TechVariable: Offering cognitive services like Natural Language Processing, data management, visualization, workflow automation and many more.

The quest to build things from scratch and watch it progress into something much greater than the builders themselves thought about, is a very satisfying feeling indeed. Everyone feels it from time to time; some, for a few precious moments; while some for an entire lifetime; all shaped by each individual’s personal lifestyle and socio-economic circumstances. This much is certain, for everyone can agree in principle to the tenets of equality and fraternity; but forget the fact that environments, geography and culture play a key role in shaping the same tenets of equality and fraternity. 

We predict that every event is also true in an unintended way; for instance, often one sees reports or hears statements like it has never been a better time for becoming an entrepreneur, without doing a sense of justice to the immense complexities in sectors, markets, products and services; not to forget the amount of technological change on every level – on the production level, on the consumer level and at the social level. This is also disorienting to many, while it is a boon to equally many. 

With that said, yes every individual’s outlook towards life is not the same. And in that sense, there does seem to be a lot of headway in individuals valuing themselves over broader societal trends that acts as a sense of comfort to many. Today, at Bangalore Insider we spoke to Nilotpal Boruah, the founders of TechVariable, a technology product start-up building products for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators. 

Give brief info about your startup?

TechVariable is a technology product development studio catering to startups and corporates. We help startup founders and innovators transcend their business from an idea to a product and help them go to market 2x faster. We mostly work closely with product owners to create their MVP, starting with Product Requirement Documentation, creating information architectures and wireframes, designing as well as developing responsive web applications and mobile apps. 

We have also worked with bigger enterprises on Digital Transformation requirements to modernise their systems in order to stay competitive; indeed, to even stay operational. Our team of engineers with Deep Learning capabilities bring in capabilities like cognitive services like Natural Language Processing, data management, visualization,  workflow automation etc.

What made you start your startup and what problem does it solve?

We started out knowing that there is a great Digital Divide in the North-East compared to the rest of the country and Assam was years behind the other states in terms of an IT ecosystem, businesses were yet to adopt digitalization and talents within the Information technology space were all working outside. With this realisation, we quit our corporate jobs and TechVariable was started in Guwahati with a vision to boost the IT ecosystem of NE India and to create a platform that enabled at least a few, if not many to come back to Assam and work closer to home. 

I believe we can grow a company with local talents and really go global. Talents from the top engineering colleges from the region are a part of our team. We work on both conventional software development technology stacks as well as Deep Learning technologies. We have worked with a handful of companies, big and small from different geographical locations and different cultures. This has helped us garner more experience in lesser time, we can connect with the clients on a more personal level to understand their vision and help convert their vision into a meaningful technology product. Our goal is to help our customers create top-notch technology products that go to market faster without burning a hole in their pockets.

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

I resigned from Tata Consultancy Services just before the completion of 2 years. Actually, I had a few offers from Universities in Europe to pursue my masters and I was supposed to leave in the fall of 2015. I started getting apprehensive of my decision a couple of months before packing my bags and leaving for Europe. It was then I thought to drop my plan for masters and start out a venture. There was not any business plan, just the conviction that I am going to be an entrepreneur.

Where is your startup based? Why do you think that is the best place for you?

TechVariable is based out of Guwahati, Assam. It is located at the heart of Guwahati city and is the most accessible from the regional and national Engineering Colleges. This enables us to be close with the student community and at the core of the recruitment processes of the colleges and we handpick the best of the engineering talents.  

Being in Assam helps us to stay close to our homes and the community. It helps us to find the emotional support we sometimes need to stay sane. We are building up a community of IT professionals, students, technocrats and industry leaders and this is working towards our vision of putting Assam at the global stage of the world of Information Technology. We have been able to create both direct and indirect jobs and slowly but surely more startups have come up in the region and I believe this can create the ecosystem of entrepreneurship which we didn’t find while we started out.

As a startup founder, what are you paranoid about? What keeps you awake at night?

