Vishwadeep Bajaj started his career with CMC and then Siemens in India and Germany, before he switched between corporate life and entrepreneurial life a couple of times, by starting his steadfast journey as an entrepreneur in Europe in the technology space. He has since then founded a couple of companies in UK/Germany and exited before founding Valuefirst. Valuefirst, with headquarters in India, serves in many countries across Asian, African and European continents. In an exclusive interview with India Digital Review, Bajaj speaks about his future plans that would fuel the company’s growth in India.
Prior to founding ValueFirst, you had worked with companies like CMC, Siemens etc. What was your idea behind becoming an entrepreneur?
I think it is a function of your DNA. I was always sure that I would like to create an enterprise with enduring values to deliver sustainable value. My corporate days taught me a lot. However the desire to be on my own and to pursue my own path took me to the creation of the Telcon Europe Limited, an Internet application development company in the United Kingdom which finally led me to ValueFirst.
What was your objective and idea behind launching ValueFirst?
After the dot com boom bust, I re-engineered Telcon into a wired and wireless application development company by the name of PervasiveOne, to develop a device and network agnostic solutions. It began to shape up well however after 9/11, the demand supply situation in the UK changed completely. This made me look at India as a potential market. Originally the idea was to sell enterprise mobility applications however I realized that the planned solutions were too expensive for the Indian market and the market readiness was missing due to lack of mobile data services like GPRS etc. This led us to choose SMS as a bearer of information to move corporate information over the mobile network at price points suitable for India.
Since then the company has fueled exponential growth both through organic and acquisitions led inorganic growth in domestic market and overseas to offer a device and platform agnostic approach to its customers through enhanced offerings in SMS, Voice, USSD, WAP, Media, Apps and Digital properties.
What were the initial challenges that you had faced while setting up ValueFirst’s business in India?
The key challenge was attracting talent to work for our start-up. Other than that lack of adequate capital meant that sometimes we would delay on paying salaries in time. Also as we were one of the early players in the market, we had to do a lot of customer education before we could sell our products.
What have been the growth drivers for the company so far?
We were solving real problems for our customers and I think that really propelled us forward. Other growth drivers we believe are that the mobile adoption in the country was exploding as well as the costs were getting reduced allowing for the demand to expand in a significant way.
ValueFirst Messaging rebranded to ValueFirst Digital Media earlier this year. What was the primary reason behind the rebranding?
We rebranded in 2012 -ValueFirst Messaging has been renamed to ValueFirst Digital Media. Earlier we were providing solutions around SMS as a bearer of information, however with passage of time and through listening to our customers, we became multi-modal and expanded to running digital interactions on behalf of our customers. Our new name and new branding reflects our expanded business model and capabilities.
What are your IPO plans and how much do you intend to raise by going public?
We plan to IPO in FY14-15. The IPO will enable us to raise additional capital for acquisition of internet and mobile properties. We have not yet finalized the size of the IPO.
In the last one year, ValueFirst had acquired mGinger, IndyaRocks.com and Way2Online. What was the objective behind acquiring these businesses?
The objective for us is very simple – we are acquiring properties with great consumer traction. This gives us an opportunity to build our own opt-in consumer database. With the right kind of profiling of this database, we can run large multi-modal targeted digital media campaigns on behalf of our customers.
Do you have any further acquisition plans going forward?
Yes indeed, we will continue to acquire interesting consumer properties – both on Internet and mobile. In addition we would like to acquire a data analytics company.
ValueFirst has been in news recently with the FIR against its own CEO Kumar Apoorv. Do you think that this has hampered the company’s image and business? How do you plan to revive the company’s image from here on?
ValueFirst stands for ethical business practices – we take pride in conducting our business in the right and completely legal ways. We would like to believe that ValueFirst name was not hampered at all. We believe that if we continue to service our customers with the right spirit and passion, we can create a great brand in India.
Do you have any plans on replacing Kumar with someone?
For the first 8 years I was the CEO of the company and now once again I am back in the same role.
What are your priorities for ValueFirst for 2013?
I would like to focus on the following areas:
