How Rajesh Gupta Started A 5 Million Dollar Outsourcing Company In India (Interview)

In this article, I’m interviewing Rajesh Gupta, who owns a software development company in India. I used to work with him for about six months.

His company has grown to five million dollars, and we are going to talk about how he built his company from scratch, over the past fifteen years.  He used to have a job at a corporation, and then he quit that. He worked at a telecom giant for almost five years, and after that his manager was looking to start a company, to do something which no one had done in Rajesh’s family.

So he started a company, called NetUse in 2000, which they started from his bedroom.  Now he has three hundred                 people working for him. The journey has been good, and it’s had its up and downs like anything.

The first customer, he still remembers came to him through an email marketing campaign at the time. In 2000, hosting a domain company was very big stuff. There were a lot less companies back then providing domain hosting.

He knew about the web hosting companies, and how to operate the technologies in relation to that. They started contacting a few web hosting companies, but the companies didn’t know how to actually host the domain. So he contacted them, and did a few projects, and the rest is history.

They built a good reputation with their first client, through word of mouth, and it’s still their biggest advantage, because of the good service they provide. He always believes they should stick to the customer, whether they are in a good, or bad patch.

He thinks that paid off, and now they are still working with clients they started with ten years ago. They have a lot of employees, in the company which they’ve been working with for the last ten or twelve years. This actually fuelled the growth, and that’s how things have built up.

Rajesh told me a story, where approximately forty percent of all their clients, back when he was really small, are now still his customers, because his company grew with them. They rely on his company, for most of their services. He started off working with customers, when they were very small, and their requirements were very small, but Rajesh kept working with them, and has now been working with them for a long time.

The companies he started off with, as they grew, required more and more services from Rajesh’s company. This fuelled his company’s growth, because when they required some programming, or any kind of support services, he was there to help them out. The guy who Rajesh started the company with, hired ten guys off this, so it made them a lot bigger of a company.

For lead generation, Rajesh’s lead generation funnel, works with three lead generations. The first one is inbound enquiries he gets to his website, which actually happens through different search engine optimization. So for example ad campaigns. What happens, is they come to his website, and fill out a form, then the sales team gets in touch with them.

The second funnel, is business to business portals, where people go and post a project they require on Elance, Odesk, and all that stuff.  His sales team, would actually reply to those enquiries, and this is how business is done.

Third is the calling team, which generates warm leads, and converting cold calls into leads, and they try to see if there’s a requirement for software development. Then if somebody’s interested, then once the sales team has matured the lead, they get passed to his business analyst team, and then the implementation team. It’s a whole process, once the project starts, and four to five teams can get involved.

For lead generation, Rajesh uses a programme to keep track of leads, and he has a good data harvesting team at the office. They use CRM, and the company built it themselves, as per the requirement. It’s a team of eight people, and they keep harvesting the data, from different parts of the internet: Google LinkedIn, or from any possible place you can find.

They harvest the data, and put it in the CRM, and they give it to a sales team. That particular sales team will work on the data by calling, or emailing. Whichever they feel will be the best way to approach the customer, and that’s how the details he finds, ultimately turn into sales.

Rajesh is working with clients all over the world: USA, Europe, etc. There’s a miss conception that if you outsource to India, it’s cheap labour. India is one of the world’s leaders in terms of software development.

Rajesh’s view, is that India is the world’s capital for software development. India is not only about cheap labour, it was like that when they first started, but now it’s turned around, and when you  are looking technology, and skill, you have to look at a lot of different avenues. India, fortunately has a massive abundance of engineering talent, because parents focused a lot on the education of their kids.

What he’s found, is that if they’ve been well educated in India, they’ll have an engineering, or marketing degree. This gives a lot of pool for skill, and a good skill. It’s true that it’s not as expensive in the states, or western Europe – you can still save up to fifty percent cost, and more if you outsource to India. Whatever you find in terms of skill in the US, you’ll find it in India, because you have a lot of educated man power available, and they can deliver on the client’s requirements.

