Nilesh Pancholi, Shrenik Bhura, Founders, Serenus Infotech

“Solutions on the web”

A value system combined with a comprehensive web solutions organization is what Serenus is all about. Nilesh Pancholi and Shrenik Bhura are the two Young Entrepreneurs behind the venture who presented their peace@work philosophy and business idea for our perusal.

Business Idea – A web solutions company is old hat but they believe that their “old hat” has a few feathers in it.

“Serenus Infotech is a holistic web solutions organization that helps advance our clients' business goals with its creative and technical expertise. Our customers start seeing immediate progress in days, thanks to our transparent, interactive and agile processes.”

“Web development with SI is fast, evolutionary, even fun. There are no secrets -- you can walk into a SI project room and see exactly where we are at a single glance.”

Their best practices like collaboration, feedback, transparency, and testing coupled with their founders experience is their chosen equation to success.

Target Market – Their solutions enable businesses to showcase their products and services via CMS backed catalog sites, CRM and e-commerce, making them a definite choice for those in the “sellers” market.

“Our services may be availed by anyone who is looking for a turnkey web-based solution to any business problem. Due to our strategic alliance with Intelliant who have substantial depth in understanding SME and general business requirements and our own in-house expertise of web-technologies, we have been able to successfully cater to domains ranging from automobile dealers to jewelry designers and more.”

What sets them apart- “We take great pains in understanding the UQ - “Usability Quotient” for the users of our systems as our users range from intellectuals to shop-floor workers. This has been a key contributor to our solutions' acceptance.”

“We are creating a niche for ourselves by designing web-based solutions for problems that are waiting to be identified in several verticals. True to our motto 'peace @ work' our action plan is to identify unique patterns and problems that are craving for a solution.”

“One of our show-case solutions caters to the automobile segment wherein we have managed to bring peace to the chaos ridden service shop-floor by combining our “solutioning” expertise with some high-end but extremely low TCO technologies. This is as yet a work-in-progress, but a few preliminary studies indicate a high degree of efficiencies.”

Future Plans- The duo have very strong feeling on what needs to be done in the coming years and say “Organic is what we prefer, to satiate our appetite of all forms – food, investment or growth. Apart from catering to the wide spectrum of web-solutions spanning from static to highly interactive social networking sites, we heavily rely on our ability to look for 'solutions in search of problems'. No, this is no typographical error. We strongly believe that given the technical expertise most of us in our industry possess, we have done very little to apply the solutions we already have to address real problems. It is high time that application is given priority over up-gradation. Advancement in technology is good, but its time that we take a deep breath and rationalize the value delivered with every advancement.”

“We aim to scale from 5-50 in the next fiscal with 2 development centers.”

Their Entrepreneurial story- The founders of Serenus Infotech believe that their choice to enter into business for themselves was the right one on two counts.

“Firstly by heritage. Secondly, because we love the independence it presents us. Having seen both sides of the coin and knowing that with 'freedom comes great responsibility', we love the challenge and adrenaline rush that this responsibility presents.”

“It allows us to freely innovate in our space and time. We always felt that their was a vacuum in the solutions space catering to the SME segment. The needs of the SME segment are very unique and the approach to their solutions mandates a lot of agility which must be built inherently in each and every process of your organization.”

“This understanding dawned upon us only after spending all these years as an entrepreneur where the onus to adapt, perform, innovate and deliver rested just with the core team.”

Their Achilles heel is one that they hope to nullify by hiring the right people. The duo says “One of the biggest challenges, as with the rest of our industry, has been to get the right talent and build the conducive environment wherein the deserving talent can thrive and deliver. The dynamics of our city and region present a more challenging situation compared to other IT nerve centers of India for reasons I would not elaborate.”

“Yet we have been resilient and persistent. We have been building capabilities (processes, corporate culture and training practices) to bring the best out of the raw talent that is available. Due to our niche focus on innovation we have a compelling need for agility and lately we have been able to focus on that area as well. Striking a fine balance between being process oriented and being agile is one of the big challenges as well.”

“Despite having understood the limitations posed to us by your regional dynamics, we took a lot of time to realize that being process oriented and that too very custom processes were necessary to scale. However, no sooner that this thought dawned upon us; we have made significant strides in this direction and are looking forward to reaping the benefits of the same.”

“Having a mentor would have really helped. This would have saved us a lot of time.”

Recognition gained-

“We would consider the trust and faith that each of our esteemed clientele have reposed in us as our greatest recognition. One of our biggest achievements is that each of our present client portfolio has been amassed by references and word-of-mouth from our highly satisfied clients. Nothing like a pat on the shoulder from those you serve.”

Entrepreneurial lesson -Nilesh Pancholi and Shrenik Bhura are driven and practical with as the song goes “their mind on the money and money on their mind. They advise “Be driven by your passion but never lose sight of what is real. Eventually it is the cash-flows that matter. Never forget to ask yourself – Where is the money, honey?”

All in all Serenus seems to have what it takes, with their method of delivering solutions that make room for future problems their chances of success are greater than average. Yourstory hopes for the best and wishes the duo luck with keeping the peace@work.