Rishikesh Ghare, CEO at Indio Networks

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

Mr. Rishikesh Ghare: Indio Networks (formerly Wifisoft Solutions) idea was conceived while I was working in the USA. While working, I had volunteered for several entrepreneurship related activities in Austin, Texas. The seeds of building a product-based company were planted while interacting with successful entrepreneurs in Austin.

When I moved back to India in 2005, I immediately incorporated Wifisoft Solutions based on the experience I had gained while doing a startup with my friends in USA. Wifi Technology was very new during those years and Wifisoft established a name for itself by providing end-to-end WiFi networking software. Initially all our customers were from USA and Europe since these regions were able to adopt and afford the WiFi technology. However, starting 2010, several countries in Asia and Middle East started adopting the technology and Wifisoft got a global audience.

Wifisoft always focused on innovation and product development which was the key to our success in the market.

Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Indio Networks Private Limited

Mr. Rishikesh Ghare: Indio Networks core competency is to build technology for connecting humans and machines. We understand all forms of connectivity and have deep expertise in building reliable, scalable and secure networks.

Indio Networks offers full range of wireless and IOT networking products for wide range of industries like hospitality, education, health-care, corporates, manufacturing, transportation, retail and more. The products include various types of WiFi access point/routers, Network Controllers, switches, NMS software, OSS/BSS solution, 4G routers and many different types of IOT controllers and devices.

Our products are deployed to build high-speed, reliable and secure wireless networks which can be managed from single console. Indio Networks offers a blend of hardware and software so its customers can get full range of networking solutions from a single vendor.

Great Companies: What makes Indio Networks Private Limited different from hundreds of other Networking Solutions Firms?

Mr. Rishikesh Ghare:

Indio Networks is one of the few companies that provides hardware and software solution for managing wireless and IOT networks. Indio Networks has built a strong supply-chain of vendors who can build next-generation wireless hardware products using WiFi, LoRA, SigFox, 4G/5G, BLE and other technologies. Indio Networks maintains a highly experienced team of engineers who build cutting-edge software on the hardware platforms.

Another key differentiator for Indio Networks is agility and flexibility of its products. Many customers need customized solutions that match their business requirements and Indio Networks with its unique software and hardware architectures is able to customized it products to match customer's expectations.

Lastly, Indio Networks offers personalized customer support and consulting services to its customers. Given our deep expertise and domain knowledge, our customer feel comforable to engage on their complex projects.

Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?

Mr. Rishikesh Ghare: Building a product-based company in India is always challenging than a service-based company. We face numerous struggles and challenges on a daily-basis from different quarters. We face lot of challenges while importing hardware goods in Indian customs. We have to face lot of corruption and red tape while dealing with Indian customs. Moreover, the government policies seem to favor MSME companies on paper but the reality is very different.

From HR perspective, it is hard to find good programmers and engineers who are experienced in networking and IOT domain. Most programmers are looking for cookie-cutter jobs and fail to understand the excitement of building products.

Lastly, India lacks a good eco-system for semi-conductor, embedded design and hardware industry. As a result, even small projects take long time to implement in India due to lack of hardware components and challenges in importing them from outside. This stiffles the speed of innovation and go-to-market for product companies in India.

Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Indio Networks Private Limited?

Mr. Rishikesh Ghare: Indio Networks plan to leverage lot of interesting work happening in WiFi, IOT, 5G and Cloud computing technologies in the Western markets and build these technologies in India for the emerging markets in Asia, Middle East and Africa. We believe in value innovation and bring down the TCO for the end customers. This will help Indio Networks pitch its products against the incumbent players.

Indio plans to aggressively position itself as an alternative for larger networking companies and build quality products in wireless, IOT and Cloud space.

Within next 5 - 7 years, Indio plan to capture a sizable market share in emerging countries and position itself as serious global competitor from India in WiFi and IOT space. Indio Networks would like to publicly list in next 5 years.

Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

Mr. Rishikesh Ghare: For all the young entrepreneurs who are starting out, it is important to dream big while keeping your feet on the ground. Big dreams can be realized with small and consistent steps. Please remember entrepreneurship is like a marathon and you need to have the stamina for the long run.