Bhavin Turakhia, Founder, DirectI

Intelligent People. Uncommon Ideas

YourStory brings to you the profile of a very successful entrepreneur, who has come a long way in the field of entrepreneurship. Meet Bhavin Turakhia, Founder and CEO at DirectI who is responsible for the exponential growth of DirectI from a startup in 1998 to a global web products company with over six businesses, hundreds of employees and millions of global customers!

DirectI is a three hundred million dollars group of businesses, that develop innovative mass market web products serving millions of customers worldwide.

Business Idea

DirectI is an idea-enterprise. It thrives on innovation and creativity and creates indigenous internet products and services that fullfill various needs. It is one of the fastest growing companies that provides backend software and services including domain name registration.

In Bhavin's words, “It is futile to imagine that everyone in an organization will be conversant with every aspect of it processes. We acknowledge this, and instead have a value driven philosophy. We believe that we would be spreading our value too thin if we built software for a single client. We believe in product ownership. We believe in building products which can be used by millions of users."

ResellerClub and LogicBoxes, the two innovative business units of DirectI have become industry leaders in their respective verticals.

Currently, DirectI serves over a million customers across more than two hundred countries. One of the chief reasons behind this incredible success is the vision that has driven the venture.

"Everything the Byte touches should be our kingdom," says Bhavin expressing the DirectI vision. He further explains the logic behind being a product based company. He says, "A custom software development company will charge a certain percentage of profit margin over its basic development cost. A products company however charges for its product on the basis of the true value derived by an end consumer."

Target Market

DirectI started, like many other successful ventures, as an extension of the passion of the founder. Bhavin Turakhia created a niche for himself. It was sheer passion and courage to walk the road less travelled to create a company that would service the needs of millions of customers across the world.

The company vision is based on the Internet wave. The ability to transmit information at a zero cost opens up possibilities that never existed before."Individuals and entities worldwide must adopt and adapt to a new way of doing business, learn new lessons, evolve their processes and leverage on the advantages and opportunities presented by a connected globe, in order to increase efficiency, remain competitive, and enhance quality of life." says Bhavin

Through his company, this dynamic entrepreneur aims to build unique software, applications and services that leverage the internet and assist individuals and entities to communicate, collaborate and stay in touch.

What sets them apart

DirectI differentiates itself from other organisation through its belief in creating value for its customers by introducing inovative products.They also believe in building volume based solutions to enhance its reach and utility to a larger base.

"We provide services at the highest end of the value chain; we aren’t just a backend service provider. We conceptualize products, build them and sell them. This involves higher risks, higher value, and in turn higher rewards," explains Bhavin

Future Plans

Bhavin envisages making DirectI the largest global product development company in the internet space.

DirectI has customers from all over the world, but Bhavin is disappointed with the traction in Indian markets. He maintains that India will remain a special focus for DirectI in years ahead.

The company is working towards establishing strategic alliances with companies in various countries to enhance its endeavor to capture the global markets in a localized way.

His entrepreneurial journey

In his early years Bhavin was exposed to computers. He spent a lot of time after school exploring BASIC and other program languages. He read many books and manuals to teach himself. By tenth grade Bhavin had coded a stock market simulation game built to track stock prices.

By the end of grade ten, Bhavin had discovered his entrepreneurial zest, constantly pushing himself to create something of value in the world. “It was through my early experience with the internet, that I got totally hooked on to the idea of transferring information from one location to another. I decided that whatever computer venture I start would have to do with the internet, since I believed that this would redefine the way people do business in the future” recalls Bhavin.

Bhavin started taking up consulting assignments, given his popularity in the upcoming technology circles. After some time DirectI was a registered domain name. Headquartered in an Osia Friendship apartment in Bombay, it was a one-man run company.

Through the first 2 years of business, Bhavin?s prime challenge was collections of payments from clients. He recollects spending 30-40% of his time following up. Professionals at Indian companies often kept him waiting for 4 hours even when he showed up in person.

Bhavin recollects many lost opportunities, but none he regrets in particular. Bhavin is a constant learner and believes that every day he spends in DirectI teaches him something new helping his personal growth. He values the hands on experience he has earned in the last 10 years at DirectI more than any classroom

.“When I considered a 40% discount on our product in order to win a new customer, I had developers who presented amazing research, surveys and competition analysis to counter the compromised product price points proven wrong by someone in my organization on several occasions. And it adds to my constant learning experience.” says Bhavin with a smile.

Recognition

Bhavin has been awarded numerous awards, from DirectI being the first and only Indian Company to get an ICANN accreditation, to Bhavin awarded as the best entrepreneur by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India.

All DirectI businesses have been more than doubling in revenue year after year. DirectI businesses rank amongst the fastest growing businesses worldwide in their corresponding industry segments.

Tips For Budding Entrepreneurs

Being a successful entrepreneur Bhavin has many advices for the budding entrepreneurs. He says " Budding entrepreneurs should tone down the product instead of changing the market. Most often, an entrepreneur is so emotionally attached with his innovation that he does not see that the market is not prepared for it."

He also wants to convey that all positive choices cannot be made at once and says "This breed of entrepreneurship is different from the one when a successful professional who already understands a particular market turns entrepreneurial. Risk taking often means taking risk in the current choice including giving up security in the choices that are abandoned.Very few disruptive innovations come in single bursts. Most evolve from small beginnings. The internet is an example."

YourStory wishes this intelligent entrepreneur more and more success in the coming years and wish to see his uncommon ideas reach the common people around the globe.