STARTUPS
SING AS BARRIERS FALL
Cloud
Computing, Social Media, And Open Source Software Have Dramatically Reduced The
Cost Of Developing And Marketing A Product
When Paras Chopra, 25, started his venture Wingify Software, a tool to optimize a website to attract users, he developed and tested his idea using a server on New Jersey-based cloudhosting provider Linode for just $20 a month. His goal was to earn a modest Rs 50,000 a month. That was the salary he used to take home in his previous job as an R&D engineer in Aspiring Minds, an employability assessment startup.
The Delhi College of Engineering graduate launched the tool in May 2010. “In the first month, I made $4,000, four times what I expected. The product was then still in beta stage,” he says. Today, his Delhi-based startup has more than 3,200 customers, including Microsoft, Walt Disney and AMD, and expects to mop up $7 million in revenues in 2013-14.
“If I had done it the traditional way, I would have had to buy my own servers and software, lease an internet line, and the cost would have run into a few thousand dollars. And, I would have had to ensure zero downtime,” he says.
Cloud computing, social media and other online resources have dramatically lowered the cost of starting a tech venture. Chopra used cloud computing; he got server-, storage- and network-resources, and software tools, from a remote thirdparty provider through an internet line by paying only a small ‘rent’. Cloud computing providers are able to price these services very low because their resources are shared by thousands of users.
And you can get going in a few minutes. Alan Perkins, a CTO at Rackspace, a US-based cloud-service provider, needs just five swipes on an iPad and less than 5 minutes to set up six servers, each with 80 GB of hard disk space and 2 GB RAM, for potential customers in India. That’s like getting a full server room running in less than 5 minutes.
“You can get half a gigabyte of RAM for as low as 2 cents an hour. And for the most intense use of resources, the cost will not be more than $4.50 an hour. In fact, most requirements will not cost more than a few cents. Rackspace provides managed support for just $100 a month, where the customer can, for instance, ask us to install something for him,” says Perkins.
ChargeBee, a Chennai-based online billings business launched in 2011, uses Amazon’s cloud-computing resources. “When ChargeBee started, there was no capital expenditure. Amazon Web Services cost us less than $100 a month to keep our production servers running. Thanks to Amazon, the cost of hardware is down to a tenth; we don’t even have to manage our database,” says Krishnamoorthy Subramanian, one of the founders.
Agrees Abhijit Bose, co-founder of the Bangalore-based Ezetap, which has launched a device that turns smartphones into point-of-sale credit card readers. “The infrastructure cost of readying a prototype and getting the first set of customers has drastically come down,” he says, echoing the low-cost refrain.
When Paras Chopra, 25, started his venture Wingify Software, a tool to optimize a website to attract users, he developed and tested his idea using a server on New Jersey-based cloudhosting provider Linode for just $20 a month. His goal was to earn a modest Rs 50,000 a month. That was the salary he used to take home in his previous job as an R&D engineer in Aspiring Minds, an employability assessment startup.
The Delhi College of Engineering graduate launched the tool in May 2010. “In the first month, I made $4,000, four times what I expected. The product was then still in beta stage,” he says. Today, his Delhi-based startup has more than 3,200 customers, including Microsoft, Walt Disney and AMD, and expects to mop up $7 million in revenues in 2013-14.
“If I had done it the traditional way, I would have had to buy my own servers and software, lease an internet line, and the cost would have run into a few thousand dollars. And, I would have had to ensure zero downtime,” he says.
Cloud computing, social media and other online resources have dramatically lowered the cost of starting a tech venture. Chopra used cloud computing; he got server-, storage- and network-resources, and software tools, from a remote thirdparty provider through an internet line by paying only a small ‘rent’. Cloud computing providers are able to price these services very low because their resources are shared by thousands of users.
And you can get going in a few minutes. Alan Perkins, a CTO at Rackspace, a US-based cloud-service provider, needs just five swipes on an iPad and less than 5 minutes to set up six servers, each with 80 GB of hard disk space and 2 GB RAM, for potential customers in India. That’s like getting a full server room running in less than 5 minutes.
“You can get half a gigabyte of RAM for as low as 2 cents an hour. And for the most intense use of resources, the cost will not be more than $4.50 an hour. In fact, most requirements will not cost more than a few cents. Rackspace provides managed support for just $100 a month, where the customer can, for instance, ask us to install something for him,” says Perkins.
ChargeBee, a Chennai-based online billings business launched in 2011, uses Amazon’s cloud-computing resources. “When ChargeBee started, there was no capital expenditure. Amazon Web Services cost us less than $100 a month to keep our production servers running. Thanks to Amazon, the cost of hardware is down to a tenth; we don’t even have to manage our database,” says Krishnamoorthy Subramanian, one of the founders.
Agrees Abhijit Bose, co-founder of the Bangalore-based Ezetap, which has launched a device that turns smartphones into point-of-sale credit card readers. “The infrastructure cost of readying a prototype and getting the first set of customers has drastically come down,” he says, echoing the low-cost refrain.
Shilpa
Phadnis & Sujit John | TOI 131226
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