We’ve been having a great time understanding and connecting with entrepreneurs and startups across India as part of the RevUp startup event series. After four cities, this month we hosted RevUp in the dynamic, tech-savvy city of Hyderabad. The event focussed on the importance of building and running lean startups.
Being lean is very important, it helps a company to constantly evaluate itself in relation to its customers and the market while driving the optimal use of resources in order to achieve business success. The speakers for the event shared their personal journeys and learnings on driving business success while keeping a check on costs and spending.
The event was hosted on the 9th of June, 2017 at T- Hub in Hyderabad and about 85 startups enthusiasts and entrepreneurs attended the event.
The speakers for RevUp Hyderabad were:
- Harshil Mathur, CEO, Razorpay
- Mrityunjay Kumar, VP Products, Zenoti
- Abhay Deshpande, Founder, Martjack & Board Member, Capillary
Here is a quick recap on each of the speaker sessions:
Session 1 – ‘Secrets to being lean and efficient while focussing on growth’ by Harshil Mathur
Harshil Mathur talking about Razorpay’s journey and what makes the company truly unique.
Being one of the successful startups in the Indian fintech space, Razorpay owes its early success to its strong belief in sustainability and lean thinking. Harshil spoke about Razorpay’s journey from a dorm room in Jaipur to cracking Y Combinator to becoming a trusted name for online payments in India in a span of few years.
This achievement was the result of the persistent focus on leveraging technology and relentlessly evaluating and optimising operations in order to keep the spending under control.
Sustainability is one of the fundamental principles at Razorpay and Harshil spoke about how this was part of the company’s DNA right from the start and what the company does to ensure sustainability both in its day to day activities as well as long term goals
In the early stages, people should wear multiple hats. People should not be limited by their role. For example, engineers should not be doing anything else. That should never be the culture. From the very beginning, set the culture of the organization in such a manner that people are ready to wear multiple hats
Harshil Mathur, CEO, Razorpay
Session 2 – ‘Getting your product right the first time’ by Mrityunjay Kumar
Mrityunjay Kumar discussing the importance of product management to build a solid product.
With a long career being a product leader, technologist and an educationalist, Mrityunjay spoke about some of the key principles that can guide startups to get their product right at the first attempt.
The first thing to keep in mind as a product manager is to ensure that customer needs are fully and accurately understood; the identification of customer problem and need is integral to building solutions that are easily liked and adopted by customers. Mrityunjay also spoke about the importance of data and how it should be effectively leveraged to verify and prove hypotheses.
Don’t just be a product manager, be an experience manager and deliver complete experiences
Mrityunjay Kumar, VP Products, Zenoti
Session 3 – ‘The Art of Survival’ by Abhay Deshpande
Abhay Deshpande speaking about how grit and determination is one of the most important attribute for entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneur and e-commerce veteran, Abhay has witnessed several ups and downs in his startup career, only to emerge building a hugely successful SaaS company in India. During this session he spoke about what it takes to survive and stay focussed on your product in the face of competition and rejection.
Abhay spoke about the importance of selecting the right startup team, people who believe in the brand vision as much as the founder in order to survive in the long term. He was spoke about how important it is to build real solutions that solve customer pain points and how every organisation has to constantly re-evaluate its relevance to customers and make changes if required.
Rejections are inseparable from entrepreneur’s life – Never take No for an Answer. Keep at it!
Abhay Deshpande, Founder, Martjack
The speaker sessions were followed by a Q&A session between the participants and speakers.
Are you an entrepreneur or someone who is interested in starting up? Find out more about the RevUp startup series by dropping us an email at events@razorpay.com.