He recently had a client come in with a certain new technology, only released a short while ago, and he wanted to have ten people working on the same technology. Rajesh asked him, if he could have two months, and they could bring ten people onto this new technology. The client agreed to Rajesh’s request. That was a fantastic project to do.

This is a really good example, of not just how India is about cheap labour, but also about skill as well.

When outsourcing is supposed to happen to India, Rajesh’s company, will talk to the client, and the client should be talking to the vendor a lot. They should be screening the vendor a lot. At the same time, they should be patient also. What Rajesh has seen time after time, over the past fifteen years, is that the culture is quite different in the US, and in India, but now since a lot of Indians are in the United States, and in the Western world, most of the clients he comes across, are available in his own culture as well. This has helped a lot, and also Indians have matured a lot, and understand western culture a lot better.

There is a saying in his culture: ‘the customer is god’ and Rajesh’s company try to live up to this, to actually serve the customer. There are still a few jerks in the industry, which try to rip off the customer, by promising a lot, and then not delivering on it.

They give a bad name to the industry, and he’s come across a few people in the industry, just to save a few dollars, who have actually fallen in to the trap, where the guy has promised everything, but not delivered.

It depends on what’s important to the client, if you’re interested in having a good project done, you should be approaching a good company, with a good structure. If you want to save money, and you are testing an idea, you can hire anyone.

Hiring a full structured company, will definitely help, because these guys will give you more ideas also, as they have been doing this kind of stuff for years. Whereas a newbie, or a freelancer, will probably not be able to give you so many ideas. He’ll just help you, he will not do discussions.

Rajesh also thinks that the loyalty of his vendors, is one thing you should always follow. You should be loyal to the customer, and be very very honest. Tell them what is right, and tell them what is wrong. If there’s a problem, tell them upfront, don’t try to hide the problem.

If you try to hide the problem from them, it will grow bigger. It’s better to discuss the problem with your client, and try to solve it together, because it’s in your interest, and in the client’s interest, to make it happen.

It’s actually in both yours, and the client’s interest, to make the project happen, so sales can start.

When people make a contract deal, when they outsource to Rajesh, he would say what’s best, is where you can’t disclose information about the customer.

He has a lot of businesses which operate on line, but he can’t share ideas, he can’t share insight into how the business is running, and that’s one thing he thinks you should follow. Contracts should have these kind of clauses in them, when they can’t share information to someone else, for their own goal. Those clauses in the contract, should be drafted carefully, because if you have a vendor, which thinks you’re trust worthy, and honest, you are in safe hands. But if you have a vendor who has a naughty mind, and can do things you  wouldn’t want them to do, you should be safe if you’ve got a strong contract.

Rajesh is making deals for a significant amount of money. To close a ten thousand dollar project, it all depends on the expectations of a client. A few clients will come, just to outsource to India, to save money. A few clients will come just for the quality as well.

You have to judge what the client is looking for: there has been instances, where the sales team has not been able to close the deal because they were facing difficulty. When Rajesh spoke to the client, he was actually able to tell what the client was looking for: either to save money, or a really good project, and how serious the client is about the business.

When you are actually talking to the client, you should be actively associating yourself with the project, you shouldn’t be associating yourself as the vendor. You should try to understand the business model completely, because you need to understand the client coming to you, and is not a technology chap.

He knows zero about technology, but they have a business idea, and Rajesh’s company needs to understand that business idea, and tell him the best possible solution, and let him know the truth: that these are the pros, and cons, of a certain idea.

Every technology isn’t perfect for an idea: they both have their pros and cons. You have to be upfront, and very honest. He would say that honesty plays a very big role. If you’re actually honest with your client, and you tell them when and how it’s going to happen.

You can win the confidence of a client very very easily, but if you try to play big, and smart, and start insinuating that client doesn’t know anything, then that doesn’t work for Rajesh.

For anyone looking to outsource to India, you’ll be able to find Rajesh, if you search NetUse in Google, and then someone will be in touch via email. They are a 24/7 operational company, they never sleep, they work three hundred and sixty five days a year. The company never sleeps.

If you have any questions, comment down below.