As part of our relentless pursuit to identify and share some of the compelling stories from the startup ecosystem, this week we invited passionate entrepreneur Teja Gudluru for an exclusive interview with us. He is a Management Consultant, Corporate Trainer, Behavioural Coach and a serial Entrepreneur. He is currently the Founder and C.E.O of Mobitattva Creative Technologies private limited which is currently incubating his Mobile app start-up UDo-now.com
Having travelled across 35 plus countries during his 19 years’ tenure and expertise in the leadership and training arena, Teja’s niche training competencies include various Behavioural, Leadership and Management development workshops using a multitude of Learning Technologies and has to date trained and coached over 25,000 individuals across the spectrum of industries and hierarchies in over 8 countries.
Passionate and enduring towards his dreams and goals, Teja left a comfortable and lucrative leadership management position 10 years ago to pursue his dream of starting his own company to make a difference in the field of learning and development. Teja has been instrumental in envisioning, designing and creating a state of the art online learning technology EklavyaOnline™. With over its 44 features including LMS, Vendor Management, CMS, Assessment Tools, etc EklavyaOnline™ offers a complete and practically focused assortment of training and development services to match organizational requirements.
A certified Leadership and Management Trainer by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), and Certified Everything DiSC by Wiley, Teja constantly facilitates workshops for various Government Projects, Corporate Organizations and Educational Institutes. During his career as a trainer and behavioural coach, he has conducted up to 750 sessions for the many IT, ITES, Government and Educational institutions. He has also coached various professional managers and leaders as a mentor in career enhancement and personal excellence.
His elite clientele includes prestigious organizations like Microsoft, HCL, Aon Hewitt, LG Soft, Bloomberg, The World Economic Forum, Amazon, Google, GE, United Health Group, Value Labs, Monster.com, Mahindra Satyam, HSBC, Amazon, Unysis, Caere India, Allegis Group, Value Labs, United Health Group, GE and Google to name a few. Prior to founding CommSure Knowledge Solutions and Mobitattva Creative Tech Pvt. Ltd, Teja has worked in Senior Manager roles in organizations such as HSBC.
In his own words, “I have learnt in my journey that when you ignite a journey of self-realization in an individual, you are creating a powerful pathway for success not just for that person but also for the entire organization they work for. This is what motivates me to connect to people and passionately facilitate this beautiful journey!”
Let’s read more in detail about his startup, journey and his advice for our community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with him:
How do you find the niche that you’re in?
I would say that it has come with experience. Having travelled around the world meeting various professionals from multiple verticals, one gets to understand the nuances of business and the day to day problems that people usually face. I am of a strong belief that any successful start-up focusses on solving a particular problem. As a Leadership and Development Consultant myself, I wanted to create a seamless platform for Consultant and seekers alike.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
It may sound funny but what has been getting me out of bed for a while now are Animals. I strongly feel for the cause of Animal, wildlife and Environmental protection. I already support various NGOs in over 5 countries. It is this calling that made me realise that a Job will not give me the financial freedom to pursue this passion of mine. I have become wiser with my vision now, but my belief 10 years ago that I needed to create a more robust platform to be able to influence a larger audience against animal cruelty is what triggered me to be an entrepreneur.
Tell our audience more about your app UDo?
UDo is a mobile-based platform that lets users connect to thousands of experts through video or audio calls in over a hundred categories. This innovative company offers a mobile app which helps people get connected to experts and seek expert advice related to any problems he or she is going through.
This unique name Udo is a colloquial abbreviation to the word You Do! There are many times in life that one requires an advisor or a mentor, UDo can be a partner or all occasions by providing the necessary information. UDo as a platform can benefit users who need help, experts who have time to spare and companies who are looking for specific databases to reach out to. This makes it a very accommodating and sustainable model.
UDo was conceived with a sole motive: to help Indian audiences in every step they take in life with expert advice. That is, from travel and relationship advice to handling a difficult boss, career guidance, demand express advice in life’s difficult situations or sometimes, simply someone to give you fashion advice. In a nutshell, UDo is a complete package in itself. UDo wants’ its users to stop texting and start talking to experts. Thus, with expert advice on fingertips and the ability to connect to an actual verified person instantaneously, Udo has the potential to become the market leader in Search and assisted services.