Startup founders need to wear multiple hats and this amounts to quite some tension, feeling like living on the edge forever, and the so many many ups and downs sometimes even make you feel that moments of success will not last. The paranoia is always there, it is usually either one or more of the following- finding new clients, multiple project deliveries, marketing efforts, employee retention, hiring, interviews, sales pipeline etc.

It’s mostly because as an entrepreneur you can never take any of these for granted and however meticulous or organised an entrepreneur is he/she will always be anxious that one or the other would go wrong the next day and believe me it does happen. The fire fighting never ends. It’s the unknown element (of what might go wrong)/uncertainty and moments of near-debilitating anxiety and times of despair when it seems everything might crumble.  

Who are your competitors and how are you better than them?

What sets us apart is our team and the experience that we have garnered in our run so far. Getting to work directly with co-founders and product owners creates an entrepreneurial mindset in the employees. Getting involved in the end to end product development lifecycle(starting from product planning to design to development) in a variety of products with different clients opens up numerous learning opportunities. 

The high-performance culture and collective learning help all of us get better with each passing day. 

There are a lot of competitors, with so many service providers, it’s hard to name a few.   

How hard is it to have a work-life balance as a startup founder and how do you manage it?

It’s true that entrepreneurship can take gruelling hours and commitment, it’s also not true that you can’t have a personal life. Part of being your own boss means that you can schedule your own hours – to some extent. But the hours never go away. 

However, the problem starts when you cannot get the subconscious to stop thinking about the startup, it’s always working. And this makes you emotionally unavailable. It may seem from another person’s perspective that you are free and idle but the mind is always working and this makes you mentally tired/exhausted. This leads to sleep problems, restlessness sets in, being easily irritated at some times, and having a hard time concentrating and thinking. It’s quite difficult to keep a clear head.

And there is the depression that sets in, because of naturally being prone to high levels of anxiety, large rejections, struggles for traction. These all factors make it really difficult to keep work and life separate, in my opinion being a startup founder means you are always working or at the least, thinking about it.

I think there should be more awareness going on in terms of the dark side of entrepreneurship.

Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If not then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

We are a bootstrapped company since the start and sustained with minimum profits in the first couple of years. We intend to go for a global expansion in the US, however with the pandemic and travel restrictions we are putting everything on hold for now. A lot has changed in the past year and we are re-assessing our business model, doubling down on customer retention and acquisition, restructuring teams; it would definitely call for raising funds for our expansion.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you? Why do they have that? What’s the reality?

Well, a lot of them think that I am super-rich. It’s mostly because of the hype surrounding startups, the idea that entrepreneurship is about fame and riches. Or maybe because we started out with nothing and have built a team of 30 and we work with clients from the US. So they try to put together 2 and 2 and make the calculations. 

The reality is we are trying to build an organisation, something that lasts. It’s about putting the company first, then the people. We are trying to balance the short term and long term priorities, all while bootstrapping. We need to increase the company runway, increase benefits for our employees, put money into RnD and training, and plan for expansion. In short, it’s more about the growth of the company than getting paid first.

What gets you excited about this company?

I always make sure to celebrate the small wins. Even while coming up with a new plan/strategy/decision even the sense of uninformed optimism really gets me going. We have bootstrapped the whole company so far, starting out from our apartment to moving into a small office, saving money to buy each piece of inventory(desktop, AC, power backup system, chairs, printer), even the small items like the whiteboard, there is a story involved. This sometimes makes us realise the struggles that we have overcome, the struggles that lie ahead. Seeing the team grow, seeing our customers succeed, seeing the small achievements, makes us so fulfilled and excited at the same time.

Tell us how a day in your life looks like? Your schedule for a day right from the time you get up till you hit the bed at night.

