Rajesh Varrier is one of those blokes who dared. He was leading a more than comfortable life at Infosys, but the entrepreneurial bug had bit him hard and he was not prepared to let go of it either. ?At the age of 21, I had become an entrepreneur, soon after quitting my first job with Datamatics. There was this group of friends. We all felt charged up about setting up our own business and we set out. We were confident of our code writing abilities and felt we could run an IT company. But we fell short. It was too premature, and we folded up despite winning a huge contract.?
Rajesh then buckled down to join the mainline IT stream. His stint at Infosys was the one where he found his real bearings. ?Infosys has a culture of entrepreneurship. Every division is run like a new business. There is so much you can learn from the leaders there. I too picked up quite a lot from them. But still, I wanted to set up something on my own.?
So after working many quarters at Infosys, he decided to dust off his old business ideas and decided to have a fresh new crack at it. ?My wife always knew I would go back and do something of my own. She knew I was restless. So in 2007, I decided to venture out and start Activecubes. And this time I was ready for any eventuality.?
But recession struck soon, and Rajesh had to recast his business projections. ?We decided to cut costs drastically. That was the only way we could survive. In a way it was good. Now we know how to tighten things when needed.? But the company did not lose heart. ?We knew we will get the desired results if we showed the right attitude,? explains Rajesh. Activecubes today is a global firm providing analytics and business intelligence solutions, helping firms harness information through technology, and also provide incisive insights through analytics, ensuring strategic and operational decisions are better enabled.
?At Activecubes, we have a strong understanding and experience of both analytics and business intelligence technologies, which puts it in a unique position to provide complete solutions to business. We have a very experienced leadership team, which puts its delivery capability, in terms of quality at par with the best and the biggest in the industry.?
?We now plan to increase our depth in the verticals we focus in and increase the size of business multifold in the coming years. With respect to the India market, over the next 24 months, we want to become company which is top of the mind recall for all brand managers, when they think of solving marketing problems like ?which of my channels gives me the best returns and which does not?. It should be top of mind for IT heads when they think of providing business intelligence/analytics platforms to their business.?
Now that he is living his dream of becoming an entrepreneur, he has a different set of challenges to live up to. ?Entrepreneurship for me is about creation/building. The joys are to be found all through the process of creation every other day. When you win a new deal, a new client, hire new talent, as the organisation meets goals and generates wealth etc. All these are signs of growth and of success in creation, that is, building. This is the essence of entrepreneurship and source of biggest joy.?
?My biggest delight was when we got voted as among the top 5 startups in the country and when we got listed in Red Herring?s global 100 list. But I think biggest achievement of my career is still to come. You know what I mean,? he adds.