Startup eSeries: Coding, Cloud Technology & Coping with Failure

They are an intriguing founder duo...

She: Tarusha Mittal - a La Martiniere alum, is qualified as a CS (Company Secretary) and armed with a degree in humanities. She started working at the age of 18, and has been in the startup space since eight years. Tarusha keeps adding new feathers to her hat, the latest being writer and techie. She is also the COO and 'mad hatter generalist' of Koonk Technologies, where she plays the role of a troubleshooter, takes care of its operations and focusses on mobile development.

He: Mohit Madan is a UPES college dropout and an alumni of Apeejay School... He is a 'hardcore coder' and techie; and a creator and innovator at heart. Mohit became an ethical hacker in his teenage years and has been felicitated by IIT-B and IIT-D for the same. He's been an entrepreneur for six years plus, and has worked on several portals under the Koonk banner.

Together: They founded Koonk Technologies, and now their latest venture Cloudrino... Cloudrino provides a GUI (Graphical User Interface) that allows users to manage their cloud servers without any platform or OS dependencies. It basically means that one does not need to deal with CLI or any other platform like cPanel- which takes up space on your server to manage it. 'Cloudrino is doing to cloud infrastructure management what Windows did to DOS, in terms of OS,' say the duo.That may sound too technical, but you'll be surprised by the number of people already using Cloudrino, making it a huge success in a short period of time.

As entrepreneurs, Tarusha and Mohit have started plenty of ventures, some failed, some successful, but through it all they have kept working, and learning. In this interview, the two share important lessons from their startup journey... Read on...

You both have had a long journey in entrepreneurship, how did it all start?

We have known each other since our school days. We started Koonk in 2011 as we were both drawn toward business and ideation. Our first venture was a hyperlocal delivery platform in Dehradun called DoonKonnect. We broke even but had to shut down as there was no way to scale at that point.

Post that, we moved to an advertisement platform which scaled rapidly, and hence we had to deploy our own hardware. When the venture Fanshala shut due to the changed AUP of Facebook, we were left with the hardware, and that is when we bootstrapped our own data centre in Delhi, and have now progressed to cloud.

You've seen successful and failed ventures, how can entrepreneurs cope better with failure?

Coping with failure can be hard...it seems insurmountable on some days. But we have a simple policy: No matter what happens, work goes on the next day - failure is not an option. Trudge along and persevere, but always learn from your failures, have a strong support system and build a sustainable business.

How was Cloudrino conceptualised, and what does it offer the user?

Cloudrino was conceptualised when we realised that deployment and delivery of servers was cumbersome, and their management even more so. We have built a self-service platform which even a lay person, with no knowledge of technology, can deploy. We are adding a layer that apart from increasing the speed and security, also optimises the web presence.

Cloudrino provides users with a graphical management console that allows users to manage their cloud servers/VPS/dedicated servers without any platform or OS dependencies. Cloudrino also specialises in High Availability Architecture (HAA). So, if anybody has an online presence then Cloudrino will help them procure and manage their server. Think of a cPanel, except Cloudrino will save a lot of resources - time and money.

With a techie Mohit at the helm, how does life as a startup become easier?

Life does become much easier... But since it is a tech product, I have taught myself the ropes for coding too.

For a startup, outsourcing of tech can be tricky, but it is doable... It depends a lot on the product or solution that one is building.

More on Mohit, and the fact that he was a college dropout who went ahead and pursued his dreams...

We are 'practical dreamers', the bunch of us. He dropped out of UPES, when we started off. He was always the builder... He has been an ethical hacker since his teenage years, winning medals in IIT-D and B. He has been a community leader there...always tinkering with ideas. Traditional education is not the end all and be all, the idea is to do stuff that brings you joy.

Tarusha, you write on the challenges of entrepreneurship... Tell us some of the advantages and disadvantages of being an entrepreneur?

Advantages: I can dictate when and where I work from... It gives me an opportunity to learn and build things nearly every other day.

Disadvantages: The instability that is a part and parcel of running any business... And, finding the right people to delegate to.

What kind of impact has your venture seen so far?

We have over 145,000 users registered on our portal, giving us rave reviews for our UI. The rave reviews keep us going. When a user came to me and said that Cloudrino enables him to manage his servers without being intimidated, I felt an elation that I've never felt before... Because that is exactly why we built this!

Another testimonial came from our referral program... A user in Sweden has referred over 500 more users to us.

How do you plan to scale operations?

We intend to add more nodes by the end of the year... Currently we have over 10,000 servers all over the world that are using Cloudrino. We are in talks with incubators and accelerators to become a part of the ecosystem in a bigger way.

Any advice for budding entrepreneurs?

Persevere. Take feedback. Learn and then pivot or persevere. Listen and build intelligently. Ask for help and be shameless in doing that.

PS: I'm inspired by the story of Mohit and Tarusha... As entrepreneurs they may have been knocked down by failure but have got up and fought back, time and again... They are not afraid of the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey... All they focus on is following their vision of giving their users a unique tech experience.

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