Serial entrepreneurs start OSSCube to help organisations leverage Open Source Software to transform their ROI
Technology is advancing at a breakneck speed. Cloud, big data, enterprise mobility, and IoT are changing the way organisations function, look at revenues, and acquire customers. We no longer are in the age of proprietary softwares, it's the age of open source.
Looking at this global opportunity for organisations to transform their ROI on the IT spend by leveraging the best commercially supported, enterprise-grade open source solutions, OSSCube was established by Lavanya Rastogi and Vineet Agarwal.
OSSCube provides innovative business solutions in the fast growing areas of cloud, big data, e-commerce, enterprise mobility, and application modernisation. The team enables their clients to reduce the time to market and total cost of ownership of their business solutions by leveraging the power of open source.
The genesis
"We have helped a variety of clients ranging from well-funded startups to Fortune 1000 companies transforming and integrating their business solutions and maximising their ROI by unlocking the power of open source," adds Lavanya.
This is Lavanya and Vineet's second startup. Lavanya says that most of the founding team have been working together and had started their careers together. "Therefore, coming together was an event that took place at the genesis of entrepreneurial pursuits several years ago. OSSCube was just the ‘next thing’ we wanted to do together," adds Lavanya.
Prior to OSSCube, the duo founded a successful product company where they had built award-winning products in the eCRM space based on open source technologies. "We fully understood the ‘power of Open Source’ – but at the time when we were exiting that company," adds Lavanya.
During this time, the duo realised that OSS adoption was going through a point of inflection. They saw that open source products were becoming increasingly enterprise-grade and commercially supported. This was their eureka moment. They discovered a huge opportunity, a pure-play open source solutions integrator to advise and enable the enterprise in conquering new technology disruptions and transforming their ROI on the IT spending.
Building blocks
Initially, they started as a training and consulting company but later forward integrated to become a full lifecycle solutions provider. "That’s why our tagline is: Solutions. Developed. Delivered," adds Lavanya. He adds that the IT landscape is going through a fundamental and structural change, where the needle on innovation and high impact breakthroughs is being moved by innovative startups rather than the traditional large software publishers.
This he says is creating a new order of meritocracy in the IT solutions space, where the enterprise is leaning increasingly towards adopting innovations to stay competitive. This he adds is creating a fundamental shift in perception as the customer’s buying decisions are increasingly less influenced by fear, uncertainty and doubt, and towards the need to stay competitive and leverage innovation.
Future plans
"This is a huge opportunity for a company like ours to actually impact multiple industries and countless lives by bridging technology innovation to real everyday life business solutions that transform the efficiency, effectiveness, and experience of both corporations and end users," says Lavanya.
The team sees a huge opportunity in the domestic IT sector, which they believe has been undermined. Lavanya says that they have been readying a suite of solutions that will directly address some of the most pertinent needs of the businesses in India.
Traction and market space
Speaking of growth and traction, Lavanya says that monetisation to his mind is a process and not a goal. He adds that it is about incrementally unlocking the value for all stakeholders. "Explosive growth while remaining profitable is a monetization of sorts already, as it gives you the flexibility to create value for people. From an event perspective – an IPO or strategic integration are both on the table," says Lavanya.
OSSCube has been listed amongst the Top 100 Great Places to Work in India. They've also made to the INC 5000 list of fastest-growing privately held companies in America. Established in 2006, OSSCube has worked with the likes of Google, LinkedIn, bigadda.com, Yahoo, and Trend Micro.
Reports suggest that close to 90 per cent of Indian IT organisations will have integrated open source to their critical platforms by 2017. A study by Gartner suggests that the uses of open source will become integral to strategic and client facing aspects of the system. The study also adds that close to 99 per cent of Forbes Global 2000 companies will soon be using open source.