The other side of the app is the ability and the ease with which people can register as experts and start making passive income! No matter what the expertise, people can become experts, decide how much they want to charge for their time on the app and get featured in searches by the users. This is the future of passive income and earns from home apps in India!
Major Market differentiators:
1)For the first time, users can search for experts, review experts profile and connect with experts instantly through video or audio call. If the expert of their choice is offline, they can schedule a call as well.
2) There are no apps in the market that help people monetise their events and be able to broadcast them live. Apps like Zoom etc only work on a subscription basis. Which means you pay them and they give you the technical ability to conduct webinars and video conference. They then have to manage payments offline and then send video conference links. On UDo, they can simply sign up, decide their charges and users will find them.
3) Live Paid Broadcasting: UDo’s events feature lets anyone registered as an expert on the app to create live sessions/events/classes on the app and monetize it. They simply decide a ticket price to the event and users pay the amount in order to join. Thereby enabling people to share their knowledge and get paid for it seamlessly without the hassle of offline activities with the users. From a student who can teach guitar and make pocket money to a housewive teaching cooking, to psychologists, coaches, IT professionals for troubleshooting, relationship advice, career counselling, relationship counselling, UDo is a perfect market place for experts to share knowledge and users to get instant personal advice from real experts on Audio or Video.
Thus far we have 20k plus downloads in 3 weeks and over 300 experts signed up in over 13 verticals. We are at a pre-revenue stage for our B2C vertical and have 5 global B2B clients who are using our platform as a white-labelled peer to Peer mentoring app.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
The fact that we were attempting what very few companies even thought of was the biggest hurdle. If the solution is so obvious, why are people still launching chat-based expert advise apps and not Audio and Video? Is creating a seamless passive income generating app so complicated?. Well turns out it was. Most start-ups chose the easier way of getting a chat applet based solutions. I was not happy with that as Chat-based platforms are not very personal for complicated relationship, career or personal issues. It requires a human interaction face to face.
As a bootstrapped app, we had to put our heads together to make the technology work. For the above-mentioned Market Differentiators, it took us a long time developing this app. We had tried launching it 2 years back but technology failed us. We had to go back to the drawing board, get more qualified resources to help us get the app to where we are today.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
Money today is more of a necessity than a reason. I would like to keep it like that. I would like to believe that people who are truly aware of their purpose and what truly gives them happiness are motivated more by emotions and emotional reasoning than Money. It is not surprising that while most successful Entrepreneurs of the world look for Philanthropy when they retire and not look at hoarding their wealth to themselves. I would like to put myself in the same category.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
To begin with, I have always been someone who would stress a lot. Be it my need to get things right the first time or the fact that I am trying to engage and influence a large group of people, either through my speaking assignments or the products we build, I have always stressed myself beyond need. It is only my introduction to concepts like Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence that taught me to calm down. The prioritizing family also has helped me become more composed over the years. My dogs perhaps are my best de-stressors.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?
Asking for help when in doubt. I would attribute my growth as a person and as a professional to this. Most of the time we are experimenting or trying to internet search our way through life. Building the mindset that it is ok to ask for help, irrespective of your position or situation in life has helped me immensely. Which is also one of the reasons why I have conceptualised UDo Now app.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
For me 3 things have been very crucial in my life thus far
Discipline – The ability to build routines / Rituals around your life
Clarity of Vision – As Simon Sinek says, don’t be driven by What an How.
Be Driven by Why – Your purpose. That’s what people buy.
Look up to people and get mentored – There is no lack of respect in reaching out to people for help. You can reduce the amount of time it takes to be successful by half, if you have the right mentor
What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
First of them all, how valid is your idea. Before you spend another minute or a penny be sure that the idea that you are so passionate about right now is feasible. If no one is doing this in the market and it seems obvious, there must be some reason why.
Once that is established, it’s important to have the financial discipline to ensure that the family or your existing commitments don’t suffer. A stressed entrepreneur is an underperformer!
The third one for me is to have a clear business plan with a clear revenue model and a sustainable exit strategy.
The final one is to have a good team with clear responsibilities for executing the business plan. It also helps to have an advisory team that comes with specific Subject matter expertise.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
