“Premature scaling is the number one mistake I have seen from a lot of CEOs and Founders. You need to be patient and persistent in your efforts. Try to build a good market fit product before you think of scaling your business.” – Saravana Kumar

Founder@ Interview

Interview with Saravana Kumar

“Premature scaling is the number one mistake I have seen from a lot of CEOs and Founders. You need to be patient and persistent in your efforts. Try to build a good market fit product before you think of scaling your business —be it hiring a team, investing in other sales and marketing tools, etc. .” – Saravana Kumar

Today we feature Saravana Kumar, the founder at Kovai. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.

Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
I am the founder and CEO of Kovai —an enterprise solution and SaaS company that operates in the UK and India. Their latest product —Document360 —a Software as a Service (SaaS) online knowledge base product.

Kovai is a successful multi-product software company with 200+ employees and over $10m annual revenue. Kovai.co has been recently accredited with the prestigious award “Bootstrapped SaaS Startup of the year” by SaaSBoomi. Before launching the business, I used to be a software consultant and have worked for Microsoft, Fidelity, etc.

A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?

As I have already mentioned, after my higher studies, I moved to London for my first job. In London, I worked for Fidelity, Microsoft, etc as a software consultant before trying my hands-on entrepreneurship.

I used to work on a specific technology called BizTalk server, where I identified a problem and wanted to bring a solution to it.

I started building the solution more as a pastime. About a year into it, I designed the solution and gave a demo of the solution to some experts & friends whom I met at a conference. They gave me positive feedback which improved my confidence levels and I polished the solution & launched it as a product.

Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?

Kovai.co is a multi-product enterprise SaaS company specializing in enterprise integration and knowledge management space based out of Coimbatore, India, and London, UK.

What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?

When I was working on the initial version of the product (BizTalk360) I didn’t have any intention of making it a business. My colleagues and peers at the conference had given very positive feedback & were impressed with the problems this solution could solve.

With a few suggestions and feedback, I designed the final version of the product. Right after the launch, I had my first client approach me (all the way from Hong Kong) for the product without any recommendations or referrals. That was the aha moment and that very first client is still with us even after a decade.

Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?

In the early days, I used to take advice from a lot of people for everything, ex: If there is a problem with an employee I would immediately call one of my advisers for a chat and blindly follow their advice. It resulted in even losing an early employee.

Their advice may be appropriate if you take it separately but unless and until they get the whole context, it might not be the right way to go about it. Later, I realized, it is always best to follow the hunch and make decisions accordingly.

Challenges are never permanent. Every problem you encounter in life will subside over time. As an entrepreneur, the most important quality you need to possess is patience. Know that things will always bounce back for good.

If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

A lot of people have positively influenced and inspired me to scale my business. I don’t remember anyone who has ever doubted me including myself. As an entrepreneur, having a bird’s eye view on matters that affect your business is extremely important. Always make decisions considering the long-term perspective, course corrections are always required, even those full-proof plans.

We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?

Microsoft teams— to handle all the external and internal communications as the company follows a hybrid model mostly. Along with teams, we also use our in-house product —Document360 for all our technical documentation across our products.

The flexibility in integrating Document360 with other third-party tools like MS Teams, Zapier, Freshdesk, Zendesk, Slack to name a few makes them an integral tool for hybrid work.

What do you know now that you wished you had known before?

Challenges are never permanent. Every problem you encounter in life will subside over time. As an entrepreneur, the most important quality you need to possess is patience. Know that things will always bounce back for good.

What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?

Starting from my first client acquisition to acquiring Cerebrata last year, there are a lot of moments in Kovai.co which I am proud of. Recently, we won the ‘Bootstrap Champ’ award at The Economic Times Startup Award for Indian entrepreneurs in the Startup scene.

This accomplishment comes as we celebrate our 10th year in the Industry. These recognitions have always boosted the morale of the entire team and we continue to push ourselves ahead.

What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?

We are looking forward to more acquisitions and investments in the coming years. We are working towards a larger goal in front of us, which is to be a SaaS unicorn by 2030.

To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?

Premature scaling is the number one mistake I have seen from a lot of CEOs and Founders. You need to be patient and persistent in your efforts. Try to build a good market fit product before you think of scaling your business —be it hiring a team, investing in other sales and marketing tools, etc.

“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Kovai”

To learn more about Kovai Visit www.kovai.co

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