At BrilliantReadMedia, we always strive to bring to you some of the finest and compelling stories from the entrepreneurship world. This week we invited Siva S for an interview with us to understand more about his journey as an entrepreneur. He is the Founder and CEO at Powerupcloud. Powerup (An LTI Company), offers enterprise-class cloud consulting solutions and products. Let’s read more in detail about his journey, way forward and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Siva:
Tell us a little bit about yourself (background) and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
My mom wanted me to become a Doctor. But I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, right from my childhood days. I was a curious kid during my childhood days, tinkering with electronic products and coming up with crazy ideas time and again. was When I was 7, I used to create ‘name labels’ and sell them to my classmates for 10 paise each.
That entrepreneurship stint arose due to necessity. That period was one of the toughest times for our family and I couldn’t afford to buy ‘name labels’. Hence I used to create my own name labels and it created a buzz among my schoolmates.
They used to queue up during lunch and break sessions to get the name labels designed as per their choice. Customization was key here. They used to ask for a car, ball, snake, and other objects to be drawn and get their name labels designed.
When I was 16, I started designing a pedal-powered 4-wheeler which operates using the principle of a ‘hydraulic press’ which used the concept of 1x=4x power conversion ratio. I used to visit car mechanic garages to design the prototype. I had to drop that as I entered my 12th board exams.
My next entrepreneurial stint was when I was 20. I joined my first job which was for a software company in Bangalore. But I used to bring T-Shirts from my hometown (Tirupur) and sell them to my colleagues in the company. I used to bring 200 T-Shirts every week and sell them for almost 100% profit margin.
My 3rd stint was during my MBA days. I was in Delhi, pursuing my MBA and I started Bookmytees.com – a custom T-shirt brand. I used to travel to towns like Meerut, Faridabad, Manesar to bag T-Shirt orders, have them manufactured at a small unit I setup in Tirupur, bring them through courier services and sell them in Delhi. I learnt Photoshop, Website coding and Animations to design T-shirts, websites and marketing videos. I made some good money but I also realized that this is not what I should continue to do.
And in 2015, I started Powerupcloud Technologies with my co-founders, which went onto become one of the top partners globally for AWS, Microsoft Azure & Google Cloud in India in the cloud consulting space and artificial intelligence space.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
Entrepreneurship gives you the freedom in executing your ideas. I get a ton of business ideas and I believe my brain is wired that way. But it is equally important to pursue the ideas which are executable and which will bring a large impact to the clients. If your clients are not ready to pay for your service/product, then you should rethink your strategy.
I don’t believe in the popular saying that ‘you are your own boss if you are an entrepreneur’. Honestly speaking, your customers and employees are your bosses. If you take care of their needs, they will help you become successful in your entrepreneurial journey.
How do you find the industry/niche that you’re in?
Golden rule: Always do something you are confident of executing. It can be something you did earlier or it can be something where you have researched a lot about. And passion is the key catalyst for both scenarios mentioned above. I was lucky to work in the cloud technology space for 3 years which gave me the required knowledge about the business and the confidence to start Powerupcloud.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
The thought that you are building something impactful, be a product or service, and the fact that your team needs you in office early helps you to get things moving. Its the sheer passion towards work that will keep you motivated. When I handed over the first set of job offer letters to the initial 8 interns who joined us in 2015, I was stuck with an immediate reality that I am taking a big responsibility and I should never dash the hope of them and their families. After a period of time, it is the responsibility and commitment towards my customers and employees which got me going every day.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
The challenges, risks, and obstacles we face in real-life scenarios are far tougher than what we see in movies. And unlike movies, these problems don’t get resolved in one motivational song. People see our success today, but before we achieved this success we did go through several breaking points in our 4-year entrepreneurial journey at Powerupcloud. I am listing some of them here. This is not to de-motivate anyone. If we could cross these hurdles, anyone of you can also cross them.
1) We struggled to pay salaries in the initial 6 months and I had to pawn my mom’s jewels for a loan to pay salaries and cloud bills.
2) We never missed the pay-date in the 4 years of our bootstrapped startup journey. We were able to achieve this because behind the scene we used to most of our customers towards the end of the month to ask them to pay us. Last week of all those 48 months has been always sleepless months for us. I still remember those restless nights when my heart would be beating heavily even at 4 am, worrying about the salaries and expenses we had to cover for the company.
3) My personal health took a massive toll. The stress that I went through had me gain a lot of weight and I developed high blood pressure and almost entered the pre-diabetic stage. Touchwood, things are getting normal and my health is under control now.
4) In order to cut costs, I will try and avoid staying at hotels when I travel to cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi. So I used to take same-day early morning (4:00 am) flight and leave by late-night (11 pm) flight and will fit in 5-6 meetings in the day.
