We have taken diabetes as the focus area - V. S. Badri Narayanan, Founder, NRich Software
Meet V. S. Badri Narayanan (Badri), Founder of NRich Software P Ltd (www.diasof.com), a software product aficionado who firmly believes that India’s dream of superstar status in the global arena can be catalysed by the products business. In this Sunday afternoon telephonic and email interaction with YourStory, Badritakes on a few questions. Read on.
First, your journey as an entrepreneur, thus far.
I have always been passionate about software products and their potential to make a difference to the users of computers. I started with a couple of services like Scan and ExSell to help software product companies. Scan is a diagnostic service, very similar to a CT Scan, to measure the market-readiness of a software product. It consists of evaluating the market readiness over 51 parameters in a set of 3 phases using 370 questions. ExSell is a two-day Sales Training program designed to sell software products.
We entered the field of personal finance with products like XpnsTrak, Enrich and FIT. Our first success was when Outlook magazine gave our product as a subscription gift when it rebranded its Intelligent Investor as Outlook Money.
I saw the power of context and the power of benefits when marketing Enrich. We have close to 5,000 users of our personal finance products all over the country, from small towns to the metros. A large number of our customers paid into our bank accounts despite the fact that we were not a well-known brand and personal finance is not a hot area. In an era where piracy was rampant, our customers willingly paid for the licence of the software because we touched their pain points and showed the benefits of using our software.
When we researched the health care industry, especially the chronic disease management, we saw that the same problems that plagued a family in managing its money were present in managing its health as well. Subsequently,I used the learnings to launch a few offerings like DiaSof, DiaCel and DiaKare for health care. DiaSof is a cloud-based EMR designed specifically for Diabetic patients to help them be Healthier Anywhere, Anytime. DiaCel is a mobile-driven service to help patients keep away from diabetic complications in just 99 days.
View of the industry you operate in, the data points of interest.
Health care especially chronic diseases management calls for adherence to treatment protocol and access to health information over a period of time. While hospitals have adopted IT to capture patient-related data, the benefits of that are yet to be available to the patients. More patients get their treatment from independent practitioners and physicians where there is no standardised system.
We have taken diabetes as the focus area given that it is widely prevalent in India (60 million diagnosed and 30 million in the pre-diabetic stage, both rural and urban, both male and female, in the age group of 20+ to the 80’s). We are working with some key hospitals to reach the patients and make available to them the power of DiaSof.
Takeaways for new entrepreneurs.
- Always be clear about what problem is being addressed by your offering and whose problem it is. This clarity will guide you through every stage of your business.
- Don’t get paranoid about competition. If you are serving the needs of your prospect segment, it would be that much harder for a competitor to threaten you.
- Choose the business structure that has minimum statutory requirements. As you grow, you can adopt the appropriate structure.
About
An MBA from University of Madras, and a Post Graduate in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, Badrihas more than 22 years of experience in marketing and selling software products and tools, both “Made in India” and global branded products from reputed players during his stints with well-known organizations like Wipro, Polaris, andKumaran Software. His experience spans a wide variety of application areas such as project management, database software, conversion tools, translation tools, retail automation, mini-ERP, analytical and statistical software, call-centre, personal finance to name a few.