The case with someone coming from a middle-class family and having a goal is that the person has to be too confident about it. Whatever your goal is, your hard work and your ego should work towards achieving that goal. This was very well understood by Shashank Dixit who came up with his own start-up idea in the last year of college.
Shashank, along with his three co-founders Somesh Misra, Brajesh Sachan and Paritosh Mahana, in the last year of their college built a software for a local outlet near the campus. After graduating from IIT in 2008 they launched the software. The software was mainly used so that the small businesses can work their accounts through the software.
The idea of the software was quite acceptable but at a smaller level the accounts were also small. And so, some of the businesses did not prefer the software Deskera which was introduced by Shashank and his team. He later decided to shift his market from India to Singapore in 2012. The research before entering Singapore made him realize that the country was open in accepting new ideas and businesses. Also, the city-state provided an ideal opportunity had it had low ERP (enterprise resource planning) penetration.
His initial days in Singapore made him do door-to-door selling of his software. This also made him sleep on the Singapore’s Changi airport in order to save costs.
His initial days in Singapore made him do door-to-door selling of his software. This also made him sleep on the Singapore’s Changi airport as a cost-cutting measure. But as Singapore had the compliance of GST, demand for his product increased. The target audience in Singapore that is the businesses there, accepted Deskera, which indirectly helped Shashank in the expansion of his business. Businesses received great support from the government of Singapore with the Goods and Services Tax. The time period in which Deskera entered Singapore there were a lot of start-up which had lost their control in operations while working in Singapore.Three years later Malaysia also switched to GST and soon Deskera had an office there to expand operations.
After facing all the hardships, Deskera had over 300 employees and a turnover of $42 million. Deskera has its presence in the US with San Francisco and California as its headquarters. With offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia it also serves in eight Indian cities. Where India is driving with GST, Deskera looks forward to India as a big market for them to expand. In August 2016, Deskera announced itself as the first cloud-based provider to offer GST-ready software suite in India.
Shashank Dixit, who had a problem with coming up with his start-up only because he being a middle-class family but he believed and was confident in his idea. And this is what made him come so far with Deskera. Apart from only business Shashank likes guiding start-ups in how they should go about analysing potential markets. According to him there is a lot more opportunities for start-ups now as all nations are promoting businesses and start-up ideas.
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