5) In fact, I have done these 1-day trips to Singapore and Dubai several times. All these did take a toll on my health as I had to be awake for almost 24 hours straight. And the worst part if when you had to do these trips back to back. My wife was all alone in our house in Bangalore and her support during these times was super important which allowed me to run.
6) The founding-team including me took a considerable pay cut to ensure that our Powerup associates are paid as per market standards. Imagine, we were competing with some highly funded unicorns and startups to attract the best talent in the industry.
7) I would have pitched Powerup to at least 50 investors in the 4-year period. So success was not easy neither quick in our case. 4 years might still look like a short period, but please remember the fact that we used to work for almost 16 hours daily including weekends in these 4 years to cover the distance.
8) At one junction in our journey, we were pretty close in closing a funding round. We went through almost 7 months of due diligence and discussions before the investor pulled out. The time we lost in those 7 months and the pain we had to go through to bring our business back to order was a lot. We paid a heavy price for the time we spent on this. Thanks to our advisors who helped us navigate the tough 3 months post this event.
9) Being a bootstrapped company with very little sales and marketing budget, we had to take on some big boys of the industry who had investor backing or had been in the business for many years. Our honest approach to our customer’s problems helped us win many deals.
10) The legal battles we had to go through, the non-payment cycles we had to manage, the high salary expectations that we had to meet, the cultural & workplace expectations we had to set for Powerup, all these struggles made us stronger as we moved forward.
I am super proud of my team which backed me during the tough times and we continued to stick to our strong ethics which helped us cross these testing times.
Having good principles goes a long way and I would thank my parents & wife for supporting me in building these strong principles.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
It will be naive to say that money is not important. In today’s world, money plays a key role in all aspects. But having your heart at the right place is more important than anything else. There have been occasions where I have taken an emotional call without considering the monetary impact it will have on my life and the business. I would reiterate the importance of having good principles. This will put your heart in the right place, help you make the right decisions and be true to one’s self.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
Stress is unavoidable in one’s entrepreneurship journey. There have been days where I used to hear my heart pumping in the middle of the night, being fully awake and sweating over things that I can’t control. But experience teaches you to handle your stress better and you will soon start identifying things that you need to worry about. My stress buster is spending time at the gym. I am an avid power-lifter and I start my day at 6:00 am at the gym. I am trying to adopt meditation nowadays during my off-gym days.
To all entrepreneurs, your family and loved ones come first. You are very important to them and hence it is your utmost duty to take care of yourselves. Let’s not squander all the hard work by allowing stress to affect your physical and mental health.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?
Self-belief. Have tremendous self-belief on yourself. This will help you go out and achieve what you set out for. Also, be humble and hear to experienced well-wishers. Don’t be strong-headed and reach out to advisors for help, honest approach will always get the right help needed.
I like this phrase which I heard once – “All you need is 20 seconds of utmost courage to go up and speak to a stranger or someone senior. Be it in the business world where you need to walk up to a high profile client in a conference and open up a discussion or be it your personal life where you need to approach someone to propose, 20 seconds of courage will help you pass this bridge.”
As far as business is concerned, cash-flow is the king. If you can manage a healthy cash-flow in a fast-growing business, you are on your way to creating something much bigger than what you thought of. Focus on cash-flow and not funding. Investors like businesses that can survive in the long run and create a strong value in the market. And sorting out your cash-flow model at the beginning is super important. Don’t rush for seeking investments, try and keep your business private and continue to build a cash-flow positive company. Innovate faster, pivot when required and take funding only if necessary.
In these uncertain times (COVID-19 Pandemic), it is even more essential to run a cash-flow positive business. My heart goes to all small and medium business entrepreneurs globally and I can feel the struggle they are facing today. I believe the government and banks will come to the rescue of entrepreneurs in need and there is no doubt that we will come out stronger from this situation.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
Like I mentioned earlier, build strong principles for yourself. Write them down and keep reading them every day until it becomes a way of life for you. Be humble, be ethical and unbiased, and work hard like there is no tomorrow. I like what Elon Musk said “Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.”
What’s next?
Powerupcloud was acquired by LTI in October 2019. This is one of the largest exits for an India-based bootstrapped cloud consulting company. I am planning to start an angel fund to invest in technology startups focused on using artificial intelligence to improve process efficiency for enterprises and consumers. Fintech, Healthtech, and EdTech are three areas where my interests lie. I also believe that one should give as much as they earn and hence I have committed a good portion to charity organizations. I have also encouraged my fellow co-founders to contribute to charity. The future is bright for AI firms and I will continue to bet on AI. To all the hard-working entrepreneurs, if we can do it, you can do it too.
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