Netflix etc., it’s time for Video.