Entrepreneur Marc Benioff is afraid of him. Venture king Mike Moritz wants to invest in him.
You have never heard of Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of AdventNet, the company behind newly launched productivity suite Zoho.
Vembu is a low-profile guy if there ever was one. He is also cheap as hell. Yet, of course, you know that among entrepreneurs, frugality is a virtue. A tremendous virtue.
Vembu has stretched this virtue to extreme limits, and added layers and layers of creativity upon it. The result? A 100%, bootstrapped, $40-million-a-year revenue business that sends $1 million to the bank every month in profits.
Doing what? you might wonder.
Selling network management tools, to be precise. But with a unique twist. Vembu employs 600 people in Chennai, India, and a mere eight in Silicon Valley. Imagine what that does to his cost structure!
Not only that, in India Vembu's operation does not hire engineers with highflying degrees from one of the prestigious India Institutes of Technology, thereby squeezing his cost advantage.
"We hire young professionals whom others disregard," Vembu says. "We don't look at colleges, degrees or grades. Not everyone in India comes from a socio-economic background to get the opportunity to go to a top-ranking engineering school, but many are really smart regardless.
"We even go to poor high schools, and hire those kids who are bright but are not going to college due to pressure to start making money right away," Vembu continues. "They need to support their families. We train them, and in nine months, they produce at the level of college grads. Their resumes are not as marketable, but I tell you, these kids can code just as well as the rest. Often, better.”
No comments:
Post a Comment