Harshal Katre
Founder at ProfitBooks.net
Harshal Katre is a member of:
Company Profile
We founded our company ‘The Nextwave Technologies’ in 2010 with an aim to solve complex business problems using latest technology. We started with developing custom made softwares for medium size businesses. That gave us a very good insight about the industry and its pain points. We noticed that small businesses were struggling with softwares due to complexity. They were forced to use multiple applications in the office and never had a complete picture of their business.
We always believed that the technology should be simple to use and should help you organise. It should not be an overhead. That’s why we built ProfitBooks. It’s a powerful tool that integrates accounting, payroll, inventory, document management and CRM into one easy to use application. ProfitBooks is cloud based and hence takes away maintenance headaches from the business owners.
After one and half year of development, we launched ProfitBooks in public during 2012 and since that time managed to get more than thousand companies on board.
My Role
I came from a technology background and hence was totally focused on product development during initial days. With too many ideas in the mind, I never thought about sales almost for a year. Later, we realised that we really can’t build a product without hands-on feedback from the real clients. So, we started showing this product to close friends from the industry. Over the period of time, I started to delegate core programming work and started focusing on customer development. Now, I look after customer engagement, testing and support departments. I also spend time in studying customer behaviour.
Relationship with potential investors
Lot of investors started showing interest in ProfitBooks when they noticed our growth. After interacting with them we got to learn lot of things. Most importantly, we prepared our business plan! We never spent time on such documentation before. I always believed that the market size, market share and all those fancy charts are just numbers. Indian market is different, one can not build a business around these numbers. For example, we have a ProfitBooks user who is a farmer from Baramati. His name will never feature in reports such as ‘Total number of SMEs in India’ or ‘Internet users in India’.
Unfortunately, our investors want to play safe and they like to follow certain rule book for that. They would have never invested in products like facebook, twitter, tumblr or instagram. Because all these products can’t answer the questions from their rule book.
I strongly feel that the focus of an entrepreneur should be on sales and not on the funding during early stage. If revenue from sales is good, investors will ditch their rule book and line up to invest in your company. Go to only visionary VCs when you need to scale up.
Culture as the company has grown
I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having a good team. Fortunately we are blessed with a very good and talented people and most of them are still with us since the inception. We always hired people who were aligned to our vision. That helped us a lot. When this happens, people do not switch companies for a small hike. Its very important that people should believe in what you are doing. Then the quality of work they produce is different.
We treat every employee with respect. We do not have any restrictions on work hours or even leaves. If you hire honest people, you can save lot of time that is normally lost in micro-managing them. I never give any importance to the glorious stuff mentioned on their CVs. It’s the 30-minute personal interaction with them that decides whether we will hire them or not.
Difficulties faced
On technology front, we didn’t really face any difficulty as we had a very competent team. However, we had a tough time deciding on features as Indian SMBs are diverse and most of them are not aware about what they need. So, we built the truly agile product which evolved with the customer feedback.
Advice to young entrepreneurs
I would strongly advise that an entrepreneur should spare some time in the day to read books. Lot of motivational books contain stories that are retro-fitted after the success, but there is still a lot to learn from every experience. “Getting to Plan B” and “Lean Startup” are my favourites.
A startup should keep expenses in control and avoid spending on swanky offices and high-cost advertising during early stage.
Its important to note that every entrepreneurial journey is unique. Directly applying success strategies of others doesn’t always help. One has to be innovative and creative in every aspect of the business (Sales, Development, Recruitment, etc).
Key thoughts about Entrepreneurship
Short Bio:
Over 9 years of experience working with MNCs like HSBC Global Technology and Barclays Technology. Implemented a financial messaging gateway for HSBC in North America. Looked after IT Quality and ITIL processes for HSBC Private bank, Geneva.
Headed support for 8 African countries at Barclays. Looked after vendor management and business analysis for Barclays Asia.
