The India Way of Doing Business: Lessons Learned

As an entrepreneur, I've always been drawn to the excitement and potential of starting something new. That's why in 2007, a partner and I founded a startup that developed a niche market technology solution. It was a wild and exciting time; we kicked off and grew quickly.

As with any business, there were challenges along the way. By 2009, we were struggling to find talented people that we needed to continue our growth. We were spending more and more time to find that next hire, the growth was starting to become burdened by a lack of available staff. That's when we started looking into other solutions, offshore out staffing was one option that we saw immediate traction with. We tested out the idea of offshoring with a pilot project in India and Eastern Europe, and ultimately decided to set up our team in India after seeing the success of the pilot.

Fast forward a few years, in 2010 we embarked on the next big step in our business journey by establishing our own operational center in India.?We set up and quickly built a team of around 60-70 developers at the new offices. However, as is often the case with new ventures, we made a few mistakes in the beginning and good lessons learned for other startup founders with talent struggles.

The first critical mistake was that we chose the wrong people for certain roles.?We assigned them tasks that didn't align with their skills, and didn't provide proper training and mentorship to get them realigned to the right role that fits their skills and interests. Second, as newcomers to India we failed to choose the right location for our offices to draw in the right type of talent with the skills that needed.?India has many major business areas and many major cities that attract top talent with quality of life, and the choice of office can limit the talent pool.?

Opening an office isn’t enough to create growth, nor is hiring the right people.?As first-time founders we neglected a very important part of any business, culture! More importantly the culture for a multinational company with development centers on two different continents and some major cultural differences. These issues added to the difficulties we faced, and by 2012, we realized that our operation in India was close to failing. It wasn't producing the desired results and we were really struggling to get things back on track.

It seemed luck was on our side though, or as they say in India, karma changed. As it happened, we met a senior Indian manager in the tech industry who was both highly professional and experience.?We started working together and our new strategic partner helped us re-establish the operation the right way.

From 2012 to 2014, we were able to continue to build an excellent team and our product was meeting all our business targets.?Customers were happy and we were able to gather interest from the market when were offered to be purchased. So, in 2014 I had my first successful exit. My business partner and I stayed on for another year while the purchasing company transitioned our company into their operations.

After all the craziness, long hours, up and downs of building a startup, we were faced with a decision: should we start another product company or focus on a service company? During our startup journey we realized that we were very passion, and skilled, at establishing amazing tech teams in India, not only for ourselves but also for other companies. We decided that becoming a service company was where we wanted to go.?Using the recruitment and management capabilities that we had developed over the years we packaged that to address the needs of tech companies that were growing quickly, but didn’t always have the right staff at the right time.?So, we went to market with a new business, establishing highly skilled technology development teams for our clients.

This service focused approach to a challenging talent problem has allowed us the opportunity to demonstrate value to our clients through: rapid recruitment, expert staffing in specific domains, staff that goes through mandatory cultural and business training to work with Israeli companies, and provide cost-effective solutions for recruitment and long-term retention.

In summary, don’t rush into a new market with enough market research and understanding of the local culture.?Do find a local trusted expert that can help you steer clear of startup issues.?Build culture into your company mission to provide value to your employees and your clients.?Lastly, when you sense trouble follow your gut, put your ego aside, and ask for help.?I’d rather have a successful exit and be wrong about some things then be right about everything but be forced to close the doors because I couldn’t see reality beyond my own vision.?These are the lessons I learned from my own business journey in India, with its failures and successes, and I’m passionate to leverage this to the benefits of our clients.

Hopefully if gives you some insights into your own business journey and helps you avoid some of the pitfalls.