Ranjith Tharayil: A Large Population Accompanied by a Market Without Any Borders and a Skilled Workforce Are Undoubtedly the Major Advantages To Starting a Business in India

Ranjith Tharayil of Tech99 Innovations Pvt Ltd.

Tell us about yourself?

I am Founder and CTO of a SAAS-based Digital Credential Platform CertifyMe. Online.SAAS-based startup enables conference and training producers to automate their credential issuing process and therefore maximize their brand presence.

Prior to these ventures, I had held Technology Leadership positions as VP Accenture Agile Engineering and Head of Technology Consulting SolutionsIQ and Cheif Engineer Samsung Electronics.

I was also the founding member of Agile Technical Group, which was the largest Agile technical community in the world which got merged into Technical Agility Institute.

I was also instrumental in founding SheCanSpeck.org a social startup enabling women to conquer the stage, Gfreshers.com a job portal for graduate freshers, gitnasa.com, and many other big and small gigs.

What lessons has being an entrepreneur taught you? 

Follow your passion, Expect failure, Have a trust on ourself, should have a great team, always look forward.

If you could go back in time to when you first started your business, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Don’t ever be afraid to do new things and new plans.

Start doing something you enjoy doing, learn the trade and understand what the business models are .

Go with your passion and not the starting salary. The money and success will come naturally if you love what you do.

A lot of entrepreneurs find it difficult to balance their work and personal lives. How have you found that?

A proper planning , a best team and an understandable family will help you to balance the work and personal life.

Give us a bit of an insight into the influences behind the company?

Before I got into CertifyMe, I was one of the co-founders of a startup called Quadralogics, a training and consulting firm. Our learners often shared our course certificates on social media platforms giving us a lot of marketing and brand presence with no additional effort.

So we developed a digital credential platform where we could easily automate awarding of our certificates, help our learners easily share their credentials on social media platforms, and even add them to their certifications on LinkedIn.

We also got requests from various HR and L&D teams to verify our learner’s course certificates helping us implement verifiability in our platform.

By now, we had an MVP of our product which we opened for various known organizations and international conferences. After getting a positive response, we incorporated CertifyMe to help organizations manage their credentials.

What do you think is your magic sauce? What sets you apart from the competitors?

Our competitors are only focusing on educational credentials whereas CertifyMe believes the credential platform can be best used not just in education but also across any digital documents like Offer letters, contracts, ID cards, etc

How have you found sales so far? Do you have any lessons you could pass on to other founders in the same market as you just starting out?

We reach out to organizations using LinkedIn and email and offer them a freemium model. This will give organizations an idea about our product and the art of the possibility.

Once they understand they start subscribing to our standard premium plans.

We also have customized enterprise plan for customers who looking for tailor fits.

We are looking to reach an MRR of 30K USD in the next 15 months

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far in your business, and how did you overcome it?

Identifying the current right team to run the business is the biggest challenge i have faced.

With a proper planning and support helps me to find different peoples from different parts of India, My company is started during the pandemic time (covid) and work from home was a biggest challenge which we overcome by the commitment of my employees.

What do you consider are the main strengths of operating your business in India and the specific state you are in over other states in India?

India is one of the most populated countries in the world with approximately 1.3 billion people due to which India gets a huge market base.

A large population accompanied by a market without any borders and a skilled workforce are undoubtedly the major advantages to starting a business in India.

India has a stable economy, digital competitiveness as well as a massive consumer market.

What (if any) are some weaknesses of operating your business within India and your state?

There are so many issues in India which make the people think twice to start a venture

1. The legal formalities for registering an organization takes a more time than a OECD and other nations.

2.High tariffs and protectionist policies.

3.Fragmented market

If you could operate your business in another state in India rather than the State you are in, which state would it be and why?

Kerala, which is my home town where i have numerous contacts and it is easily to analyze the market of state where i born and bought up.

India has an incredibly diverse population. How has the affected your consumer base and business?

India has an incredibly diverse population which gives us more options to expand our business.

Infrastructure is really important to businesses. How have you seen India’s infrastructure improve recently? Do you see new opportunities opening up?

Though progress has been made, India’s infrastructure of roads, railroads, airports, seaports, power grids, and telecommunications infrastructure present challenges to its growing economic status and ability to deliver public services.

Massive population growth, growing urbanization, and rising incomes put pressure on the government to improve the country’s infrastructure.

As such, the government is allocating significant portions of its budget to infrastructure projects.

What do you want to accomplish in the next 5 years with your business?

We at CertifyMe are on a global mission to eradicate fake / forged documents and we would love your blessing and support in our mission.

And finally, if people want to get involved and learn more about your business, how should they do that?

No comments. We are not facing any issues right now.

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