This is how I intend to follow but isn’t always the case. There are interruptions and the need to attend to so many unknown elements. Here’s a summary: 

Naturally, I am a morning person. Pre-Covid my day started with hitting the gym at 6/6:30 in the morning. However, with the gyms closed and not being able to adapt to home workouts I wake up around 7:30 and take a stroll inspecting the houseplants that I have.  

I have been reading a lot lately and pick up a book at 8:00 and read for an hour or so. I go to the kitchen at 9:00 and prepare the food for the day and have my breakfast. I sit at my desk around 9:45 and open the following browsers in sequence- Gmail, Linkedin, FB, Instagram. I reply to the emails, visit my company pages and see the performance of the social media posts of the previous day. The first meeting starts at 10:30 with my Marketing associate, Ms Sonali and it usually runs for 15-30 mins. It’s like a virtual huddle and we plan out the day’s work.

My work gets divided into Inbound marketing and Outbound marketing. Some time is spent on doing market research and working out social media strategies and content planning. The content that goes into our website and social media handles gets run by me and I have a meeting with the content guys for 30 mins. I also need to take status updates with the developers or get into team meetings with clients that I am handling. Lunch is around 1:30 pm.

Post-lunch I get back to the emails. The emails are usually from clients, business partners, other team members. In the 2nd half, I work with prospective clients, sending them proposals and getting into meetings. I spend an hour or so from 3:00 pm doing some prospecting and social listening. 

Around 5 pm I get into meetings with co-founders, this is not a daily activity though. It’s time to get back with my Marketing team. Here we mostly work on the ongoing tasks at hand and walk through the social media handles. There might be another meeting with our HR Recruiter and another with our design team to work on a client project. Off late I have started some self-learning and going through a few online programs. I usually do this from 7-8 pm. 

Post dinner, around 10:00 pm I usually have meetings with potential clients or business partners or mentors which runs from 10-11. If not I try to write some blog posts or just get back to the book I left in the morning. There are of course the odd 6:00 am and 1:00 am meetings for the sales call with the prospects from the US.

This is a daily routine when everything is in motion and there is no fire to be extinguished. Once something urgent comes up with high priority, I usually have to get on with it and put in the extra hours. 

Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other?

I resigned from Tata Consultancy Services just before the completion of 2 years. Ever since my engineering days, I had plans to pursue a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. I received 3 invitations from Universities in Sweden, Finland and Iceland and those came with scholarships. I was supposed to leave in the fall of 2015, which means I had 4-5 months of free time until I left for Europe. Almost a couple of months were left for me to pack and leave, I started getting apprehensive of my decision.

Looking back what influenced me to drop my plan for masters and how I stayed back in Guwahati without having a proper plan of action, I think it was my love for Guwahati and the realisation from personal encounters that a majority of the Assamese diaspora working outside the state wished to come back to their home sooner or later. During my time in TCS, Delhi, I could see that there was a huge population (starting from freshers to top positions in MNCs) working outside the state and almost everyone realised how much Assam was lagging behind in terms of IT and job opportunities.

Without much consideration of the pros and cons, I called Utpal(batchmate from AEC and colleague from TCS), who was still in TCS, Mumbai to check if he might be interested in starting some sort of a venture in Assam. He was quite excited about the idea and told me to make some plans and he would resign and come back in a few months. Back in 2015, the internet scenario was still horrible and as such, I used to sit at a desktop in a coaching centre and use their internet to browse how to start up, what are some business jargons, what the definition of a Business plan actually is.

A month or two later I met Ratnadeep, who had just finished his MTech and returned to Assam and joined that same coaching institute as a faculty. A couple of months later Ratnadeep and I started TechVariable from our 2BHK apartment at ABC, Guwahati. The funny thing is Utpal was still working in TCS and hadn’t met Ratnadeep yet. It was not until March 2016  we decided to set up an office and Utpal joined our Chandmari office full time somewhere around June.

Know a great startup story or want to share your own? Write to us at bhumikka@insidermediacorp.com and we will get back to you. For more updates follow Bangalore Insider on Facebook and Instagram.